My life's Adventure

My partner has initially accepted that she will have a computer.

I was fixing up this old clamshell iBook macintosh computer and went broke doing it. I offered to give it to my partner who has never owned a computer and does not really use computers. She has accepted and this is a first step in digital divide work with my partner. Her friend has just taken a job at an Internet café.

I have completed my proctoring duties for another term.

I have completed my proctoring duties for another term. I will now apply to be hired as a TA again. But I am also looking for full time work these days. I would have to give up a lot of activities if I get a full time job.

My partner went out to buy groceries this morning.

I slept at abut 1:00 AM this morning. I woke up slightly before 9:00 AM. I am not having long days this past week but regular days so am dealing with the creeping bi-polar life style. I got some cash for groceries and my partner left about half an hour ago to the grocery store. I took my morning meds about 45 minutes ago. I am just powering up my iPod, my cell phone, and my PSP. I also have pager batteries powered up already for my on call shift.

Our next big ticket items should be a solar power panel and battery for emergencies. I also have to buy six 4 liter water containers because our old emergency water had expired. This is to fit the formula of 4 liters per day per adult for three days in an emergency. We keep this water under our kitchen counter.

The volunteer appreciation dinner was fun.

I enjoyed myself at the volunteer appreciation dinner. We heard speeches and had a good dinner catered by a psycho social clubhouse catering service. I got a lift home and went to sleep relatively early. I woke up this morning a little past 9:00 AM. My first duties today include a meeting at 11:30 AM then I am going to the memorial ceremony with our business agent for noon. After the ceremony I am free until about 18:30 when I am working as a proctor in the evening tonight. I just took my morning vitamins as I posted this. I just ingested 1 gram of vitamin C and 1 gram of niacin.

I worked this morning and yesterday afternoon.

I worked this morning as a proctor. I also worked yesterday afternoon. Tonight I am attending a volunteer appreciation dinner. Then tomorrow I will lay a rose to honour those killed at work in 2005. I am doing the honours for my union local. I will also work tomorrow evening as a proctor. Then I am working Saturday afternoon as a regular proctor, then doing some work for the student's with disAbilities centre in the evening Saturday. On Sunday I am volunteering a bit then Monday there is a meeting of the disAbilities coalition in the morning then I have Monday afternoon and evening off all work and all volunteering. I am in training on Tuesday afternoon then have a SAS user group meeting on Wednesday morning at a hotel. Then I have Thursday off work or volunteering. I think I am working early Friday morning on the 5th. Then on the weekend I am attending a criminology conference at school and doing a green party meeting. So busy couple of weekends ahead.

I slept in and missed some work this morning.

I was up late last night. I worked yesterday for three hours at exams. But because I stayed up late I was nervous. So I took 9 mg of risperadol (1.5 times my regular dose) at about 2:00 AM this morning. I was scheduled to work all day today. I lay down at about 4:45 AM to get some rest and set the alarm for 6:00 AM. I did not fully wake up to the alarm and so missed my work shift this morning. I am working this afternoon. We are broke right now so that is adding to the pressure.

I completed my exam and then attended two meetings yesterday.

I handed in my exam yesterday at noon. I then went to a government mental health meeting. I then went to our self help group for a board of directors meeting and then came home and went right to sleep.

I woke up and went to work as an exam proctor and am now taking the afternoon off a bit.

There is a short two day conference on criminology at my school in early May.

I will be attending some academic events in the next few weeks. I am going to attend a criminology conference at my school put on by some law department professors. This is in a couple of weekends from now. I will also attend next week a user group for some software I am using at school. The user group will meet at a hotel downtown. I have been doing a little more reading during my exam to relax. I am reading about digital culture. I also met with a graduate school professor on Friday and the meeting went well. She suggests I will find topics to write about in the graduate school courses rather than come in with my own topics. I intend to accept this and will keep an open mind next year.

I am applying to study systems science next year in grad school at another university in this city. I need to still pay for the application but the referees have filled in their forms and the application has been filled out and submitted. So the payment is the last detail needed.

