Roommate Quotes

TAKE THEM TO A LEGITIMATE DROPBOX,

Corporation support is not the source of social change, it’s the visible indication of it. A mall covered in rainbow flags with ‘pride month sales!’ is nothing that makes LGBT people more accepted, nor do tweets from companies about supporting the BLM protests do anything to stop police violence, but they DO show the shift in public mindset. Corporations don’t take risks. They don’t make bold statements that they feel are unpopular or will lose them money or support. They’re a litmus test for when a statement or symbol that has been taboo becomes a commonly held belief. 

Robert Eads was a transgender man who transitioned later in life and as such it was deemed inadvisable for him to seek sex reassignment surgery. He was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1996 but was refused treatment by more than a dozen doctors, some for personal reasons and others on the grounds that taking him on as a patient might harm their practice. When he finally found a doctor to treat him in 1997, the cancer had already metastasized to other parts of his body, rendering any further treatments futile. He passed away in 1999. His life and death was the subject of the award-winning documentary Southern Comfort (2001).

As i’m sure many of you have heard, the Trump administration just passed a ruling that would remove LGBT+ anti-discrimination protections in health care and health insurance. I immediately thought of this man’s story when I heard about the ruling. Stories like this are the reason why those protections are necessary.

It’s easy to feel hopeless with all the bad news our community has been bombarded with recently. But we have to keep fighting, and one way we can fight is through legal means.

Here are some organizations that have announced plans to take action in court. If you can donate to any of them, please do!

Lambda Legal: one of the first to announce they would take legal action against the ruling, Lambda Legal is the oldest and largest national legal organization advocating for LGBTQ+ people and people with HIV.

Transgender Law Center: the largest American transgender-led civil rights organization in the United States. The stated mission of TLC is to connect transgender people and their families to technically sound and culturally competent legal services, increase acceptance and enforcement of laws and policies that support transgender communities, and work to change laws and systems that fail to incorporate the needs and experiences of transgender people.

Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund: Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund is committed to ending discrimination based upon gender identity and expression and to achieving equality for transgender people through public education, test-case litigation, direct legal services, and public policy efforts.

Every individual matters. 

Every individual has a role to play. 

Every individual makes a difference.  

It’s okay to cry for Opportunity. When she landed on Mars almost fifteen years ago, she was expected to live for 90 days. I wonder if there was a point soon after she blitzed that expectation that NASA engineers stopped expecting the minimum result from Oppy.

Because at every turn, Oppy exceeded expectations. She went so far, she learned so much. She covered twenty-eight miles! On a world no human has set foot on! She was our pathfinder, our point-man, boldly going where we could not yet go.

Oppy was built with hope. And dreams. Programmed with the human spirit of exploration, and she carried that torch so brightly for so long. Fourteen years, and two hundred and seventy days longer than anyone had any right to expect her to.

It’s okay to cry over Oppy. She was born to the scientists at the Jet Propulsion Lab, but we adopted her. She was our lil robot, scurrying slowly around Mars trying to learn just as much as she could.

Fifteen years is a long time, though. And even though she was a trooper, she was starting to show her age. She’d been through several storms that had almost killed her. The edges of her solar panels were cracked and bent. She showed the wear and tear of every one of those Sols spent on the red planet.

But she did us so proud.

It’s such a peculiar thing, to explain to people that some machines have personalities. But they do. There’s quantifiable behavior, programmed and machined into a device and it behaves accordingly. But there’s an X factor, something unplanned and unexpected, something that gives life to the machine.

Oppy had that life. Curiosity still does.

No one needs to explain why we care so much for Oppy. And now that she lost the final battle with the storms of Mars, it’s okay to feel sad at her demise.

Just remember. She lasted so much longer than she had any right to. And she did so much more than we could have ever dared to hope she would.

She’s earned her rest. And she knows how proud of her we are.

Pour one out for our little Opportunity. Remember her well.

Opportunity

A post I made has over a thousand notes!! And most importantly it’s starting a conversation and spreading knowledge about what was done to my culture.

It is also so heartwarming to go in the notes and find people sharing more information and sources! And even more so to see that only two idiots decided to chime in with their misinformation.

