The Laursonian Institute

First of all, this new wordpress is fantastic.  I was waiting to do this update until I was out of school just in case I mussed something up and had to spend a million hours fixing it. Instead, I’ve had unorthodox success on two updating fronts.  I’ve updated wordpress, and added new and exciting widgets (including the aforeposted twitter feed) and everything went as smooth as can be.  I can’t believe it!  But what’s more, I also upgraded Ubuntu today with only the tiniest of hiccups!  Had to swap out my network manager (but the standard one is crap anyway) and I still have not quite figured out why my outgoing mail isn’t working… but otherwise, total success.  Sound working, wireless is working, display working, even *suspend* is working!!   I love you, computer.  I love you, you wonderful old Ubuntu.  And I love you, lovely people at Za Reason!

This has been a muchly successful day.  Got up at my leisure, made breakfast (mm, cinnamon tortilla rollups and yogurt), and watched silly SNL videos.  I made split pea soup in the slow cookers, and baked a loaf of multigrain bread to go with it (graham flour + cornmeal + white) .  Got the tree trimmed, and Lewis set the train up around the bottom.  The track is really great this year – so long and curvy!  Lewis also did the laundry, so we’re all well set up for tomorrow.  Watched an episode of Ken Burns’ Jazz,  and did some internet window shopping, getting myself ready for maybe going actual-type Christmas shopping tomorrow.  I even read a little, and hung up the instruments mom brought up for the music room.  Yay!   It’s so fantastic to get to spend a day doing random stuff… I’m getting so much done, even though it’s all the little unimportant-type stuff that gets passed off while I’ve got real school-type work to do.

Also, it only got up to 45 degrees, and it rained all day.  We were going to put the Christmas lights up on the house, but it just was not very inviting outside.   Our rain meter says .43 inches for the day so far!   It is nice to have some decently wintry weather though, since it’s been so mild for so long.  Not that I’m getting actual snow, Seattle-style or anything, but you know.  I’ll take what I can get.

I should also mention that we had to parties in a row!  After classes finished up Friday, we had a we had a gathering of Linguistics folks over to watch William Shatner speak Esperanto.  It was much more well-attended and festive than I had anticipated, and I’m really pleased with the whole endeavor!  People stayed rather late (for academics coming off finals week anyway) and there was much good bonding and joking and such to be had.  Yay for our department.   We spent yesterday at another party, this time Nina’s engagement party, full of all our good ol’ work folks.  I really miss all those guys!  It was so wonderful to see Nina & Jimmy and Charlise, Scott, Christine, Julian, Raffaella, Chuck, Hope, and Kim!  Chidi and Stefano were both out of town, but perhaps we’ll get to see them soon.  We promised KE we would stop in for tea time if we’re going to be in the area doing Christmas shopping.  And I believe we will!  Lewis and I already have a Rattos and tea trip in mind.  Yum.

Ah, life is good, isn’t it?  I’m looking forward to my classes next quarter, and have found I really don’t even care what grades I got this quarter.  I do anticipate A’s in both, if I may be a judge of my own work and its quality, but I find that I don’t have nervous grade checking heart palpatations like I might have as an undergrad.  I just check every day like habit, and feel like the inevitable grades will show up sooner or later.  Probably more like later.

I don’t even know what to do with the rest of my night.  Snuggle up to Lewis and read?  Go to bed early?  Start an art project?  The possibilities are endless.  Endless!

December 14th, 2008 | Tags: baking, chores, cooking, friends, grades, linux, parties, school, twitter, updates, wordpress | Category: life, meta, school | Comments Off

It’s been a week of socializing, which for me, is probably a record.  I went out Thursday with my co-TA to Sudwerk, and here I am again, blogging after a dinner at Sudwerk with more ling friends!  Lewis and I met up with another grad student who lives in my office, and her husband, and we rocked the drinks and eats… so tasty.  They actually had a pretty nice jazz band playing tonight as well, which was excellent though it did make it difficult to hear anyone talking.  Double bonus points for us – we went out to dinner with some folks for the first time, and then we invited them over!  Turns out they like games as much as we do, so we played a round of Zombie Fluxx, and then introduced them to some Cheap Ass Games (namely, Secret Tijuana Death Match).  So much fun!

And to top it all off, I even got a fair amount of work done today.  Here’s to being, I hope, one day away from being done with my transcription.  Sigh.  Too bad I have to code it after that!  Tomorrow should be good though.  A nice, calm Sunday, with a great week coming up!  Tuesday is a holiday, so we don’t have class.  Mondays have always been pretty chill.  And my parents will be in town Thursday!  Yay!  I’m rather looking forward to much in the near future.  And I’m not letting myself get too worried about the upcoming papers, though I know there’s a lot of work to be done…

For now, lets just call this much Saturday success!

