The Laursonian Institute

Like I told Lewis earlier… today is one of those days that will probably never happen again.  Today is the day I both got a scholarship, and a brain scan!   What are the chances?   I’m pretty excited about this scholarship.  The money will be nice, though it’s not a great amount, but I feel like more importantly the outword show of faith from the department and nice CV boost are priceless.  I had been worried when I first got in to Davis with Lewis that I was perhaps an accessory to his more glorious career, but since actually getting here and starting classes I’ve felt like my work speaks for itself, and I’m showing myself to be a worthwhile asset.  This just sort of proves it, in a fancy sort of public way!  I’ve never gotten any sort of meritorious scholarship before, and it means a lot to me that this isn’t just part of some big pool of money that I got a piece of for being a decent student.  I got our department’s only scholarship – a nod from other linguists that I’m a promising student!  Yay!

So, yeah.  It was a wildly successful day, even though it got off to a rocky start.  I slept really poorly last night, and woke up pretty grumpy.  We had a great night last night, playing Apples to Apples and Zombie Fluxx with a bunch of Linguists and their significant others.  I made a chex mix-like party mix (which was really good) and a strawberry rhubarb crisp (which was tasty but amorphous) and others brough various goods.  It was originally going to be at someone elses’ house, but she got sick, so we emergency hosted, and it was a good excuse to finally clean at least the common areas in our house.  Anyway, after all that adventure last night, I just couldn’t sleep – heart palpitations and the like.

So I made muffins this morning – apple cranberry ones, whole wheat with orange zest and walnuts – and they turned out really well.  Muy sabroso.  Went to the gym after that and worked out pretty hard.  Weekends are a great time to hit up the gym since no one is there, and I had the women’s room to myself.   Worked out for longer than usual, and then I got to try all the weight machines I’ve been curious about, since no one was there to see me make a fool of myself.  Was pretty beat when I got home, but I took a real nice long shower and had some lunch and got back in the swing of things.

Ran off to Sacramento after that to visit the UC Davis Imaging Research Center, where my lab does its fMRI scanning.   I was volunteering to be a subject in the control group of  a sign language study my advisor is working on, mostly to get the chance to do an fMRI study.  Being in the scanner is hard to describe – on one hand more difficult than I would have thought, but on the other hand, also less clausterphobic and nerve-wracking than anticipated.  The tasks were amusing, and being in the magnet doesn’t really feel like anything more than being anywhere else tiny but safe while your head is strapped to a plank.  I suppose what I mean to say is the magnetization isn’t really discernable.  I was glad I had taken that fMRI class already though, because I could identify what the noises were probably being caused by, and I knew enough to know what the magnet would and would not do, and thus it was more interesting than scary.  I can see being pretty wigged out by all that stuff if you were a kid or someone without the background on RF coils and all that.  Anyway, I would certainly do it again, I thought it was rather fun.  I’m sure I’ll post a picture of my brain when the person running the study emails me a copy of some of my high-res anatomical scan data.  I’m looking forward to it!

Post-scan I was hungry and eye-strained, but happy that Lewis had come with me, and we were going out to dinner!  Hit up the Tower Cafe, where our friend Maya works, and had the most delicious dinner and wine and desserts.  Maya was even working, so we got to chat her up a bit.  It was nice, since we haven’t had a chance to catch up with her in a while.  I do hope we can do something soon, I really enjoy her company.   Anyway, came home and Lewis gave me a really nice neck rub (which I needed after that hour and a half of forced immobilzation in the scanner)  and we listed to some good jazz records.  And I got a barrage of congratulatory facebook messages in my email.  Nice way to cap off a nice day!

May 2nd, 2009 | Tags: cooking, excited, fmri, friends, game night, party, restaurant, scholarship | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Pretty good day today, but mighty long.   Had a lovely surprise evening with our friends Heather and Kevin who kept me company (and took me to Sudwerk!) while Lewis was out with his padre tasting some tasty cheese and beers in SF.

Section this morning was great!  I skipped the stuff that I thought was crappy from the earlier section, and went straight to the exercises and group work.  I think it went really well, and there was a great vibe with the students.  I’m feeling quite good about both sections this quarter, and I hope I can keep that feeling rolling for a while.  Had office hours after that, which was kind of a disaster.  I only had one kid come in, sort of at the end of my time, and I spent a full 90 minutes with him.  Arg.  I don’t know quite what to do with this kid, but I’ve never seen anyone completely lacking in any kind of linguistic intuition before.  I never even got to the point where he could tell a consonant from a vowel.

I feel bad, cause I know he’s really struggling with his phonetics homework, but I just don’t know what to do to teach him this stuff that should theoretically be intuitive.  He keeps blaming it on being a second language learner, but I’ve had tons of esl kids before, and that’s really not a valid excuse.  As a linguist, I think I’m more atuned to the difficulties language learners face since we spend so much time talking about SLA and bilingualism.  This really turns me around in application though – it’s impossible to know when you’re being too hard and when you’re not being sympathetic enough.  I don’t think asking people to memorize the IPA and the position of your articulators.  I think there’s a leap of faith you need to take as an ESL student that what we’re saying isn’t some kind of crazy conception of how the English language should be done.  [t] is the most common sound cross-linguistically, the least marked if nothing else, so asking an ESL student to decompose a [t] into it’s phonetic parts isn’t ridiculous – they should be the same parameters in their native language as they are in English, more or less.  I have a lot more sympathy for the vowels, because I know English has a middling-to-terrible vowel system.   Urgh.  I’m doing my best, but by the time I explained what the questions on his homework were supposed to be asking (and spending 90 minutes doing that…) I was just so totally drained.  I want to help him, but I really can’t keep this level up all quarter.

