The Laursonian Institute

Lovely day for a lovely wedding.

Got up mightily early this morning to make it to a 10 am wedding in Berkeley.  The groom was one of Lewis’ friends from junior high.  It was quite a nice affair – both the (fairly non-traditional Jewish) ceremony and the reception were both at The Brazilian Room in Tilden Park in the beautiful Berkeley Hills.  There was a great Bay Area mist about this morning, with lots of light rain and fog.

The wedding was a much smaller affair that I anticipated, since Lewis and I got invited and I’ve never really met either the bride or groom in the years we’ve been together.  But they were at our wedding, and Lewis and the groom seem to have solid affection for one another… so it was quite an honor to be on the list!  Our friends Ben and Maya were there, as well as some other old classmates of Lewis’ from Davis, so we were in good company.  We also carpooled with another couple from Davis who we hadn’t met who were quite lovely and I’m sure we’ll see around town in due time.

I’d never been to a Jewish wedding before (actually, this is the first non-family wedding I’ve been to!), and it was very cute.  They aren’t particularly orthodox, so it was a very casual ceremony, but it did have the various blessings and canopy and glass-crushing I came to expect.  And a klezmer band.  And lots of circle dancing!  All in all, it was a really warm and relaxed reception with lots of participation from the crowd and lots of silly happenings.

Only downside for me was for some reason my heart wouldn’t stop palpitating in the latter half of the reception.  I kept walking outside to get some air, getting myself calmed down, and then going back inside and having it start up again.  It did eventually stop, but I think I went through four prolonged rounds of it or so, and it’s usually just one or two off beats before it rights itself.  It was at least well timed to prod myself into getting an appointment at the health center, since I had spoken to my nurse about the general palpitation issue last week and she told me to come back in with my records from my old place in LA where they had done an echo cardiogram.

I do think it’s just stress (as in, this always happens waaay more frequently around finals week and such than any other time), but anyone who has had regular palpitations must know how off-putting and a little troubling they are.   At any rate, when I had that echo cardiogram done last time all my doctor said was that I had a slightly irregular heart beat, and I’m sure that’s all that’s going on now.   It’s funny how nervous I get about my body when I’m stressed out.  I keep finding muscle knots (I think) in my neck that my brain just can’t let go of.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to talk myself out of thinking that they’re cancerous lumps or some sort or another.  Any tiny thing goes wrong and I presume the worst.  This doesn’t happen when I’m feeling less stressed – I wonder what it is about stress that makes me feel so… perishable?  At least my hair isn’t falling out, like one of my grad school compadres.

March 15th, 2009 | Tags: friends, heart, stress, wedding | Category: life | Comments Off

My life as a dialogue. I just got to the final and most persuasive subpoint, and I’ve forgotten what issue we’re debating. I carry on anyway, hoping that at the end of this section it all comes back to me. Or that no one noticed I obviously lost my way.

March 12th, 2009 | Tags: ennui, metaphor, self | Category: life | Comments Off

This is one of those dead-tired sort of days.  But it’s okay.  It should be the last one this quarter!

It was a necessarily busy day today.  Had Quechua this morning and we did dialogs and had a little Peruvian feast.  I wish I knew what anything was called or made of, because it certainly was delicious.  Oh, and we drank some Inca Kola.  Drinking neon yellow soda at 10 am is certainly a way to kick off a day.  Anyway.  Much fun was had in Quechua, and my heart is softening a bit towards that class.  Probably a good time to have handed course evaluations out.

Went straight from Peruvian snacks to my lunch date with Bernard Comrie.  It’s so amusing to have lunch with famous linguist-types.  I don’t know what it is about being a grad student that gets you introduced to these folks.  Maybe it’s the benevolence of those above you to spread your name around and get your face known.  At any rate, it was great being invited to lunch.  The food and company were both excellent, and I learned amusing things about Comrie that will stick with me for a while.  He’s a good guy.

Had to ditch lunch a little early to go meet with my TAing professor, and then my research professor.  This is the last set of homeworks I have to grade for this quarter, which is excellent, but sadly means that soon I have to grade the final.  Had a very nice final meeting with my research professor, and wrapped up what we’ve been reading very nicely.  Unfortunately he also assigned me a little write-up to do before the end of next week, so I didn’t quite escape without a short paper to do.  Oh well.  I sort of needed to synthesize what we’ve been doing anyway, so it will end up being rather useful later.

