My life's Adventure

We have bought shortbread, socks and chocolates for Christmas presents.

We managed to save money buying food and socks for presents. We bought some ginger bread houses for kids. My partner went out in the heavy snow and cold and mailed the presents today. I ordered her some shoes for Christmas and also bought her an Aboriginal hair piece. Which means it is just a hair piece made of beads. I also used some points loyalty program and got some bookstore gift certificates for presents for L and my partner's sister. I am getting my own brother a CD over the internet and I am also buying his son that. We bought the women in our family soap and also one young women facial clay. We bought elders nuts and shortbread. We still do not have a tree. I am about to go out and use some grocery gift certificates to buy some more food.

I owe a lot of money right now and I will post my progress paying these bills due now.

Busy working, two more days in the working world done.

I worked two days feeling different and uncomfortable in my skin. I did though do a good job and continue to work a full week this week. I have most of next week off as holidays.

Computer games, tasks and helping neighbours with computers.

Part of my alienation comes from having no one to play computer games with. I was just playing scrabilous on facebook with someone who is also disabled. We will call her Q for scrabble. She is a learning counselor at my old school's disabled student's centre. I have known of her for years while I put together my first degree and then had more success with my second degree. I am happy to have her as a friend thus creating a bigger academic network. I could turn to her for help with school issues if I needed too.

I just spent about two hours playing this game and also playing Second Life a little. So games are no longer played alone because even in Second Life I said hello to another player and made a business proposition to another player to buy some land cheaper in a snowy region of that 3-D world.

I did get H some help. I helped her turn on and download her email and send one reply. I also said I would go back to help her more, may be tonight after work.

I am just transferring some songs to my new cell phone which can play music quite well. I will also do some typing up of minutes over night and some studies for workplace promotions.

Seasons Greetings to my Yahoo chat friends.

I sometimes tell others in yahoo chat to visit this blog. I should just say a happy holidays to those chatters out there. I may drop in on yahoo chat and say hello from time to time over the holidays. I might also drop in on Second Life and will of course be using facebook as usual.

I am helping H with her computer this evening

I am just running out the door in this snow storm to help H with her computer and the Internet. H has depression issues and is also a strong self help group supporter. That is how I know of her. She is also a neighbour so this will not be a long trip in this snow storm. I am of course taking a first aid kit, a flashlight and cell phone and warm winter clothing. I am always trying to be prepared for emergencies. Last night I helped a drunk who was falling down in the snow storm. I also asked a police officer actually a Royal Canadian Mounted Police man in his car to look for the drunk on the street, because of the risk of frost bite and death.

I just took some vitamins.

I just took 1 gram of vitamin C and 1 gram of niacin and 1 capsule of fish oil.

I attended a few hours of labour strategy meetings today.

I met with other union members today to discuss our labour union. We were well fed and relaxed with no infighting. I applied feminist principles to move us forward. I also did not do most of the talking but did more listening. I am home now it is very cold outside and we are expecting a major storm from Texas. I am warm at home and just need to go out and buy milk and get some cash from a bank machine to help pay for presents tomorrow. I may stay up all night and sleep tomorrow at about noon. I have some typing up of the labour meeting notes to do and some typing of the self help group AGM minutes that I should also get to.

I am just getting ready to go to work now.

My partner went out in the cold and bought us smokes and pop this morning. I slept on the couch falling asleep tired at about 2:00 AM. My partner woke me up at about 7:30 AM. I work my regular 8 hours today and then come home. I am selling a jig saw today. The fellow who is buying it is coming over after work. We are so broke now and just will be able to afford some things this weekend not everything planned. I am not sure if C and J are coming by this evening but R has confirmed he will be coming over.

I sort of use shelves and table tops and other flat surfaces to organise.

I was looking for some computer parts and could not find them today. I have some shelves in my office that are particularly for different types of computer parts. I can then generally locate these parts when I need them. But I did loose track of some parts recently. Part of the problem is that I consume large amounts of computer parts and do not have enough space for everything.

Our volunteer meeting was quick.

We introduced some new volunteers and discussed issues with our service. Then we talked about up coming events and training. This is law enforcement volunteering so I will not go into any detail. And remember this is law enforcement in Canada so not as may be tough as you find in other countries. And we are all volunteers not paid police. We are never in any danger because of our volunteering.

I wrote my final exam yesterday.

I wrote my final exam yesterday. Today I am back at work. I have a volunteer meeting after work today. I have a new cell phone now. It may become very expensive this cell phone as it downloads from the internet. I have to be careful with it. It is expensive as it is but downloads are very pricey.

L is looking after herself well, I think.

