New Year's Wishes

I don't think New Year's Resolutions work. I've been a regular gym goer long enough to see what happens around Valentine's day: 6 weeks after they've been all excited about working out, getting into shape, whatever, over half of those enthusiastic people are no where to be seen.

I also found this year that I didn't really want stuff for Christmas. I have enough and my house is full. What I really wanted was to spend meaningful time with the people I care about. And I got that. Don't get me wrong, there is stuff I want or need in this world, but almost none of it would be rendered more meaningful because a friend or family member spent money on it.

So. For New Year's I have some wishes.

1. I am hoping for a sense of academic direction: lately I've felt a bit aimless and lost in my work. Now that I'm done with classes, I'm hoping that rather than becoming a slug person, watching Mad Men reruns, knitting, and eating pasta in my increasingly dirty apartment, I will instead get excited about my work again, and charge forward in a confident research direction.

2. I am hoping for the possibility of living in the same place as my husband.

3. I would like to spend more time with the people who are important to me.

4. It would be great if one of the multiple conferences I have sent abstracts to will say "yes, please come show us how smart you are."

5. I would like to be more goal directed in my fitness. Things sort of fell to bits after the race back in October, and I would like to get that back, without the burn out that I had in the highest mileage weeks before it. I would also like to have energy and fit better into my pants.

6. I would like to not feel guilty about knitting. Not guilty enough that I am able to start knitting with groups of knitters in London. That would be awesome.

Happy New Year's!

Stuff I Learned Today

1. Irony is only ironic if everyone gets it. While this is a lesson that I learned in the course of reading dense literary/cultural theories of how we communicate in these post-modern times, it is also an important lesson for social networking.

2. Sometimes a day just has to be written off as a research loss. I had 0 attention span today. Indeed 0 seems a bit generous. It was so bad I was afraid I was sucking other people into my black hole of aimlessness.

3. Markers might make everything better. Okay, probably not, but I picked some up nonetheless. These.

4. Just because you get back on the horse doesn't mean it will be easy. Well, in this case, the treadmill. I ran for 1 minute out of every 5 for 30 minutes, and parts of me I forgot I had now hurt.

5. Cold weather is relative: last year we had -40 temps and it seemed unresonable. Today it was -9 C and I thought I might die. But last week it was nearly 10 C, so I feel like I have a valid excuse.

6. This would all seem easier if there was cake. But then, what wouldn't?

Product v. Process

So sometimes, this blog looks more like a weird hybrid of a knitting blog and a running blog, rather than anything to do with going to graduate school in Canada. There are people who do both better, I know. That said, both are a major part of what I do when I'm not face down in a pile of work with a bottle of vodka glass of wine pot of tea. (Or running was, before an unfortunate incident while trying to catch a bus left me with a sprained ankle.)

But there is something that binds together musicology, running, and knitting, and it is this: the idea that both involve processes that produce products, and one can focus on one or the other and can get more out of either the process of the activity or its product. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (aka the Yarn Harlot) has written about this a lot in regards to knitting, and has raised the good point that craft cannot be all about process:

"Imagine this: You and I are sitting together on a park bench, and we are having a lovely time, knitting and chatting, maybe we have coffee and some chocolate. It's lovely. I spread my knitting in progress out on my lap to admire it, you know, the way knitters do. . . Then, something catches my eye, and I lean forward to take a better look at the sweater and suddenly you can see what I see. There's a massive mistake. You inhale sharply; this is going to be bad. This is one of those ugly mistakes that can shorten a knitter's lifespan. You slowly look up at me, prepared to help me through this awful moment, and much to your surprise, I break out in an enormous smile of sheer joy and exclaim:

'Wow! Look at that! I made a huge mistake way back at the beginning of this sweater. Oh my gosh, it's enormous. No wonder the rest of the sweater looks so odd. My goodness, that mistake is as obvious as Cher naked at a convent, isn't it? How did I not see that? Well now. What a fabulous turn of events. I'll just have to rip this while thing out. Yup, every single stitch except for the cast-on edge is entirely unacceptable! Oh, but I'm so lucky! I'm glad that I got a chance to knit the whole thing before I noticed this. If I'd seen that mistake right away, then I wouldn't get the pleasure of knitting this practically twice! Oh happy, happy day.'

Having been the knitter who has mad a mistake of that magnitude, I think that if I ever heard a knitter say that, I'd either get up and move, consider talking about her in unflattering terms after she left, or, even though I'm a nonviolent person, I think I'd momentarily consider knocking her off the bench in an attempt to smack the stupid right off the poor unfortunate."

--Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, Free-Range Knitter, 107-8

Even the most devoted process person almost has to be, on some level, at least interested in the product, just as the most devoted product person has to be interested in the process, or they would just buy the stuff at the store.

That said, there are knitters who find their joy in having a big heap of finished objects that they use regularly, rather than on the hours of craft that goes into making them; there are runners whose only pleasure in running is in race times, personal records, and statistics; and there are researchers who measure their success in terms of books and articles published and presentations given. I am not one of these people. I might have a better relationship with time if I was one of these people: if I wasn't having so much fun doing the stuff, maybe I'd be more likely to finish it on time.