Spent a few minutes with Lewis in the sunshine on the Quad, and puttered about for my spare hour until it was time to go to Comrie’s talk!  I’d seen him give portions of this talk in Cambridge before, but for some reason it was much more engaging this time.  The talk seemed to fly by, and all the questions were very interesting.  Before I knew it, it was 6:00 already and time to go home.  Crashed a fair bit when I got here, didn’t make dinner… but I did watch some Colbert over some left-overs, and made a loaf of lemon bread for breakfast tomorrow.

All in all… a very successful, if draining, day!

March 11th, 2009 | Tags: comrie, lunch, papers, peruvian food, quechua, talk | Category: life, school | Comments Off

I have not adjusted to this time change.  It’s 10:00 and here I am, completely exhausted again.

It was a pretty darn good day, though.  It’s always encouraging to start off the last week of school!  And as a bonus, we had a Quechua linguist-guy visiting our class this morning.  He was only going to sit in for an hour or so and watch us work, but in fact he gave us a very interesting 2-hour lecture and used up all our time!  So we didn’t have to do our dialogs, and didn’t even correct or turn in our homeworks.  Thus, we also didn’t get any more work assigned!  Best class yet.   Neuroimaging was good and short today (as it is every Monday), so it was a real smooth day.

I did also go to see the doctor (nurse practicioner, it turns out) about these migraines though.  I was looking forward to having that taken care of.  So there isn’t actually any real news from the visit.  My nurse is great.  She thinks the headaches are some combo of hormones and stress, and that I don’t have to do anything about them unless they really get in my way.  We can try messing with my birth control perscription, or they could perscribe me migraine medicine or something that has the effect of migraine mitigation (anti-depressants, blood pressure medicine) if I wanted… but one crap day a month sounds a hair less bad to me then being on medicine every day I don’t really need.  So for now, no change.  But good to know that it’s non-life-threatening and that I’ve got escape plans if I need them.  Nurse said I could even see the neurologist if I wanted… ooo.  Anyway, sort of a relief to know the headaches are not a huge deal, just another minor annoyance to deal with in life.

So I triumphantly rode home, got all my work done, baked cookies, and concocted dinner.  I’ve discovered that one of my best cooking resources is some innate ability to conjure up a version “KC’s Rice Surprise”, my Dad’s magical never-the-same-twice refridgerator meal.  Boy, Laurie’s Rice Surprise was sure good tonight.  Verrry spicy, and full of kale and collard greens and rice and red beans and ground beef.  Mmm.  It did have the odd effect of making my fridge as seemingly full as when I started though, since I somehow managed to create twice as much rice surprise as the rice I was attempting to use up.  Ended up going right back in the same tupperware it came out of!  Oh well!  It’s at least a little tastier now.

March 9th, 2009 | Tags: cooking, doctor, migraine, quechua, time change | Category: life, school | Comments Off

This is the most social day I’ve had in ages!  I may wax poetic about the two wonderful groups of people we saw today… but I don’t think words really capture the feeling of comradrie and fulfillment I’m left with.  In short, we got up early to go to Berkeley and have Thai brunch for our old co-worker’s birthday.  The whole team was there, and it was so wonderful to be with the work group.  That’s a truly special group of people, and I’m really hoping we can make good on the plan to do another Afghan food / Bollywood night with them while we’re on spring break.  We definitely need to spend more time with them.  Thai brunch was a little strange this morning, because it turns out it was the 100th day of mourning for the death of the founder of the temple, so they were having a big funeral next door to the brunch-having, and the place was crawling with monks (it’s a temple, so it should be, but these were out-of-town-type monks all congregating to show their regards) and the usual Berkeley crowd as well.  They weren’t charging for brunch today since it was sort of a special day, they were just asking for donations instead in remembrance of their departed abbot.  We paid what we would have normally, but it was still a nice gesture.

After a lovely brunch, we headed back up to Davis and squeezed in a little work (and made some chocolate chip cookies!) before going over to our friend Ben’s place for his birthday.  This was another really great crowd –  old school Davis folks of the Ben’s family and family friends varieties, as well as a few Ben-friends I’ve come to know and enjoy.  It’s funny, I think of Ben as one of the most social, connected people in town, and yet I’m at his birthday party and I know almost everyone there through one event or another by now… from other parties, from the brunch club, from cribbage nights, people who were at my wedding I didn’t even realize I knew… The longer I’m in Davis, and the longer Lewis and I are together, the more old-worn-shoe all these parties get.  It’s a really gratifying feeling.  I’ve done so much moving around in my life, lived in so many houses and places and cities, and had so many different groups of friends… so on nights like tonight, it starts to feel like maybe I’m settled, and maybe there’s joy and comfort to be had in maintaining a loose network like this for decades.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve been at a Davis house party, dreading that I don’t know anyone but Lewis well enough to feel like I could chat them up, feeling like the out-of-town novelty with no intrinsic value.  This doesn’t happen so much any more.  There are no new “scary” people left to meet!  Just lots of nice people doing interesting things with their lives that I’m happy to talk with.

