Moving!

Hi to anyone who reads this blog. I've moved over to WordPress because Blogger isn't sufficiently supported on iPads and I want to be able to blog while sitting on the couch instead of hunched over my computer. Plus I really don't like the new blogger format. I don't know that I even liked the original one. WordPress is way better. Anyway, it's the same url, just replacing "blogspot" with "wordpress:"

dancingmathprofessor.wordpress.com

I've moved everything over already. Happy reading!

Looking up

Things have, indeed, gotten better. As I'm sure is no surprise to anyone, most of the improvements have to do with Kraig and me honing our puppy skills.

I spent an hour yesterday afternoon chatting with my mom on the bed in my room with the dog gated off in the livingroom and diningroom. I needed a break away from her company. Mom had some good suggestions that my sleep-deprived brain hadn't come up with, like putting something that smelled like us out for her to curl up with. Finally, I have something to do with Kraig's stinky hockey shirts other than gag while putting them in the washing machine!

Anyway, that worked. We also talked about whether she was leashed trained or not, and I realized that, no, she's not the least bit leash trained, and that what Kraig and I were expecting of her on walks was simply not realistic. I also tried using her kibbles as treats instead of the "grain-free, organic chicken" treats we bought her as a present. I thought we'd adopted a mutant dog who didn't like treats. Turns out, those things were just crap (and also didn't agree with her stomach). Now all we have to do to get her attention is hold up a kibble. I spent 10 minutes with her on-leash walking slowly around the apartment next to me, sitting whenever I stopped walking. Success! I even got her to do it twice outside this morning when she went out to pee. It's still a bit too busy outside during the day to expect her to focus, but I'm going to keep working inside and hopefully it'll translate naturally to her walks once she gets the hang of it.

The VERY BEST bit of progress from yesterday is that she SLEPT BY HERSELF IN THE LIVINGROOM!!! Kraig and I have been taking turns sleeping on the couch and keeping her company, which sucks, and last night we decided that she was used to the house and was going to have to suck it up and deal. She whined for about an hour (apparently; I passed out immediately) and then settled down and slept through the night without any accidents. She was even still asleep when we went to take her out in the morning, so maybe we can sleep in a little on weekends.

At the moment she's playing contentedly with her tennis ball and fabric frisbee in and around my office while Kraig showers and shaves. I'm optimistic that I'll be able to get some work done later today while she amuses herself. She's figured out a neat trick of picking up the ball wrapped inside of the frisbee so that she can carry them both around at the same time. She has a seriously adorable puppy prance when she's proud of herself.

Kids have GOT to be easier than this

It's been a rough day with the dog. Given the following my posts about her on Facebook have received, I am not saying anything about it there. The LAST thing I feel like getting is a barrage of sympathy and advice and, "Don't worry, it will get better!" Damn fucking straight it'll get better. It still sucks now.

This morning started fine. Serif nosed me when she woke up and needed to go out to pee around 7am. Kraig and I are taking turns sleeping on the couch in the living room with her. She doesn't like crates because of her previous owners who kept her locked in one all the time, and she isn't secure enough to sleep in her bed in the living room. She'll sleep in our bedroom eventually, but for now that's the cats' territory.

I drove to Northwestern with her this morning to meet with a student. Also fine, though she's shy now that she has "her people." She met my student and the department admin, and after my meeting I went outside to take her back to the car and home. She was being really fractious outside because the area around the math department is so busy. I was waiting for her to calm down to pee and looking around thinking, "where's my car? Did I park somewhere else?" Normally this is the case; I routinely forget where I've parked and think my car's been towed. This time it really had been towed. There's street cleaning every third Monday of the month. Instead of just leaving a ticket like Chicago, however, Evanston tows immediately.

So I freak out because now I have a misbehaving dog who won't pee because she's too distracted outside and no way to get home (dogs aren't allowed on the trains anyway and OH BOY am I not getting on a noisy train platform with a skittish dog who doesn't even like squeaky toys because they make noise). Oh and I left my cell phone plugged in by the bed because I wasn't sleeping there and so didn't grab it when I woke up like I normally would.

Solution: head back to the office and enlist Kraig's aid via gchat. He's at work 2 hours away via public transportation. So he stops at home to get spare keys and look up the license plate number (haven't bothered to memorize it yet since moving to IL). He had lunch while he was home, figured out that the plate number is not on the car title or the insurance paperwork, found it on our garage lease, and then left to go get the car -- without the spare keys.

So then Kraig takes a train and a bus to the lot where the car is, figures out he doesn't have the keys, and then has to take a taxi to the math department where I've been holed up with the dog in my office. Fortunately, my friend Bethany who also works at Northwestern is an angel and brought me some grilled cheese for lunch (comfort food!!!).

