The Laursonian Institute

Finals week.  Things to say.

Awesome day off yesterday.  Got hair cut by favorite, Melody.  Much catching up.  Ethiopian dinner with Ben.  Major life questions deftly unanswered.  Mind-blowing free jazz concert at favorite Oakland club/cement box/accordian repair shop.  Home very late.  No studying at all.

Took Quechua final this morning.   Utterly flubbed oral portion.  Actually spaced out instead of answering questions in dialog!  Brain: -1.  More amused than bothered.  Feeling happy about pass-fail.  Confident about spending study time at Ethiopian + jazz.

Came home.  Celebratory (abashed?) sushi lunch.  Recieved email from neuroimaging professor / goon.  Surprise, your quiz *is* an essay!  Discomfited.  Rejected from working memory until semantics is attended to.   Worked outside on semantics paper all afternoon.  Did I mention, 75 degrees today?  Saw more birds than semantics.

Manual labor break to wash, clean, oil bike.  Feeling very mechanical.  Much grease under fingernails.  Hands well chafed, bike well tended.

Spent all night (is it midnight already?) working on semantics.  Triumphantly (abashed?) emailed Quechua professor all remaining lexical questions.  Feeling somewhat assified.  Isn’t this paper done yet?

March 18th, 2009 | Tags: bay area, bike, birds, concert, fail, finals, jazz, papers, questions, telegraphic, test | Category: school | Comments Off

Last day of classes!  I’m so close to spring break, I can almost taste it.  I think I’ve finished my research write-up, and I’m feeling well prepared for my Quechua final on Wednesday.  Not sure my neuroimaging professor is going to actually give us a final quiz… so that just leaves my semantics paper!  I’ve got it half done or more already, and I’m hoping I can maybe polish off the draft tomorrow.  Phew.  I’m really ready for break.  Aaaand for sleeping in tomorrow!

March 16th, 2009 | Tags: class, finals | Category: school | Comments Off

Lovely day for a lovely wedding.

Got up mightily early this morning to make it to a 10 am wedding in Berkeley.  The groom was one of Lewis’ friends from junior high.  It was quite a nice affair – both the (fairly non-traditional Jewish) ceremony and the reception were both at The Brazilian Room in Tilden Park in the beautiful Berkeley Hills.  There was a great Bay Area mist about this morning, with lots of light rain and fog.

The wedding was a much smaller affair that I anticipated, since Lewis and I got invited and I’ve never really met either the bride or groom in the years we’ve been together.  But they were at our wedding, and Lewis and the groom seem to have solid affection for one another… so it was quite an honor to be on the list!  Our friends Ben and Maya were there, as well as some other old classmates of Lewis’ from Davis, so we were in good company.  We also carpooled with another couple from Davis who we hadn’t met who were quite lovely and I’m sure we’ll see around town in due time.

I’d never been to a Jewish wedding before (actually, this is the first non-family wedding I’ve been to!), and it was very cute.  They aren’t particularly orthodox, so it was a very casual ceremony, but it did have the various blessings and canopy and glass-crushing I came to expect.  And a klezmer band.  And lots of circle dancing!  All in all, it was a really warm and relaxed reception with lots of participation from the crowd and lots of silly happenings.

Only downside for me was for some reason my heart wouldn’t stop palpitating in the latter half of the reception.  I kept walking outside to get some air, getting myself calmed down, and then going back inside and having it start up again.  It did eventually stop, but I think I went through four prolonged rounds of it or so, and it’s usually just one or two off beats before it rights itself.  It was at least well timed to prod myself into getting an appointment at the health center, since I had spoken to my nurse about the general palpitation issue last week and she told me to come back in with my records from my old place in LA where they had done an echo cardiogram.

I do think it’s just stress (as in, this always happens waaay more frequently around finals week and such than any other time), but anyone who has had regular palpitations must know how off-putting and a little troubling they are.   At any rate, when I had that echo cardiogram done last time all my doctor said was that I had a slightly irregular heart beat, and I’m sure that’s all that’s going on now.   It’s funny how nervous I get about my body when I’m stressed out.  I keep finding muscle knots (I think) in my neck that my brain just can’t let go of.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to talk myself out of thinking that they’re cancerous lumps or some sort or another.  Any tiny thing goes wrong and I presume the worst.  This doesn’t happen when I’m feeling less stressed – I wonder what it is about stress that makes me feel so… perishable?  At least my hair isn’t falling out, like one of my grad school compadres.

March 15th, 2009 | Tags: friends, heart, stress, wedding | Category: life | Comments Off

I think we’re about to hit that point in the blogging where I don’t have anything to say, and no time to say it in.  It’s finals week!

So I guess that’s it.  One day of classes left.  Lovely weather today – worked outside most the afternoon.  Got started on my semantics paper, and my research write-up.  Made a tasty dinner and played Zombie Fluxx with Lewis while we ate.