November 8th, 2008 | Tags: dinner, friends, games, transcription | Category: life, school | Comments Off

I solved my one-unit problem today (as in, I had signed up for one fewer units than were required) by commiting to something fantastic.  I’m going to learn Quechua!  What have I gotten myself in to!  I do hope you expect a whole blog full of “Arggg semantics!” and “Arrggg Quechua!” next quarter, cause that’s all I’ll really have left to say.  At least I won’t be TAing that quarter.  Wooooot.

TAing actually went really well today, despite the sort of boring subject matter that is phonetics.  I think I got some kids to play with their mouths and discover their articulators and all that good stuff.  Phonology next week, which should be most righteous.  We just did contrastive and complimentary distribution in class today, so I think the next few lectures ought to be on phonological problems or processes.  Yaaay.

Also had a nice hang-out in the TA office (as always!) and secured the plan that I’m going to find a home for my big silly red rug!  Just gotta get the office swept up and vacuumed (and maybe have the floors washed?  We can apparently request this) and then the rug will be in action!  I’m so excited to finally have something to do with that thing.  Anyway, I got some good teaching tips from fellow-TA Heather, and we agreed to meet tomorrow evening for drinks and non-linguistic chatter at Sudwerk, a tasty brewpub nearby.  Lets give that a double yay for making friends and social events!

Only other piece of fantastic news today… I got some cleaning done!  I spent the morning not doing any (school) work and actually getting some much needed house tidying and cleaning done.  I got all the dishes washed, and swept and mopped the kitchen and entry way and bathrooms.  It’s still not very tidy in here, but it’s certainly a good start.  Those floors were looking pretty shoddy.  But Lewis did laundry yesterday, and the rest of the house isn’t actually that dirty, so maybe this weekend in between transcribing my interview, I can finish that up.  And finally plant our bulbs!  Egad we’ve been busy.

Life is so good!

November 7th, 2008 | Tags: decorating, drinking, friends, quechua, rug, socializing, taing | Category: home, life, school | Comments Off

Oh daily blog, what happened to you?  I wish I weren’t so busy and so frustrated around bedtime when I should be relaying to you all the triumphs of my days.  I don’t recall the last time I wrote.  Suffice it to say that several days have passed, included within them Halloween, the midterm for my TA class, and Lewis and I’s fourth anniversary of dating.  Seems a little crazy to be embarking on year five already!  Woot to that.

Today was good.  I got up early so we could drive to the Bay Area to go to the SF Opera with our old work buddies Charlise and Nina.  Turns out I got up an hour earlier than intended (5:45?  Goodness me.) so I got a lucky extra hour of sleep after that once I realized my time shifting mistake.  But we were still up and out of the house fairly early, and made it to the Bart with just a few minutes to spare to make our perfect train.  Ran into Nina at McArthur while changing trains, and then ran into Christine and Kim on the escalator coming up from Civic Center… turns out all four of us were on the same train!  Quelle surprise.  So we made it to the Opera, found Charlise, and had a lovely brunch at Citizen Cake.  Got to see Charlise’s apartment in the city for a moment, and had some coffee and purused books at Books, Inc. / Peets.

We got to go stand in line for a few minutes to get in the good standing-room-only spots (though Charlise had already reserved herself the first and second spots…) and we got to see a pre-opera lecture (short) about the work we were going to see.  Saw Boris Godunov, which was okay, though I didn’t like it as much as the last one we saw there, Ariodante.  But the company was superb and I had an excellent time galavanting around the city with our pals.  Yay Ask, and yay San Francisco.  Made me want to go Christmas shopping being so close to Union Square!

Okay, enough dallying… I really ought to get a little work done today while I still can.  Off to transcribe…

November 2nd, 2008 | Tags: anniversary, friends, halloween, opera, san francisco | Category: life | Comments Off

Berkeley day today!  Yay!

But before the Berk, I started the day off right.  Sort of.  I’ve been feeling like I’m swimming upstream a bit all week, or at least since class started.  So of course, I woke up 15 minutes before the alarm went off and I panicked about being ready to leave on time, and whether I could squeeze any work in before Lewis got up, and what to have for breakfast, and whether I should blog, and all that ridiculous stuff.  So I got up and made apple cinnamon muffins, which are superb.  And I blogged!  At the end of the day (or morning, really) what really matters is that we got out of the house on time, without forgetting anything, and with breakfast in our tummies.

