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Posts tagged relaxation

Ye Olde Laure

Odd day today, but much productive.

Got up really early.  Woke up at my usual weekday wakeup time, 6:30, though it was in fact Sunday and I had every intention of sleeping in.  Eventually got up at 7, and spent a nice leisurely time working on fixing some pyjamas I had made with my sister that were too big.  So I ripped stiches and listed to NPR until Lewis got up and was ready for breakfast.  Got a lot of reading done after breakfast (I love it when papers go faster than you anticipate!) and then spent an hour at the gym.

Got home and had lunch, and just in time for me to start working again… sadly I got another optical migraine.  I had been hoping all this focus on de-stressing and the exercise I’ve been getting to do so was going to prevent these… and it’s been a few months since I’ve had one.  But it’s the midway point in the quarter, and I had a relatively stressful week.   Looking on the bright side, even with the migraine, I’m feeling much less stressed out than I was last quarter, and I at least seem to be staving off a majority of the panic attack-y heart palpitations.  And the migraine was smaller and less disruptive than it has been.  I took a rest with Lewis (who was napping anyway!) while it played out, and even managed to eventually get rid of that post-occular muddle-headed feeling.   So… oh well.  I’ve got more relaxation work to do before I’m out of the stressed-out woods, I suppose.

So I had a lazy evening, since I got so much work done this morning, and spent all night watching PBS (Nature + Masterpiece Theatre!) and working on these pyjama bottoms.  They turned out really great, actually!  I fixed all the things that went wrong the first time.  I put elastic and a tie in the waste, took something like four inches off the whole piece (as in overall width) and put the cuffs on.  All this was nicely easier than the Lewis PJs, partially because I’m doing it for the second time, I’m sure, but also the fabric is less stretchy and picky, and I didn’t bother with any piping or fancy stuff.  So the end result – revamped them entirely in just one day, and now they fit, and look nice, and are very comfortable!  I’m proud of how they turned out since I freehanded the repairs.  Soon I’ll put up pictures of both the Lewis and the Laurie PJs so I can properly crow about my work.  Yay!

May 3rd, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Category: home, life | Comments Off

Yay, yay, for Chester A!

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: , , , , , | Category: home, school | Comments Off