The Laursonian Institute

Yeah.   It’s one of those days, I guess, though I feel like all I need to do is decide it isn’t and my day will pick up.   I feel like I’m tired of work, tired of thinking, tired of planning, tired of doing.

And I’m also feeling lonely.  I listed to the mix CD that Steeny sent me for my birthday last year, and it made me really homesick.  Or maybe timesick, if that’s possible.  There’s this freedom of movement and being that my life has had in only fits and starts since I left Seattle to go to college.   Exceptions being the very last of my time in LA and roadtrip to MIT… but otherwise I feel like my life is used up in minutia and jostling for security.  It makes me wonder, at what point does responsibility bring diminishing returns?  And at what point does responsibility overtake my ability to relax and enjoy the fruits of my labors?  I’ve never been the type of person that is able to relax while skirting my reponsibilities either, so I’m not sure there’s a win to be had.  I don’t know what makes a person as high strung or meticulous as I am, so there’s really no getting around it, but it does strain my heart some times.

It saddens me to find myself daydreaming about hopping in my car and screwing around in Federal Way with my friends, only to realize that I gave that life up in the name of ambition.  Ambition is not all flowers, all fun, all successful.  On nights when school seems hard, when my advisors are being difficult, when my projects aren’t taking off, my papers aren’t flowing… on these nights, the trade-off seems dubious.  Did I give up all my friends and lazy good times for this ephemeral, ill-defined, completely unattainable… something?  It’s odd, I feel as though by my own 8-years-ago measure I’m more successful than I ever thought I would be.  I have everything I wanted (and indeed, want): a successful education, a wonderful husband, a happy family life, a nice place to live, and I’m getting my doctorate… which always makes me feel like a whiner.  Or an Icharis-like fool.

So I’m spending my Monday night, my holiday night, watching television I couldn’t care less about.   And trying really hard not to think about the b-level work I could be doing instead.

February 16th, 2009 | Tags: bored, home, icharis, sad, tired, tv | Category: life | Comments Off

Blog!

Valentines Day was yesterday, and it was very excellent!  It felt so nice to take a whole day off and not worry about getting any work done or anything.  Double nice since it’s a three day weekend – woot!  Anyway, we had a wonderful day yesterday.  I sorta surprised (as much as possible, anyway) Lewis with a blueberry-cornbread breakfast (with heart-shaped eggs!), and we had a really lovely slow morning.  Took an excellent drive around for the afternoon, so Lewis could show me Capay valley.  Actually we hit up the Putah Creek Cafe in Winters first, which is such a wonderful spot.  I love me a good diner!  Not to mention, someone cute gave me an adoreable little pocket duck I named Percival.   Anyway, after waiting for a squall to pass, we eventually did go get our drive.  We got some great vistas of the stormy cloudscape, but got rained on only infrequently.  Came home and watched some cheesy movies to top it off, and altogether had a great Valentine’s Day.

Today was a work day, but very pleasant.  Work went well, got all the reading and grading I wanted out of the way, and even had time to watch a movie!   Saw Frida, and it was excellent… much better than I had anticipated even, and really great cinematography.  Also made some squash chili,  which was good as ever.   It’s been so surprisingly difficult to make anything with vegetables lately, it’s great to get a little nutrient in my dinner.  Hurrah for cooking!

February 15th, 2009 | Tags: cooking, diner, movies, valentines | Category: life | Comments Off

Alright, so I missed a few days.  It’s been a busy, odd, foggy couple of days.

Lewis and I had one of the strangest kinda crappy days on Wednesday.  It started off well enough, until Lewis got to campus.  He pulled his hat out of his bag, and as he was going to put it on, a big cockroach jumped out!  How terrifying!  Lewis squished it, but it was so very odd!   We took ourselves out for Japanese lunch which was great, but we got caught in a big rain storm on the way back to campus.  We were having a fondue party that night and I had to get our cheesey supplies, so back into the rainstorm went I.   Got thoroughly soaked on the way to the Co-op, and as I was right in the middle of shopping when I heard a huge thunderclap and the whole store let out a collective “oh!”.  Absolutely poured after that, but thankfully only for a few minutes, so it was fairly rain-free for my bike ride home.  I was still pretty nervous about that thunder, so I rode home pretty fast.  Sadly, bike chain fell off while going up the overpass, and then I fell off my bike while trying to get it back on.  Sheesh!   Followed all that up with some semantics homework and my second optical migraine, so I guess I’m headed to the doctor on that count.   Luckily it was all looking up from there – had a wonderful fondue party with the most delicious cheese-goop and delightful company.  Phew!

