My long term disability got approved last week. No appeals, no court battle, just long months of waiting and a few of scraping brokeness. I get my full package, benefits and 401k contribution included. Thankful to be able to take some time to actually take care of myself the way I need to. Eat the way I should, daily. Take exactly the medications I should, without thinking about rationing, daily. Attend cardiac rehab and be able to pay my copay. Have to do some doctor shopping, new psych, new pain doc, but it's manageable. Truthfully I'm kind of numb. I want to be elated, we went out to a nice dinner to celebrate, but it hasn't set in yet that I actually got the benefits that I earned, that I signed up for years ago specifically for when the day came that I needed them. I guess I find it hard to believe that the corporate end of the bargain is being held up. Just need some time to process I guess. Finished The Universe in a Nutshell, gonna re-read it for the sake of clarity and comprehension before moving on to the next one. Hawking is a wonderful breather from Durant.
gonna be a data scientist? Got accepted to Lambda School! It's an intensive coding bootcamp I'll start in September: nine months of 40 hours a week online instruction, following instructors build applications and building our own under their supervision. I'm told that it's the same or more amount of coding as in a 4-year CS degree. My acceptance is conditional on completing "precourse work" which I'm finding involves a steep learning curve. It dawned on me that this is their weeding out process. I'm not averse to the approach at all; instructional time is better spent on more complicated things than learning to define variables or importing libraries. But some of the later assignments which I haven't gotten to yet have names like linear algebra, pandas, training models with sklearn. Thankfully, there is a metric fuckton of resources online for learning the basics of python on your own. I'll speak to my decision for the subspeciality--data science--at a later pubski. summer 2019 curriculum In addition to the coding I'm doing this summer, I'm training and coaching gymnastics. I'm basically living at the gym and a bagel place next to it. Had a really discouraging day today. I'm so old and stiff. Trying to remember that there are a lot of slow-going, sometimes deeply uncomfortable and miserable days that comprise the road to progress. Saturday Officiating my best friends' wedding this Saturday; been reading my speech every day in preparation. It brings me chills. "I now have the privilege to announce--for the very first time as husband and wife--Andrew and Grace."