So I went to Albany, and I got my hair cut, which was badly in need of being done.  Cost me way more than I should probably be spending on these sorts of things, but I just have not gotten around to figuring out who else to go to, and besides, I love Melody.  She’s a really cool person and she’s been doing my hair since we moved to the Bay Area, and frankly is the only hair stylist I’ve ever had.  I fear trying to find another one, though I’m sure someone in Davis ought to be able to at least placate me.  It’s not so much about the hair as trusting and liking someone to do it.

Anyway, post-hair we headed to the Berkeley Farmers Market to grab a little lunch and meet up with Nina, the person I miss most from the Bay.  The Farmers Market was cute, and had tasty foods for us to consume.  Saw lots of neat booths as well, and I was glad to see it was a different variety of people that go to either the El Cerrito or Oakland markets, so it felt a litlte unique.  Thence to Jupiter to meet up with Armand and have a few pints.

It’s always so heartwarming and life-affirming to spend time doing nothing with the people you like the most.  It’s so great to see Armand, and he fits in so well to Berkeley!  I’m glad he finds the place comfortable and to his liking.  So we had a few pints, talked about the good old days, introduced Nina to Arms and vice versa.   Yay.

Home again, and back to studying.  Made it through the first of the papers I need to read for 280, and got all the notes I needed for that one as well.  Very  pleased with how the wikinotes are going — I took almost 4000 words worth for Saussure!  Labov was much easier reading, and sadly I didn’t enjoy it as much as the Saussure.  I seem to be getting into the more cerebral philosophical papers, and I suppose sociolinguistics has never really been my forte.  Also sad but true… this blog is slowly going to turn into barely coherent linguistic musings and/or braindump.  Sorry, non-existent readers!

September 27th, 2008 | Tags: berkeley, friends, pints, reading | Category: life | Comments Off

Having one of those not-knowing-where-to-start blog days.  I’ll start at the beginning, and then not really finish anything because I’m tired and it’s time to go to sleep.

Had “New TA Orientation” at the Department this morning which wasn’t much about TAing and was a lot about the professors we’re TAing for sharing their teaching experiences with the new professors.  Not much to protest about, it was interesting to listen to and sort of helped put my mind in the framework of what Linguistics 1 is really going to be about.  Lots of actual useful information about the types of students, material that is always hard to teach, who to expect to preform well, etc, etc.  General goodwill for all.

Followed by “Department Orientation” which wasn’t much new news at all, and rather similar to the graduate student introduction-type day we had in March after we’d all been accepted but before we all committed to coming to UCD.  A little more frivolous this time, very amusing, and very jovial.  Plus lunch was provided.  Anyway, general got to catch up with some other folks, and a good time was had.

Met with the instructor I’m TAing for and my co-TA for this quarter.  Co-TA is very nice, professor is very nice, and everyone is twice as organized and twice as well prepared as I was fearing.  Not many frets over how TAing is going to go now, as several important things were discovered.  First, turns out the sessions aren’t mandatory.  Everyone who is there either wants to come, or needs help, both of which are great.  Second, the professor’s syllabus lists out exactly what it is the students will expect we’re discussing in sections.  Third, the class is rather hard, and the sections realistically will be all problem sets and very little “discussion” or “lecture”.  And lastly, the department and the internet are full of wonderful resources for problem sets, and I (lucky me!) even get the answer keys.  All I have to be is not boring-as-hell or needlessly confusing, and todo es bueno.

Came home, crashed out a bit, got lots loaded into my calendar (TA stuff mostly) and even put a little light reading under my belt.  I got the books for LIN 1 from the professor (another bonus: TAs get those class books for free and can even keep them…) so I thought I’d start putting a dent in the first weeks assigned readings.  It’s actually serving to excite me about some of the fundamentals and hows-and-whys of linguistics that got me into the major in the first place.  It’s turning out to be a really nice refresher course!

Had a nice hang out with Ben and Maya, possibly my favorite Davisites.  Taught Maya cribbage, had lots of tea, and finally got to try out our hookah!  Very enjoyable, and rather relaxing.  Tomorrow is our last big day off — class doesn’t start till Thursday, and it’s certainly felt like I’ve had a whole weeks worth of stimulation already.  Big plans in the works though — pumpkin bread perhaps, and laundry!  And perhaps a bit more LIN 1 reading.  Phew.  I’m really raring to start class though.  I’ve gotten all hopped up on orientations and I’m ready to go give my best and all that, tut tut, cheerio, etc.