Yesterday was much less eventful.  Class went well, I got lots of work done, and had a nice relaxing evening with Lewis’ family.  They always get together on his grandpa Pappy’s birthday to have his favorite meal in his memory, so we went over to his parents’ house and had dinner with them and his Aunt Linda & Uncle Bill & Annie.   I always enjoy the family events, and Annie is always amusing to hang out with.  Anyway, much meatloaf and cherry pie was consumed, and it was great to have something low-rev and chilled out to be doing.

…which is exactly what I’ve spent all day doing.   I’ve only got one class on Fridays, and I’m done by 11, so it’s something like having the whole day off.  I got all my work done, and spent much of the day reading slowly and watching crappy (read: satiating) daytime tv.   Did a little prepping for some sewing only to discover I don’t know how to use the tracing paper I got from Francie this week.  So instead I poked around with mom’s old machine and cleaned it up a little bit.  It’s a multi-day clean-up task, but I figured out a few things, like how to wind the bobbin, and how to get the bobbin shuttle out.   Yay!   Now if I had only managed to have something more than a bowl of rice crispies for dinner…

February 13th, 2009 | Tags: crap, family, fondue, friends, recap, sewing, thunderclap | Category: home, life | Comments Off

I can’t remember the last time I spent a whole afternoon making optimality theory tableaux.  I think it was 2004.  And I think they were on syllabification in Nuxalk.  The next summer I found a Nuxalk dictionary in a speciality bookshop near MIT while Lewis and I were hanging out at the 2005 LSA summer institute.  I don’t know if I’ll ever really have use for a Nuxalk dictionary, but it’s one of my more cherished silly books.  Doing OT is amusing, though much of the time spent doing the work is making the tableaux, which is just asking for everything that could possibly go wrong with word processing software to do so.  Turns out I have two Linux-related OT problems:  a) OpenOffice doesn’t permit dashed lines in tables (!) so I can’t show my unranked constraints properly, and b) the bomb symbol isn’t in unicode!  At least I finally found my pointing hand.  For a minute there, it felt like OT was going to demand Microsoft Word, and that just seems like a ridiculous presupposition for a phonological theory.

But speaking of the LSA… what am I going to do this year?  In more prosperous times (read: no rent to pay) I would have been there in a flash.  The institute is at Berkeley this year, commutable from home, which makes it seem a bit like an opportunity I couldn’t possibly pass up.  On the other hand, committing 6 weeks of my 12 week summer to commuting to Berkeley every day and not having a job seems like a pretty poor idea.  Coupled with the fact that I could only go if I got a fellowship to cover tuition (admittedly a not-unlikely prospect) and that students with fellowships are required to attend all six weeks instead of one of the two three-week sessions generally open to the linguisty public and furthermore that there aren’t really 8 classes I want to take… makes me wonder if it’s worth going.  I need letters of rec and transcripts as well as a personal statement to apply for the fellowship before next week, and I’m really feeling uninspired and unsure about my summer.  My graduate advisor reaaaally wants me to go (and wants to write one of my letters of rec)… but meh.  Money is a pain in the ass.  On the other hand, infinite time and means seems like a bit much to ask.

I made saurkraut-y cabbage tonight.  It wasn’t intended to be kraut-esque; I used the Chez Panisse recipe for warm cabbage, apple, and onion salad.  But it sure was good, at any rate.  Had dinner over one of my favorite new public television related activities – watching Huell Howser.  When I was in LA, he really used to get under my skin.  Though Pinks did have a hotdog named after him, which should have been a tip-off of his potential greatness.  Anyway, for some reason his boundless enthusiasm and child-like irrepressability warms my heart at the end of a long day.  Who couldn’t use a few more handy facts about out-of-the-way California towns?  Today we learned about Smallsville and Timbuctoo.  High quality.

