CWD Technology Conference in Philly!

What Penny Said:

CWD Technology Conference in Philly!

The Children with Diabetes Focus on Technology Conference 

is coming to Philadelphia in February 2012!

If you are even remotely close to Philly, I urge you to come!

Not only for the learning, but for me to meet you, o' faithful reader!

You can read about the conference here.

You can register for it here.

Come!

Parking - $62.50 an Hour

Yesterday I wrote about the type 1 meet up over the weekend. It was a good event. I was happy with everything but the stolen car. Well sort of stolen.

When I posted the event a while ago on Facebook my good friend Nick asked if there would be free parking. Sure Nick, drive on up from Texas, free parking for all.

Almost all.

To have time to get thing ready and to fret that I would screw up horrifically we sent my son on his first solo driving mission to center city. He has an acting class there. His is a good actor and beginner driver. For the last few weeks I had gone with him as a passenger, to teach him the way literally. Those missions were not entirely smooth but worked out OK. Well when I say OK, I made him miss the exit off I95 the first time. We did a U turn in the empty parking lot of a sketchy "gentleman's" club and book adult literature store parking lot at the next exit down.

The city can be a little tricky but with the practice runs I figured he was ready to solo. Maybe even better off without my navigation errors.

He got lost.

I talked him back on course over the phone and without the dance club u-turn. Parking was hard to find. The window motor broke and wouldn't go up. No worries, I said, its a clunker go to class.

At noon he came out to get the meter had left in the car and check on things. It was gone. The car that is, and with the meter with it. He thought it had been stolen. We tried to calm him down. Staying in touch with his acting training he analyzed his feelings and sent this text message, “If I were to describe this situation with one word, it would be a swear word.”

I just about cried I was laughing so hard.

A few calls, while I fretted all the more over blowing the meeting, Kimball discovered the car had been towed by the infamous Philadelphia Parking Authority. The ones with the reality TV show.

We wanted the kid back more pressingly than the car so Kim drove down to pick Connor up with little more than just enough time to get back for the event.

Meanwhile Ginger, the guest speaker and star of the soon to happen and fretted over diabetes event, and I had crossed signals. I didn’t get that she needed to be picked up at the train station in Philly. Time was short and just for fun the Mini Cooper battery died and it wouldn't start without a hill to coast start on.

But Karma was on my side as Kimball was already downtown picking up Connor! Did I mention his meter and iPod were in the car and the window broke and couldn’t be put up and the car was in the impound lot? He was stressing about that part. Guess what happens to blood sugar when he stresses out? Right Hypos.

I am not making any of this up.

The lot was open to 3:00 am or something convenient like that for people who stay to last call before finding out their car was towed. That is full service impoundment. The lot is off the same exit of I95 where Connor and I made the U turn when I missed the exit for old city.

Being overly ambitious we were planning on going to go down that night. But after theBetesNOW meet we had tickets to a spectacularly good New Church Live Band benefit for Habitat for Humanity. Saturday night we were too tired to get the car before the 3:00 am closing time. It turns out that was also good Karma as the tow truck driver wars turned violent and there was a shooting that night.

We got to the impound lot a half hour before it opened at 4:00pm the next day. I looked up the history of the cruise ship the United States to pass time. It is a rusting mess right next to the parking authority now but it was probably way cool in its day. The internet says it cost $800,000 a year to keep it there. That works out to something like $91.32 an hour. Yeah I was that bored. Seemed high for the location to me and it made me worry a little about getting the car back.

We were second in line. So when the parking authority did open we had only 37 minutes of standing in two different lines for three different windows and a sliding gate in south Philly to get the car back. Mostly the was due to Kimball quick thinking and her getting in the second and third lines while I was still in the first and second.

The car window was still open. It had only rained a little and the meter and iPod were still in it. And it worked out to only $62.50 an hour for parking for Connor's 4 hour class. Cheaper than parking the ship.

I think maybe I'll drive with him to class next week. I have had enough fretting.

theBetesNOW Event.

We hosted our first type 1 event over the weekend and it went very well except for the car being stolen. Well sort of stolen, I tell you about that tomorrow, what was really important was connecting with others who share the experience of type 1. Those connections go a long way to making the journey more bearable. So we hosted a little get together for folks living in the local area. A word that hear means Philly suburbs.

I was a nice group of about 20. Some we knew from people from CWD’s Friends for Life in Orlando and others were new friends. We watched a few BetesNOW clips and then I briefly introduced three new type 1 things that I thought were cool. Regular readers, like friend of the Blog Penny, may have seen some of these and I hope I didn’t bore her with re-runs.

For the official record the 3 cool things were:

Number 3 #DSMA The weekly twitter chat for folks with diabetes. Wednesdays at 9pm Eastern. You don’t need to be a Twitter pro. In fact I’m a twit at Twitter but even I could figure out how to join in with theses instructions.

Cool thing # 2 has to be the recently announced in Europe but not yet blessed by the FDA iPod Blood Glucose Meter from Sanofi-Aventis & Wavesense.

And the coolest thing I have discovered about diabetes recently isn’t a thing. It is people, Canadians mostly but they're people too, in a group called Connected In Motion. I found out about them when Jamie emailed to RSVP for theBetesNOW event. It seems she travels from Philly to Canada to do stuff with these guys. They are hard core nut cases and I mean that with the greatest respect. Kids with type 1 grow up to be adults with diabetes and if these folks are any indication they grow up cool. See for yourself.




After babbling a little I managed to get out of the way and pointed out that before the kids can grow up to drive up to Canada and slide down snow covered hills in their shorts they need to go to school and be safe.

At this point Kate from the local ADA chapter rescued the group from listing to me anymore and talked about their Save at School program. The ADA has wonderful resources to support schools and families. Kate did a very nice overview of these and she had some backpacks for kids. Excellent! Thanks Kate.

As a little aside about how great a school can be our daughter's school nurse came to the meeting because, well, she is awesome. The Bryn Athyn Church School let us use their building for the event so big shout outs to both.

Speaking of awesome Ginger Vieira my friend from the DOC came up from DC to share some of her experiences with the group. Ginger worked through barriers to achieve her goal. Specifically she is a champion, drug tested, power lifter. The means she can easily snap me in half but she only uses her powers for good.

She talked about overcoming social resistance to her ambition to become a lifter at well as the very real challenges of type 1 and celiac. She balanced her conversations with parents, teens just starting with competitive athletics and a adult marathoner. She did this with grace that transcended athletics engaged the rest of the room. Quality work.


It was a good event. Thanks to everyone who participated.