Workshopped

Last night was the SSI Workshop (or presentation or seminar or whatever you want to call it.) I don't have too much to say about it. It went pretty much as I expected - except maybe for the fact that the woman who did the presentation excelled in speed talking. She accomplished some of this by not only cutting short many of her own sentences - typically when she seemed to be about halfway through them, but also by occasionally cutting off some of the individual words, as well. It was like some weird kind of verbal shorthand. Thanks goodness I knew almost nothing of what she was talking about otherwise, I would have been really lost.

The part that was expected was that it was basically two hours of getting hit in the face with rapid-fire spitballs of information. Rather than be absorbed, most of these informational spitballs started to drop off my face as soon as I left the building.

I did glean one or two partial bits of information. This was mostly due to a couple of the other people who were there, also struggling - but these people seemed to be far ahead of me on the dealing-with-SSI curve. (And when I say “far ahead,” I mean in the amount of time they’ve been dealing with SSI - which is not necessarily the same thing as saying that they’ve made any progress.) So, I'm grateful for that.

I also learned an interesting new fact. Apparently, there is another DDS apart from the DDS that I’m aware of. The DDS that I'm "familiar" with (in the loosest sense of the term) is a stand-alone state agency. The DDS that the seminar maven kept referring to, is a different DDS. Her DDS is a subdivision of the SSA (which, by the way, is the agency which incorporates SSI.) That's one of the major things I came away with: don't confuse the DDS with the DDS. They are two completely different agencies.

I'm not sure, but I think I'm getting somewhere.