The Roving Activist’s Blog

Happy Pi Day! Today is Pi Day. You know, Pi — the circumference of a circle — 3.14 something something something all the way to infinity? Sorry folks, though my head is filled with facts and factoids of every description, it does not include the value of Pi greater than the first two numbers beyond the decimal point. I leave that to the true numbers enthusiasts.

Anyway, Happy Pi Day!!

Don’t worry, I’m just doing this for Technorati so that I can spread my influence far and wide! j/k K5MP83W6URAS

Technorati is a good way that more people will find out about us.

Happy New Year everyone! May you all have a wonderful, prosperous, joyful, and blessed 2010!

It’s snowing here in Rochester today. I’m resting in bed mostly because I’ve still got that sick thing going on. Sometimes I feel better, while other times, my body is clearly trying to stave off something. I still get out of breath if I talk too long or move around too much.

My main goal for 2010 is to keep writing and get better at it. I’m writing at Associated Content, but hope that I can branch out to some other sites, too. I really want to make some money off of my writing!

I’ve written a few more articles, so go check them out.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/691438/anita_cameron.html

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! It’s 6:15 am, or thereabouts. I haven’t gotten up yet, and really don’t intend to for another couple of hours. The whole famn damily is in bed – me, Lisa, Sammy, and JoJo. Lisa is snoring softly with visions of sugar plums and other holiday stuff in her head. She’s excited about Christmas, so I imagine she’ll be up soon. She’s a large kid like that; its one of the reasons I love her so. Little things make her happy.

Sammy is at my head purring contentedly, and JoJo is at my feet under the covers. It’s cold out, but warm inside. The Christmas tree is up, with presents beneath it, the lights are on, and the stockings are hanging. Lisa and I will make Christmas dinner, and friends will come over to enjoy the day with us. I’m happy that I was able to get Lisa a couple of presents though I’ve not been to work in almost two months. I know that things will work out fine in the end.

I’m still dealing with the effects of the pneumonia – my chest still hurts, and I’m easily winded, so I’ll probably nap and rest a lot today.

I got an early Christmas present on December 18th. Washington, DC mayor Adrian Fenty signed the same-sex marriage bill that passed the city council 11-2. Sure, it’s controversial, but so what! I believe that every loving, consenting adult should have the right to get married if they choose. Check out the story:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/18/same.sex.marriage/

Now, it’s up for the 30 day review by Congress, but it is highly unlikely that Congress will overturn this.

What else will I do today? I’ll most likely call my sister and talk with her and my nieces. I’ll also call my mum, my nephew, and a couple of friends.

What do I want for Christmas? World peace. Justice and equal rights. The earth to be taken care of. The Community Choice Act passed, and real, effective implementation and enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act along with an Olmstead plan for every state. Good health and a good life for myself, my family, and friends. Oh, and one more thing – check out my articles at Associated Content. Just in case you forgot, here’s the link:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/691438/anita_cameron.html

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and have a joyful, blessed day!

Arrrgghh! It seems that every time I make a comeback, doggone it if right after, I don’t disappear again! I have been dealing with illness since October. Let me tell you all about it.

It all started during the ADAPT action in Atlanta back in October. That Monday, the 12th, had rains of epic, biblical proportions, but we are ADAPT. As I told one newcomer, paraphrasing the Postman’s Motto, “Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor dark of night will keep ADAPT from doing our duty”. So, of course, we went forth. While some of my ADAPT sisters and brothers suffered the demise of their power wheelchairs due to the effects of the rain, I was hit with the ADAPT Crud, a singularly nasty bug that invades the bodies of ADAPT members either during, or just after an action. I was quite familiar with the Crud from my early days in ADAPT, but hadn’t been visited in almost a decade, so I guess it was my time. It put me down HARD for over a week!

I finally went back to work, but got sick again with a viral upper respiratory infection. This time, I sucked it up and pushed on through because we had really important stuff going on with Governor Paterson’s proposed budget cuts. During this time, I learned that at least two folks had H1N1 (swine flu), and I had been in close contact with them for several hours on more than one occasion. The Albany trip was intense, and I literally wore myself out. I couldn’t even get up the next morning to go to work! When Day 2 arrived, and I was feeling beyond horrible, with fever, vomiting, chills, diarrhea, and mass body aches, I knew it was time to see the doctor. He told me what I didn’t want to hear – that Miss Piggy had come to visit.