Boy, I guess that’s it.  How sad!  Amazing how time flies when you’re staring at this screen.  Oy.

March 13th, 2009 | Tags: finals, papers | Category: school | Comments Off

My life as a dialogue. I just got to the final and most persuasive subpoint, and I’ve forgotten what issue we’re debating. I carry on anyway, hoping that at the end of this section it all comes back to me. Or that no one noticed I obviously lost my way.

March 12th, 2009 | Tags: ennui, metaphor, self | Category: life | Comments Off

This is one of those dead-tired sort of days.  But it’s okay.  It should be the last one this quarter!

It was a necessarily busy day today.  Had Quechua this morning and we did dialogs and had a little Peruvian feast.  I wish I knew what anything was called or made of, because it certainly was delicious.  Oh, and we drank some Inca Kola.  Drinking neon yellow soda at 10 am is certainly a way to kick off a day.  Anyway.  Much fun was had in Quechua, and my heart is softening a bit towards that class.  Probably a good time to have handed course evaluations out.

Went straight from Peruvian snacks to my lunch date with Bernard Comrie.  It’s so amusing to have lunch with famous linguist-types.  I don’t know what it is about being a grad student that gets you introduced to these folks.  Maybe it’s the benevolence of those above you to spread your name around and get your face known.  At any rate, it was great being invited to lunch.  The food and company were both excellent, and I learned amusing things about Comrie that will stick with me for a while.  He’s a good guy.

Had to ditch lunch a little early to go meet with my TAing professor, and then my research professor.  This is the last set of homeworks I have to grade for this quarter, which is excellent, but sadly means that soon I have to grade the final.  Had a very nice final meeting with my research professor, and wrapped up what we’ve been reading very nicely.  Unfortunately he also assigned me a little write-up to do before the end of next week, so I didn’t quite escape without a short paper to do.  Oh well.  I sort of needed to synthesize what we’ve been doing anyway, so it will end up being rather useful later.

Spent a few minutes with Lewis in the sunshine on the Quad, and puttered about for my spare hour until it was time to go to Comrie’s talk!  I’d seen him give portions of this talk in Cambridge before, but for some reason it was much more engaging this time.  The talk seemed to fly by, and all the questions were very interesting.  Before I knew it, it was 6:00 already and time to go home.  Crashed a fair bit when I got here, didn’t make dinner… but I did watch some Colbert over some left-overs, and made a loaf of lemon bread for breakfast tomorrow.

All in all… a very successful, if draining, day!

March 11th, 2009 | Tags: comrie, lunch, papers, peruvian food, quechua, talk | Category: life, school | Comments Off

I’m feeling so very delightfully relaxed.  Sorta.  I realized right after typing that out, that per usual I’m sitting here with my jaw clenched as tight as can be.  I do wish I could stop doing that.  I guess on a metalevel I’m relaxed, but on some sort of biological level I’m still all keyed up.  Anyway.

It was a good day.  Penultimate semantics class finished, though it was sort of painful.  Professor was discussing his own paper, which is really interesting, but I didn’t bring it with me (it’s 60 pages!  truthfully, I didn’t print it!) and it was more like a talk than a class.  Got some TA work done after that, and headed home.  Spent home-time pretty well, reviewing my semantics work and doing a bit of thinking about the last meeting with my professor for research I have tomorrow.  Got tired of thinking and mowed the lawn.  Made Lewis take me out to our local “Mexican” place (New Mexican I guess?) to split some nachoes, and then I was feeling all rejuvinated.  Did a bunch more research prep for tomorrow (synthesizing! my greatest talent!) while sitting by a toasty fire.  I’ve had this kitty on my lap all night, while I drink mate and eat what’s left of my chocolate chip cookies and listen to these nice Mozart clarinet and bassoon concertos… life is pretty spectacular.

Tomorrow should be an interesting and sorta big day!  I’ve only got Quechua to get through, but I have a million things in the afternoon to do.  First of all, and I guess most importantly, I’ve got a lunch date with a very famous visiting linguist!  Thankfully it’s not just me, there should be several of us grad students, and a professor friend of ours who invited us (and is good friends with the visiting linguist).  It’s just a little unnerving, but very exciting to feel partially responsible for entertaining someone I respect so much!  After that, I’ve got a meeting with the teacher I TA for to get the last homeworks from him, then my last research meeting with that professor.  Hopefully he’s going to tell me that I don’t need to do any more work this quarter!  And then after that… the lecture that the visiting linguist is giving.  I’ve actually seen him give this talk before when Lewis and I caught him at Cambridge, but it’s a really neat thing, so it certainly won’t be boring to catch again.  Yay, it’s Comrie Day!  (For fun, try to count the number of publications he has on his site..!)

