The Laursonian Institute

So.. we got a dog!  And thus, it’s been a week of high expectations and stress and patience.

Our doggie is a very good dog.  We’re had the surprise yesterday to discover he’s not really a mutt.  He’s the spitting image of a Glen of Imaal Terrier, and I’m feeling prepared to say he’s not a mutt at all.  Add to that the fact that he’s surprisingly well trained, and I think we have an escaped fancy dog.  I don’t understand how he failed to get adopted in the pound, since we got him from a rescue organization.  Perhaps the rescue groups just pick up all the good dogs from the pound as they come in?  At any rate, he’s house trained, he kennels, heels on the leash, doesn’t bark, ignores our cat (99% of the time), and doesn’t beg.  He loves  belly rubs, brushes, and sleeping on his doggie pillow.

Despite all this, the life adjustment has been a little rough, but pretty fulfilling.  We’ve been trying to be proactive about getting him exercise and entertainment so he’s manageable at home and tired for when we kennel him.  So Lewis and I have been getting up at 7 to take him on a walk so we can fit it in before classes, and then again when we get home and take him out of his kennel.  It’s been working really well – he gets mighty sleepy after he gets home and eats, and he’s been really good about kenneling and sleeping through the night.  All the fresh air and exercise is good for us, and a very pleasant way to start the day!

All in all, I think that makes the dog experiment successful.  I’ll be glad when Watson gets his silly cone off (he’s been bothering his neutering scar) which should be in a day or two.  It’s been a mighty expensive week, but making a happy and whole household sometimes means taking a dive like this.   So here’s to another good week, tired and distracted though it may be.

January 22nd, 2010 | Tags: dog | Category: home | Comments Off

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

It was darn hot today.  The weather says it hit 106, but my house was a trooper!  We never really needed to turn on the AC, though it was 88 degrees in here by the peak of it.  We got new blinds installed a week or two ago, and it’s amazing how much keeping the sun out of the windows does for the temperature inside.  I’m very pleased!  Plus I washed and cleaned all the front windows today before it got hot, so it was looking particularly nice and sparkly when we finally got to pull the shades back up.

I’m doing an excellent job of wasting my break away, which I suppose is one of the activities I actually intended on accomplishing.  I do wish I could put myself to task a little better doing school work in addition to the projects and gardening I set up for myself.  It’s hard, because if you start the day with school work, you end up wasting the whole day sitting at the desk or table, and then by dinner time I feel like I’ve gotten nothing done, and that I’m a dope for having not left the house all day.  However, if you start the day in the garden or doing some housework, like I prefer, you end up spending the whole day doing not school work.  Definitely sub-optimal.  Perhaps I’ll have myself better put together when we hit July.   It really has only been a could of weeks since class ended.  I’m always too hard on myself!

I’ve been cooking so much, it really makes me happy.  This week I’ve mastered the Denver omelet (why did  it take me so long to figure out how to cook an omelet?) and I made red beans and rice for dinner today.  Mmm.   We’ve got so many delicious left-overs in the fridge, and lots of tasty salad stuff we haven’t even dug into.  For all that cooking more means eating well, it does sort of obliterate one of my better excuses to get out of the house.  But we’re doing a good job of saving money, anyway.  And it means I get to try out a bunch of new ideas – ricotta pancakes, mozarella chicken panninis, baked sole…

Money is still too much on my mind, but I think that’s always the way of things.  We did our budget for next year, and calculated it a few times over and came to a very sad conclusion: there’s really no way to pay for car insurance.  I’m feeling very deflated after this decision… I was really looking forward to having a car, and having a car of our own we could take places more guilt-free and easy-like.  The prospect of Davis without a reliable car next year is rather daunting, though do-able.  I guess it’s the first thing we’ve really had to cut out in the “you can’t afford that” category.  We’re just going to be barely scraping by next year – we’re already making so much less money than we were when we were both working, and our appointments next year (and the loss of the one-year-only fellowship Lewis had) means we’re making almost a third less than that.  We’re canceling all the extraneous costs (our veg box, our carshare dues) but that really leaves just a smidge of an emergency buffer after our necessary budgeted expenses.  So unless car insurance is magically rather affordable, we’re sunk.  And that means a few things for me, the spelling out of which seems so trite.  It means I’m probably giving up the gym, because I can’t seem to muster the gumption to bike there (particularly in 90+ degree weather), and it means I need to start shopping at the Co-op weekly or more often.  I’ve been getting so spoiled by the ability to drive to the store and bring home all the bottled water and cat litter my heart desired.  Now it’s back to the ol’ cubic feet calculations.  Whine, whine.  I know.  Like I say – it’s just the first of these “we can’t afford this luxury” things, and it’s a cranky one to let go.

