The Laursonian Institute

I want to get my wireless keyboard fully functioning in the ol’ Linux.  This is apparently troublesome.  Something about USB, blah-blah whatever.  I got pretty close tonight, but I should really know better than to start futzing around with Linux stuff right before bedtime.  When I’m supposed to be reading a paper anyway!

Today was pretty bonus, as Lewis would say.  Got up early enough to do a little library research this morning from the comfort of my own desk.  (Non-non-heinous side note, saw a rat jump out of our grape vine from own-desk-adjacent window… eech.)  Got to campus with enough time to have lunch with my sweetie, then bust over to class.  Class was pretty good, though it’s a little freaky learning syntax in a non-binary branching way.  Lewis and I talked it over a bit this afternoon though, and I think the kids will be more into it this way.  Hit up the co-op on our way home (I love you, co-op!) where we ran into our next door neighbor who very nicely offered to drive some of our copious groceries home.  Managed to fit all our business in our own bike bags though, and came home with quite a bounty.  I like the bi-weekly mondo shopping trip, even if it’s rather expensive.  Takes a bit of money to feed two point five mouths, I guess.

Oo.. also called my grandmother – it’s her 75th birthday!  Yay!  Talked to her on the phone a bit, which was very nice.  Don’t know why I don’t call my grandmother, but I suspect none of us grandkids do… she’s very lovable but with a gruff demeanor that sometimes makes you feel like she’s got nothing to say to you.  That sounds more callous than I intend it, but these subtle family relations are hard to explain.  I think my grandma is a little lonely, and very much used to being someone… inconsequential.   She sounded so surprised that so many people would be calling her on her important birthday.  Like a whistle-stop town getting a presidential visit.  She’s very dear.

I’m not sure whose idea it was to put the cat box in the office (sadly, probably mine) but given the state of air quality in here at the moment, I think I had better go to bed instead of blathering on any longer.  Yuck.

… the tags on this post are delightful.

October 13th, 2008 | Tags: coop, grandma, kitty, linux, syntax | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Nothing sucks the brain matter right out your ear faster than grading homework.  It’s like trying to imagine what 75 different people all who only sort of understand what they’re talking about try and convince you that both their theoretical underpinnings (under + pin + ing + s) and execution are correct.  And when I say, “it’s like”, what I mean is “it is.”

I realized halfway through my day today that I feel like I’ve been sick all weekend without being sick.  I’m going to call that psychologically exhausted.  Intellectually exhausted.  Something involving exhaust.  ex + haust.  psych + o + log + ic + al + ly.  Look at all those morphemes!   Anyway.  I think I’m running on empty, effortally speaking.  I took two naps this weekend!  Both rather necessary.   Today’s was outside, in the fresh air and sunshine.  I woke up and my hand was asleep.  For all that I’ve been freezing all weekend (scary Davis is down in the 60s and 70s these days!) it was so warm and sunny outside, I had to ditch my scarf and slippers and everything.  Yummy sunshine. (yum+my sun+shine).  I also made our acorn squash.. stuff it with quinoa and raisins and walnuts and stuff.  It was so delicious.  I should have taken a picture!  My blog is so sad and texty lately.  (late + ly).

I failed to plant any bulbs this weekend though it was my secret project I’d been waiting to do all week.  I hate it when the weekend rolls around and all I’ve got time for is work, which is all I have time for any other day.  I guess what I’m trying to say is… I’m ready for a weekend.  A real, honest-to-goodness do-whatever-I-want-all-day day, if not a whole two days.  The deeper we get into this quarter, the less likely that seems to be.  I’ve got sociolinguistic interviews to conduct.  Papers to grade, homeworks to grade (sorry spell checker, homeworks is a count noun for me now), midterm to write… Sigh.  And at some crazy distant future… my own papers to write.  A literature review to lead.  And two presentations.  Before December 10th.  It’s both far away, and quickly approaching.  They don’t kid around with this quarters stuff in the ol’ graduate school.  (grad + u + ate school (monomorphemic)).

Serendipitously, my Monday meetings have been moved to Wednesdays, so I only my TA class to attend.  That’s 50-minutes of required work total on the Mondays.  That pretty much makes Monday part of the weekend, with the added bonus of also forcing me to go to campus and maybe get more work done.  Yep.  If I’m smart, I’ll go to campus early (as in, before class) and get the papers I need copied so that I can come home right after my class.  A whole afternoon off would be so nice.  And I don’t really have all that much to do tomorrow, anyway.  Work-wise.  By “not that much” what I’m trying to say is “the usual amount that will take me all day but at least nothing is late yet”.

