More making new friends

I think that I'm successfully starting to make friends.

Last Sunday, I went shoe shopping with a fellow yogini, Kisa, and ended up getting two pairs of boots and a really adorable pair of grown-up shoes!

Best of all though, I made some new friends. I've been walking partway home with Kisa, who goes to the same yoga studio as me, and Saturday morning I mentioned that I was planning on going to Alamo and would she like to go with me. She said yes, she actually needed some new shoes, but that she had to go into work that day. I said that I didn't really need to go immediately, and how was tomorrow, and she said that would be fun!

Tangential question for my friends who can actually write: is there a good way of editing the above paragraph so that it's less "he said, she said," and more engaging?

After spending way too much on shoes (not even going to tell you how much, exactly) we went to a coffee/tea shop next door and chatted over chai. Kisa's friend, Nicole (I think, I'm an awful person but I don't remember), joined us and we chatted some more and got slices of pie.

It was lovely. The shop smelled like Four Seasons in Saratoga Springs, which was one of my favorite places to go have lunch and hang out with people during college. Both of them are theater people of one form or another, so we chatted about that and teaching and other stuff.

Then last night, I went to "Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind,"  the signature performance piece of the Neo-futurists, a theater group in Andersonville. It was hilarious. I met up beforehand at the Hopleaf, a really awesome bar with amazing beers on tap (seems to be a theme around here), frites, and apparently mussels (which I'm going to have to try at a later date) with two other new faculty members with the Northwestern math department: Simon and Anne Marie.

We had a lot of fun being generally geeky and progressively more tipsy off of various Belgian beers. My first beer came in what looked like a small yard glass (a round bulb on the bottom with a narrow middle and flared top) that rested in a separate wood holder. I also got a raspberry flavored beer, which was actually less sweet and more sour, ie it tasted like real raspberries rather than raspberry flavoring. Very excellent. We also got frites and aoli, which were scrumptious.

We walked from there over to join the queue in front of TMLMTBGB. They don't allow reservations, and basically the first 150 people who get there get tokens to redeem for entry. My token was a little plastic police officer. The cost for the performance is $9 plus the roll of a 6-sided die, though they had a 5-sided die (WTF I've never seen one of those before!) for people who had checked in on FB. The inside waiting area is covered with material (a timeline containing historical trivia, pages from the play, pictures of old-time actors) for their current main production, which is based on (not sure how) The Ladder, which is apparently the longest running flop on Broadway (sorry theater friends, I don't know my theater facts).

During the show, they try to perform 30 short plays in 60 minutes in a random order shouted out by the audience. They write the plays/skits themselves and change a random number of them each week, so that the show is really never the same. They didn't finish this time: #'s 25 and 26 didn't get started, and I think it was #8 that they had just started when the buzzer went off. Super high energy and ADD: the perfect middle to a Saturday night should one want to continue into the early morning. We didn't, but it was a good time.

I am a power napper

So what I've been doing lately (unsuccessfully, apparently) is starting posts with snippets of ideas that I have, and then finishing them later. I created this title on Wednesday afternoon, having given an extremely good lecture after a 20 minute power nap that I took sitting in my office chair with my feet propped up. I used to nap a lot in college and I think I'm going to start doing it again. I might even bring in a sleeping bag and pillow.

Why I need to nap: I have the misfortune to be teaching at 8am and 2pm. If I'd known this was so unusual for the Northwestern math department, I would have said something when I first got my teaching assignment. I know, my friends in 9-5 jobs will have little sympathy for this, but teaching that spread out is different then simply having to be at Northwestern during those times. When I teach, I have to be "ON" in the same way that one has to be while performing or playing a competitive sport. It's like having two shows in one day, except that I'm supposed to get stuff done between that requires some serious brain power. It's so hard to transition out of that mindset to settle down and be productive. I am also NOT a morning person, so getting up at 6am to catch a 7am train does nothing for my brain.

Ok, the sleeping bag and pillow would be a little extreme, except that one of my classes is what's called a "common course," meaning that there are multiple sections that happen throughout the day, so the exams have to be taken at a different, common time. Because the undergrads are ungodly busy, this time happens to be 7:30pm on Thursdays. That's when they START. The exams are an hour or an hour and a half, not including those students who get extra time for disabilities, and THEN we grade them immediately following so the students can have their exams back the next day. So I'll probably be grading until almost midnight on days when they have exams, and then teaching at 8am. There's no point in my going home and sleeping for 4 hours, waking up and coming all the way back in, so I really think that I'm going to pack an overnight bag and sleep in my office. Fortunately, they only have two such exams. The final is at a normal time during the day.