I am feeling quite good about school work. My exam is going well. I am may be taking the summer off my own studies. Although I am considering studying some music, or math or sociology this summer. I might also take a law course. I will most probably be working as a teaching assistant again this summer in statistics.

My exam continues this morning.

I am still working on my exam and will hand it in today at noon. I can't really say more than that.

I am just doing some minor backups.

I am just doing my by-weekly back ups of my documents and my mail folder to an external hard drive.

I am working on my exam over night.

I am up alone with my wife sleeping. I am working on my exam but can't really post much about it because it is an exam and I am forbidden to talk to others about it.

We enjoyed a dinner with family.

We had a quiet dinner at my wife's father's. I made a little bit of family film but was more into socializing. We came home and my wife is watching TV and I am working on the computers. I am working in Texshop on the Mac writing latex code.

We watched game one of the Stanley Cup playoffs last night.

We watched the hockey on TV. We cleaned dishes together. I made Kraft Dinner macoroni and cheese. My wife made a chicken salad earlier in the day. I am at home working on my exam but I can't talk about it with others so I won't be able to go into detail about it. I am working on it that's all I will say. I am still not asleep after 24 hours. I plan to be up to about 4:00 or 6:00 AM this morning. Then we have a family dinner later today.

My experimental design course final exam is happening for the next three days.

I am just having my last cup of coffee before going to school to pickup my final "take home" exam and bring it home to get started on it this morning. I will also take deliveries this morning and then go to the dentist for some more teeth cleaning at 14:00 PM. Then the rest of the afternoon will be exam time and I will be up fairly late working on this exam at the computer. I have all the textbooks and other references I need. I am planning on being at the professors office before 9:00 AM this morning to pick up the exam.

I am well rested and off work now for three days.

I slept at 1:00 PM or so yesterday, and slept until about 2:00 AM today. I am well rested. We got our good food box delivery, so we have plenty of fruits and veggies. I was just downloading PSP ebooks from project gutenberg provided by http://psp.manybooks.net onto my new 1 GB memory stick duo for my PSP. I downloaded Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, the Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Hamlet by William Shakespeare, and Germinal by Emile Zola in French. I have also been doing a little bloging with iBlog this morning. I also have now cleaned off the USB 20GB portable drive and copied my school work folders to this drive. I am preparing for my three day experimental design exam now which I will pick up in about four or five hours. The sun is just starting to come up as the sky turns to an ink colour.

I booked off the union meeting too.

I have been up all night and rather than attend the union meeting today I am going to sleep in a few hours. I got a lot of computer projects done overnight. I took apart a computer and replaced a hard drive with a larger one. By doing this myself I saved 90$ an hour on getting it done at the local Macintosh store. I also just managed the bills and started to prepare the income report for the month just past. I also read a little about mad women and the law and will be reading more of this book which includes pieces about the sexism and hetrosexism of the DSM. The final piece written by an anti-psychiatric activist and feminist suggests combining movements to better the condition of mad women. I am just about to surf the government job openings web site before checking the postal mail.

Backing up computers again.

I have finished setting up the burn folders for the back up of the USB drive. I am just going through my run of burning the first copies of 6 DVD's. I am storing these first copies in a spindle that the blank disks came in. I will also store the second copy in this spindle. I hope to have these DVD's done by earlier this morning. So this computer project is almost done. Organizing these projects is inspiring me about a choice I am making for a possible graduate school experience in Fall 2006. I have almost completed an application to study systems science at another university in my city.

I did work yesterday as planned. My TA work is completed for another term.

I did work at two exams yesterday. I also wisely booked off an exam proctoring shift for this morning. I knew that waking up late yesterday morning and missing advocacy training would mean I would want to be up late. Rather than stay up all night and work in a very tired frame of mind I booked it off. I learned something I think that I don't have to do every job there is especially because, this job pays so little just minimum wage. In fact, I worked for two hours yesterday marking as well as proctoring and marking pays better. So I got my TA work done for the winter term. This work does not start again until late May. So yesterday I worked for a total of 9 hours so no wonder I am still up late from that.