Despite taking the Tamiflu, the swine flu persisted, and I wound up in the emergency room suffering from dehydration. Needless to say, during this time, I did not go to work. I was back and forth to the doctor, who told me that the diabetes was why this flu was hanging on. He was worried that I would wind up with pneumonia, but I’d taken a chest x-ray at the hospital, and everything was fine. Yet, I was still sick…

By this time, I hadn’t been to work in a month. Financial pressures sent me back on December 1st, but I didn’t last past three hours. My chest was hurting, and I was finding it difficult to breathe. I still had a fever, even after a month. I went back to the doctor, who told me to be patient, that I was slowly getting better, though he didn’t want me back at work, just yet.

It seemed, however, that I wasn’t getting better, and in some ways, I was getting worse. I went back to the doctor, who listened to my chest, and ordered another chest x-ray. Later that afternoon, I received a called. I had pneumonia.

The doc started me on antibiotics, but they weren’t working, so they started me on another one that covers a broader range of bugs to kill. To be honest, I haven’t seen much change and I am sick as a dog! I have another doctor’s appointment tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes. I must say that I have never been continuously sick like this in my life, and it is extremely frustrating. Hopefully, I’ll get back to work soon, and in the meantime come around here more often. I miss you all!

Be warned Gentle Readers, that I am afflicted with a case of Blogarrhea! I became ill with what is known as the ADAPT Crud during the Atlanta action, and could not really blog the way I wanted. The crud was so bad that I was out sick for a week. Since then, I have been very busy, which seems to have been the story of my life for quite some time now — sick, busy, busy, sick! That’s not counting the occasional hiccups and problems with Wordpress that I’ve encountered lately, including an upgrade that resulted in the wiping out of all my cute images in my header and sidebar, which is the pics that you see at the top and side of this page (thank goodness I make sure that I back everything up first!). The result is the aforementioned blogarrhea, which is my attempt to catch you up on what has been happening in my life. I’ll start with a full report of the ADAPT action in Atlanta. Stay tuned…

It’s 5:52 am.  Do you know where your Roving Activist is? Would you believe – at work! Yes, I’m here at work, and have been here since 4:15 am, or thereabouts.

For those who know that it usually takes a miracle to get me out of bed before 7 am, let’s just say that I’m super excited about going to Atlanta tonight! Lisa and Reggie came in at 4:00 this morning and loaded our van with our gear and luggage. Of course, since Lisa was helping out, I had to tag along, especially since once they’re gone (they left at 5 am on the DOT!), I won’t see her until tomorrow night.

So I’m here doing some work, and taking a break to think, and talk about how excited I am (did I say that already?) even though I am exhausted from being sick all night (remind me to stay away from Wendy’s) and getting up at 2:45 am.

I’m excited because I’m preparing for battle. I’m going with ADAPT to Atlanta, Georgia to work to free our people. Doing battle to free our people always gets me revved up. I can put my anger over the institutional bias that keeps people with disabilities and seniors locked away in nursing facilities and other institutions across this nation to good and positive use. I can take that fire in the belly and rage over injustices perpetrated against my community and channel it to help fight for justice.

Yeah, I’m preparing for battle, ’cause Georgia is one state among many whose rate of institutionalization of people with disabilities has gone up in the face of the Olmstead decision (the 1999 landmark Supreme Court decision affirming the right of people with disabilities to live in the community). Georgia is one of a number of states (including my own) that is using the budget crisis to keep our people warehoused in institutions, or forced into one.

Being an old-school, fierce warrior-womyn, the prospect of doing battle doesn’t scare me at all, but really gets my juices flowing! It might be long (as most battles are in this War On People With Disabilities), hard, and infuriating, but I’m not about to let NOTHING or NOBODY turn me around!

Yes, I am excited. Can you tell?

Thank goodness I’m back! I’d been gone for so long because for some mysterious reason, I couldn’t post. I’d write a cool post only to discover that it wouldn’t go online. Between illness, being mad busy with work, and life in general, I didn’t have time to figure out what was up. Finally, after some research on Wordpress, I figured out that I had to bite the bullet and upgrade the software. I looked at the instructions and thought: OMG, I’ll never be able to do this!!!!!!! Things were getting down to the wire, and I really needed this done (you’ll see why in the next post).

Thank the stars for Mark, my lifesaver, who did the upgrade for me! Now, with this version, I should be able to upgrade with a mere click.

Thanks Mark!!!!!!!

…to see if I can now upload posts.