Week 3

This week has been jam-packed, as usual. On Monday, I went to a meeting of the Consortium of Citizens with Disabilities (AAPD is a member) to talk about the newly-formed Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and how fiscal reform might affect the disability community. Tuesday I participated in a Webinar on disability employment. David presented using a Powerpoint I made on Disability Mentoring Day, and it was kind of cool to see it officially presented. Wednesday I went to another Congressional hearing; this time it was about HHS’s actions to deal with potential health effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. As far as I could tell, there’s going to be big trouble down there, because the basic message I got from the hearing is that they don’t know what the effects are going to be. People are being exposed to massive amounts of oil and volatile agents they’re using to clean it up, which hasn’t really happened at this magnitude before. Yikes. After the hearing, I rushed to Google for our event. I had a great time there—I have never seen offices that cool before. Who has a giant Google Earth machine?? And that game room? Also I really found the panel to be interesting and informative--I especially liked what they said about bringing the knowledge of disability issues into any field. Thursday I worked on a couple of JFA articles and did some research for another DMD thing. This morning, I went to a meeting about possible cuts to Social Security. On another note, I’m really excited for the Newseum tour this weekend—I’ve heard it’s awesome, and I really haven’t been to see DC touristy things here yet. Then afterwards I’m having dinner with my grandparents at a restaurant that’s supposed to be great, so things are looking good!