I have applied for some government jobs and will find out about those at the end of the month. One job is as a civilian with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police which my new law BA qualifies me for.

I worked 4 hours yesterday and am working 7 hours today plus marking work.

I worked at an exam last night and came home and slept right away basically only checking email and our bank balance before sleeping. I am working this afternoon for three hours and then tonight for four hours. I may stay up over night tonight and sleep at 4:00 PM or 5:00 PM Thursday. I have to work tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM - 12:30 PM then have a union meeting at noon which I will be late for. I am then off work until next Tuesday. So after tomorrow morning I am off work for four days. I will use these days to do my three day take home exam. I am going to get my teeth cleaned on Friday and we are going to a family dinner on Saturday.

I have some marking to do today but will only mark it today, and then give the papers back to the professor at 6:00 PM whether they are completely marked or not. This is what she wants and she has to get the marks in by this weekend. She has agreeed to be a referee for my application to systems science in grad school.

Pills prepared

I just prepared my partner's pills for another five days. I put all the pills she is prescribed into her pill box for five days. She takes both anti-psychotics and anti-depressants. This time rather than throwing out empty pill bottles, I saved the empty pill bottles for use to hold screws for when I take apart the iBook MacIntosh laptop. I like it when two tasks combine like this to improve a task. It is also green to reuse the pill bottles as we are not allowed to recycle pill bottles. In fact, did you know that hospitals are some of the worst environmental businesses there are in terms of reuse, reduce, and recycling.

I did spend the morning in a kind of lazy way.

While not altogether lazy, I did spend the morning not really working or studying much. I made back up DVD's of a portable USB drive I have and am still making these back ups. I want to clear the USB drive off so I can maybe use it with my iBook and/or use it for school work. I also got some old email imported into my eMac 2 mail, from 2003 that was read and written in Outlook Express running on a Windows NT machine I have. So that email back up project is done. But this new USB portable drive project has now started. I am also as the sun rises doing various academic tasks as I prepare possibly to meet a professor today to discuss studies. This meeting might help me improve my chances for graduate school in legal studies something I am really looking forward to being able to do next year.

I am spending more time and money on my iBook than my school work it seems.

I spend a lot of time and effort and money on fixing up this old iBook this past weekend. After getting off work this morning I went out to a hardware store to buy a Torx T8 screw driver. It was an extra trip that brought my day length to 25 hours awake. I also bought groceries and my wife made Greek leak stew. I slept at 1:00 PM and slept until 11:00 PM so a good 10 hours sleep.

After all this the I got the iBook a 60 GB hard drive and also got my Compaq pentium 1 laptop another 128 MB RAM. I will have two functioning laptops now. I am waiting for a 6 GB hard drive I bought last week for the Compaq to arrive in the mail. The Torx T8 screw driver is a tool I need to take apart the iBook and install the hard drive.

I am up at 12.01 exactly and coffee is brewed.

I took advantage of the automatic coffee brewing my machine can do and set it for noon. As I woke up to my alarm after about 8 hours sleep coffee was brewed and waiting. I think I will make my second pot now for today. I just ordered a digital watch on-line as my watch is breaking down and stopped at work last weekend. This shows that those of us with schizophrenia have normal life problems too. I am working tonight but have a good five hours awake before work. After I work I will buy a Torx T8 screw driver Monday morning and then come home and sleep at about noon. On Tuesday morning, when I am awake, I will do my final marking for my teaching assistant work or at least get that started. I will otherwise have a lazy Tuesday morning and then do some training on Tuesday afternoon at school in preparing for emergencies. Then I work as a proctor again Tuesday evening. I then plan to sleep at 11:00 PM Tuesday evening.

Researching graduate schools.

I spent about an hour or two at my computer researching graduate school. I am now doing some actual study using blogs and books. But before I go further with blogs and I am going to do some reflection and care for my own thoughts.

I tired the parenting role out in an email.

They say the internet lets us experiment with social roles. I just sent an email to a young family member who I am an uncle too. I also emailed her parents in the same email. I tired to tell her about young adult women's work.

I just made the last of my annual back up DVD's and am making a second copy of the movie.