June 27th, 2009 | Tags: car, cleaning, cooking, food, heat, money, procrastination, worry | Category: home, life | Comments Off

I’ve been much betwitter lately.  I got a cute twitter client and now it just sits there, running, filling with goodness.   Yay for summertime amusements.

I know I haven’t been doing a good job of blogging lately.  There just aren’t that many nights when I feel like I want to be on the computer, thinking about my day.  But today is a hot, lazy night.  It was really hot today – 100ish – but it’s pleasant now.  Breezy and cooler.

Much triumph was had, regardless of heat.  We had some lumber delivered this morning for our gate project (splitting the big unusable double-wide gate on the side yard into two openable doors) and the lawn edging.  They came way earlier than they quoted us, thus both Lewis and I were in bed when they showed up.  They didn’t even actually knock, though, they just sorta dumped the goods in our driveway and took off.  Not that it matters much, we didn’t need to sign or pay for anything.

Went to the doctor after that at my sister’s behest.  Have a good summer plan in the works to test out whether my birth control is having anything to do with these migraines, and then I have a back-up plan appointment with the neurologist at the end of summer.  All in all it was a good appointment.  I’m feeling well, all my vitals and blood work checks out, and other than these headaches, there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with me.  Yay!  I’m glad to have an action plan for the time being.

Spent much of the afternoon car shopping with Lewis from the comfort of the internet.  Thought we were going to go see a car, but we wanted to price out some insurance quotes on various vehicles first, and called Lewis’ dad to see what insurance company they use.  Didn’t get much further than that – I guess Artie and Francie had been discussing selling us the car we’ve been borrowing, so he said he would give us a good deal if we wanted the Accord.  It blue books for more than we can afford, but Artie seems pretty serious about making sure we don’t put ourselves out.  We also called a family friend who owns the local Honda dealer to see what sort of back lot stuff he has in stock, and ironically he’s also getting in an almost identical Accord that is cheaper than the car we were going to go look at today…. so car plans are much altered in favor of someone in Davis doing us a good turn.  I suppose that is good news, though the prospect of paying car insurance next year is pretty dismal with our much-reduced income.  The other grad students make it happen somehow… I do suspect more than a few are still on their parents’ ticket.

I’ve been really enjoying cooking lately, since I have all the free time in the world these days.  I roasted a chicken tonight, with some red potatoes, and it turned out really well.  I probably could have devoured my whole half, but we squirreled away some nice leftovers.  It sure was good though – it came out beautifully crispy skinned and juicy. Mmm.  Had a really nice after-dinner walk through the fields behind our house.  It smelled really nice, like dry grass.  Davis is a nice place, even when it’s hot.  Next hot day will surely call for heading over to the Lawyers’ to abuse pool privileges!

June 23rd, 2009 | Tags: cooking, doctor, projects, summer | Category: home, life, meta | Comments Off

Oy, thunderstorms.  It’s 3:30 in the morning.  It’s the second time I’m up… though I think it’s also the last of the cells to pass before the storm is basically spent.   I wish I could sleep through these things, but I just can’t keep my heart from racing, even when on the surface I feel pretty confident everything is going to be fine.  Animal instinct, I guess.

It’s a pretty strange storm, for Davis anyway.  The cell that went by around 1 am had so, so much lightening – a nearly constantly lit sky.  You could see it going every which way, it was pretty incredible.  I’ve only seen a storm like that once, and it was in Louisiana.  I didn’t realize we had such storms here sometimes.  Though Lewis said he’ d never seen one like it either, so it’s certainly strange for Davis.  This second cell is a lot more normal-y for a Seattle girl like me – lots of rain and hail, big window-rattling peels of thunder every couple minutes.  They’re even shaking the pictures on the wall just a bit.

