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!