September 23rd, 2008 | Tags: friends, games, orientation, taing | Category: school | Comments Off

Woke up feeling much better than yesterday, which was a great surprise! Only had to take one dose of cold medicine all day, and even that I think I could have done without.

So we had our usual morning – rolled out of bed at 9:30 or 10, and headed over to the Teacup to have breakfast with my sister before beginning on our adventures du jour. When we got to the store this morning, my sister was actually across the street overseeing the demolition and digesting the morning’s events (namely: the Health Inspector visited). It was really neat to get to see the new store in a state of progress, with all the old wood beams exposed and counters ripped apart and such. It’s going to be really lovely when it’s all done, and I can’t wait to see it.

After grabbing a bagel at Noah’s and having some tea with Lisa we decided that we had to get some teriyaki en route to the south end, lest I manage to entirely avoid having teriyaki on this trip. Crisis was averted, and the three of us went to my favorite spot, Nasai on the Ave. Had delicious teriyaki and poked around for a backpack at the UW Bookstore where Lewis found a good linguistics book for cheap, and I failed to find anything. About this point we realized that it was too late to go to the Museum of Flight since it was already 3:00 and the museum starts shutting down at 4:30, and we weren’t even in Renton yet.

We actually didn’t end up having time for anything anyway, since we were supposed to be to Steen’s by five for game night. We got caught in a fair bit of traffic leaving the city past three, and our empty take light came on just as we got past Boeing field. We got off I-5 on Marginal Way there and filled up, and then took Interurban (what turns into West Valley Highway) all the way from Boeing to Kent. By the time we made it to downtown Kent it was almost four thirty, and we still had to get all the way to Federal Way. We did stop at the top of the west hill to do a loop around West Fennewick Park, where I got to tell Lewis about all the great adventures we had playing Bad Tennis and walking Eponine as a puppy and shouting dirty words from the hilltop. Ah, childhood. It was nice to see it’s actually getting fancied up over the years!

Made it to Steen’s right on time, and had a very nice night with Steen and Joel, K.I. (of KISUX fame), and her friend Amy. We had tasty spaghetti, and played Settlers of Catan. I played on a team with Lewis cause I didn’t really know what I was doing, and we won! Very exciting. Things sort of turned in there after that, and as it wasn’t particularly late yet, Lewis and I headed hotel-ward via a coffee shop downtown. Ended up trying to find a place in Fremont, and mostly discovering that Fremont is full of bars and Thai restaurants, and not so much coffee shops. But we did find a local chain, Caffe Ladro, which was open all the way till 11:00, and served us very tasty fair! Lewis had a mocha with orange zest… yum. We also had some great conversation about family and friends and life that left me feeling like I had all my loose ends tied up and maybe I’m ready to yet again bit Seattle farewell and strike out on my own in California. Though it’s nice to feel like I can always come home.

Tomorrow we have to drop off our rental car by noon, and then we’re schlepping around town with my sister. I’m hoping to talk her into a market trip, since that’s sort of the last landmark I haven’t hit since being here. But we’ll see. I’ve been pretty easy to tired out these last few days. Which reminds me: sleep!

September 10th, 2008 | Tags: coffee shop, fremont, friends, kent, seattle, tea shop, teriyaki, the ave, vacation | Category: life | Comments Off

Today our big plan was to meet up with Cerise in F-Dub and get ourselves out to Orting to say hello to an old junior high teacher we both TAed for in 9th grade. We stopped off to see my sister and have breakfast at the shop, but she was too busy with her architect for much visiting, so we had our bagel and got on our way. Met up with Cerise at the Barnes and Nobel which Val used to work at on Pac Highway, only to discover that Cerise assumed I had found directions to Orting before we left. I had also wrongly assumed Cerise had directions since she was organizing the trip…

Lewis and I did have a Washington/Oregon map on hand which thankfully at least had the town of Orting listed, so we managed to navigate ourselves (albeit somewhat circuitously) to the town and land on the very doorstep of the middle school we were aiming for! It was funny seeing our old teacher, who was looking much younger and more sprightly than I remember her. It’s funny how old and boring you think your teachers are while you’ve got them, only to discover that they were the age you are now when you had them. It turns out she’s was just 30 when she was teaching at Totem, and didn’t even have kids until after we lost touch.

