The Laursonian Institute

I’m feeling so accomplished today!   Lewis and I finished the sprinkler project (except to fill the trenches back in), and I finished sewing my robe (which I’m wearing right now)!  In addition to that, we got a whole bunch of supplies at Ace, and I did a little patch work on our bed to make it less creaky.  Think we’re going to try and get a little donation fund going for Christmas this year to see if maybe we can’t collect enough money to help us buy a new mattress / box spring.   But for now, at least I’ve gotten the bed less rickety.  Also managed to make pizza for dinner (thanks to having frozen half a recipe’s worth of dough a while back).  And last but not least – Lewis and I sorta got a job today!  We stopped by campus to pick up Lewis’ TA paycheck, and ran in to Hawkins, who apparently had just been talking about us to the Dean and had us in mind for a project he wanted to get done.  Already some money from a “seed grant” he has secured, and all we need to do is figure out how to give his project some “web presence”.  In academic-talk, what that really means is setting up some portal page that at least had some text, some pictures, and a place to download relevant papers.  Shouldn’t be anything out of our league, and any money is welcome money!

August 5th, 2009 | Tags: crafts, garden, work | Category: home, life | Comments Off

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

I’m wrestling with my day.  Also, I think I’m winning.

Spent much of my morning and afternoon on campus, though I had intended to come home to go shopping.  Wanted to get the midterm finalizing and copying out of the way so I wouldn’t have to think about it any longer.  Stayed a bit after that to have lunch with Lewis, and then decided to work in my office instead of come home so I could actually get some stuff done.

Did manage to get my work mostly done, and go to the gym.  Worked off a fair amount of my grumpiness, and also managed to stretch out my arm a bit so it’s hurting a lot less than it was last night.  It was also Lewis’ mom’s birthday tonight, so we went out to dinner with her and her sister’s family, and then took her out for a cupcake on our way home.  It was a nice dinner, and a good time, and now I’m completely exhausted and ready for bed, even though I know I’ve got a bit more work to prepare for my section tomorrow.

Also:  arg, mother’s day is coming.  It’s in 5 days.  Better not screw this one up like the birthday.  Grad school seems to distroy anything that takes more than one day of preplanning.  I’d better get something together tomorrow and get it in the mail.  What a crap daughter I am!

May 5th, 2009 | Tags: birthday, family, gym, holiday, work | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Wednesdays are great days.  Though I had section this morning, and it was sort of just alright.  For some reason, that section is sort of… slackery.  They only sort of of half did their homeworks, half participated in class, and only one or two kids really seem to care at all.  A couple fell asleep, which is par for the course.  My Friday section just seems sharper and more with it.  But as I said, section was passable, and I got through it, and really 50 minutes a week is nothing I should be losing sleep about.  Though I did have a total anxiety dream this morning that everything I wrote on my board was jibberish and I mixed all my examples up and everyone snuck out of the room but a few kids at the end.  A complete mess!  Thankfully section was not nearly that bad!

After section I always feel really free, even though I’m already running late for cogneuro.  Class was great, we had a guest lecture from a professor who is also heading up the “ERP Bootcamp” Lewis and I are attending this summer.  His lecture was great, his research was interesting, and he was really open to questions.  It’s interesting to be taking this cogneuro class which is being treated essentially like a weekly rotating seminar.  I’m getting at least a taste of all the major labs at the Center, and who is doing research on what.  Very neat.  Also heard from my lab professor today, and I’m feeling well relaxed about our plans.  He’s been on vacation and I was worried I was being lazy, but it turns out he’s really busy, and I think working by myself for now is probably best for both of us.

The rest of my day was great – hit up the gym, had a really delicious salad for dinner, watched episode three of our Masterpiece Theater adventure, read two and a half papers, and graded my Friday section’s homework.  So good!  It’s been a good, relaxed, productive day.  Yep.  Oh!  I also forgot to blog about summer jobs – Lewis and I both got minimal employment with the department for part of summer, which when I put it that way, sounds lame.  But realistically, I hadn’t been holding out getting any work this summer, and a TAing gig for each of us is fantastic.  Minimal work, minimal pay, but a little bit of cash flow is just what I could have hoped for.  And it’s within the school at that!   All is well.