Overall, it's going to be an exhausting semester. I'm teaching two different levels of calculus, and the students in both classes are needy in different ways. In one of those classes, I have the students who are petrified of math, and it's my job to explain everything patiently, slowly, and repeatedly. My other class isn't quite the overachievers, but they're mostly people who have done well in school, and not necessarily particularly in math. They can handle the material fine, but they tend to worry too much about the details of examples and grading. These are students whose knee-jerk reaction is to email me with a question before taking a really hard look at their problem.

I have a lot of sympathy for both sets of students, which probably helps me to be a good teacher, but also takes a lot of energy on my part. I am thinking that if the emails don't start dying down next week, that I will have to institute an "email window" when students can expect me to answer emails. They're having a lot of trouble accessing the online assignment system, so I'm glad that they're contacting me ahead of time. However, typing, "Unfortunately, there isn't anything I can do about WebAssign directly, so please email support@webassign.net and let me know if the issue isn't resolved promptly," twenty times gets old.

Enough grousing. One detail that I really like about all of these emails? Their official Northwestern email addresses look like FirstnameLastname201_@u.northwestern.edu, so I can tell what year people are just by their address. It's extremely useful, since I need to give different advice, e.g. for dropping a class, to freshmen vs. seniors.

Another plus: as crazy as quarters here are, they're short. 1/10 done already :)

Waking up to butternut squash soup

Slow cookers are fabulous. Last night I went to sleep having thrown in some half-cooked squash, chicken stock and some herbs, and this morning I woke up to the most amazing smells. I'm not saying that it made getting out of bed any easier, but it certainly made ignoring my alarm clock that much better.

There's also a really fun story behind this particular batch of soup, so what better place for it to be recorded than here?

I meant to make the soup over the weekend. That didn't happen, in part because I didn't go grocery shopping until 10:30 on Sunday night, and also because when I did go shopping, the grocery store didn't have any fresh rosemary or thyme. I even asked someone for help looking for them, and got the usual box-store reply of, "oh, there isn't any on the shelf. I guess we don't have that right now."

So I'm thinking, no biggie, I don't have time to make the soup tonight anyway, so I'll go to the organic food store/juice bar down the street and get some on my way out in the morning. They've got to have tons of herbs. I can make the soup when I get home and have it Monday night for dinner. Well they didn't have much to speak of for herbs and also didn't have any rosemary or thyme.

At this point I'm thinking about sacrificing my tea-ball and just settling for using dried herbs, but it didn't make me happy. (Postscript: get herb ball.)

I continued on to Northwestern where I had an AV orientation in a classroom that I'm going to be teaching in this quarter. Actually, I'm not teaching in there anymore; they switched my room right after my orientation. But anyway, this really nice lady was there to do my orientation, and when I opened my laptop to see if I could get it to connect to the system, there was the butternut squash recipe up on my screen. The AV guru, Natalie, said, "oh, that looks good," and so I replied, "yeah, it's a friend of mine's recipe (it's Chris Towle's). I can email it to you if you'd like." I mentioned that I was going to make it that evening, but that I'd been to two stores and couldn't find any rosemary or thyme, to which Natalie responded that she had some in her garden and I could stop by after work and get some if I wanted to.

So that's exactly what I ended up doing. She met up with me by the L and her boyfriend John picked us both up. I got the quick tour of their apartment, which is really very charming and looks like one of the pseudo-rustic stucco houses that I saw in Germany, and I met their parakeet, Ella, who used to be a lab bird and is going on close to ten years old. Natalie and I went and clipped some herbs and then she gave me a ride back to the L. So not only do I have really fabulous smells to wake up to this morning, but I also made I new friend! Her boyfriend likes to play bridge, so I am going to try to learn. I also might bring over my dominoes and teach them how to play.

Footwear

It's truth-time for my shoes. I have just far enough to walk on a daily basis that if my shoes even sort of give me blisters, I can't wear them. I purged a bunch before moving, but the majority of my shoes still aren't appropriate for city-wear. I'm not talking about the fun heels, but the boots, flats and sneakers that are for everyday wear.

My sneakers are worn out. I know this. I tried running for a bit after my hip surgery and they're left over from that. The soles are probably pretty squashed flat, but the main problem is that there are chunks missing from the padding on the backs of the shoes. My sneakers always do that. It's something about the shape of my heels (I have extra bone growths on the outside edges, which makes the inside edges rub against shoes and wear them out quickly). Actually, my last pair of sneakers had the same problem and it eventually led to my hip surgery. Side story.