I just made the last copies of three disks for my annual back ups. I now must send 5 DVD's off site to a family member to save them for me until next year. I also accessed one DVD today on another computer running Linux and the DVD is fine and I could open Open Office files on the Linux desktop no problem. I can also do some R code on Debian 3.1 no problem with Open Office. Thus when I get the 6 GB laptop hard drive I bought through ebay I will use it in the Compaq Presario 1210 and this time install Debian 3.1 on the Presario 1210. I also am just making a second copy of the movie I made yesterday. I am also thinking now of buying and setting up another USB external drive for storing music and video and have been window shopping on the web this morning to do this.

I am feeling great today.

I had a good rest of 14 hours again. I knew making the DVD movie was a slightly manic end of the day project. But it is fairly easy to make a good amateur movie these days. Instead of getting too excited about that movie before sleeping I also cleaned up a bit of the house. I also talked with my dad who suggests I apply to teach a course rather than just be an assistant teacher. He figures, if the TA director likes me so much I should apply for a better position. I sent an email this morning to ask about this from the director of the school. So I am feeling good this morning about my statistics studies, the home front, my own work this afternoon as a proctor.

I am also feeling good about my computer progress. R has agreed to buy my Intellistation from me in June. He will only pay about half of what I paid for it but it will still be sold.

I made a half hour long DVD of my self working on web pages.

If I am to be remembered in film I made one of those films today. I set up the camera in the beautiful natural light of the spring morning and recorded myself working on a web page. I did some formating of a paper published in HTML. I talked the whole way through. This was my manic project started this morning and now in mid afternoon I just completed watching it on DVD on my partner's portable DVD player. More than just a way of remembering me or a manic project at the end of a long day it is also styled as a job search tool where I appeal to the watcher to hire me to do web work. Success with Mac computers, Samsung camcorders, Kodak DVD's and Toshiba portable DVD players. In fact this was very easy to do I feel so accomplished my first movie is a self promotion add. Hire me!

Happy Easter everyone who celebrates Easter and happy Passover for those who celebrate Passover.

For those who celebrate Easter, happy Easter. And happy Passover for those who celebrate Passover. I am not much into religions myself.

Working this weekend.

I have today off of work. In fact, I am not working again until Sunday night/Monday morning. But then I work all week as an exam proctor until Thursday. So really exam proctoring will only take three days next week. I have some new marking to do in my teaching assistant work but it is a rather short assignment and I may start it this morning.

Experimental design course going well.

I so far have gotten perfect or almost perfect on 60% of the course so my mark is 59.5 for this part. I know one part counting for 15% was incomplete so that ruins the A+ grade I could have gotten out of this course. I only have 25% more to do in my take home exam later this month. I can still I think score A in this course. This may help me get into legal studies graduate school as the committee that makes the decision to admit me is waiting for my winter term marks.

I successfully worked as an exam proctor yesterday.

I was able to do the work yesterday. Notice I say "able". In fact like many of us with schizophrenia I worked too hard. The other proctors had to remind me to take a break.

My arm is better again today.

Again today the pain is less. I got some good rest sleeping from about 6:00 PM to almost 8:00 AM so a good 14 hours sleep after maybe three long days and one short day.

The iBook works ok.

I got the iBook power adapter and the iBook and power adapter both work. I am buying the stuff over this last week and next week, I need to upgrade this iBook. Things are looking good for this too.

All my household duties are done for the day I can go to work.

I got finances arranged for the day. I got our drinks for the day. My wife made my lunch. I have my bag packed and a lock today because I will be using a locker at school today. I am getting ready to leave for school. I will go through downtown to buy cigarettes and some printer paper. Then I am working for 7 to 8 hours today with a one hour lunch break and two 15 minute smoke breaks. I just reviewed my work instructions and things are looking good for today.

I bought a matching frame for my second degree.

I was issued my diploma in late Feburary. Yesterday my dad helped pay for a wooden frame for this diploma. I got the same model frame as I used for my B.Math degree for this second degree the BA degree. I just need to hammer a nail up in the office and put it on the wall now. I will have to remember this time to warn my neighbour on the other side of the wall that I am hammering, because the last time something nearly fell off her wall.

