The Laursonian Institute

Mondays are a good days.  Had our reading group meeting at the center which was a nice relaxing time since I wasn’t presenting.  It feels like things at the lab are getting a little more friendly, probably just because I’ve been spending more time there.  For whatever reason, it’s nice to feel slightly more welcome.  Class this morning was also excellent – a lecture on working memory that seemed to touch on some of my work, so I had lots of questions for the presenter.  Interesting stuff.

Also, I got copies of my brain images!  Exciting stuff.  The data includes the skull and skin on the skull in addition to the actual brain junk, so you can actually 3D render my whole head without my hair and see what I look like bald!  Very odd!  So I spent a while playing with my brain slices, which is much fun.  I’ll post some up later.  Turns out I’m going to get scanned again in a few weeks, and Lewis too, because the scanner messed up my data.   It was interesting, so I’m really not bothered.  My lab mate is even going to let me run the scanner while we’re scanning Lewis, so I’m looking forward to it!

Got my work done early, and I’ve been doing a good job of not working harder than I need to, so I spent the evening working on some audio files we’d recorded from our vinyl.  I didn’t even go to yoga tonight, though I would have liked to.  I did something funky to my arm yesterday at the gym, and today it really hurts to straighten it all the way so I figured it was best to rest and let it recoup a bit.  What a lazy day!

I’m thinking about hitting up Vacaville tomorrow to get some more sewing goods and maybe spend a gift certificate I’ve got on some summery clothes.  Could be good!

May 4th, 2009 | Tags: fmri, reading group, shopping, sore, yoga | Category: life, school | Comments Off

I dremt this morning that I decided not to go to class, and then omnipotently realized that none of the other TAs came either, and felt bad about it.   Then I woke up and realized that I had actually turned my alarm off already, and thus was already a bit late.  Not much, but mussing up my pre-consciousness routine always messes with my day.  My optimal wake-up strategy is to wake up the first time my alarm goes off, calculate how many minutes until I actually get out of bed (usually the exact same time, give or take about four minutes) and then sleep in three to five minute chunks until I arrive at the sweet spot (total = about 18 minutes).  If I have to haul myself out of bed the first time I see the clock I stay muddled all morning, if not all day.

So my day was sort of a drag.  I got my handout made for the presentation I’m giving tomorrow, and I got all my papers graded and put in the grade book.  I also went to yoga, and had a particularly rough class today.  Somehow it seemed to take me three times longer to do anything than it should.  And I was mid-level grumpy all day, which is stupidly so hard to shake, and compounds on itself.  Meh.  Anyway, I’ll be glad to have tomorrow out of the way, and this week over with.  We’re having a cute game & snacks night with a bunch of us linguistics kids, which should be a lot of fun.  So I just have to get through a section, my office hours (which are sometimes quite a trial..) and this presentation, and then I’m home free.  Phew.  Four weeks of nothing, and then one last class presentation, and we’ll be on summer vacation before I know it!

April 30th, 2009 | Tags: grading, grump, presentation, routine, sleep, yoga | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Mondays are one of my favorite days, because I’ve got my 7:30 yoga class.  Yoga at the end of the day is the best!  I come home all relaxed and feeling well and ready for bed.  Today’s class had a bit of an odd twist to it, though I’m trying to not make anything of it.  While we were doing our little cool-down meditation (where you just lie on your back and breathe) the instructor came and gave me a mini-massage – feet, knees, chest and head! – and didn’t seem to do this to anyone else.  It was a little awkward!  On the other hand, it was also very relaxing and felt nice.  I’m going to assume she was just being nice and maybe I looked like I needed some extra relaxation.  Otherwise, I’m not sure what to think!

The rest of my day was also excellent, and thankfully not also awkward!  Class this morning (cogneuro) just about killed me.  A big uppy-up was guest teaching, which actually isn’t unusual, since we usually have guest lecturers present the work their labs are doing once a week.  This one was strange because this guy already gave his lecture, but presumably our teacher was just out of town or something today, so he sat in for a second day to oversee the student presentations that we do the other half of our time.  Sadly, a kid was presenting work this guy had published, so it took him a whole hour to get through his 20-minute powerpoint since the uppy-up had a bunch of stuff to add after every point.  Pooh.  We only had two presenters today, so we were going to get out an hour early – but we almost got out late instead!  Not to worry though, because our Wednesday class was cancelled.  Yay!

I got lunch with Lewis at a great cafe just a few blocks from the Center, so that was a wonderful find.  Gourmet sandwiches for 6 bucks!  I’m always on the lookout for good places that aren’t crowded, expensive, or crappy.  This place is friendly, delicious, convenient, and relatively crowd-free!  Yay!  After lunch I was supposed to hang out in the lab until it was time for our inaugural Journal Club meeting, which my advisor-to-be had asked me to run today.  Presented two articles there, both of which had fruitful discussions, and I think I did very well.  Or at least as well as one could expect to do in a we’re-all-friends no-consequences sort of meeting.  I’m happy with the result, at any rate, and off the hook for journal club for probably the rest of the quarter.  Whoo!  Also got myself signed up for some more fMRI stuff this weekend — one session worth of scanning shadow (hopefully we’ll be less rushed and I’ll get more info) and once to be scanned myself!  I’m hoping to come out of this with a nice high-res picture of my very own brain.  And hopefully I don’t panic in the magnet.

Only other triumph worth mentioning today is that I finished sewing Lewis’ PJ shirt!  It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself, though I know I messed a number of things up.  There are just a handful of things that show (like the pocket which is kind of crooked), but I learned a hell of a lot, and there isn’t anything I think I didn’t learn from.  The next shirt will be mucho mas smoother.  I’m really excited to get moving on the pants so the whole outfit will be done, but I lost patience with it today after wrestling with the button holes for a whole hour and a half.