So we’ll call this a rousing success of a day, in a time when both Lewis and I should probably have been home working.  But I think we’re both better off for having had a chance, even in the busiest of times, to connect with our roots and get our heads out of our books.   Yay!

March 8th, 2009 | Tags: birthdays, brunch, davis, family, friends, happy | Category: life | Comments Off

It’s Friday night.  I’m watching a cute foreign movie with Lewis.  I’m drinking champagne.  And I’m feeling like the luckiest kid in town!

It’s been such a fantastic day.  I had neuroimaging this morning, and it was really awkward – I was actually sort of nodding off during class.  This hasn’t happened to me since I was a freshman, I think, and I normally really enjoy this class.  I’m just getting tuckered out, I suppose.  Anyway, came home and took a nap, and refreshed myself very well for the rest of my day, and it’s a good thing I did!

The only other thing I needed to do today (having slept through the Quechua talk I could have been at)  was show up for this Language Group meeting at the Center for Mind and Brain.  I was just invited to attend by another psycho/neruolinguist in our department, and they were having a little reading group today.  I think normally they practice presentations in front of eachother and such.  Anyway, it was nice, informative and pleasant.

The important part of this all is that a professor I’ve been trying to get in contact with from my department (who has been not returning my emails) was also there, and had sent me word through a student who works in his lab (who I have Quechua with) that I should drop by some time and that he wasn’t meaning to ignore me.  Anyway, he told me to drop by his office after the talk, and we had the most amazing chat!  I told him all the things I’ve been getting into, and the classes I’m taking, and the ideas I’ve been having for a thesis, and he was right there with me on all counts.  He really likes what I want to do, and he’s sure that there’s ways to make it happen.  He has extra funding in his name for some MRI studies which we might be able to use as a pilot study for my thesis (and maybe also my second QP?).  Most of all, he seems to be really interested in letting me do the research I want to do, and providing me the support and guidance I need to do it.  This was the huge thing that was missing from my grad school experience so far, an actual advisor-type who can oversee me in a functional useful way with resources and an interest in my project!  I just about jumped out of my skin!

So I got a tour of his lab from my Quechua friend Michiq, and met the other folks who work with him.  He wants me to sign up for 2 units worth of research to get my feet wet and make sure we’re all on the same page or whatever.  I think I may be using some of these research units to read up on the literature in the field I’m trying to get in to, which he already seems to have a pretty good grasp of.  This was what I wanted to spend my summer doing anyway, so a little directed reading is even better.  It seems as though he’s also in contact with the as-yet-on-Sabbatical phonologist in the department, who is also interested in neuro work, so that looks to me like the beginning of a committee coming together, and the foundation for lots of good to come.  So…. I went to an informal reading group, and came out with a lab job for next quarter, and the beginning of what I hope is my advisor-student relation.  I never dreamed that would all go so smoothly!

After that I made Lewis take me out to my favorite Davis place (mmm, Greek pizza) and buy me a bottle of champagne.  Life is so good!  I hope I can keep my eye on getting through the end of this quarter before I spend all my time thinking about how sweet next quarter is going to be :)

March 6th, 2009 | Tags: advisor, champagne, cmb, excitement, future, neuro, optimism | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Well, another day, another something.

I woke up with a wonderful feeling of optimism.  My first thoughts were reassuring myself that I didn’t need to stress out about getting to campus on time (my usual thought pattern) and that I could have a nice morning and get to class no problem.  Which is exactly what I did.  It’s amazing how much of the timbre of your day is determined by the outlook you assign it.  So not only did the morning go well, but Quechua was enjoyable too.  Learned an interesting statistic – we’re the largest intro Quechua class in the world!  Or so my yachachiq says.

