GYM CHRISTMAS Day 3: I encounter Escher

Today I completed GYM CHRISTMAS Day 3: Sneak a Workout into another Activity. For me this meant taking the stairs at Talbot College. After a day of climbing up and down the four stories between John's office, my office, my classroom, a department luncheon, and the copy room, I felt like I'd spent the day in an Escher drawing. Day 3: CHECK!

Nevertheless, I came home and did a bonus workout, apart from Gym Christmas. I've been working on a variation of a yoga pose called "half moon." It's great for stretching out my back and hamstrings.  I can do it somewhat without falling over now, but the leg I'm holding is supposed to be more parallel with the floor, so there's still a long way to go. John was kind enough to take a picture. And in the process you can see how messy our bedroom is!

Here is my GYM CHRISTMAS list now: 

Go for a Pre- or Post-Dinner Walk.

Yuletide Cheer

Make a Game of Household Chores

Crank Up the Music and Boogie Down

Hazardous Waste Removal

Regular Water Consumption

Investigate and Share

Sneak a Work Out into Another Activity

Turn TV Commercials into Fitness Breaks

Muscle-Building/Strength Training

Animal Time

Seven-Minute Work-Out.

I have more plans for how to complete the list during the rest of this week and next. The holistic theme has made this year harder to complete in 12 straight days, as I have in years past. But I also like the variety. It's nice to have something else to think about besides chapters and grading and French history.

Are any of you participating in Gym Christmas this year? It's still not too late to sign up!

Silver Dolphin's Halloween Haunt/Crystal Ball, Annual Fall Time Trial

A couple of weeks ago my swim coach emailed us to say that the London Silver Dolphins decided to open their annual fall time trial (aka, unofficial swim meet) to Triathlon Club swimmers and other people at Western. I'd like to enter some meets in the spring, but I wanted to have a practice meet sometime beforehand, so I gladly signed up.

The goal of the meet is to come closest to your predicted time, though I was more interested in seeing what on earth my times would be. I haven't timed myself since I last did summer swimming in 2001, so I needed to establish some new baselines to work from. A few weeks ago at Triathlon practice we timed ourselves and I did a 50 free in 42 seconds, so I used that to guess some more times. Here's what I did: 

100 IM

Predicted time: 1:40. 

Actual time: 1:32. 

Holy crap! I can't believe I swam that fast. It was hard. I rarely sprinted while running unless I was at the very end of a 5K where I was trying to PR. But I'm so glad I did it. I love 100 IM - it's just the right amount of IM. But that much hard butterfly made my abs REALLY sore.

100 Free

Predicted time: 1:30

Actual time: 1:19:51. 

Again, I was so happy with this time. I thought it would be MUCH slower and I was pleasantly surprised. The photo below is just before the first turn (I'm the one with the blue head in lane 5).

50 Free

Predicted time: 00:41

Actual time: 00:37:52
Wow, this was MUCH harder than I remembered (pretty much the theme of the day), but I also loved it. I breathed probably 4 times, which is more than I would have done years ago, but I was generally happy with how this went. Also, my swim coaches helped me figure out how to keep my goggles on when diving off the block by putting them under my cap and pulling the cap over the edge of the goggles. I have a lot of work to do if I really want to be able to sprint again and improve this time, but I also feel like a better time is completely within my reach.

I also managed to get into the lane on the end so that John could take pictures.

Now that I've done it again, I'm excited to enter some meets in the spring. I'm thinking of registering as an independent Silver Dolphin so that I can keep training with the tri-club but have some company with the team for meets. 

John was kind enough to come with me (especially since I spent so many cold, rainy hours with him in Indy for the marathon), and I was reminded how many boring long stretches swim meets have. Unlike when I was a kid, no one seemed to have a deck of cards to play War and there was no snack bar where we could go get a Ring Pop. But the UWO Swim Team was there to volunteer as timers and other meet workers and they walked around with buckets of Halloween candy from time to time. From what I could tell, the Silver Dolphins are a nice bunch and I hope to swim with them again.
Now I have some times to beat!

In the Beginning

The school year has begun. And because I'm too lazy to write a series of individual blog posts focused on fall topics, I've decided to cram all of it into this post in a convenient (for me) list format.


1. The first week of school has a way of being rough, sometimes for me, sometimes for humanity.
Here's a list of things that have happened to me and, seriously, to humanity, on the first week or day of school, starting with this year:

• Root canal (last Monday)
• Cast on my foot (last Tuesday)
• Diagnosed with mono (freshman year, 2003)
• Hurricane Katrina (junior year, 2005)
• 9/11 (junior year of high school)

Maybe it's a curse? Next year I may send out a warning to my friends and family so they know to be on the look out that week. The curse extends beyond me, as you can see.


2. My stress fracture is only sort of healing, so they booted me. I'm not sure how long it will last, as the doctor's cryptic words were "Let your pain be your guide."

This is my second boot. My first was in 2009, shown below, and it was more intense. Both times now I've wondered if the boot is actually helping my foot, or just distracting me by making other parts of my body hurt (hips, IT bands, ankles - it's hard to lug that thing around).

