Day 1!

First day of the presession today (a short session of three 3-day courses before the read deal kicks off). Of course, every one of my courses got moved to a different room, so I had to do a bit of running around (on this GIANT CAMPUS), and one of the three got flat-out cancelled for today.

It's all good in the end, though. The courses I did have ("Intro to ERP Studies of Language" and "Logic for Linguists") were both pretty basic today. The ERP class was all neuroscience, which I've been doing more or less nonstop for the past year, and the Logic class was just building up a foundational logic, which I've done in at least 3 other classes. No matter, though, both of them look like they'll get interesting and challenging pretty quickly (read "tomorrow").

I finally managed to get my hands on a calling card and talk to AM (twice!). I also let my folks know that I'm here in one piece.

I'm hoping to catch a show in San Francisco sometime this month...I took a quick peak at Pollstar and have found a couple of potential candidates: Tegan & Sara, Neville Staples (ex-vocalist from The Specials), The Squirrel Nut Zippers...I'm checking some other nearby cities now (San Jose, Santa Cruz).

On a different note, it turns out that my secret (from my wife) plan to start a semi-rigorous program of exercise will come to fruition (although it's plainly no longer a secret). I had been hoping to start running and just run a little bit every day for the duration of the institute, but let's face it; anyone who really knows me knows pretty well what the likelihood of that is. HOWEVER...it turns out that Alan (you remember my roommate, right?) has brought along not one, but two tennis racquets, and is looking for a partner. Now I'm the furthest thing from a tennis player, but I do love to watch it (remember that scene from Days of Thunder when Bobby Duvall asks Tom Cruise what his NASCAR experience is, and he says something like "ESPN has excellent coverage"?), and I've done alright with other racquet sports in the past. So...exercise it is, starting tomorrow afternoon, if all goes according to plan.

That's it for now, reader(s). It's getting late and I still have some stuff to read for tomorrow's ERP class.

Be excellent to each other.