I enjoy running because I enjoy the journey: I enjoy watching the world around me, seeing places from a particular perspective, the feel of my body moving through space. It is like dancing, but rarely am I judged for my grace. I race, because the particular experience of racing gives is a different experience from that of just going for a run, not because official results impress me. I work as a musicologist because I love the part of it where I sit down with a heap of sources and actually find something interesting. I am less impressed by the actual act of sitting down and writing up my findings. That is, that part is like pulling teeth and must be surrounded by the perfect environment, or I will gladly clean the kitchen before I can even contemplate getting started with the real work in the other room (a room from which I cannot even see my dirty kitchen). I knit, in the full knowledge that socks are available for $5 for twenty pair at Wal-Mart and sweaters can be more efficiently acquired at the mall. I knit because I get a lot of personal satisfaction out of the act of playing with sticks and string. I teach because I like the sound of my own voice sharing what I know and seeing the moment when students "get it."

These processes would be pretty pointless if they didn't have some sort of product. I like my half marathon medal and my collection of racing t-shirts. Upon finishing my master's thesis, I printed it out and stood on it to see how much taller standing on 117 pages would make me. I wear or gift the things I knit, after taking pictures of them, and am proud of what I have made. (A sweater out of sock yarn is nothing to sneeze at.) The thing that keeps me coming back, however, isn't the ultimate product, however, it is the simple, everyday acts of which the accomplishments are built.

Jess Ran to Canada

Wow. On Sunday, I managed my first half-marathon. I'm sure running purists would point out that at my pace, the term "run" might be an overstatement for what could best be described as a drunken-appearing lurch towards the finish line, but I traveled 13.1 miles on my own 2 feet, with nothing more than a handful of Cliff Shot blox and the knowledge that Sally had already travelled by the places I passed to keep me moving forward.

I ran the Detroit Free Press/ Flagstar bank half marathon, as did my bestest girlfriend, Sally. We both had great races, although hers was substantially faster than mine.

I did learn that those of us at the back of the pack are happy to laugh at ourselves. Somewhere between the 4th and 5th miles of the race, I stopped to use the washroom (it was on on the Canadian side of the river, totally correct term), and was waiting in the line for the ladies, making snarky little comments about how the men's line was shorter than the women's, when the husband of the woman in line behind me said that it was a single stall, no urinal, and we should go get in the men's line, so we did. In that line, some of the guys gave us a hard time, but it was faster. (And surprisingly tidy, all things considered.)

I did the work of training, and it paid off. I finished, although I was a bit crazy at the finish line: I might have accidentally proposed marriage to the volunteer who handed me a banana. But then Sally and I were reunited, had our picture taken, showered, and enjoyed some yummy pumpkin spice smoothies.

Jess Runs to Canada

So I have, like my pal Sally, registered for the Detroit Free Press Half Marathon. You start in Detroit, run across the bridge and back under the Detroit river in the tunnel, then finish. (I'm glossing over the agony that is actually 13.1 miles of running. I'm doing this on purpose.)

Training officially started for me this week. There may be a charity tie-in, watch this space.

The only problem thus far is that training (and ramping up to official training) has left me eating like a Hobbit. Seriously, second breakfast has become a way of life. I'll only be mad if I wind up either gaining weight or with hairy feet.

A Week In the Life

So, last Wednesday, Sally and I left for the beach. We had a lovely time, it was windy, which made actually being on the sandy part of the beach a bit interesting and exfoliating, but in the water or on the deck was just fine. Sally hooped in the sand and I sat on the deck and read and knitted. It turns out you can knit this much sock in 4 days:


I cast on for this sock in the car on the way to the beach, and stopped knitting on it while we were there because I misplaced its mate, and need to make sure that the ankles are the same length before starting the heel flap.

Then it rained and we went shopping, and finally we left the beach just in time, since the waves had made their way under the cabin.


After heading back to Nashvegas, I hung out at home with the Beloved Husband and on Monday, a holiday here in the States and our 7th wedding anniversary, I ran a 5k that benefited the Nashville City Cemetery Association. Since my goal was to finish, I accomplished exactly what I set out to do.

Look, me at the start:


Kickin' it in what I like to call "tortoise style:"



Watchin' out for zombies:

And the finish:

Later, the Beloved Husband and I went out for a fun fish dinner, followed by ice cream.

Tuesday night included knitting, which was great, and I cast on a new sock.

Then I came home and the BH and I hung out with Mr. Calvin, who was doing his dangedest to be cute.

Now it is my birthday, and I'm another year older. Not sure about wiser, but older. I'll be inspecting for crow's feet later. There are movers, painters, and the bug spraying guy at our old house right now, getting it ready for potential renters.

That's Why I Live Here...

At the halfway point of my run this morning, I had to stop and take a picture. The picture doesn't really do the day justice, but such is the nature of cell phone pictures.

After taking the picture, I went and ran down there by the river. It was lovely.

That's why I live here. There seems to be a consensus in London that almost everyone wants to live somewhere else, but it is actually a sort of pretty city. The greenway system along the Thames is great for running, biking, roller blading, or strolling. I'm not saying that Toronto doesn't have more going on or more cultural institutions or that it doesn't stink that downtown closes at 5pm, just that London isn't all bad.

I can't wait for the leaves on the trees to make an appearance.