Gone! All the days of begging–the days of theft, no more gasping for a breath! The air has filled me head to toe and I can see the ground far below. I have this breath and I hold it tight and I keep it in my chest with all my MIGHT..

Jason Tougaw

… I pray to God this breath will last  as it pushes past my lips as I

gaaaaaa

                  aaaaaaaaaaa

                                              aaassp.

I think I may have used this title already, but I love it and it suits my mood.

November has arrived meaning (dum da dum) AACAP is finally over! which allowed me to enjoy the Halloween weekend. My poster session went well. It was not as traumatic as I thought it would be. I vow to never get this anxious again! Well, at least not until my next test of worth in the scary but exhilirating world of the hard sciences (you see, I still feel like quite the outsider amoungst the snooty scientists.) SFN is in 11 days and I am starting to fall deeper and deeper in love with neuro-everything and San Diego- anything.

Not too long ago I mentioned that one of my mentors at Sinai was training me on how to pre-process fMRI data that we are collecting. The time has finally come when Suzanne will be training to me to do the full blown thing. No more simple smoothing and normalizing! I will now be lost and confused in an entirely different world! It is really such a great opportunity and I am excited and thrilled that she trusts me enough to do this. I can not wait to get started. I prefer this over administrative paperwork ANY DAY.

My next steps: CNS! The conference is being held in San Francisco and I am reading up on anxiety, the LC and noradrenergic pathways. More information on the abstract to come.

Of course, with good news there is likely to be some bad news. I am (as usual) failing to keep up with my course work, but I am trying very hard. Somehow, I am going to magically pull it all together. First step: Return to yoga. I miss practicing yoga. I can feel my body begging me every morning to go through a sequence, but for some reason I just can’t do it. Perhaps I am still 100% upset that Michelle Weiss is no longer at QC. That said, she still has made a positive influence on my life and it seems I’ll simply have to suck it up and be a big girl who will find a new yoga studio. I have had my eye on a place by work for a long time now…