April 15th, 2009 | Tags: class, lazy, section, summer, taing, work | 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’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

Day got a bit better then I was expecting this morning.  It’s good to have your day surprise you.  I took the bus to school cause I was feeling really uninspired, so I ended up getting to class late.  I’m never late to class, but it turned out not to be much of a big deal since we were still in the midst of settling down when I got in.  Quechua went very well, though it was pretty chaotic.  I will be glad when that class is over, and I wish I weren’t.  It’s just not really my bag.

Anyway, I followed it up with a great meeting with the professor I TA for to prep for grading the midterm, and then another great meeting with my paper advisor.  He told me my work was really good, and he thought I was doing a very nice job, and all was not lost on my paper.  It was really relieving to hear he’s got high hopes for my paper still, cause I’ve been feeling very lost on it.   So good news there.

The only downside for my day was I finally sat down and put everything I needed to do in the next few weeks and the list is very much daunting.   But in a week… I’ll be past all the worst of what the semester has left, I think.  All my semantics homeworks will be in, my presentation over, and my last pre-final neuroscience quiz.  Phew.  Besides, I got everything done I needed to do today.  It’s just gonna be a long week!

February 18th, 2009 | Tags: list, paper, quechua, stressed, work | Category: school | Comments Off

Today was a day for doing what I ought, taking my self-prescribed medicine, and getting on with my life.  I’ve been living under this fog of being underworked and unfocused.  Like trying to start a car which is frosted over and too cold to turn over.  LA was just the little vacation I needed.  It came on the perfect weekend – I just got a whole bunch of stuff to do, but wasn’t behind on anything, and thus got to go play and get all my work done.  I got a cold my last day there, and skipped yesterday’s Quechua and today’s semantics classes, and now I’m feeling really rested, restored, and caught up.  I worked all day today.  One of those life-affirming, productive, well-paced work days.  I got started this morning when Lewis went off to class, and I worked all the way until he came home for dinner and I got a ton of stuff done.

(Now to deliniate my list in a self-fulfilling manner:) I cleaned my desk, caught up on neuroscience powerpoints, did some neuro-reading, did Quechua homework, pronounciation practice, and song practice, set up a meeting with my TAing professor for tomorrow, cleaned the living room, did some research and brain-dumping on my phoneme paper, read an article for that, prepared for my meeting with research professor tomorrow, went out to Chinese food with the Lawyers (+Emily & Andrew!), screwed around with my computer’s layout, and studied all my Quechua flash cards!

Now it’s almost 11, and I’m feeling so accomplished and vaguely prepared for tomorrow.  I can’t remember the last time I went to bed feeling prepared for my next day of classes because I’ve actually studied everything I intended.  It’s good to be TAing again (at least, having work to grade) and I’ve got midterms coming up!   Not to mention, researching for my QP always gets me all excited.  I imagine this is what archeologists get to spend their lives doing – unearthing artifacts and surprising relations between things.  It gets my brain working so quickly, it’s like all my synapses are firing at the same time.  It’s crazy, like no other feeling I know.  I think I’m built for critical analysis.  I keep discovering these quotes in papers that just make me jump out of my chair.  I want to run down the street announcing, “Hockett said it in 1942!  It’s right here!  I can’t believe it!!” and have everyone I meet be pleasantly surprised to see that a quote I’ve found proves a thing that we hadn’t thought was true.  That everything I need to know is right there, on paper, lost somewhere in the annals of history.  It’s like the Da Vinci Code, but with linguists arguing over the existance of theoretical units of sound.  That’s my new line for whenever anyone asks what I’m doing.  “It’s like the Da Vinci Code, but with linguists”.

And on top of it all, I’m feeling pretty much non-sick this evening!  Sore throat still, but all my sinus stuff seems gone.  Did I mention I’m listening to The Moody Blues?  I love The Moody Blues.  I’m a happy camper!

January 27th, 2009 | Tags: exhaultation, lauditory, lists, nerdery, phoneme, sick, vacation, work | Category: life, school | Comments Off

August 1st, 2008 | Tags: last day, work | Category: work | Comments Off