I have another pair of sneakers that are fabulous and have been to Europe multiple times with me, but they're definitely going to wear out quickly if I start wearing them regularly again. I also have four pairs of slightly more dressy flats, only one of which is wearable. I purged a bunch of boots that were no longer foot-friendly before moving, and the pair I bought myself at Marshalls are, unfortunately, as cheap as the price I paid for them. One quarter-size blister later, and I'm getting pretty desperate for quality footwear.

So I've come to the realization that I just can't deal with shitty quality shoes anymore. And that means that I have to start spending some real money on shoes and stop shopping at discount stores. No more Payless and no more TJMaxx and Marshalls, though I will admit that they do occasionally have really nice stuff.

I was talking with a girl from my yoga class and she was saying that there's an old-school shoe store called Alamo not too far from where I live. I checked out their website and reviews and it looks like they have all kinds of stuff and sales associates who can actually help you find shoes that work with your feet. I just have to expect to spend real money to get real shoes.

Sneaker Tangent

I was hanging on to an old pair of brown, New Balance sneakers, the backs of which were completely chewed up. I decided to be smart and wear sneakers instead of flipflops to 4th of July fireworks since the park was about a quarter mile away and I wanted to be kind to my feet and knees. I ended up getting really awful blisters on the backs of my heels to the point where I couldn't wear shoes for a jazz class that I went to the next day. I wore socks rolled down to the balls of my feet. I was feeling super limber and kicked a leg higher than I should have and ended up falling flat on my ass.


This would not normally be a big deal. I'm pretty clumsy and I trip and fall all the time. Most recently, I bit it walking off of the beach on a boardwalk and skinned both knees. I managed to give myself pretty good bruises on the bones on my knees too, which are still around (from the beginning of August). This time, however, I managed to tear cartilage in my hip because of how I fell -- on the back side of my hip -- and because I have hip dysplasia from stretching too much (this is most common in large breeds of dogs and dancers).

I didn't find that out immediately. At first I thought I was developing tendinitis and went to see a physical therapist about it. She was smart enough to ask me about any recent falls and suggested that I get an MRI. Bingo. I ended up having a labral tear in my right hip and had surgery in January of 2009. Not fun, but I definitely prefer joint surgery to abdominal surgery.

Meeting People

I've been trying to adopt a "go out and do shit" mentality during the past week. This naturally extends to "go talk to people." Eek.

It's not that I don't like meeting new people. Once I'm talking to people, it usually works out ok. And in my situation - living in a new place not knowing anybody - if it doesn't go ok, I probably don't have to talk to them again if I just avoid going where I met them. I don't know though. Something about repeatedly walking up to strangers, introducing myself, and trying to say enough about me that people get why I'm talking and asking questions without over-explaining and sounding self-absorbed -- well it gets old after a few repetitions.

I've met a lot of people over the past few days. I had an orientation last week for new faculty in Weinberg College (the college of Northwestern that I'm working in) and met a lot of fellow faculty. That was pretty easy since most of the people there were in a new place. There are a surprising number of new math faculty.

I also wandered around the math department and met people there: faculty who I've been emailing, coordinators for the courses I'm teaching, department admins, my teaching mentor, the chair (actually, she stopped by my office today and unfortunately I was too absorbed in what I was doing to be a particularly good conversationalist).

I've been chatting with people at yoga a bunch, but people at yoga classes do tend to chat a bunch. I almost feel like I'm going through a probationary period since it's pretty normal for people to start taking classes for a few weeks and then stop. We'll see if I end up making friends there. I've found that it generally takes a pretty long time to befriend people through yoga or dance classes since you don't actually spend time during class socializing. I'm definitely still enjoying the yoga itself, and how it can simultaneously get me out of and into my own head. It's more like it gets me out of whatever rut I'm stuck in and back to the larger picture.

My great success of today, though, was stopping by the dance department at Northwestern. I just decided to suck it up and go wander over to the arts complex, and I managed to find a few studios (don't know if there are more) and the dance office. There were two faculty there who were really friendly and helpful, and it turns out that yes, depending on space, faculty can come take classes. One of them even mentioned that they're always looking to collaborate between departments, and I have to say that I'd be seriously interested in getting back into the type of cerebral choreography I played with during college. I have no idea what exactly, but that's what collaboration's for, I guess.