All things considered, it’s been a most triumphant day!

April 27th, 2009 | Tags: cogneuro, fmri, presentations, reading group, sewing, triumph, weird, yoga | Category: home, life, school | Comments Off

I had one of those days where I felt like I never really rose out of the bog and instead flailed around covered in swamp gunk all day.  Actually I take that back – this evening has been very nice.  I went to yoga (new instructor – decent!), came home, riled Lewis up for a walk to our local Sushi place, took another leisurely walk home, and then read an article I need to present to my lab’s reading group next week.  I think I’ll go to bed soon, though it’s not quite even 10 yet, because I’m feeling quite finished.

Rest of my day was decent enough, besides feeling generally incompetant.  I only have Lin 1 on Thursdays, which is both nice and somewhat aggrivating since I’ve got no other reason to be on campus, let alone awake so early.  I came home from that and got all the rest of my grading done, which I probably spent longer on than I needed to.  It’s amazing how well the kids are doing on the homeworks this week, since this is a part of the class kids usually don’t get very well.  Something must be working!

Though I might fall asleep on the couch so instead I did a little more work on Lewis’ PJs.  They’re coming together really surprisingly nicely, though every little thing is screwed up in one manner or another.  It’s all a big learning process, so I’m not too concerned with these… I haven’t thought through constructing a shirt before, and I know lots of things I’ll do differently next time.  However, I think the end result will be wearable (or at least I hope!) and if it keeps going like it has been so far, it will even be something to be proud of!  Today I sewed the front panels to the back piece, and got the whole collar made (including fancy-pants piping!).  Haven’t attached it yet, but I guess that’s off a few steps further.  I’m getting a little nervous as we get closer to the sleeve parts, but I don’t know if in reality those are going to be any worse than anything else.  But… circular!   Does seem daunting.

April 23rd, 2009 | Tags: ennui, paper, presentation, reading group, sewing, sushi, taing, yoga | Category: home, school | Comments Off

It’s been a pretty fantastic minimal-work type of day.  In short:

• went to lin 1 this morning, did very little, but had a nice chat with my co-TAs after class.
• came home, had a really good salad for lunch (blood oranges, pecans and goat cheese!)
• read outside in the hothot sun for a while
• played two games of croquette with Lewis!
• hit up yoga, felt relaxed and well stretched
• Lewis made me the tastiest dinner wrap evar
• came home and attempted to begin sewing Lewis’ PJs… marginal success, but I’m feeling stoked!

Section tomorrow AM, so I should probably take myself off to bed.  I do wish this yoga class were a little later in the day because I have plenty of time after class to get myself all worked up again.  Lame!

April 16th, 2009 | Tags: croquette, sewing, sunshine, yoga | Category: home, life | Comments Off

Ah, Monday nights.  Monday nights are my slow n’ easy yoga nights.  So round about now, I’m feeling all relaxed and ready to crawl into bed for a restful sleep.  It’s always somewhat difficult coming home and trying to decide what to do with myself in these last few hours, but tonight I think bed might win out.  Bed and some enjoyable (though still school) reading.  It’s the first time I’ve really read science papers outside my discipline, and it’s funny now how relaxing the old structural linguistics books are.  These cognitive neuroimaging papers are going to be the death of me!

Today was a nice and abbreviated day.  The reading group I thought we had finished setting up apparently didn’t fit enough schedules to go through with, so it’s sort of indefinitely on hold.  That’s just fine with me, the short day was nice.  CogNeuro was a little troublesome this morning because I hadn’t realized we were supposed to read the papers other people were presenting on in advance and come prepared with questions and all that.  So I don’t think I got any participation points, and it bothers me somewhat that it appears my professor writes down the name of everyone who talks in class thus somewhat obliging everyone to have something to say all the time.  I understand it’s supposed to make us critical thinkers, but I feel so far out of my domain on these cognitive neuroscience topics, especially the vision research we’re talking about right now, that I seem to either have no questions at all, or they sound dumb to me.  Oh well.  I’m running through my “options” mantra and reminding myself that ones days worth of performance is nothing that needs to reflect on me generally, and I’ve got all quarter to get myself going on this.  Not to mention, I’m feeling a bit pleased with myself for understanding any of what’s going on, and if my deficit reflects itself in an absence of participation… that’s fine.

So I spent the whole rest of my day reading cogneuro papers, and preparing myself for reading more neuroling papers soon.  I got that all squared away pretty early, so I still had time to pin and cut Lewis’ jammies!  It’ll all be coming together before I know it.  I just hope they fit.  The material is really comfortable, so I’m not too worried about them being cozy, but it would be nice if they fit in some rational way.  Then I took myself off to yoga, and sort of failed to get in “the zone” cause the room was rather crowded and the lady next to me was quite distracting. At the end, though perhaps not feeling all centered, I am at least feeling all stretched.  I’d go so far as to even call myself relaxed!  And as I said before, that’s my only gym goal.  So hurrah, another success.

Now I think Roman Jakobson and I have a study date!

April 13th, 2009 | Tags: cogneuro, papers, reading group, relaxed, sewing, yoga | Category: Uncategorized | Comments Off

Yoga. So tired. Sadly more grumpy than relaxed. Going to bed now. Section tomorrow at 9. Then a long, but hopefully relaxing day?

April 9th, 2009 | Tags: grumpy, tired, yoga | Category: Uncategorized | 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