I went out to take Serif home at 11:30am. We'd been there since 9:20am. By the time Kraig, Serif, and I got home, it was almost 4pm and we were all EXHAUSTED.

And now, she just took a big, liquidy shit on the carpet in my office. Oh the joys of pet ownership. Either the shelter didn't give us the same food that she's been on, the treats don't agree with her, or all of the stress has mixed up her digestion (probably a bit of all three -- she doesn't care for the treats much).

Tomorrow we have a vet appointment at 10am and then I am staying home for the rest of the day with her and relaxing. It's supposed to be super hot out so there isn't any point in taking her on any kind of significant walk. Fortunately, it's Kraig's turn to sleep on the couch tonight, because I'm exhausted.

Oh yeah, did I mention that I left my Petit Ecolier by the windowsill out of reach of the dog last night and they're melted today? Sigh...

How to "seduce" your SO

It seems like people in long-term relationships, and especially married people, frequently complain that their sex life isn't as busy as it was way back when they first met, and in the case of married people, before they got married. Here are my suggestions for how to get your special someone so riled up that they simply can't resist you:

1. Do random little nice things for them. This will make them like you and think kindly of you. It's entirely possible that they'll stop leaving the room when you enter, giving you more seduction opportunities. They may even start reciprocating and doing nice things for you, and then you might start to like them more as well.

2. Treat them with respect and support their ambitions. This will make them feel good about themselves. How does that work to your advantage? Well, people are more likely to feel sexy when they are confident and happy with themselves, and remembering that you're to thank for this new-found self-esteem will make them that much more susceptible to your charms.

3. Make sure your personal hygiene and general physical appearance are comparable to what they were when you two first met. I know, I know, why should you make an effort when you've already got a stable thing going? First, this will make you feel more confident, and make you more likely to close the deal with aplomb. Second, despite loving all of your imperfections and being used to your slovenly state after so long together, even an indifferent mate is going to notice an extra 150 lbs and gingivitis. Go hit the gym and get that cute butt back.

4. Pick your sexy moments with care. Birthdays and anniversaries are a good time to ramp up your seduction (see steps 1-3). Some bad times to move in for the coup de gras include any time your SO is exhausted after a long day, more than 36 hours after you last had a shower, any time you're in public or at a relative's/friend's house (unless they were into that kind of thing back when you were having sex regularly), and whenever they are annoyed with you because of something you did. This last part is especially tricky, since you may or may not have any way of knowing when your mate is irritated with you (depending on how prone they are to throwing household objects). Hopefully, steps 1 and 2 above should make these moments less frequent and of a lesser duration. If you are truly diligent with your seduction, especially with step 3, sexy moments will eventually begin to present themselves naturally when your SO approaches you for sex. Do your utmost to encourage these occurrences.

5. Lastly, once you've followed the other steps and your special someone is raring to go, make sure you beef up your bedroom skills and bring your A-game to the tussle. Everyone loves good sex (yes, even your asexual SO) so they'll be back for more if they like what they got the first time.

What about all of the classic approaches that involve getting them drunk, doing it when they're asleep, or conning them with expensive presents? These approaches can certainly work, but only occasionally and with mixed effectiveness. They are, in particular, either costly or borderline illegal. My approach promises consistent results and will actually work better the longer you employ these techniques. They will even make you less likely to be on the receiving end of legal action from your partner.

Enjoy your seduction!

Mental Health Day

Kraig and I took a mental health day today. This is something that my mom let my brothers and me do when we were in school (mostly high school) when our workloads or extracurricular life got overwhelming and we just needed a day to catch up or unwind. Neither Kraig nor I had to go into work today, and since we've been running non-stop since the beginning of January (probably longer for Kraig), we went out for dinner last night, split a bottle of wine, and slept late today.

Then I sat down with the interwebs and taught myself how to purl. (It's a stitch used in knitting.) Actually, if you go to your closet and find a sweater, chances are that large parts of it are knit with a purl stitch. It's the one that looks like rows and rows of nested v's. I'm getting pretty obsessed with this knitting stuff. It's really nice to have a hobby where I can decide when and where I'm going to do it, and have something physical to show for a half-hour's work. It's also pretty mindless if you're working on easy stuff (which I am for the moment). I have a few projects in mind to do, and hopefully by xmas time, I'll be good enough to make people their gifts! Let me know if there's something you'd like and I'll try to figure it out by then :p

Holly is a big fan of my knitting. She likes to sit next to me and keep an eye on the working end of the yarn (the part that gets jerked around as I loop it around the knitting needles). I had a scrap piece of yarn that got turned into a cat toy earlier today. The only down-side for the cats is that my hands are busy while I'm knitting, so they don't actually get petted.