I am concerned with L given that I know depression can worsen when one is grieving the loss of a family member. I asked her on the phone if she was eating and and getting rest. She said she was eating and taking her meds. I also asked her a few weeks ago about taking her meds. Without them she stays up long hours and does not get rest. I wonder how she would do without her meds? I know she looses all sense of the world then.

I am off work today.

I have today off work to study for and write an exam at school. My present boss is supportive of my studies. I need to review some notes in my notebook and then go to school this afternoon and write the exam.

Update school project

I am trying not to brag but I do want to let you know that we did well with our term project. So our lose was not what was marked instead our efforts and more so our conceptual understanding is what was evaluated. I now know my full mark can be excellent and it depends on my studies tonight. My mood for tomorrow is important too. At the moment I took my meds including my vitamins. It is a pay day tomorrow and I often stay up all night before pay day and spend some money as soon as it is transfered to the bank. I am only disclosing this because it is quite common as a habit for those of us on government cheques and limited incomes. The only real differences now are the government cheque is for work I have done, the amount is much higher, and also, I have to work each day so staying up late is not as easy or even smart.

Update conference last week

I did not actually take last Friday off of work. I did not attend the conference. It was not actually in my official field of study. It was also pure political science and concerned the Internet as well. But I did not attend after all. I worked that day towards our deadline. So yes I am a committed and dedicated worker.

I should be studying this evening.

I need to start studying now. I was able to finally get our cat to the vet today. She is healthy and well. She had her booster shots. The vet cut her claws for us and I watched and I think I can do this claw cutting now.

I am going to help H with her computer soon and she is out of her blues now. I sold her a computer and offer her free lessons. Speaking of consumers I met a consumer survivor from the Ukraine at the dinner. I also know a consumer who is going to Africa. One of my coworkers had to return to Africa to visit his ailing mom. I won't give more details than that as I respect these person's rights to their privacy. I was being difficult trying to advise one consumer at the dinner on school and scholarships. I said I was sorry. I am just trying to show that some of us live regular lives and stuff.

Speaking of life we had some money help from our parents to get our holidays started a bit better. We still have no tree but soon will I hope. I am hoping to get a new cell phone but had such a bad time today talking to company representatives in the retail store. I guess retail workers think we are the ones who are jerks or stupid but really this guy was so judgmental and rude. I thought the customer was always right not someone to treat like an idiot? None of the clerks at the department store were jerks and they put up with us. They were actually quite helpful even if young and not that experienced although truth be told it was the elder workers there who really were the most helpful with their accumulated knowledge of the store.

Thanking those academic supporters

I had extra help at returning to school. I was helped by learning assistants and councelors.

We bought Christmas cards and socks.

We did go to the department store after the dinner. It was my wife's turn for feeling uncomfortable in the store this evening. She was too hot in the big sweater and coat she was wearing. We bought some working socks for men in our family. We also bought some Christmas cards. The cards have a dove with an olive branch. Wishing all my readers peace of mind and peaceful holidays. I realise Muslim holidays are only weeks away now. Jewish holidays are already upon us. My workplace was more friendly today and slightly festive.

Self help Christmas dinner.

The big event on our self help group's calendar is this party in half an hour. The annual Christmas dinner is attended by almost every member. Members even show up for this event only all year. We are about to leave for the dinner but will be slightly late. We are only one bus ride away from the dinner.

After the dinner we are going to the department store again for more Christmas shopping.

I have tomorrow off of work and am taking the cat to the vet. I also have Wednesday off. Things were slow at work today but I worked hard and helped solve some problems my boss was having. I also studied some material for new employees in the government and have a course later this winter to teach me more about being a public servant.

I am just posting this then checking the bus schedule and it is off to the dinner and shopping with my wife. My wife just returned from the grocery store with lots of food and our Turkey dinner stuff for our friends dinner with C, J, R, and L later this month.

Christmas shopping blues.

Actually it was because I was hungry and tired that I did not enjoy our first shopping trip of the season today. I was over heated in the store wearing my parka, new fleece jacket, and down vest. But really we had almost no food and I had been up since 11:00 PM last night. So when we went shopping mid day I was in terrible shape. We got home with a lot of presents including a new sweater for my wife. Yes, I saw up close the large women's section of the store for probably the first time. We also bought nuts and short bread at that large downtown department store.

I then was well fed by my wife and went out to buy some food. I had a good second shopping trip. After buying food I continued shopping on my own now. I took a bus way out to the suburbs to buy some computer parts and studied on the bus the whole way there and back. I am slightly tired manic now but should sleep in about half an hour. I just have the last trip to the corner store for pop and I will crash out and sleep. Hopefully I wake up really early tomorrow like 4:00 AM ready for a long day at work. Then after work we have our self help group Christmas party dinner. I have Tuesday and Wednesday off of work.

Exam study day!

