The Laursonian Institute

Yep, I said it.  We’re building a fence!  Or rather, a gate in an already extant fence.  By which I really mean that Lewis’ dad designed, framed, and hung said gate, and now all we’ve got left to do is put the facing back on it.  But it still feels very accomplished!  We only got half done this morning before Lewis had to go do TA stuff, but I think we’ll get it polished off tomorrow.  I’ll put some pictures up (though I know it’s only a silly gate)!   It’s going to be amazing to be able to walk through the fence on that side… we’ve only had one tiny gate that goes between the front and back yard, so you sorta had to walk through the garage or through the bedroom or living room until now!  So good.

I actually managed to get a little work done this afternoon too – read through a paper in preparation for thinking about a QP.  I don’t know why I’ve been dreading reading my own work lately, but I managed a few pages at least.  Got my gears moving, a little.  It would be nice to get past this mental block before I use up my whole summer… but if I don’t, it’s not a total disaster.  I’d rather I start Fall quarter refreshed, but better still refreshed and accomplished.   Anyway, some progress is better than no progress, and I got some progress made today.

Got lots of other bits and pieces done today.  I set up our finances for next year so I’ve got a fancy spreadsheet where I can keep track of things, which I’m excited to break in soon.   Oh, and I got a haircut scheduled for next week!  Yay!   I also hit up the Co-op, but I wasn’t really feeling that into cooking or planning this week, so it was a little meagre.  But I’ve got food plans for the next few days at least, and I at least got us filled back up on the essentials.  It would be good to get into the once-a-week swing of things again so we don’t have to buy so much at once.

Well, there’s my day in brief.   And on that note, I’m ready for a good night’s sleep!  I never sleep well when it stays hot all night (which it sure does on these 105+ days), but it finally stayed below 100 today, and there’s a nice breeze… it’s lovely!  I can already feel the impending comfortable snoozes! :)

June 29th, 2009 | Tags: chores, fence, shopping, work | Category: home, life | Comments Off

For a Monday, it was a pretty domestic day.  My reading group was cancelled, so I only had my cognitive neuroscience class this morning – yay!  I’d been hoping for a day off, of sort.  Not feeling much like updating though, so I think I’ll list up:

• went out to lunch!  Mm, Dos.
• got all the dishes done!
• made potato salad, and chocolate syrup
• started laundry
• got almost all my rough drafts graded
• read the penultimate paper for my cogneuro essay

Oh yeah, one other good thing today – I got another fellowship thing!  These funding guys are always really mysterious, so I’m not quite sure where it all comes from.  At any rate, I got a nice email telling me I’d been awarded some kind of research grant, and that they’re giving me 1500 bucks to spend on things “vital to the research” I’m doing, and I have to report back about what I’ve been doing to the powers that be next spring.  I’m not quite sure what my research is, yet, or what I’ll need 1500 bucks for, but it’s pretty neat to know I have a personal little expense account at the department next year.   I’m +2 for next year!

May 18th, 2009 | Tags: chores, cleaning, cooking, fellowship, reading | Category: home, life, school | Comments Off

I don’t like how much I’m relying on lists these days.  But I’m just so busy, and so tired by the time I get to my poor blog!  With resignation, I give you today’s list:

• Ling 1 this morning was very amusing!
• Did some laundry in prep for the upcoming San Diego trip
• Decided at the last moment to hit up the corpus linguistics group meeting
• Ran out at the end to hit the gym – good yoga today, but fast and intense.  Chatted the teacher up after class and she was very nice.  Nicer than anticipated given her class demeanor!
• Made it home just in time to meet Heather and Kevin for a dinner out to celebrate good news for them!
• Got an email from research professor setting up my first fMRI shadowing adventure for next Tues.  I’m really excited!

I’m looking forward to my last day of classes here… but dang, it’s been a long week.  And it’s going to be a pretty crazy weekend.  Phew.

April 2nd, 2009 | Tags: chores, classes, fmri, gym, meeting, yoga | Category: school | Comments Off

I’m full of toasty chai, and very sleepy.  It’s been a long day.  A long, choreful day.