February 10th, 2009 | Tags: cabbage, cooking, dictionary, huell howser, linux, LSA, money, nuxalk, openoffice, OT | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Quechua midterm this morning.  Went well, I think. Oral portion was pretty decent, I only mussed a question up because my professor had just told me how to say “linguistics” in Quechua (which I do not remember, of course) and then asked if I study Quechua (“Imata Quechua yachashanki?”) but I thought she asked me what I studied in Quechua to test my new knowledge (“Imata Quechuapi yachashanki”).  Oh well!

Afternoon was pretty productive.  Got a mat put down under our slippery rug in the TA office, registered for classes, and met Lewis for lunch on a nice sunny bench on the bike path.  Had my neuroimaging class which was great per usual, though the professor ran over time by 20 whole minutes!  The subject matter was interesting so nobody minded, but it was pretty funny.

Sadly,  I spent the whole rest of the night reading and grading papers.  I was hoping to get some sewing or some cooking or even some ironing done tonight, but I guess things are settling in to that middle-of-the-term grind.  Oh well.  I’ll come out the other side soon enough, and then I’ll have a whole week or two off for my leisure.  Life is grand!

February 9th, 2009 | Tags: midterm, quechua, studying | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Almost had a nosedive of a day, but Lewis saved it at the very end by taking me out for dinner and a pint at our little German braupub, Sudwerk.  The rest of my day was one of those head-against-wall work days.  I got up early (for a sleep in day, I guess) to finish grading papers, and was nearly done by the time Lewis got up to make his tasty cinnamon rolls (and they were tasty!).  Spent the rest of the morning / afternoon reviewing for my Quechua midterm, and reading the next chapter in my structuralist semantics book.  I’ve got a presentation on the semantics of european structuralists next week, and I’m really not sure what to do yet.  Thankfully the book I’m reading is going way better than the last one, and I’m sure I can come up with something interesting to say.  After that though, I was just completely spent… so thank goodness Lewis took me out.   Now… I guess I’m off to bed, so I can get a decent sleep and maybe get up early to do a short-term-memory filling before the midterm in the morning.

February 8th, 2009 | Tags: midterm, out, pub, quechua, semantics | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Big day, big day.   I slept in, had a lazy morning with my sweetie, and had a lovely walk.  We also finally made Valentine’s plans, which I’m really looking forward to!   Seems like I spent the next million hours grading papers and getting my semantics reading done, but when I came out the other side it was pretty early.  Managed a real dinner (Lewis made some Asian coleslaw – my favorite!) and watched a Pink Panther movie.   Hurray for PBS!  I can’t forget to mention as well that Lewis has been working on cinnamon rolls this evening and I’m reaaally looking forward to tomorrow’s breakfast adventures!

Also embarked on some sewing projects… turned some scraps into hankerchiefs for Lewis.  I was also hoping to cover a pillow we had sitting around to take in to the TA office to snazz our couch up.  Learned a very important lesson… you apparently can’t sew all the sides of something together and then hope to then turn it inside out.  Especially when you’ve sewn a pillow into it.  Har har.  Fixed it, though it’s not as handsome as I had envisioned.  Decent for a completely half-assed no-pattern sort of thing.  It will snazz our couch nicely, and it was an amusing learning experience if nothing else!

February 7th, 2009 | Tags: lazy, sewing | Category: home, life | Comments Off

I think a good metaphor for my grumpy and uncomfortable position lately might be “life vertigo”.  I got to this place I always wanted to be, and now I’ve got no hand holds, no railings, and no one to follow.  This surely isn’t a good thing, it just seems to be freaking me out.  I never really planned ahead for being where I am.  A bit like always playing the lotto and then one day winning, and having no idea what to do with yourself any more.

