So you may or may not remember I extended my stay in Rochester for a little over two weeks extra. This a direct result of the fact the conversation I ended up having with Algonquin College’s disability department virtually undid everything I was trying to get all comfortably tied up when I wrote this entry. With pretty much three weeks before the course was supposed to start, and escentially a week past the deadline with second career, disability chick decided completely at random that the course was not going to be accessible. She was even nice enough to tell me she confirmed that with two of the individuals who were directly involved in that program–including mister questionable availability, who I’d already spoken to and got a rather different story from.
Since I only had less than 3 weeks to actually do anything with all this–classes would actually be starting this morning, I pretty much effectively declared that ship sunk after hanging up the phone with her and jumped off it. Not all that long after doing that, I got wind of another way to get me the hell off government paychecks. It involves first getting a hold of ODSP people and figuring out who’s palms need to be greased in order to get them to put up the cash for software that will actually let me do something vaguely resembling work. As luck would have it, person I’m dealing with at second career told me he got wind via someone at the college that the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) might cough up the money to purchase my screenreader of choice for purposes of employment. Handy, considering the company they’re trying to aim me at has absolutely no intention of purchasing it themselves.
Employment specialist’s goal now, what with the college thing going down river without me, is to get me hooked up with a job working for Online Support. I’ve had more than a few dealings with them before, which usually ended in either being outright ignored, or a somewhat appologetic rejection based on they don’t have the kind of financial room necessary to purchase the technology that would make me able to do the job–oh, did I mention they’re a semi-national, multimillion dollar corporation? Yeah, didn’t think so. His current theory is, if we can convince them I’ve got the cost of the screenreader covered, we might be able to squeeze me through the door and into something vaguely resembling a minimum wage job. Which would still be a huge improvement over what I’m getting now. Now we just need to get someone from ODSP to say yes sir and fork over the dollars, then we’ll have something to walk into a room with.
I’ve already put a bug in folks’ ear about it, who according to their voicemail are supposed to be in the office today, so we’ll see exactly what kind of strangely diplomatic 5-page answer I get from them about it. In the meantime, that whole college thing? Stick a fork in it. At least for this year, it’s done. If this employment thing falls through, or if I can find out the second career program will be around next year, I’ll at least have the flexibility to start drop kicking the necessary people to get that ball rolling a lot sooner and with a lot more maneuvering room than this time. ‘Til then, it’s off to find some answers. And maybe possibly beat a few heads together in the process. Hey, that’s always fun, no? And they say I don’t do much during daylight hours.