I got up early and made Lewis some apple cinnamon muffins and got rolling on the laundry.   Spent all morning alternating laundry and homework, which is a sure way to wear oneself out by lunch.  But I did manage to finish all my work today, and all the laundry, as well as cleaning both bathrooms and finishing up the dishes.  Ooh, and we took a walk and got some ice cream from the Davis Creamery!  Phew.

I guess that makes me prepared for a day of playing tomorrow – we’ve got two birthday parties to attend, one in Berkeley, and one in Davis.  Wouldn’t have said yes to both, but they’re for two of our favorite people, and I can’t imagine not going to either.   Should be rousing fun, even if it’s an early morning (after daylight savings at that!) on a day Lewis and I both have an awful lot of work to do.  Some days you just have to choose frolic and folly and know you’ll make it all up somewhere else.

March 7th, 2009 | Tags: chores, ice cream, muffins, work | Category: home | Comments Off

Another up-down-up-down kind of day.  I guess I’m feeling up.  I’m listening to Kinski.  And I’m done with all my work.

Quechua went alright this morning, though I did discover when I got to campus that I had entirely forgotten my bike lock and thus had to run my bike to my office and the hoof it over to class pretty quickly.  Boo.  Luckily Lewis was coming to campus later and was able to drop my lock off with me before my neuroimaging class later.   Said class was great as always.  I’m always left feeling really inspired after that class, full of ideas I don’t know how to put into fruition.   Sadly that didn’t transfer to the rest of my day, as I got home and became totally stuck in trying to get tiny things done and feeling like I was going nowhere.  But to-do-list was cleared, I made dinner with actual vegetable matter in it, and really… what more can I ask for?

Nada!

February 2nd, 2009 | Tags: bike lock, boring, chores, inspiration | Category: life | Comments Off

It’s 10:30.  It’s Friday night.  I’m exhausted.

I had a really chill day, compared to what I was worried about.  Doctor’s office cancelled my appointment at 7:30 this morning, so I didn’t have anything to do but my neuroimaging class.  Class went pretty well; it’s a good class, and it’s nice to be done by 11 on Fridays.  We have a three day weekend coming up, so that’s pretty bueno.

Did some work this afternoon when I got home, and got the house all cleaned up and ready for my sister.  Well, at least most the house.  Thankfully our house is always really easy to clean up.   I’m really looking forward to this weekend.  I should have tried to get all my work done today, but I burned out pretty early.  There’s something about the end of a Friday that really makes work difficult to do.   So instead, Lewis and I went and got frozen yogurt downtown and did some windowshopping at Ace, made a nice dinner, and watched a movie!

And now, all I really want to do is go curl up in bed and read my book.  Which is what I shall do!

January 16th, 2009 | Tags: chores, lazy, movie, yogurt | Category: home, life | Comments Off

Massively productive day.  Now I’m massively tired.  Better opt for list:

• got 2/3 of fellowship application done
• finished semantics reading for the week
• made eye doctor appt
• did quechua homework
• got class schedule straightened out
• assembled new desk chair!
• yummy chinese food with lewis
• went to jazz show @ the mondavi

And now, honk shoe.  Three more days this week?  Everything’s looking pretty easy except Friday, where I”ve got some stuff piling up.  But then my sister will be here!  And Monday is a holiday!  Is it bad when I’m looking forward to Monday on… Tuesday?

January 13th, 2009 | Tags: busy, chores, concert, list | Category: life, school | Comments Off

I just got back from a trip to the Sacramento Rail Museum, and my house smells like stew.  Technically it’s vegetarian (squash) chili, but nevermind that.  It smells like stew.

I’ve been getting really worried about starting this new quarter, in a latent way.  I know there’s nothing beyond my capacities coming up, and that all I have is another three months of hard work before the next rest.  I think I put perhaps too much hope into how much I was going to get done in this break, and how settled and relaxed I was going to feel by the time it was over.  It’s less than a week before I head back, and I feel like I’m just now able to relax and take stock of what’s going on in my life.  There’s so much I want to do, and so little time left, and that alone is enough to stress me out and make it so I don’t get anything done.

