...and we're back

Hello there, Cyberspace (that seems to be a severely underused word these days)!

It has been a while since I have posted, as things got a little hectic at school. But, I have survived and managed to pull in A's! I am particularly proud of the final project I put together in Language and Cognition--a research design with a goal to uncover the spatial categorizations that peoples with different native languages implicitly possess. The design improves upon our class study by avoiding a preference for English-like romanized forms, implementing a well-established artificial orthographic system and lexicon--Klingon! If interested, you can read my paper. My friend, Omara Kurtzdorfer, converted the original video stimuli (used in the class study) to Flash animations that make it more clear what parts of the actions to focus on. She's amazing!

I am planning on expanding this paper into my M.A. thesis and so I'll be working on that to some extent this summer. I will also be working on improving my Python programming skills and reviewing Japanese, since I plan on picking it back up at SDSU next semester! I am super excited about that. I am reviewing the textbook that they use as well as practicing with Rosetta Stone. I also enrolled in an evening Voice class at a local community college just for fun (and to improve my Rock Band top score)!

It's summer now and I've started out by finishing a game I had started near the beginning of the summer--Indigo Prophecy (also known as Fahrenheit pretty much everywhere else besides the States). It is an original XBOX game and the spiritual sequel to Sony PS3's Heavy Rain. Now that I am done with IP, I wish I weren't so poor so I could acquire a PS3 and Heavy Rain. I am hoping to find a summer job, but I've decided not to settle for a job that would just make me miserable. I went around school during finals week and gave my C.V. to anyone who would take it, applied for a retail position with Rosetta Stone, and applied to be a summer day camp aide with the City of La Mesa. Hopefully one of those will contact me, but, if not, I am thankful that I have the resources to survive and take it easy until the fall semester starts, when there are more employment opportunities for grad students at the Uni. I am hoping there will be more money in the budget this upcoming academic year, so we grads can pretty much all become employed in the department.

It's graduation time and quite a few of my linguist buddies have graduated. Congratulations to all of them! I missed out on the ceremony since I had plans of my own, including my mom coming into town, but rest assured that I am quite proud of them.

I will be throwing a party next weekend in celebration of what will hopefully be a great summer. It will have been the first party I have thrown, and I like to think of it as a belated house-warming party, being that we moved in at our current abode about one year ago!

Oh, last, and definitely not least, my pal Holly has re-joined the school gym so now I have a regular gym buddy! We plan on going pretty much every day and also hitting up the Aquaplex. My favorite cycling instructor is teaching a water aerobics class every Sunday morning this summer, so I am looking forward to that.