Only downside of the day was I also woke up with a big headache this morning, and it was pretty crappy.  Thankfully I managed to score myself a nap when I got home and it went away!  That never happens!  Spent the rest of the day relaxing and getting small work done.  And installing Mint!  Working quite nicely.   I know somewhere in my brain that I should be attacking this semantics paper from all fronts, but I just can’t seem to get past feeling like I need to calm down and take care of myself.  I suppose when I put it that way, it doesn’t sound as ridiculous as it feels sometimes.

Ooh, also Lewis and I tried to make a Dojo-style noodle curry that would be all saucy and delicious.  We’ve been failing pretty poorly with the saucy curries, though the results are always fairly tasty.  Anyway, I was feeling the inspiration tonight, but to no avail.  I found a decent recipe for a generic curry sauce, and it was tasty, but per usual not saucy enough for the masses of meat and veg we put in it.  Oh Dojo noodles, why must you be so difficult to replicate?  Or alternately, why must you be 5000 miles away?  Or even, why are there no good noodle houses in Davis?

March 4th, 2009 | Tags: curry, headache, lazy, noodles, outlook, quechua | Category: home, life | Comments Off

Blog, I had such big plans for you tonight.  But my legs are absolutely killing me (I do not know why.. they do this sometimes) and now I’m not sure how much I can stand before I go to bed.  I can at least hit the major points… maybe it’s time to go list-format:

The Great:

• semantics presentation went smashingly!
• triumphant post-presentation hot dog lunch with my sweetie
• got a surprising amount of work done
• excellent Obama speech watching!
• settled on San Diego travel plans finally (I owe Lewis for this one)
• went out for pie and coffee this evening just because!

The Bad:

• cat tried to bite me, shame on him.  had to swat him with a midterm I was grading.
• my legs… boo!

You can tell it’s been an excellent day when I have to grasp at straws like that on my bad list.  What’s even better… I’m not sure I’m even going to go to class in the morning.  I’ve left it up to morning-me to decide, but I’m feeling rather self-congradulatory, and like I deserve a little spoiling.  Besides, I’m taking Quechua pass/fail and I’ve got like 99% at the moment.  I can well afford a little slackage.  And sleeping in!

February 24th, 2009 | Tags: celebratory, list, pie, presentation | Category: life, school | Comments Off

This has been one of those days.  One of those days where I watch my fingers tap, so slowly, on these keys, amazed that somehow my thoughts appear before me.  Amazed that my fingers have the ability to move.  That muscles contract, release; digits navigate seemingly without direction.  These days are so draining, so disheartening.  The feeling of agency is both absent and wrenchingly present.  The only thing which prevents my poker face from cracking is ennui, perpetual motion in a frictionless world.  I want to walk outside.  Plod slowly across the grass, saturated with two inches of rain.  I want to walk until I can’t walk any more.  And then I want to sit down in the cold, and the wet, and cry.  Cry until the sun shines, and everything is just how it’s supposed to be, and I have forgotten this night, this feeling, all of these insecurities and disappointments.  It’s been so long since I have had one of these days, so long since the world felt so bleak and distant.

Rational me, peaking through these clouds like a crepuscular ray, knows that the sky will clear.  That no problem I have is so enduring, or even extant, that sleep and hard work won’t succeed in the inobservable erosion of dispair.  Crepuscular me prevents me from walking outside, from acting out, blessed with enough foresight to realize that making a scene today because I’m overtaken by a feeling of ineffectiveness and hopelessness will be quickly overtaken by the repercussions reaped tomorrow.  Because there’s some kind of faith in self that knows pressing through this day at all is a victory.  That I have not succumbed to irrationality, to crying, to fits, to disappearing.  A several-years-ago version of myself was very fond of disappearing.  It was never as liberating as I hoped, for being unfindable is more damningly lonely than feeling forsaken but reachable.  It never made the world more tender.  And it never stopped me from casting myself down on days like today.

So I here sit.  Undisappeared.  Unfunctioning.  Having those seeping crises of faith that I live with, like a condescending, abusive, conjoined self.  Despising my inability to maintain perspective, and cringing at the thought of assistance.  This feeling is so tarnished, so leperous, that I can’t stand the idea of someone trying to help.  It’s something that should not be seen, let alone contemplated, and should be burried by my better self.  Out of sight, out of mutual reality, banished from external discourse, and forgotten.  Makes me wonder why I blog it.  Maybe I’m hoping the universe has a feed reader.   And is going to leave a better version of myself under my pillow, like the tooth fairy.

February 22nd, 2009 | Tags: depressed, ennui, ridiculous | Category: life | Comments Off