I got my last major marking assignment completed yesterday.

Good news I finally got the last large marking assignment completed yesterday. I woke up at a little past midnight Wednesday morning. I got some marking done in the morning.

I then went to some training with other consumers. We learned about systemic advocacy. This four day workshop spread out over five weeks will end with us all going to see a politician. So we are organizing around information on our government income support and also the other issue we will work on is workshops, talks, and lectures for consumers. So with these two issues identified we will move forward. We are being guided by two professionals from service agencies.

After this morning workshop Wednesday I went to school and completed the marking and got it to the professor. More good news the graduate student director who schedules and hires all the TA's in the school of mathematics and statistics said he needs me to apply to work this summer. So there will be work this summer which is very solid news for me.

I am working today as an exam proctor. I won't have to use a computer at work today. In fact, it will mostly be walking, as I patrol the rows of exam tables. but today will be a first as my workload has been increased in this work to two exams in one day. So today I will work in the afternoon and again in the evening. My partner just made me a sandwich for supper. I will do a little more email and blogs this moring then get my partner some beer money and then go to work for about 1:00 PM.

My arm is still sore but not as sore.

I would not like to think that I could not use a computer anymore. My arm is still sore. I called my family doctor and he can see me if I need it but I am sure the arm will get better without medical attention. I also need to use the computer a little less.

Back at the computer but I am getting my marking started again too.

I have really been procrastinating on this marking. I got at it again this morning. This part I am doing now is the last large problem to mark. After marking this problem the rest of the marking will not take long. I had hoped to get this done by today. I want to take it back to school this afternoon.

I am working as an exam proctor this Thursday. I will work at two exams that day. Since I will be on campus that day and that day is also a pay day, I will also buy some printer ink and some paper to use for my own exam. My own exam will be working on the computer analysing data. I will also have some theory work which I will have do in latex. I will have three days to complete the exam and must work on it on my own although I am allowed to use any books I want. Also I have budgetted two hours a day to studying for this exam for six days starting this past Saturday. That means up to today I need to do about 8 hours but have only done 1 hour. I was going to take a two day break after the six days and then go back to studying two hours a day for five days but now I will not have that break.

I spent the evening working at the computer.

I spent the evening making back up DVD's. I also did some blogging on live journal. I joined some local livejournal blogs for the buses and for my school. I spent about two hours at live journal. I need to curl up with my pen and ink journal now and relax a bit. I also need to avoid computers a bit because of the repetative strain injury.

Order of fresh veggies paid for for another month.

I met the Good Food Box coordinator who lives near us and gave her the money for this month's food box order. We chatted computers. I gave her an ethernet cable and had given her my old wireless router that I bought on sale two Christmas's ago for 20$. I gave it to her for free. She also paid my partner for a poetry book that my partner gave her last month. I have to go back out now to get some pop and some chocolate for my partner.She is just watching hockey on TV right now.

Rest, quiet time, and time out help with voices.

There is some discussion right now with some others with schizophrenia about time outs helping one quiet one's voices. I am thinking of taking the summer off of my TA work and my own studies. This would be a stress reduction break.

I slowly got some marking done this morning.

I got some marking done this morning but would like to do some more marking now. My partner is up now and I need to look after the household a bit now. I may try to get a nap in the next few hours and then wake up later in the afternoon for my night shift tonight. I need to take some vitamins now and review my schedule for this coming week.

Our radical union meeting happened yesterday.

We met some new people interested in unionising parents of developmentally delayed people. We also discussed the up coming May day celebrations and the anarchist book fair coming up this spring. I just managed some of the union networking stuff this morning and am now free to leave this work for the day.

I slept at 6 PM yesterday. I woke up at 3:00 AM or 3:30 AM this morning. I will be marking this morning and then working a night shift tonight. I will sleep at 9:00 AM Monday morning.

School work is becoming focused on statistics.