Sigh.  I give it another half hour, and I’ll be glad when it passes.   Oo.. we’re down to the 4-second mark between flash and boom.  Guess it’s right overhead.  That means it should be soon getting further away than closer…

June 4th, 2009 | Tags: awake, early, storm | Category: home | Comments Off

For a Monday, it was a pretty domestic day.  My reading group was cancelled, so I only had my cognitive neuroscience class this morning – yay!  I’d been hoping for a day off, of sort.  Not feeling much like updating though, so I think I’ll list up:

• went out to lunch!  Mm, Dos.
• got all the dishes done!
• made potato salad, and chocolate syrup
• started laundry
• got almost all my rough drafts graded
• read the penultimate paper for my cogneuro essay

Oh yeah, one other good thing today – I got another fellowship thing!  These funding guys are always really mysterious, so I’m not quite sure where it all comes from.  At any rate, I got a nice email telling me I’d been awarded some kind of research grant, and that they’re giving me 1500 bucks to spend on things “vital to the research” I’m doing, and I have to report back about what I’ve been doing to the powers that be next spring.  I’m not quite sure what my research is, yet, or what I’ll need 1500 bucks for, but it’s pretty neat to know I have a personal little expense account at the department next year.   I’m +2 for next year!

May 18th, 2009 | Tags: chores, cleaning, cooking, fellowship, reading | Category: home, life, school | Comments Off

Excellently productive day?  I think so!  Though I didn’t do any reading, and a day without reading is never a great idea.  What I did get done was some prep for section, and the approval of a prompt for both my neuroscience class, and my typology class.  In fact, my typology professor had some really good ideas about what direction to take my paper, and thus I’ve even sort of gotten an outline put together for that one!  I’m hoping sections go well tomorrow.  I have to hand back the midterms, and my Wednedsay section did particularly poorly.  We’re also moving into real “discussion” territory, and these guys also aren’t too participatory when I’d like them to be.  So we’ll see how well I can manage to swing chattiness.    I’ve also been scheduled for my fMRI safety training tomorrow, so I can officially operate the magnet!

In non-school triumphs, yesterday we did our tri-weekly co-op trip, so there is actually food in the house today.   I had a smoothie and toast this morning, which is hands down my favorite (regular) breakfast.  I also made it to the gym, which is good since I skipped yoga in favor of food shopping yesterday.  I really need to get to yoga on Thursday, I miss it.  I was pretty stressed out pre-gym, and I’m happy to say that working out calmed me down.  Also, I came home and cleaned our room (which was a complete disaster) so I’m feeling pretty accomplished!  Here’s to hoping I can keep up this level of optimism for the rest of the week.

May 12th, 2009 | Tags: cleaning, essays, fmri, gym, midterm, optimism, section, training | Category: home, school | Comments Off

It’s going to be an early night, and thank goodness, cause I’m exhausted!  I made it through midterm week.  Midterm went well, and I spent about six hours grading yesterday with one of my favorite linguistics people (and co-TA) Ariel.  We squatted in Sudwerk and had some drinks and snacks, and our waiter was even a linguistics major!  Very surprising.  Anyway, I got the rest of the papers graded this afternoon, and thus I am done with midterms!  Yay!

No one came to office hours today, so I had a really relaxing day.  Actually I was dreading section this morning, but our sort of short day of essay topic stuff went over really well.  Students were engaged and amused, and I got to talk to each one individually about their topic choice, and it was nice.  They didn’t even notice how close to being out of time we were at the end of class!   So good times.  Walked around the beginnings of the Whole Earth Festival that has taken over campus today.  It’s way more intense than I anticipated – I knew Davis had a bunch of hippies, but this was pretty crazy!  So we escaped after partaking in ice cream and some free sewing machine repair advice.  Came home and cooked up a chicken I had thawed.  I had meant to roast it yesterday, but ran out of time, so I was getting nervous about leaving it sitting around all uncooked.  Made a spicy fried chicken instead, and holy crap was it good!  I’m not a big frying-things fan, but damn, sometimes it just hits the spot.  Mmm.

It’s gonna be a busy weekend.  We’re going to a conference in Stanford tomorrow morning, because one of the professors in the department asked us to come with him.  I’m not super keen on spending a whole surprise day at a conference, but Lewis and I weighed the lost time and stressful weekend against the probable benefit of bonding with a professor we both like, and meeting some of our peers (it’s a meeting of the graduate students and faculty of Stanford, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz) and decided it’d be worth it.  So we’re meeting at the train station at 7:30 tomorrow morning for our carpool to Stanford, and then I think he’s going to drop us off at the end of the day somewhere in the East Bay so we can take the train home.  Should be exciting!

May 8th, 2009 | Tags: conference, cooking, grading, midterms, section, taing, whole earth | Category: home, school | Comments Off