March 10th, 2009 | Tags: comrie, lunch, quechua, relaxation, semantics, work | Category: home, school | Comments Off

I have not adjusted to this time change.  It’s 10:00 and here I am, completely exhausted again.

It was a pretty darn good day, though.  It’s always encouraging to start off the last week of school!  And as a bonus, we had a Quechua linguist-guy visiting our class this morning.  He was only going to sit in for an hour or so and watch us work, but in fact he gave us a very interesting 2-hour lecture and used up all our time!  So we didn’t have to do our dialogs, and didn’t even correct or turn in our homeworks.  Thus, we also didn’t get any more work assigned!  Best class yet.   Neuroimaging was good and short today (as it is every Monday), so it was a real smooth day.

I did also go to see the doctor (nurse practicioner, it turns out) about these migraines though.  I was looking forward to having that taken care of.  So there isn’t actually any real news from the visit.  My nurse is great.  She thinks the headaches are some combo of hormones and stress, and that I don’t have to do anything about them unless they really get in my way.  We can try messing with my birth control perscription, or they could perscribe me migraine medicine or something that has the effect of migraine mitigation (anti-depressants, blood pressure medicine) if I wanted… but one crap day a month sounds a hair less bad to me then being on medicine every day I don’t really need.  So for now, no change.  But good to know that it’s non-life-threatening and that I’ve got escape plans if I need them.  Nurse said I could even see the neurologist if I wanted… ooo.  Anyway, sort of a relief to know the headaches are not a huge deal, just another minor annoyance to deal with in life.

So I triumphantly rode home, got all my work done, baked cookies, and concocted dinner.  I’ve discovered that one of my best cooking resources is some innate ability to conjure up a version “KC’s Rice Surprise”, my Dad’s magical never-the-same-twice refridgerator meal.  Boy, Laurie’s Rice Surprise was sure good tonight.  Verrry spicy, and full of kale and collard greens and rice and red beans and ground beef.  Mmm.  It did have the odd effect of making my fridge as seemingly full as when I started though, since I somehow managed to create twice as much rice surprise as the rice I was attempting to use up.  Ended up going right back in the same tupperware it came out of!  Oh well!  It’s at least a little tastier now.

March 9th, 2009 | Tags: cooking, doctor, migraine, quechua, time change | Category: life, school | Comments Off

This is the most social day I’ve had in ages!  I may wax poetic about the two wonderful groups of people we saw today… but I don’t think words really capture the feeling of comradrie and fulfillment I’m left with.  In short, we got up early to go to Berkeley and have Thai brunch for our old co-worker’s birthday.  The whole team was there, and it was so wonderful to be with the work group.  That’s a truly special group of people, and I’m really hoping we can make good on the plan to do another Afghan food / Bollywood night with them while we’re on spring break.  We definitely need to spend more time with them.  Thai brunch was a little strange this morning, because it turns out it was the 100th day of mourning for the death of the founder of the temple, so they were having a big funeral next door to the brunch-having, and the place was crawling with monks (it’s a temple, so it should be, but these were out-of-town-type monks all congregating to show their regards) and the usual Berkeley crowd as well.  They weren’t charging for brunch today since it was sort of a special day, they were just asking for donations instead in remembrance of their departed abbot.  We paid what we would have normally, but it was still a nice gesture.

After a lovely brunch, we headed back up to Davis and squeezed in a little work (and made some chocolate chip cookies!) before going over to our friend Ben’s place for his birthday.  This was another really great crowd –  old school Davis folks of the Ben’s family and family friends varieties, as well as a few Ben-friends I’ve come to know and enjoy.  It’s funny, I think of Ben as one of the most social, connected people in town, and yet I’m at his birthday party and I know almost everyone there through one event or another by now… from other parties, from the brunch club, from cribbage nights, people who were at my wedding I didn’t even realize I knew… The longer I’m in Davis, and the longer Lewis and I are together, the more old-worn-shoe all these parties get.  It’s a really gratifying feeling.  I’ve done so much moving around in my life, lived in so many houses and places and cities, and had so many different groups of friends… so on nights like tonight, it starts to feel like maybe I’m settled, and maybe there’s joy and comfort to be had in maintaining a loose network like this for decades.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve been at a Davis house party, dreading that I don’t know anyone but Lewis well enough to feel like I could chat them up, feeling like the out-of-town novelty with no intrinsic value.  This doesn’t happen so much any more.  There are no new “scary” people left to meet!  Just lots of nice people doing interesting things with their lives that I’m happy to talk with.

So we’ll call this a rousing success of a day, in a time when both Lewis and I should probably have been home working.  But I think we’re both better off for having had a chance, even in the busiest of times, to connect with our roots and get our heads out of our books.   Yay!

March 8th, 2009 | Tags: birthdays, brunch, davis, family, friends, happy | Category: life | Comments Off