I also sorted books out this morning and I plan to study for my exam for two hours a day until the exam. That is for the next six days then two days break then five days then get my exam. I will spend three days writing my exam. I borrowed books on the so called advanced topics in the experimental design course. These are fractional factorials and response surfaces. I also borrowed a book on simulations. I am applying to attend a systems science graduate school next year. At the moment I do not know how I will afford all my professional dues that are late at this point. But I am realising that the professional statistican qualification might be put off for awhile. I can instead pay the late dues and pay for the application to systems science. In systems science I could study simulations. I would really like to do this. But perhaps I will not be admitted. Oh well it costs 75 dollars to try. I am almost at this point in the morning finished my alotted time for studying experimental design. I have another hour and a half but I am going to do some job searching and looking at my systems science application in this time. I am keen to look for work even full time work now because I could end my education here at this point. I am also basically working full time hours now so I am sure I can put up with the stress levels of full time job at this point. But I am keen at this moment because the job statistics that came out yesterday tell a story of full time job hiring. I am going to try to capitalise on this moment in the economy.

I stayed up this morning from yesterday and marking went well.

I was using my iPod to make voice memos as again I tried to quit smoking. I smoked about 9 less cigarettes this morning. I chewed two old pieces of nicorette gum. I did start marking and got one Q done and got part of another Q done. I set goals using both my paper journal and my iPod voice memos and did well. I relaxed a little at 6 AM and watched a Japanese TV show on DVD. I then started to smoke again and then cleaned up the living room a bit and recycled paper. I got the morning paper just now and am making my fourth pot of coffee in my presently 21 hour awake day. I am soaking the dishes and will wash them before my partner wakes up.

Later today I will go pick up my bass guitar from the music store. I will also buy some more cigarettes. Then I will attend a union meeting at 2 PM, or I might just come home and sleep. Then when I wake up later today or tomorrow I will mark some more before going to work on my night shift. I would like to get this marking done by Monday noon hour after I come home from work.

Power out here stopped me from posting.

The local electrical power went out Thursday evening. It was just our immediate neighbourhood. But I could not post on Thursday evening. Then on Friday I was so busy going around town I did not post until now Saturday morning. I had a union meeting on Friday then needed to do some shopping. I also needed to sign contracts for the drop-in/self help group workers for another year. I am the president of the drop-in so I am the one who has to sign the employment contracts.

Then last night C, J, and R came over and we watched a film. I managed to watch the whole film without a lot of discomfort. But because it was a heroic sword fighting drama I was slightly, delusionally, a sword fighter in my mumbbles but that has now gone away. The only parts I missed were because of cleaning up the kitchen and making a pizza for my guests. But it is nice to watch a film from time to time. I bought three new films last night. Also this past week, I watched another StarGate episode and made a web page review of it.

So this past week I have made web pages. I am waiting for a year end web master pay cheque and also waiting to hear about a web master job application. But I do not have a lot of undone web mastering work over my head right now.

About spotting symptoms and bi-polar depression.

One of the best group therapies I have attended that was run by professionals was called symptoms management. This is where I learned the basics of schizophrenia and also the basics of side effects and how and why to use medication. So I have learned to identify at least for myself the crazy thinking. This is good to know when this is happening. So when I said I was depressed this is actually good that I spotted it. And I have been on the look out for depression for 16 years. So far things are not bad. In fact although work and school schedules are stressful and my moods can get dark I am not as dperessed as I was 14 years ago or 16 years ago when I was an inpatient. Still teenage breakups and hospital stays are the most depressing events to happen to my moods. These days I earn enough money to stay happy compared to 14 years ago. Also my partner is a great support. I can rarely get sad when I am helping her and she is supportive too. I also find numerous others in our community supporting me with my up moods. Doing good work brings good feedback and this keeps me from getting depressed.

But I am aware of this change in my mental state. In fact the past three days I have kept my awake hours more reasonable. Even this morning as I go towards a night shift on Sunday at one job I am trying not to plan and excessive awake or sleep schedule to get ready for overnight work. So I am stablizing my sleep patterns as a support to avoid this bi-polar behaviour/condition.

My arm is better.