Thankfully, my afternoon class was great.  Lots of interesting discussion on typology, and I got my assignment for the presentation I’m giving for that class.  Got the paper (book?) I wanted, and I’m looking forward to getting my one presentation out of the way early (I’m going the first day) since I’ve got my cogneuro presentation on the last day of class.  It’s probably time to start thinking about paper topics, I suppose.  The quarter system is rough that way – it’s just the end of the second week, and it’s already time to start hammering out final papers.  It’s at least good to get your topic started so you don’t get blindsided later when you’re completely lacking in time to do research.  My topics for both classes are completely open, so it’s almost more difficult to start thinking about whether I can work these papers into the thesis-y master plan.  Or something like that.

April 10th, 2009 | Tags: class, friends, papers, section, taing | Category: school | Comments Off

My day can be summed up in one word: Bollywood! Another wonderful trip to see the Askers in Fremont, Afghan food and Bollywood as always. So good!

March 27th, 2009 | Tags: bollywood, fremont, friends | Category: Uncategorized | Comments Off

It’s another feeling-late night (though I know it’s only 11) and that means list time:

• saw a lovely phlebotomist, got labs done
• headed out to 3 Palms to check out plants
• hit up ace, picked up sharpened knives!
• planted procured flora
• almost planted dwarf lime tree…
• hung out with heather and kevin!  symposium, davis creamery, “the meaning of life”

Tomorrow… I’m going to mostly chill the heck out.  And go to a Bollywood movie with the KEs!

March 26th, 2009 | Tags: doctor, friends, gardening, list, movie, plants | Category: life | Comments Off

Too tired… can only list:

• drove to Oakland
• hung out in favorite local bookstore (FOPL!)
• had lunch at Rattos with favorite local work friends!
• had second lunch with Armand in Berkl!
• nerded around model train store
• read books and birdwatched on campus
• visited favorite Berkl coffee shop / classical music shop and adjacent bookstore
• drove back to Davis
• had chinese takeout with the Lawyers + Schmidts
• tried enquicken Lawyer computer (failed)

Tomorrows gonna be a big day.  I think it might be join-the-gym day.  And early morning blood sample day.  But it’s also hang out with Heather and Kevin day, and the big trip to the nursury to get our fruit trees and front yard goodies!  Yay!

March 25th, 2009 | Tags: berkeley, books, bookstores, friends, list, oakland, rattos, spring break | Category: life | 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

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

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

Well, I’ve been in the Bay Area the last few days, putting in my part of the grunt work at the LSA annual conference.  Not feeling like the conference was much of consequence, so suffice it to say that I didn’t see much in terms of content.  I was scheduled to work during most the things I would have wanted to see, and managed to miss (through my own poor planning) the only talk I had intended on catching, by an old advisor of mine.  Oh well.  The real plus of the whole thing was getting to meet some new friends from other schools, hang out with the Davis crew, and see lots of folks I haven’t seen in ages!  I feel well socialized.  I even had one of the professors from Davis bring a famous linguist-guy over to to introduce me and told him about what a great project (my Russian variation paper) I did and how promising I was.  I’m rather flattered, though that’s not my field or direction.

What was of great note from the last two days are two different things.  First of all, Lewis and I were staying with Nina and Jimmy, and it was really awesome to see them and get to hang out.  It’s always so nice to get to stay with friends!  Especially ones you don’t get to see as often as you’d like.  But even better, Nina had an appointment to try on some wedding dresses this morning, and asked me to come with her!  It was great to get to help out with some of the wedding stuff, since I’m not positive we’re going to make it to New York later this year (though we’ll try out best!) and it’s always nice to be able to offer a sturdy shoulder and meagre advice.   I was so happy to oblige!

My other weirder and less-cool news of the weekend is that I had an occular migraine (without accompanying headache) in the middle of one of the few talks I was able to attend.  It was supremely weird, since I’ve never had one before.  Started as a little smudge in one part of my vision, something like having stared at something really bright for too long, but more smooshy than bright.  Anyway, it expanded to a sort of semi-circle before too long and at times completely obscured my peripherial vision on one side.  It was in both eyes, so it wasn’t an eye thing… anyway, I paniced and bailed out of the talk as soon as it was acceptable to do so.  Ran up to where Lewis was on duty, and he thought it sounded like an ocular migraine, which his mom used to get.  A phone call to the UCD advice nurse on duty assured me I wasn’t in dire trouble (though she said they “didn’t do eyes” so she couldn’t tell me much else).  I talked to Francie for a while and she really calmed me down and made me feel pretty sure that’s what had happened, though I’m gonna hit up an eye doctor in short order to rule out everything else.  Poking around on the internet this evening seems to pretty much confirm it.  I even found little diagrams that look almost exactly like what I saw, so it’s pretty suggestive.  Anyway.. I’m slightly unnearved, but thankful it seems to be nothing more serious than perhaps too much stress, too little sleep, and a little bad luck.  And no head ache, thank goodness.

All in all, a pretty successful couple of days!  January marches on.  I have a big week ahead of me, and then my sister will be here!  Yay!

January 10th, 2009 | Tags: conference, friends, linguists, LSA, migraine, weddings | Category: life, work | Comments Off