Not to sound entirely pathetic, but I can't wait to have friends around here. Acquaintances and coworkers are fine, but I want to be able to hang out and get a beer on the weekends and just shoot the shit with people. I don't mind spending time by myself but I'm definitely edging up on my limit for alone time.

Success!

I went to check out a yoga place down the street this evening and had a really great time! I decided to take a "basics" class because it's been so long since I've practiced regularly. It was a really good decision. On top of being out of shape, my body's pretty out of whack because of all of the physical and emotional stress it's been under lately. It was great to take a class where I could focus on what I was doing without having to worry about pacing myself or whether I was going to have to modify something.

The same teacher has a Hatha class on Saturday morning that she thought I'd like, so I'm going to go to that (it's 9:30-11) and then swing by the farmers market on the way home for some ciabatta bread and seasonal fruit. Yay city living :)

Checklist

Things to do in subsequent posts, hopefully soon:

• post pictures of my apartment,
• chronicle my Search for Furniture, including craigslist adventures,
• talk about meeting people, or not, alone in a new city (Kraig's going back to Boston until October starting tomorrow),
• New City - Exercise Edition where I review the various Pilates, yoga and dance classes I've checked out so far.

I'm telling you so I'll either remember, or you'll bug me about it :)

New City - Food Edition

The cats are finally starting to settle into the new apartment. I got them one of the cardboard scratch pads on a recent trip to Target and loaded it up with the catnip that comes with it, which I think helped them to relax. Their scratching post/jungle gym is set up in front of one of the big livingroom windows, and so far they love people-watching.

I'm feeling about the same as the cats: give me some good food and a stroll through a neighborhood antique store and I'm happy as a clam. As soon as something comes along to upset me, though, and I'm edgy and anxious again. However, things are going pretty well overall and I'm getting used to the new apartment quickly. My favorite thing about Chicago so far: the food!

St. Andrew's Inn is on Broadway (the main drag nearest to my place) around the corner and they're probably going to end up being our main hang-out location. They have over a hundred beers available and provide boardgames for customers to use. Kraig and his parents and I went there for dinner after the driving and unloading, and the food is excellent. Probably not a particularly varied selection for my vegetarian friends, but they accommodated Kraig's mom's gluten allergy very well.

For my vegetarian friends: there's a rice and noodle restaurant a bit farther away (by the Granville stop, one north from us), though still in walking distance, that Kraig and I stumbled upon this evening that was also fabulous. Most of the dishes have a choice of chicken, tofu, or other meats (or none at all), and I'm happy to report that their portions are large enough for two meals and that they do indeed know how to cook their vegetables. There is also another vegan (I think, or possibly just vegetarian) restaurant on Broadway close by, but I haven't been there yet.

For those who want burgers: Moody's pub has a limited but very tasty menu and seriously atmospheric lighting. I haven't quite decided what their hook is, but I think they generate a loyal following. The dining area is so dark that it takes a few minutes of letting your eyes adjust to be able to read the menu and it's decorated in a slightly goth, old-school Irish pub sort of way. Moody's also has the benefit of being the closest to our apartment. It's tied with St. Andrew's for actual walking distance, but we can see their patio across the alley from our porch.

We have a Dominick's (local grocery chain) across the street on Broadway, and there's a weekend farmers market down the street that runs every Saturday morning though the end of October.There's a lovely Mexican restaurant that we've been to a few times now by the Bryn Mawr stop (one south from us) that is also extremely good for gluten free food. When we ate there with Kraig's parents, the manager told us about how her husband has a nut allergy and that she always provides customers with photographs of the gluten free labels on their products.

Other local restaurants we need to check out: two different, and supposedly very good, Ethiopian restaurants; a sushi and Thai place on Broadway; a bubble-tea and pastry shop near our L stop that's been closed since we first came to the neighborhood. It looks like they didn't know to get the appropriate permits when they opened up and now are closed pending such-and-such approval. There are tons of Indian, Greek and Middle Eastern restaurants around, along with the usual American pizza and sandwich shops.

Wrapping up back with the kitties: there's a dog and cat grooming shop whose primary services I have no intention of using, but it looks like they might carry the kind of dry food I usually feed my cats (a zero-grain, weight management food by Innova).

I've heard that Chicago is a very good food city, and so far I have to agree. The worst food that we've had here has simply been mediocre, and would probably be acceptable if not for all of the other amazing food around. I'm looking forward to doing more research on the subject!