I keep having these visions of the one tiny adjustment I need to make before my house will be perfect and settled.  Of course that means that there are a million tiny adjustments to be done, and that my house will never feel really “done”, but my mind seems to fixate on a few really silly things.  I was vacuuming today and thinking that maybe what the house was missing is something that smells nice to put in the bathroom.  Like a scented candle.  Yesterday I thought maybe it was (also nice smelling) pine or lavender satchets to go in the linen drawers.   The idea of simple pleasures derived from small, decadent items seems to be the theme.  I think I want to be able to focus all my restless energy on a totem of some kind that I feel like I can channel into and tell myself that everything is calm and settled because my house smells nice.  The mind works in mysterious ways.

There are two self-pampering things I wanted to do before the break was over, and I’m not sure I’ll get around to either.  First, I really need a haircut.  My hair as it is needed to be trimmed months ago.  It’s manageable, but it does make me wonder if I’ll ever get it together.  I wanted to go to see Melody (who is so awesome) in Berkeley, but she never got back to my email and I’ve been completely lax in following up, and incapable of finding a Davis alternative.  It’s almost like finding a new doctor – you don’t want to end up having something ridiculous happen by going to someone surly or sub-par.  And Berkeley isn’t a place that’s so hard to get to I couldn’t manage it once a quarter.  But as it is, I’m at a complete impass.   The other thing I had thought of doing was getting a massage.  My neck and back muscles have been as tights as ropes since about half way through last quarter, and I had sort of assumed they would loosen themselves when I wasn’t at the computer all day and studying so much, but that’s not at all what has happened.  A massage is probably fairly good for you, physiologically speaking, and I’m trying to focus a little this quarter on taking better care of myself.

This is one of those loops I’ve been on seemingly forever.  It’s nearly impossible to rise above the status quo and do all the things you know you ought or intend to do.  Last quarter I even went so far as to block out a few hours a few days a week to go to the gym on campus, and haven’t even been once.  I don’t even really know where the building is.  But here I am, a few days before the next quarter, having the same conversation with myself about going to the gym a few days a week just because it’s good for you.  I don’t have any plan or goal in mind, just the simple wanting to spend a few hours of my day doing something, other than reading, that will be good for me.  I don’t know if the problem is lack of specificity of goals, or that I don’t really want to do these things I tell myself I do, or nervousness about trying something new, but whatever it is, I’m really easily defeated in this category despite the best of intentions.

Oddly, I feel exactly the same way about the gym as I do about getting chores done and cooking up the vegetables in my fridge.  We get vegetables delivered biweekly from Farm Fresh to You and they’ve been piling up in the fridge since finals week.  Normally I feel like I have a pretty good grip on seeing what we have and knowing what to do with it, but the last month or so has been completely uninspired.  Part of it really has to do with going out too often – we went out more than usual while finals were happening, and we’ve been treating ourselves lavishly (well, for grad students anyway) over the break, and even eating at parties and the Lawyers’ and such, so not so much cooking has been going on around here.  Instead of rectifying the problem my brain just spins on how I don’t have any great ideas though, and that really gets me nowhere but closer to our next vegetable delivery.

Perhaps what this whole thing amounts to is this:  school is almost starting, and I need my routine back.  Rising above the status quo is something that only sounds good when you’re disatisfied with what’s going on, and I never have enough time to be bothered when I’m in the middle of studying.  Whether having failed to do most of what I intended over break is a real failure to improve my quality of life, or is just a symptom of having a more relaxing and not hyper-productive break, I don’t know.  Makes me wonder what setting up all these plans was really about in the first place.

December 30th, 2008 | Tags: break, chores, cooking, musing, time | Category: life | Comments Off

Nada mucho to report today.  I slept really late — till almost 11! — and then I did housework all day.  It’s nice to feel like we’re not neglecting this place of ours.  I did all the dishes, the laundry, and the ironing, and maybe after some vacuuming tomorrow, we’ll be in good shape.  Boy, I can’t believe we only have a week left!

December 28th, 2008 | Tags: chores, short | Category: home | Comments Off