On a related cat note, I recently got a carpet remnant to put down on the floor in my office just to add a bit of softness, and it is already coated in cat hair. I'm going to have to vacuum in here twice a week just to keep it from looking completely disreputable. Le sigh.

Full Day

Quick blog entry before I sit down to prep my lectures for tomorrow and grade some quizzes. I just had a really good, full day.

I went to a ballet class this morning, which was great. There's a studio right off of the train stop where I get off for Northwestern, and one of the co-owners does a once-a-week advanced/pro ballet class. My right leg/hip is still being bothersome, but at least my over-stretched/pulled hamstring seems to be getting better. I've been careful about trying not to overtax my hips in general. It occurred to me last week that it's been almost a year exactly since I was "training," i.e. staying in good enough shape to perform. I'm not necessarily trying to get to that point again, but it's going to take some consistent effort to build up the strength to dance without having to worry about blowing things up (things generally being joints and ligaments).

Then I moseyed over to my office where I started looking into the various details of grants that I want to apply for and conferences that I want to attend. A month ago I was worried that I wasn't hearing about conferences anymore. Now there are three that I want to go to, all between March and June of this year, and in three different countries. I'm pretty sure that I'll manage to go to two out of three of them, though I'm not sure which two that will be. It was a little overwhelming at the time, but overall it's more motivation to WRITE MY DAMN PAPERS!

After finishing up in the department, including going to tea (department social hour) and having a great conversation with a grad student about adopting/fostering dogs from shelters in the Chicago area, I went to a yarn shop with a member of my cohort, Anna Marie, and bought some lovely dandelion-yellow yarn and a pair of knitting needles. Anna Marie happens to be a whiz knitter, and I've decided that I could use a hobby that is productive, portable, and potentially mindless. So yeah, I'm learning how to knit. So far I can cast on and do a slightly uneven garter stitch. Sweet :)

Happy New Year!

Time for some resolutions? Definitely. And what better place to record them than my oft neglected blog?

1. I will write here more often. I'll aim for once a week, except for possibly when I'm writing exams.
2. I will track my food daily and my weight weekly on WW. 
3. I will attend yoga and dance classes at least twice a week.
4. I will prep for classes and write quizzes and exams ahead of time and not at the last minute. I will also not spend more time writing exams than I need to.
5. I will write three or more papers this year (two of these should have been finished last summer). 
6. I will not feel guilty about scheduling "me time," understanding that it will ultimately make me more productive. 
7. I will keep in touch with my friends by email, phone, or in person.
8. I will always have a "just-for-fun" book that I am reading. 

 2011 was jam-packed full of life changes, so here's to a less eventful 2012.

Explorations in Food

Chicago's a great city for food. You can pretty much assume that any restaurant that's been around for more than 6 months is good, since otherwise nobody would eat there and it would go out of business. Kraig and I have continued to find restaurants in our neighborhood that we like, but the most exciting food thing we've been doing lately actually has more to do with the food that we're making at home.

An organic foods store down the street offers half and full farm shares each week that includes vegetables and fruit (there's an optional expanded fruit share). They also do a meat share, but we haven't tried that yet. For the past few weeks, we've been getting shares (mostly half, for the two of us, but a full one if we're having company) and the result is that we constantly have tons of really good produce in the house. We're basically forced to cook at home most nights, since otherwise we wouldn't even be able to eat a half-share quickly enough to keep the food from going bad. We're also eating a larger variety of foods since what we get varies from week to week and we don't fall into the trap of going food shopping on auto-pilot.

What we get from week to week varies a lot, so it's hard to give you an idea of what we're getting. Generally, though, we get a head of lettuce and possibly also cabbage or kale (kale chips=AMAZING snack) along with some potatoes (russet or red), a few apples and carrots. They might throw in a few bananas or grapefruits. We've been getting various squashes and small pumpkins lately along with a zucchini or two, as well as beets, turnips (surprisingly yummy), green beans, and a few tomatoes and possibly shallots or onions. We got a huge clump of cilantro the first week that we did not make it all the way through, and some basil the week after that that I think ended up in a stew.

We pick up the half or whole share from the store on Friday evenings (it's about 3 blocks away), but this week, since Thanksgiving is a big food day, they're having people pick them up on Wednesday instead. Doesn't that make so much sense? Amazing. I just hope that there are more green beans and some sweet potatoes. ::crosses fingers::

Proud of Myself Today

Hi all. Sorry I haven't posted at all in a really long time. The quarter has swallowed me. Fortunately, my last lecture is on Monday, so things are starting to wrap up. I have lots to write about, so I'll try to start doing that regularly again.

