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