Feeling inspired by our Orting success (and also our delicious Mexican food lunch) we got ourselves back to Federal Way just in time for high school to be letting out, and for us to stop by another new school to see a favorite old teacher, Mr. A. By the time we found his new school, and classroom, and got checked in and all it was just about time for him to leave, but not before he recommended us a new book and made us all merry with his unhinged sense of reality. Seeing Mr. A is like reminding yourself that there’s a whole different way of looking at life out there. As he rode off into the sunset (literally, after having ridden his bike through the halls at his school) we went back to Barnes and Nobel and Cerise and I each bought a copy of his recommended book. We also spent a few minutes saying hey to Cerise’s mom (another teacher!) at her 1st grade classroom in Auburn. I haven’t seen Judy in ages – it was really nice!

That left us just in time to get over to Steen’s house, for she had made us dinner! Cerise didn’t stay through dinner since her lady was waiting for her at home to make her tasty steak, but it was neat having ¾ of the band in one room at the same time. Lewis and I stayed a bit longer to chat and watch Hot Shots, which Joel had just brought home for Steen. That movie is pretty classic, even if all the jokes are ham-handed and cheap. My cold was catching up to me, so we left pretty early.

Lewis was feeling like getting some reading in at an exciting location so we took a pit stop off in Capitol Hill after getting the name and vague location of a coffee shop from Lonnie. We had a bit of a time finding the place, not having realized that 15th Ave and 15th Ave South were so disparately numbered, but we did eventually make it to the proper cross street and intersection. The Victrola Cafe was very pleasant – good chai, good brownie, nice art, chill clientèle, and grooving music. I made it all the way through this week’s Stranger, which is always a really heartening read for a homesick Laurie.

I’m going to miss Seattle an awful lot after our trip this time. But when do I not?

September 8th, 2008 | Tags: coffee shop, friends, movies, orting, teachers, vacation | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Flowers at the Bellevue Botanical Garden

You can tell my vacation is going well when every post seems to start with a “Yay!”

Today was very chilled out, and we did lots of stuff I had never done before! We started out our day stopping by my sister’s to have a wee sconey breakfast before heading out to lunch with Valdito. Lisa was looking mighty tired, and seemed rather stressed out. It’s hard to know what you can say that will make her feel any better, but I hope she enjoyed having us over this morning, and that her day picked up from there. All this tea shop business can get a little trying and she’s such a trooper it’s always hard when you can see it’s finally starting to get to her.

Anyway, the lunch with Val was a bit awkward at first. I’ve never spent enough time with her husband to get to know him and the times I’ve met him over the years he’s always made a bad impression on me. This was by far the most time I’ve ever spent in close contact with him and I think it really paid off. By the end of our long day today he seemed to be loosening up and not being nearly so combative as when we first hang out. I think perhaps new people or old friends make him nervous; I know I am especially self-conscious when meeting Lewis’ old-timey friends.

So we kicked it off by going to a nice restaurant in cute downtown Issaquah, and then Val took us home to show off their wedding photos. It looks like they had a lovely time in Hawaii, and a lovely wedding, and I was definitely a bit sad that I didn’t have the opportunity to participate. But Val’s life is just how she wants it, and apparently how she wanted it was with only Kelly and her father by her side. I do wish them the best, retrospectively.

After that we took off for the Bellevue Botanical Gardens, which I had never been to. This surprises me a bit, given the field-trip-happy elementary school I went to fairly nearby, and the naturalist-type parents I had at the time. At any rate, the gardens are lovely, like a weensy Northwesty version of the Berkeley Botanical Gardens, and it was a very nice afternoon. I think we may have walked the whole park, and it took us through several wooded and open plains, and they seemed to have tons of fuchsia and hydrangea varieties.

I tried to follow Val’s directions to Lynnwood thereafter so we could go to P.F. Chang’s (where she had a mighty gift certificate to). I got supremely lost, but it turns out I got lost right at the mall. Lewis and I made three or four about-faces and ended up right at the point where we had decided we were lost in the first place. After eventually arriving at the Alderwood Mall we checked out the movie schedule and headed to dinner. Never ended up seeing the movie as I was hoping to get back to our hotel before it got too late so we could finally get some good sleep. And here we are – it’s 11:00 and I’m already back! Many sleeps to come.

All in all it was a relaxing and reassuring day. There were moments in there I was worried I’d never be able to enjoying seeing Val without Brian getting on my nerves, but that fear has abated. I also panicked about ever finding Lynnwood, but we made it there as well! A day of tiny triumphs, and entertaining experiences, and good company for sure.

September 6th, 2008 | Tags: bellevue, friends, gardens, issaquah, lynnwood, sister, vacation | Category: life | Comments Off