On the double-plus side… it’s bed time.  Bed time is my favorite time of day.  If I’ve been good, and I almost always have, it means I can look at my clock, say, “no more work today!  it’s bed time!” and go to bed with a fairly clear conscious.  Or at least one that knows that sleep is more important than staying up late and getting ahead of schedule.  Yessiree.  Lets try and keep it that way.  Though the pull to be ahead of schedule is pretty strong.

Okay, I’ve only got two things left to say:  honk.  shoe.

October 12th, 2008 | Tags: exhausted, taing, weekend | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Didn’t blog yesterday… got home from doing my two friday sections and pretty much crashed.  Sessions went well, but not as well as my Wednesday one.   I think there are some things I can work on to fix that this week, but it’s more of a problem with timing, I think, than anything else, since they turn their homeworks on Fridays just prior to coming to class.  But whatever.  This will change in a couple of weeks anyway when homework switches to Mondays.  Yay.

Spent a few hours last night, and most of all day today grading homeworks.  I was supposed to get some reading done for my own classes but alas, it wasn’t to be.  This has really been another one of those slogged-through-the-day sort of days where there’s nothing I feel like I’m ready to blog about.  Though we did manage to hange a few pictures today, and tidied up most the house.  But really, when that’s your day’s big notable accomplishment… nada mucho to say.  Doubley so when it’s uncooth to talk about the silly things my students are doing in their work!  Much enjoyment on that front!

Well, here’s to sleeping in clean sheets, and for tomorrow being a new day.  The weather is decidedly fall-like, I’m excited about autumn, and my classes, and my life.  And when your days are all the same, those are the important things to keep in mind.  Look at how optomistic I’m feeling!  Great success.

October 11th, 2008 | Tags: autumn, chores, grading, same old, school, taing | Category: home, school | Comments Off

(Half) bottle of wine.  Too inebriated, or tired, to post for really.  Let me sum up my day:

I.  Freaking.  Rocked.  My.  Section!

They should pretty much hire me right now.  C’mon, linguists!  I’m ready to go!

Then I came home, celebrated with Lewis, and talked politics all night.  Why am I still awake?!

October 8th, 2008 | Tags: taing, wine | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Blurp.

I think it might have been a productive day.  If only I could remember what I’ve done.

Ah yes.  I got up early.  And I went to class.  I turned in my first homework(!) and survived my lectures.  I lunched with Lewis, and got all my materials prepared for tomorrow’s first big TA session.  Then I started reading some insane phonology paper and was joyously saved by the presidential debate.  Watched the debate and made delicious spicy dirty rice.  Returned to phonology paper.  Lost my mind.

I am now going to bed.  And I wan’t no more of your crazy beta-sounds or phonetic equivalent classes, Hockett.  You crazy old man.

October 7th, 2008 | Tags: frustration, lists, phonology, productive | Category: life, school | Comments Off

I have two things to confess.

First, I waited, again, until midnight to start blogging. This makes me loopy.

And second, I say “nu-cu-lur”.  I know it’s spelled like it’s “supposed to” be pronounced.  Nuclear.  I also know I’m in graduate school and I shouldn’t be harboring all these uneducated colloquialisms in my lexicon.  But I trump both points.  For I am also a linguist!  I celebrate my sub-standard form!  I grew up saying it, and now, with my tiny set of linguistic oddities I like to pretend are my “Seattle accent”, I must embrace my nuclear.  I’m also keeping my short /uh/ “roof”.  And my short /e/ “Vegas”.  And I’m also too tired to try and figure out how to put any of this in IPA tonight.  Oh well.

Half of that aversion is that I spent all afternoon making notes on Trubetzkoi and thus arm wrestling IPA into my wiki program.  Tried to find a more wonderful way to get Linux and IPA together, but it looked like more installing and futzing than I could do at that moment right in the middle of my reading.  That didn’t stop me from installing all the rest of the language packages though!  Got most my non-Latin scripts up and running.

Other things that happened today:  I finished grading two sections worth of homework!  Also, the Lawyers had us over for delicious dinner and we checked out their Hawaii photos and caught up on news.  I got my Trubetzkoi done (though after typing his name all day I’ve really taken to wanting to call him “Trubz”) which was my set goal du jour.  Also the kitty wasn’t feeling well this morning, but I think he’s gotten over it.  Seems to be doing decently this evening, though I’ll keep an ojo on him.  Oh, and reading Trubz gave me an idea for my 260 fieldwork as well… gotta see if I can follow up on that tomorrow.  Decently successful!

October 4th, 2008 | Tags: kitty, linguistics, linux | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Pretty successful day, for sure, but busy as heck.  Feeling a little too disparate to blog successfully.  It’s rather late.