Thanks for your concern about my arm and depression. My arm hurting is feeling better with much less pain. I did buy Advil (trademarked) the second day. That reminds me I can take some more now. But really my arm hurting may have been a repetitive strain injury. I was trying to empty the trash on my Mac but some old files that I recopy each month and then delete old copies of are encrypted. This means for each of these files the "empty trash" proceedure stops and I need to click a continue button. This basically results in me clicking very fast close about 200 times. So doing this the day before my harm hurt may have been the cause. So I should be careful about doing this again. I used a warm compress too. I have a medical warm compress which I heated in boiling water. I did reschedule a dentist appointment on Wednesday. I then had the dentist appointment on Thursday.

I am taking the day off today.

Yesterday was the last day of classes at my school. Now exams will begin in about a week. I have one take home exam of my own. I will also be hired to proctor exams. This is easy going work and I enjoy it.

I woke up today at 8:00 AM after sleeping at 10:00 PM last night. My arm was sore because I slept on it, or the weather was cold and we left the windows open. I called my GP and then with the receptionist's advice applied a warm compress. I did some shopping and my partner is cooking today. My arm hurts less now. I am not working today but may get started on my marking assignment later today. I have a volunteer meeting early this evening.

I was up to 8:00 AM working on my final assignment.

I am just completing the write up to my final 5th assignment in my experimental design course. I printed all the SAS printout this morning. I got about four hours sleep. I am worried that I am developing bi polar depression. I need to get more rest. I have been feeling rather depressed lately. I am happy to get this school work done. Good news too the professor of this course has agreed to sponsor me for a professional designation with the Statistical Society of Canada. My home work is due in at school in two hours.

I have stress!

I am pretty stressed out. I had a stressful volunteer shift on the weekend. I manged to solve the problems I encountered and manged other volunteers all weekend. Other people helped me get this job done and the executive director also cooperated so things worked out fine. This goes to show that given the right support those of us with schizophrenia can perform as good or better at some tasks than "normals". This includes problem solving, decision making, and managing others.

One thing I have been going back to for stress reduction is my paper and ink journal. Another way of reducing stress I am using, is getting more rest.

The stress I have right now is related to getting my home work done on time for tomorrow and also getting some marking done which I am procrastinating with. I am doing the homework first because that is due first. In fact, after I post this I am going to boot up my windows PC and work in SAS, as well as, continue the write on on this computer the eMac.

The iBook works.

I went to a local Macintosh store to check the iBook with one of their power adapters and it works. The owner of the store said it is running OS X 10.2. He said his wife uses an iBook clamshell. He also told me I can put a larger hard drive in. I purchased a power adapter that will work but not at the store but instead on ebay.

Someone commented here on this blog, that I tend to buy a lot of stuff and that is true. I am a shopaholic. I do like and get pleasure from buying something for the cheapest price I can find. I think this may be common for those if us living on disablity pensions. I am not all that irresponsible with money though. In fact, I am getting better at managing money and having more money to spend, as well as, save. I am not going to be buying a Treo 650, as these cost 60$/ month for internet.

Well the iBook may be working but it has the wrong power adapter.

Apparently the iBook was working but it may have the wrong power adapter. The seller is trying to find me another one. I am thinking of buying a Treo 650 tomorrow. I will see if I can sell my Tungsten W first. I am also trying to sell my portable gaming machine my PSP because I don't use it much. I have mac and windows and linux computers working fine here now.

Weekend phone calls done.

I moved out on my own prematurely when an older teen but needed to move back home when I was hospitalised. In the late middle 1980's I moved out on my own for good. After my psychosis which took place in the first few years of living on my own I got better. I began to call my dad, mother, and brother every weekend since then. I call them for emotional support. I called my dad today to help me with my graduate school application and then took some action on his advice. I also just got off the phone with my mom who gave me some financial advice.

Now I am going to do my monthly hard copy back up of my blogs. I also did some more home work this morning. When my partner woke up we washed the dishes. She made me a lunch for my night shift tonight. I am working tonight for 12 hours and will be up late into Sunday afternoon. I am also going to be able to study at work tonight because it will probably be quiet at the factory over night.