The Laursonian Institute

Eyeballs feel like they’re going to fall out of my head.  Mlugh.  Maybe because I didn’t have tea this morning?  Maybe because I’ve been doing eyeball-intensive junk all day?  My day has been a big stressy blur.  Not because anything has really been going on, but more because I’ve been stressing out about nothing and I can’t remember what seemed so important earlier.

Section this morning was fairly crappy, though that’s sort of to be expected with midterm reviews.  Everyone is so tired of hearing about these topics by this point that it’s hard to keep anyone interested in what’s going on.  Went to CogNeuro after that, which was fine.  I’m going to be glad to be done with classes soon, for sure.  Went downtown and had lunch with my Lewis (Steve’s!) and hit up some stores for Mother’s Day stuff.  Ended up not finding anything that really sent off my mom sensors, so I came home and whipped up a batch of my rosemary cashews, and then I also worked up a batch of something new – honey roasted sesame cashews.  Both turned out well!  I do hope she likes them.  Lewis took them to the pochta while I hit up the gym.

I’ve been pretty spent every since I got home.  Just feeling tired from my day, and worried about giving this exam tomorrow.  Things seem to be all in hand, though, and I’m really ready to go to bed.

May 6th, 2009 | Tags: cooking, mothers day, presents, stress | Category: life, school | 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

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

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: early, gym, migraine, npr, pbs, reading, relaxation, sewing, stress, triumph | Category: home, life | Comments Off

Like I told Lewis earlier… today is one of those days that will probably never happen again.  Today is the day I both got a scholarship, and a brain scan!   What are the chances?   I’m pretty excited about this scholarship.  The money will be nice, though it’s not a great amount, but I feel like more importantly the outword show of faith from the department and nice CV boost are priceless.  I had been worried when I first got in to Davis with Lewis that I was perhaps an accessory to his more glorious career, but since actually getting here and starting classes I’ve felt like my work speaks for itself, and I’m showing myself to be a worthwhile asset.  This just sort of proves it, in a fancy sort of public way!  I’ve never gotten any sort of meritorious scholarship before, and it means a lot to me that this isn’t just part of some big pool of money that I got a piece of for being a decent student.  I got our department’s only scholarship – a nod from other linguists that I’m a promising student!  Yay!

So, yeah.  It was a wildly successful day, even though it got off to a rocky start.  I slept really poorly last night, and woke up pretty grumpy.  We had a great night last night, playing Apples to Apples and Zombie Fluxx with a bunch of Linguists and their significant others.  I made a chex mix-like party mix (which was really good) and a strawberry rhubarb crisp (which was tasty but amorphous) and others brough various goods.  It was originally going to be at someone elses’ house, but she got sick, so we emergency hosted, and it was a good excuse to finally clean at least the common areas in our house.  Anyway, after all that adventure last night, I just couldn’t sleep – heart palpitations and the like.

So I made muffins this morning – apple cranberry ones, whole wheat with orange zest and walnuts – and they turned out really well.  Muy sabroso.  Went to the gym after that and worked out pretty hard.  Weekends are a great time to hit up the gym since no one is there, and I had the women’s room to myself.   Worked out for longer than usual, and then I got to try all the weight machines I’ve been curious about, since no one was there to see me make a fool of myself.  Was pretty beat when I got home, but I took a real nice long shower and had some lunch and got back in the swing of things.

Ran off to Sacramento after that to visit the UC Davis Imaging Research Center, where my lab does its fMRI scanning.   I was volunteering to be a subject in the control group of  a sign language study my advisor is working on, mostly to get the chance to do an fMRI study.  Being in the scanner is hard to describe – on one hand more difficult than I would have thought, but on the other hand, also less clausterphobic and nerve-wracking than anticipated.  The tasks were amusing, and being in the magnet doesn’t really feel like anything more than being anywhere else tiny but safe while your head is strapped to a plank.  I suppose what I mean to say is the magnetization isn’t really discernable.  I was glad I had taken that fMRI class already though, because I could identify what the noises were probably being caused by, and I knew enough to know what the magnet would and would not do, and thus it was more interesting than scary.  I can see being pretty wigged out by all that stuff if you were a kid or someone without the background on RF coils and all that.  Anyway, I would certainly do it again, I thought it was rather fun.  I’m sure I’ll post a picture of my brain when the person running the study emails me a copy of some of my high-res anatomical scan data.  I’m looking forward to it!

Post-scan I was hungry and eye-strained, but happy that Lewis had come with me, and we were going out to dinner!  Hit up the Tower Cafe, where our friend Maya works, and had the most delicious dinner and wine and desserts.  Maya was even working, so we got to chat her up a bit.  It was nice, since we haven’t had a chance to catch up with her in a while.  I do hope we can do something soon, I really enjoy her company.   Anyway, came home and Lewis gave me a really nice neck rub (which I needed after that hour and a half of forced immobilzation in the scanner)  and we listed to some good jazz records.  And I got a barrage of congratulatory facebook messages in my email.  Nice way to cap off a nice day!

May 2nd, 2009 | Tags: cooking, excited, fmri, friends, game night, party, restaurant, scholarship | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Hey look!  I’m famous!  Or at least feeling well honored :)

May 2nd, 2009 | Tags: excitement, scholarship, woot | Category: 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

Slow going today. I hate it when you only have one thing to do, and no energy to do it with. So impotent.

April 30th, 2009 | Tags: twitter | Category: life | Comments Off

Somehow going to the gym today did the opposite of relaxing me… and I’ve been trying to fight off this doom feeling since I got home.  Poo.  I’m ready for bed, and feeling a smidge grumpy about it, so I’m defaulting to list format.

Good:

• Nearly finished Lewis’ PJs.  Just have to put cuffs on his pants.
• Got my work done rather early, feeling prepared for my presentation on Friday.
• Made green curry eggplant and sweet potatoes for dinner.  It turned out well, and was, for once, saucy enough.  (I admit, we doubled the sauce portions!)
• I actually did go to the gym, and did have a nice workout, even with pervasive funk.

Meh:

• Messed up a disappointing number of things on the jammie project.
• Graded papers.  I guess that’s a success, but it’s a crap way to spend an hour.
• Feeling unconvinced about section tomorrow.  Lots of stuff, some of it crap, no real grip on my theme or trajectory though I prepared everything.  Ick.

If I were a betting woman, I would put my money on that last point being the source of my grump.  Being convinced your section is crap before you start teaching is a sure way to put a defeatist gilt on the remainder of the day.

April 28th, 2009 | Tags: cooking, grading, grump, gym, sewing, taing | Category: home, school | Comments Off