So as part of my little countdown, here are few few tips for everyone! I hope that some of these are less well known than others. I feel like there are a lot of the same DCP tip posts floating around. Anyway, enough rambling, here is a little list of advice tidbits I have picked up on my first two programs at Disneyland!

A few weeks before the DCP

~ Figure out how you will be getting there as early as you can! Flights tend to get more expensive the closer you get to the arrival date, and driving may take some planning. This is true especially if your program starts in January, as the weather isn’t as perfect as summer!

~ Consider buying apartment supplies online, or shipping stuff down to yourself. This can totally make it easier to travel, whether you fly or drive. Most FedEx and UPS stores will hold packages sent to them for around 5 business days. This way, you don’t have to ship it to the apartment complexes, as that isn’t an option until after you move in. You can pick it up at your convenience.

Right before the DCP

~ Coordinate what you are bringing with your roommates. There isn’t much space, so you don’t want to end up with multiple TVs, Kuerig’s , toasters, etc.

~ Bring travel toiletries with you. You may not have time right away to get big toiletries. This will allow you to take a shower the night you get there if you don’t make it to the store.

~ On that note, bring a role of toilet paper with you. There wont be any in your apartment until you buy it. This will allow you to actually use the bathroom once you get into your apartment. Pro tip…if you are staying in a hotel the night before, just take the spare one from your bathroom there!

~ Arrive the night before check in, really, even if you only live a few hours away. They are pretty strict about check in times, and many are early morning. You don’t want to deal with traffic, or flying into an airport, early morning of, delays, etc. its touristy, there are many economically priced hotels. Just pick a few friends off the Facebook page to stay with and share the cost of a night!

~Bring cash with you, at least a couple hundred dollars. The only sure form of payment is cash, don’t rely on your card completely. Your credit/debit card company will consider the start of your program as traveling, and that can cause complications, even if it traveling has never caused complications for you before.  Also, you won’t be paid for a little while, cash can help you make it to your first paycheck.

~ On that note, make sure to call your credit card company before you leave, and let them know you will be interning in California/Florida. As both may be out of your normal geographical spending range, and a tourism location, it will set off red flags. It may even result in your card being shut off after a transaction.  Trust me, that is not a fun discovery at a register in a Target with a cart full of apartment stuff.

~ Put passport/employment docs in purse/ backpack/ what ever you are bringing with you to check in the night before you leave. Check in day will be hectic. Your mind will be frazzled with anticipation, which can cause you to be a bit forgetful. You have to have your documentation for check in. If you put your stuff in the night before, you are less likely to forget it!

During the DCP

~ Bring an Ethernet with you…the Internet is Wi-Fi, but during certain times of day the traffic can cause it to be a bit slow! An Ethernet cord hooked from the modem into your game system, Blu-ray player, or computer can help it to work better during those times!

~ Get a flat rate postage box before you get to obsessed with buying souvenirs! This helps with limiting your spending! If you know that you only have a very limited space, you will be less tempted to overfill it! You also have a dedicated way to send things home at the end as well.

~ Buy lunch during the first week of training. Trust me on this one, training can be unorganized, you can’t carry a lunch box around with you, and it makes it easier on everyone if you bring money so the training group can just end up where they end up for lunch break.

~ But make sure you bring your lunch to work the rest of your program. Once you are done with training and settled in, it is really important to bring your own lunch. It is a lot healthier this way, and it is a lot cheaper than buying all the time from work. Your bank account will thank you!

~ Buy an external battery for phone! These are super handy, they allow you to charge your phone on the go from inside a backpack, purse, etc. You can get them really cheap at Amazon, and even most retail stores (I have seen them often under $15 online, and sometimes even cheaper in stores!) they do sell them in the park, but as there is a high demand, they are really expensive in the park.

~ Wear good walking shoes on park days and at work, your feet, back, knees, will thank you! Flats may be cute, but they have no support, and if you are putting out 20,000 steps in a day, you will definitely feel the lack of support!

~ Make sure you spring/winter clothes too! December, January, February, March, These months can have cold and rainy days. Once the sun goes down, it gets chilly too! You may be going to two of the sunny vacation spots of the US, but make sure you pack a pair or two of jeans, maybe capris, and definitely a rain jacket!

After the DCP