I got invited to give a talk to a student-run forum of phonologists and phoneticists at Berkeley and I’m not sure what at all to do with that.  On one hand, I don’t have any phonology research of the empiricle bent to present to these students in the next few months.  On the other hand, I’m deep in the murky depths of this theoretical phonology paper, and that might be interesting to share.  Provided I have some conclusion hammered out before that point.  Which is part of what’s making me so cranky this week… I’m definitely at an impass on my QP research and feeling fairly overlooked by the professor who is supposed to be overseeing that.  But I think a little distance and some time to think about it will do me some good.  Anyway, not sure what I’m going to tell Berkl folks at the moment, but it’s an interesting opportunity, and I’ve been invited to attend the ongoing events.  So if nothing of my own presentation happens, I could at least attempt to make some connections and see what folks are up to over there.  Unfortunately their meetings are at a really inconvenient time, at least for me to be in Berkeley.  *shrug*

Other less exciting things happened today.  I went to the dentist and got a thumbs up from everyone.  I went to my morning neuroscience class and felt pretty uninspired, but I partially (or perhaps even mostly?) blame that on my neuroscience midterm ennui from yesterday and my professor’s lack of preparation or enthusiasm this morning (he had just flown in from San Diego before class).  Made it through that, and I had intended to catch the very-much-seeming-important colloquia on “the functional anatomy of auditory processing” but I failed on that count.  It’s information I can gather elsewhere, and my mind was too burned out and unfocused for it to have done me much good.  Besides, it was the only chunk of time I had to get lunch before the dentist.   And goodness, getting to the dentist was a mess.  Sacramento isn’t really made for rain squalls… the freeway just about whited out and started flooding almost immediately.  I was really glad I only had a few miles left to go, and escaped the majority of the hard rain on the way home as well.

So I came home, made brownies, and watched movies on TV all night.  I just didn’t have it in me to be doing any more work.  I’m really just about at the end of my wick for whatever reason.  It feels like my restful night was already beneficial, if I may judge by my current state of relative complacency.   I think that’s a sure sign that I need to take it easy this weekend and prepare myself for my last midterm, and second half of this quarter.  Phew.  I’m ready for summer vacation already.. but I suppose I can at least look forward to spring break.  5 more weeks?

February 7th, 2009 | Tags: brownies, class, dentist, introspective, rain | Category: life, school | Comments Off

I don’t know if it’s because it’s midterms week, or if I’m just getting lazy and taciturn, but I haven’t been doing a great job at the nightly blogging lately.  I really just don’t feel like I’ve got much to say.  But I guess a few things have happened.  Better go list format.

The Good:

• I got new glasses today!
• Had a nice post-lunch lunch with my sweetie
• Got my performance reviews from my students last quarter, and they’re fantastic
• Think I have my classes figured out for next quarter
• Had a dream I was helping Eddie Vedder garden?
• Also had a dream Hilary Clinton was my mom and we were moving into the white house?
• Only missed half a point on my neuroimaging midterm
• Managed to cook a bit, vacuumed, and ironed!

The Other-than-Good:

• Feeling really grumpy lately
• Had a crap meeting with my research advisor wherein he didn’t listen to anything I said and tried to solve the problem I presented him with by using my exact same non-working solution and apparently not noticing…
• Dentist appointment tomorrow
• Quechua midterm on Monday…
• Semantics presentation coming up which I’m pretty nervous about (as in, I know nothing about the subject I’m presenting on and the readings suggested are aggrivatingly quatralingual (read: incomprehensible))
• Spent a thousand years trying to figure out what courses to take; still waiting for a professor to return my email…
• Mostly just grumpiness!

Yeah, so… that’s life.  Rambling along like usual, feeling like I’m stuck in slow motion and I’m not getting anything done.  I’m getting pleanty done.  I think last quarter was way more work than perhaps your average quarter, and thus I am now feeling aimless and deflated and underworked.  It seems ridiculous that being in grad school could be underworking me, but there you go.

February 5th, 2009 | Tags: absent, grumpy, list | Category: life, school | Comments Off