Went to class, collected our first round of homeworks from the undergrads.  Most everyone turned them in!  Much success.  Class went well and everyone seemed to be into the morphology thing.  Chatted with some kids after class, and busted over to office hours.  Spent most of office hours talking to my co-TA and other TAs in the office about Warcraft and other slightly-more-relevant topics.  Good times!  I do really like the grad students in our department.  We’re good folks.  Anyway, had my last two sections this week and they both went really well!  I think I learned from my Wednesday mistakes and moved forward.  Guess we’ll see how the content shapes up this week, when I’ve really got to do the “teaching” part of the ol’ job.  Linguistics Graduate Group party after that, which was fun!  Went over with another one of the 1st years, who I really like, and chatted with many of the rest of the 1st years.  Again.. what a great group!  Students and faculty alike.  Yay.  Came home and graded homeworks and watched crap TV while Lewis was out celebrating his friend’s birthday.   These homeworks are gold, but truthfully I’m really glad to see how well all the kids are getting the material.  And those that aren’t… pure gold.  And lots of material for next week’s discussion sections!

Weekend.  Tomorrow.  That’s all I really have the steam left to say.  Yay!

October 3rd, 2008 | Tags: homework, party, taing | Category: school | Comments Off

Boo goes colloquially by Jingles around these parts some times.  Sometimes I also feel like those jingles are the perfect pick-me-up to a tanking day.  It’s funny how endearing the tinyness of Boo’s existence can be.  But I guess sometimes you just need something that simple to pluck you from the theoretical storm cloud brewing in your head.

It’s silly that my days feel like they’re tanking lately.  Classes are going pretty well.  I’m really worried about Sociolinguistics, but the material is interesting and the challenge, though great, seems surmountable in my moments of optimism.  Bed time is never a moment of optimism.  This is the time of night this stuff sinks in.   I look at my day tomorrow and all I see is myself one moment closer to what must be inevitable TAing mediocrity, and one day closer to the deadline of my Socioling initial research proposal which I am completely floundering about.  This is a little over-dramatic.  After reading all day, this is what happens.  It’s ridiculous to say I’m working too hard when it feels like all I’m going is leisurely reading research papers about subjects I like.  It’s not even hard reading.  And all it is is reading.  But when I crash right about 9:00, like I do most nights, it seems, I wonder if I work too hard.

It’s true I got up at 6, and was busy getting us ready to go to school.  I had class till 11:30 and did a little of what I’m going to call “grad student stuff” for a bit.  Had lunch with Lewis, which is definitely quantifiable as a break, though we were talking about class.  Was home by 1, went straight to TA work and reading.  Read till 5.  Helped Lewis study for Latin test tomorrow.  Turned on the debate at 6, and watched it while simultaneously skim-reading another paper.  Had a brain storming conversation about research proposals with Lewis again.  Finished said paper after debate ended.  Eyes glazed over, doom descended, and a general aversion to bed set in.  I blogged.

And now here we are.  Blogging and dreading again.  But the somewhat meta-frustrating reality of it is that tomorrow I’ll wake up, it will only seem 3/4th as hard, I’ll go through the motions, getting up, making breakfast, studying, class, studying, class… and by 6:00 my weekend will be upon me.  My day will culminate in drinking and festivities with the grad students in the department.  And that’ll be it.  I’ll have fun, some things will go well, some things will discourage me, and I’ll start it all over again.  And with this washing-machine-like emotional cycle in mind, I’ll say one thing definitively that I stupidly had never bothered to anticipate:  grad school is hard.  Now, to sleep on it.

October 2nd, 2008 | Tags: dread, kitty, pensiveness | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Waaaaaaay too tired to blog tonight, so here’s my day in (very) brief:

• woke up, made starter for pumpkin ice cream; made lewis an egg-white frittata
• got some reading done
• went to TA-class
• hung out at my office hours, got some reading done
• Lewis came by office hours, chatting with Lewis + fellow graduate types in the TA office
• went to 1st section… did okay.  neither bad nor good.  made some dumb mistakes.
• came home, vented to Lewis about section and my failings
• read a tiny bit
• talked to Lewis about possibilities for socioling project, examined our “extended social network” and discovered we know lots of interesting people who might be able to hook us up with people to research
• made pumpkin ice cream.  it’s crazy good.
• brainstormed a million socioling ideas
• read a lot more
• blogged… how meta.

I don’t even want to talk about TAing today, though it’s the major portion of my mental space today.  I’ve got some stuff to improve for Friday, for sure.

But first on my list is a whole lotta sleep.

October 1st, 2008 | Tags: list, reading, school, taing | Category: meta, school | Comments Off