Today I bit the bullet and signed up for a course in the statistics graduate programme because it turns out I am not allowed to be on medical leave until January 2008; I was sent an e-mail yesterday that told me that if I did not register for the fall semester I would be kicked out of the statisics graduate programme. There aren't too many courses I am cognitively capable of taking right now, but I do need to get my SAS back (I lost it last year, along with all my other computing languages (except for Fortran)). Without SAS I have no hope of finishing the masters in statistics because all the final year courses assume you can program in SAS. So, even though I already took an introductory SAS course, I have signed up for a different introductory SAS course that also includes using SAS along with databases (something the other course didn't cover). It turns out that I can use this course towards my masters degree, so that is good news.
We'll see how it goes...if I can't handle it, I can always drop the course later this Fall and decide what to do from there. Either it is going to be really good for me to take this course, or it is going to be sheer hell...we'll just have to wait and see. It may help that I just started the third week of the new medication today (still slowly titrating up to the therapeutic dose) and I think I might finally be starting to see some benefits (instead off just all the nasty side-effects)...I actually had a 20 minute conversation with my mother-in-law yesterday, and it was only shortly after it ended that I realized that I didn't stumble over words, forget words, or slur (that I noticed anyway) for the entire conversation. Or maybe I am just getting used to sounding like an inebriatied dementia patient when I talk.
In other news, I decided to start a hand written journal today...I tried journaling a few times as a kid, then always gave up after a couple of weeks because it seemed like such a chore. In hindsight, I wish I had kept a journal of my undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral years as a physicist. Now that I am trying to take up journaling, I think it will be interesting to read about my road to recovery in future years, and read about the end stages of my lawsuit, etc etc, all written in a personal way that I cannot write on this blog.
I also bought myself a Tibetan Buddhist singing bowl today. It's fantastic, and my kids' eyes get bigger and bigger as I make it get louder and louder. It makes an ethereal sound, and is beautiful to look at even when it is not being used. Oh yeah, and I also picked up some Nag Champa while I was at the Tibetan Buddhist Singing Bowlarama today...I was running low. You can never have too much Nag Champa on hand.