I'm feeling super positive right now, so I wanted to share/record the feeling. Here's the back-story: I've been on Weight Watchers since the beginning of August because I realized that, with all of the excessive amounts of exercise I got as a teenager and through college, I never learned to regulate what I ate. I always sucked down as much food as I could get my hands on, and if I started to feel a little chunky, I'd eat salads for a week and be back to normal. During grad school I started swinging between weeks where I would pig out and weeks when I would starve myself to try to "diet," and I eventually found myself miserable and starting to hate food. In particular, I was starting to hate going out to eat/having dinner with friends because I knew that I would inevitably eat too much and feel sick for hours afterward.

Well, Weight Watchers has worked. I still pig out sometimes, but I'm more conscious about only doing it rarely and picking better foods to pig out on. The rest of the time, I'm eating consistent meals from day to day. I still get the occasional day or two when I feel hungry and "diet-brained," but for the most part I've found that I can live long term with my new eating habits.

I weighed myself this morning, and I have officially made my 10% weight loss goal. (WW has this thing where they say that pretty much everyone should lose 10% of their body weight. I don't know that I believe it in general, but it was definitely true for me.) More importantly, I'm back at my "pretend weight," meaning the weight that I used to lie and put on audition forms and that I think of as "my weight." I haven't actually weight this little since before college (not counting my junior and senior years of college when, let's face it, I wasn't doing too well on the eating disorder spectrum). I also retook my measurements that I haven't checked since I signed up in August, and I've lost almost three inches from my waist, two from my thighs, one and a half from my hips, and half an inch from my arms. My clothes finally fit again and I feel like I recognize my own body when I look in the mirror.

I'm still going to go for another couple pounds of weight loss before I start focusing on maintaining my weight, but mostly so that I can eat a lot over the holidays without feeling like a stuffed pig.

I also think that next spring/summer I'm going to try the couch to 5k program that a friend of mine did recently. (Read her blog!) I might be feeling better about my overall body, but I'm still in woefully bad cardiovascular shape. I've never been able to run without feeling like I've been hit by a truck, but maybe following a structured, well-paced program will help me ease into it.

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!

Posting Fail

Damn, I've gone more than ten days without posting. Sorry! I'll try not to let it happen again, but I'm still getting used to doing this regularly.

At the moment I have an excuse: I'm cleaning and purging my apartment pre-packing. It's miserable. I'm fairly satisfied that I've gotten rid of most of my personal belongings that I have no desire to take with me. I just have a box that I've been dumping souvenir-type stuff into since high school that I have to sort through so that it's not over-flowing. There's still a good amount of Kraig's stuff that he has to go through, and lots of jointly-owned junk. Especially excess kitchen equipment. Anyway, all of this is exceptionally boring and I don't particularly feel like remembering it.

In good news, my brother Tom and his fiance Jess are coming over this weekend to help us pack, because they are the awesome-est people EVER! Actually, I find that there are quite a few awesome-est people in my life at the moment, but they are among the awesome-est... We are going to hunker down with pizza and beer (sorry weight watchers) and dust, sort, pack, and label. Hopefully while listening to some sweet-ass tunes.

In other news: I went to a ballet class last night at Studio Ballet of Hudson. It was a great class and it felt really good to be dancing again (and in the studio space that I grew up learning ballet in, no less) but I am WOEFULLY out of shape. I really hope I can find a convenient ballet class in Chicago that's right for me: something laid-back and more technique/placement/organic-focused than the typical classical ballet classes one finds. I'm also thinking about checking out Gyrokenesis. The Pilates is working really well for core strength, but I'm finding it harder and harder not to use my large muscle groups while dancing/living in general.

Serendipity

Up until recently, I've liked to keep all of my various email in separate accounts. Well, now I have five different email addresses and it's just too much for my poor brain to remember what's gone to which inbox, so I'm cleaning house and moving everything to my gmail account. Another impetus for this is that I've finally gotten comfortable using gmail's filter/label/search tools.

I was just starting to go through my old hotmail account and unsubscribe from the various email lists that I no longer read. I used to reserve this account for "junk-like, but requested" email, but I never check it anymore anyway. The first email that I opened to unsubscribe from was my horoscope. I used to read mine daily. I don't know that I took it seriously, but it amused me to see if I could relate its predictions to my life. Here's today's:

"You are juggling lots of things today -- people, projects and more. That can be great, but for now, it's harder than usual for you to deal with things that are complicated. Try to just keep juggling!"

Spot on. Maybe I'll keep getting these?