Today my simple goal is to read the entire course notes book the professor has provided us with for his course. Earlier today well actually early this morning I opened our term project in Kate a Linux based word processor that can highlight computer code. But then to save energy I shut down my other computers. I have a lot of reading to do today and plan to sleep at about 6:00 PM this evening.

R went to see a movie last night and I did not hear from C and J.

I did not have friends over last night. I surfed the Internet and my wife watched TV.

That's about two weeks now with no overnighters on working days.

I have not been able to stay up all night now for a few weeks. The last time I tried that I had to call in sick the next morning. I slept on Thursday evening and also last night. I worked hard on Friday and we are doing well at work my coworkers and myself.

Recovery in food.

I am feeling much better now after my first veggies of the day. I still need two more servings of veggies and three more fruits today and it should be time to sleep right now. I am no longer bitter about work. I am looking forward to studying for my school exam over night and trying to work a 12 hour day tomorrow so we make a deadline we have at work.

Looking after my own health with a limited budget.

This bitter state of mind takes a lot of energy. I just made some squash in the microwave and am eating it now. The squash might have gone bad and we might not have eaten it after all but now it is ready to eat. We got this from our wholesale food program. This is good food for battling the employment monster. I do not think I will find rest this evening. I will work very tired tomorrow.

I came home bitter about a hiring decision at work.

I have been bitter now for about 5 hours. This is not a good state of mind to be in. I can not sleep now. I let me boss know I was bitter but it is not his fault the hiring process is not something he can affect. He is supervising me now but it is the bureaucracy that hires people. I did have some good news about a different job at work. But I also had some bad news about another job. So that's two bad news items and one good. I am only employed for my high school diploma right now my degrees are not needed even though the work I do requires specialised training. It is all called misclassification and workplace exploitation. It is our world.

L's father passed away today.

My wife just went out to comfort L whose father passed away today. I said sorry to L and will support her in anyway I can.

I slept and am ready for work rested.

I slept and am just waking up now. I will work 8 hours today and then attend my last class this evening. I may be a little late this morning at work but will work a little later to make up for it.

I made coffee and am wondering how I will manage to stay up all night this time.

It has been more difficult to stay up all night and I have not managed it for a few weeks now except on weekends. This was yes, a trick I would use to be on time for work. I feel the pain of this trick from time to time and in the last week have either missed one day or slept in so this is all not working right. Oh well, I am drinking coffee it is past midnight now and I am growing tired tying so will break form this task.

I crammed the evening away at school.

We have lost. Our project is not done and major gaps are still evident in the program. We did spend about three hours this evening working on it. I am home now and should sleep but it is too late now. I just read a book on statistics and have made some coffee. I also ate an apple and that is the last fresh fruit in the house. I fear bankruptcy is just around the corner.

But speaking of studies I have a new topic to study namely HTML stylesheets. I am continuing to study statistics but have lightened up on Internet studies.

R has gotten extra help at school and may in fact graduate with his high school diploma this spring. I told him I was non-judgmental about his dropping out and yet I encouraged him to return. He has now returned. You may know that those of us with schizophrenia tend to start projects that will really help us but then fall behind and quit. This is a strong lesson for me and the opposite continuing on forever is also not what it seems. In fact, we all need to think and reassess from time to time. By sticking out my awful jobs I am now rewarded. I was given a workplace fleece sweater yesterday for speaking out at work about mental illness. We did not use the actual word schizophrenia at all yesterday. The MI word mental illness came up but may be you could use the IMF that is impossible missions force acronym to feel better about that. I used the examples of Margaret Trudeau and Sally Field so I could pretend to have depression whereas, in fact, if you know me you would probably wish I was a little more down and quiet and a little less excited and happy.

The real reward I have right now is my work place tasks have become more interesting and are, in fact, an extension of my studies from back in 1999 to 2002. So I can give up a little now on day dreaming of being a spy or security agent which is yes paranoid thinking and I hope I never ever have to be a security guard again. Useful skills no very useful skills to have in that work and I retain these skills but much better to focus on more academic skills with more wage power. It is also a lot less boring. So I have been doing more constructive work for about two months now and also my unique skills in mathematics and computer programming are being used at work so my work place productivity is now able to meet my quality which has always been there. I am not really arrogant I am only writing some self reflection by the way.

My school work has been worked on and I am now ready to focus on work today.

I did some proof reading and writing for my term project this morning. I just emailed a copy to myself at my school email address and need to forward this to the other students in our team. I will just run out to the store now and buy some milk and coffee creamer. Then I will have some final cups of coffee and walk to work. I am still trying to go into work an hour early today. I may not take the Friday off of work anyways. We are working to a deadline right now and there is a fair amount of work to complete for next week. If I make any mistakes they will have the most effect this week and next week I have two days off of work to study for my exam. I have begun to study and will focus on school work after work today and meet my team this evening. We hand on our project tomorrow. It is tricky balancing school and work but I seem to be doing better at it this term with only one course to focus on.

