The Laursonian Institute

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Valentines Day was yesterday, and it was very excellent!  It felt so nice to take a whole day off and not worry about getting any work done or anything.  Double nice since it’s a three day weekend – woot!  Anyway, we had a wonderful day yesterday.  I sorta surprised (as much as possible, anyway) Lewis with a blueberry-cornbread breakfast (with heart-shaped eggs!), and we had a really lovely slow morning.  Took an excellent drive around for the afternoon, so Lewis could show me Capay valley.  Actually we hit up the Putah Creek Cafe in Winters first, which is such a wonderful spot.  I love me a good diner!  Not to mention, someone cute gave me an adoreable little pocket duck I named Percival.   Anyway, after waiting for a squall to pass, we eventually did go get our drive.  We got some great vistas of the stormy cloudscape, but got rained on only infrequently.  Came home and watched some cheesy movies to top it off, and altogether had a great Valentine’s Day.

Today was a work day, but very pleasant.  Work went well, got all the reading and grading I wanted out of the way, and even had time to watch a movie!   Saw Frida, and it was excellent… much better than I had anticipated even, and really great cinematography.  Also made some squash chili,  which was good as ever.   It’s been so surprisingly difficult to make anything with vegetables lately, it’s great to get a little nutrient in my dinner.  Hurrah for cooking!

February 15th, 2009 | Tags: cooking, diner, movies, valentines | Category: life | Comments Off

Oh beloved Friday, you have come to bless me again.

Class was great today.  We started semantics and it was really bueno.  I haven’t done semantics formally before, so it’s great to get a little primer before I take semantics next quarter from the same professor.  I’m really looking forward to it!

Had a delightfully social day after that.  Dionne came by my office hours to chat about our plan for next week to see if we needed to prep anything this afternoon.  We didn’t – hurrah!  Lewis came by shortly thereafter, and then we met up with fellow grad student Ariel to chat a bit about how classes are going and set up a Friday drinks plan for one of the upcoming weeks.  She’s in our 260 class with us, so it was nice to comisserate about certain things together.  She also is TAing this semester, and we’ll be TAing together in the spring.  Woot.

Sessions actually did pretty well!  Much better than Wednesday, despite feeling like it was going to be a flop.  Seems like maybe the Friday kids are whittling down to just the few who want to participate whereas maybe the Wednesday session still attracts those who feel like they should attend but don’t really want to.  Not sure.  Anyway, it’s always relieving to have another week behind us, and moving on towards the weekend.  Next week in sessions we’re talking about semntics, so that’ll be a bit of trouble, but after blazing through syntax today and for once feeling like I know what I’m doing, I’m read to tackle semantics for sure.

Came home and had some vino with Lewis while watching out most recently netflixed movie, Buster Keaton’s “The General”.  How much do I love Buster Keaton?  A lot!  I laugh so much more in his silent movies than I do most of the contemporary “comedies”.  It’s really amazing how much he can do with his face, and how acrobatic he is!  Good times had by all, for sure.  I’m hoping to get a few household-type projects done this weekend in addition to the regular work load.  I think I worked too hard last weekend and it really burned me out this week.  So I’m going to make cider this weekend, and attempt Clare Hall Soup #1.  Really not sure what I’m doing there, but it’s always worth a go.  Maybe some day I’ll figure out their secret daily-changing-but-always-sort-of-the-same recipe!  Also have a little home maintenance to do with the landlord/inlaws, and maybe my first sewing fix-it project.  Oo – and if we can borrow a car — to the you-pick pumpkin patch!!

What good stuff I have in store!  Yay!

October 17th, 2008 | Tags: class, crafts, movies, pumpkins, semantics, syntax, taing | Category: home, life, school | 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