First day of first grade

Wow.... what an emotional experience this was.

Today was August's first day of first grade. His school had a ceremony where all the 8th graders gave each of the incoming 1st graders a rose.

To be honest I was dreading it because I'm such a dark cynic. When the moment came though, I was blubbering like a baby when he got his rose.

Spectacular combination of curse words

I went out for Korean BBQ with two friends last night. One of these guys unleashed the most spectacular combination of curse words I have ever heard.  It's only four words long, and only two of the words are actual profanities.  Nevertheless, the combination was masterful.  Bravo, Yune.

 

Semantic access from multiple modalities

Here's the result of our fmri conjunction analysis between naming an object  from an environmental sound (e.g., barking) vs naming an object from a picture. 

We did the analyses in SPM and the surface rendering in SUMA/AFNI.   I love this result.  Writing it up now....

Liberated from EndNote

I think I might have successfully liberated myself from EndNote.  I deleted a reference today and it staggered 75 other references into the wrong place.  I've finally had enough.  Everything was ported over to Mendeley successfully. Fingers crosssed!

Goodbye K23 DC010197

I finished my K23 career development award on July 31 (Structure of Semantic Memory and its impairment in Aphasia and Dementia).  This was my first grant from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.  I learned so many great things and am so proud of the work I did under this award. It protected my research time, provided resources, and really allowed me to develop as an investigator.  Everyone at NIDCD was so supportive and kind. I would recommend this grant mechanism to any junior scientist. 

Gaius Baltar is my president

I've almost finished a terribly unhealthy binge of Battlestar Gallactica on Netflix. Gaius is *by far* my favorite character. Looking forward to seeing if Admiral Adama is the 13th Cylon.  If you ruin it for me I will unleash the fury.  

Houseboat in Amsterdam this summer

I'm heading to Amsterdam at the end of this summer for the Neurobiology of Language Conference. Here's something awesome. It's actually cheaper to rent a houseboat than to pay for separate hotel rooms for my lab. Ergo we successfully rented a houseboat. This is a 4 bedroom boat near the Tulip Market on one of the central canals.

Here's my bedroom for the week.... How awesome is this?!

Give me the 'David Lynch'

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The last couple of years I've had long hair approaching that of David Foster Wallace style. I went insane yesterday and had it all chopped.

The radical part of this move was the selective chopping. It involved a buzz cut with a #1 guard around the sides and back allowing some serious length in the front.  

In many respects this style is a reverse mullet.  It's also a throwback to the Echo & the Bunnymen era of the late 1980s. That was quite a magical time in my life, and I'm glad to relive it with this bizarre hairstyle.  

The stylist worked from exhibit A (David Lynch circa Twin Peaks) to produce exhibit B.  She nailed it!

7 years old

Here's the Once and Future King, August, on his 7th birthday.  

This picture was from his school birthday party where they dressed him up like a little king.  

So proud of my boy!