I just took my vitamins and am geting ready for work.

I just took 1 gram of vitamin C and 1 gram of niacin. I also took one capsule of fish oil actually wild salmon oil.

I have only my school project editing to do this morning before work. I am dressed for work and might shave a little. I want to go in an hour early again this morning. I am expecting an email at work telling me if I have been hired permanently in the government. You may know this is an important job historically in many countries and will be significant in my life too.

I just ran to the bedroom to shut off my bedside clock radio alarm that was going off. I have been up actually since about midnight or 1:00 AM. I went to sleep at about 6:00 PM last night. I got off work and took my meds early yesterday and grew tired with all the snowy weather. So I did not sleep a full 8 hours but am feeling fairly rested if a little sluggish. I will be able to work over time today if I need to. Besides waiting to hear back about a job at my present workplace I have also been short listed for a job as an analyst of air pollution for our health ministry. One of my coworkers is already there now in the health ministry. She is back at her old job there now.

I scored perfect on some homework but am procrastinating this morning.

I am able to admit that I should be working on school work and not reading the news and updating blogs. But my term project is almost done and I am just putting some final edits in to our project report. We will meet this evening to finalise our project. We all did a task and our project is now done. So I now have a little experience working with C# a new programming language. I also plan with the other students to open source our method and add to the GNU collection of math routines and am in touch with GNU people about this. I will need to rewrite the code into C.

I got my mark for last week's homework and scored perfect a 100% so I am really doing well this term with a possible and likely A+ mark once again. Believe me it was not always this way. I have had years at school with all F's before. So the lesson is stay in school and keep trying. My friend R for instance just dropped out of his school because it was too much for him and he got behind missing some classes.

International day for Persons with DisAbilities.

Yesterday was international day for Persons with DisAbilities. I attended a workplace event and then worked the rest of yesterday. I celebrated the day with others with disAbilities and felt excited.

I sold my saw and an iPod to help our budget out.

We were so broke at the end of the month. Today we were at zero dollars. Actually worse because of the debits we owe. I was able using the Internet to sell my circular saw which I used for the balcony pigeon proofing structure. I sold it to a local fellow and that got us milk, pop, bread, butter, a magazine and bus fare for school. I might still buy a bus pass for this month but have only one class this month this week and one exam and otherwise a few meetings and such. But even with this the bus pass is cheaper than paying per trip.

I also sold our iPod, the large one. I plan to buy a new one later but right now we just can not afford this piece of electronics. I may buy a new large capacity iPod on the holiday sales. So we have money to meet bills tomorrow when the first banking day of the month occurs.

I am planning on staying up all night now and trying to work two to three extra hours tomorrow. This will bring me much closer to having Friday off work for a conference. This reminds me I need to register for this conference no later than tomorrow. It will also cost a little money to attend.

I did finish watching the sci-fi film but no more than that.

I did watch all of the sci-fi film. I had planned to also watch the political fiction film. But at 6:00 AM I was tired and slept. I am worried to look after myself more so I rested when I was tired. I spent about 2 hours working on some school work related to a course I took in 2000. I was using data from my workplace. I really did not get anywhere with this data. So another failure. I am up now having woken up about 1:00 AM. I want to read some cyber culture studies now. My partner is out somewhere and has not left a note or called.

I bought quite a few DVD's this evening.

I won't mention the titles of the movies I bought this evening because I don't want to promote anything or do product placement or adds here. I started to watch one movie that is sci-fi. I am about half an hour through the movie right now and it is on pause. My partner is sleeping now. She also watched some movies today.

I am about half way through my nightly telephone banking now. I bought the movies on credit. I also took some expensive 5.1 stereo speakers back to the store unopened. I was thinking of them for my niece but this would be a bad move financially. I also do not have the money for the receiver that would be needed.

So I bought movies today for myself and my wife. I plan to watch the one sci-fi movie over night and then one political fiction movie and then may be a comedy movie. I do not usually watch films so watching three in a row may not happen. My next move is to take some vitamins and read some work related books and some computer studies. I have been reading a fair amount today already while I was on the buses.

I know too much about consumer electronics now. I do not need more electronics these days.

I in fact have four computers, two that can run Windows XP, one that runs Windows 2000. Then I have on the same computers, Mac OS X 10.5 and Mac OS X 10.4 and these machines also run the windows. Then there is also Debian 4.0 Linux and Windows on a third computer. On the fourth computer it only runs Solaris and I think it has Solaris 10 but I am not sure of that because I very new to Solaris. This fourth computer is not designed for the home and is, in fact, an engineering workstation with non PC hardware and is ten years old.