3. Triathlon Club starts this week, which means I have to be at the pool at 6:05 AM on Tuesday. I've also learned that I can register as an unattached swimmer with Masters Swimming Ontario and participate in some meets this year! Woohoo! Triathlon Club seems to be very organized and well staffed, and I'm looking forward to having an actual swim coach again. At their Q&A meeting this week they talked about all the practices, etc, but they also mentioned that they go to a bar after Saturday swimming, and that they have potlucks and a Christmas party!! They had me at potlucks.

If you'd like to watch the club's promotional video and GET AMPED, here it is. Seriously, if I weren't totally injured, I would sign up for the whole club. What with all the coaching staff, it's a freaking steal at $125 for the whole school year.

4. People ask me frequently how Bo is adjusting, and I'd say she's feeling good.

Matthew, who has decided he wants to be called Auntie Matthew, gave her this very nice UWO bandana! Purple Pride! Or, #purplereign, as I think the kiddies say.

She also managed to get a small cut on her leg that she could not stop licking, so we put a sock on her. She loved it, obviously. Here's a picture of her working on her "saddest greyhound in the world" face. It's one of her most consistent personas.

5. We made beer floats last week and they were awesome. First a chocolate stout, then pumpkin. Both awesome. 

6. I had one of the best weeks ever with my dissertation this week. I even had a good meeting with my advisor where we made a timeline to completion. It feels so real. I felt like saying, 

"Who's got 2 thumbs, reads limited 18th century French, and didn't want to cry once during her dissertation meeting?! This moi!" 

I also found a bunch of useful stuff in Rameau's Collected Theoretical Writings (ed. E. Jacobi). 

First, an awesome Debussy quote where he talks about what a great thinker Rameau was. 

Then I started reading a bunch of reviews of the treatise I'm writing about. And, for reasons that I won't bore you with, it's really helpful that they connect his Génération Harmonique with Newtonian physics. I got so happy reading it that I drew some smileys, which also help me find those passages when I need them.

7. Mama K. and I are going to Michigan in a few weeks for what was supposed to be our 10 year high school reunion. Since only a few people signed up, they canceled it. But we've got reservations at a cabin and I want to see my old teachers anyways, so we're going to go and make our own reunion. 

8. The back to school message we all need to be reminded of: 

Real Swimming Prep

I've mentioned several times that since I developed a stress fracture in my foot, I've wasted no time getting into the pool. It was time for a change. And swimming has definitely been that! I miss being out on my favorite trails, especially as the leaves start to change. But I have to say, swimming has more perks than I expected. For example, I can eat lunch and then go swimming without getting so much as a  stomach ache. If I ate even a banana just before running, I would often have actual acid reflux. But I guess swimming doesn't jostle all that food around the same way. I wouldn't eat a whole pizza before swimming, but I don't have to schedule my life around my work outs.
Also, the weather doesn't effect my work out. Thunder storm? Snow storm? Super cold? No problem, I swim inside. There has been one notable exception to this, of course. The week before we left for Indiana, the pool at UWO and the other large aquatic facility near us both closed for maintenance, so I decided to try the Thames Park Pool - a 50 meter, outdoor pool also fairly close to our house. Luckily it was pretty warm that week, and the Thames Park Pool is totally great. It seemed like every triathlete in town was there because their usual swimming spot was closed and the atmosphere was really friendly and nice.

For my birthday I received two Amazon gift cards and I spent them both on pool toys:
a new TYR mesh bag with pockets so that my wet stuff can breath; swim paddles (for pulling drills); a new pair of Speedo Vanquisher goggles; and, not shown, a new Speedo and a new TYR swim suit. I love everything except the goggles. For some reason I have trouble finding goggles that don't leak - and yes, they are super tight, and yes, I push them into my eyes to make a vacuum seal. For some reason water still gets in during my flip turns. It's not a huge deal and I want to just find away to adjust them properly. It's still nice to have goggles that aren't 15 years old.

I had a little shoulder pain last week, so Massage Therapist Sam suggested that I back off the distance and add some stretches to my warm up. The pain is virtually gone, but I did ease off on the over all distance. It's not like I'm training for a race or something, so I decided to take it easy. I just need to get back in shape in time for Triathlon Club to start. 

I've had a lot of luck with this site: 100 Swimming Workouts and I'm especially a fan of their intermediate work outs. I like this one with the 25 meter windsprints and the 400 IMs. I enjoyed this one that focuses on breast stroke and freestyle. This site also shows the total distance of the work out so it's easy to plan how much or how little you want to do. I gradually increased my distance with work outs like this one until I reached one that totaled 3000 meters. But then my shoulder was unhappy with that and I reduced to between 2000 and 2500, 3-4 times per week. Between the reduced distance and real stretching (and a whole new level of pain in my massage therapy sessions), my shoulder is doing fine and I've been able to start building distance again.
It will be nice to have some real structure once the Triathlon Club starts so that someone else can come up with the work outs. Until then, it's nice to be back in the pool. As my high school swim team used to say, "Fast girls have good times."

Summer Running and Summer Salads

John and I are about to take some time off for the wedding. Ever since my area exam I've been working what I think of as regular hours on my dissertation in order to take a long period of time off this summer. My brain feels something like this Rameau tornado:

Some day I'll write a real post about my dissertation research, but you know, not right now. Suffice to say I'm ready for a break. 

In the mean time, John and I have been running a lot of miles and making a lot of salads out of Appetite for Reduction. I wanted to save the salad recipes for the summer when veggies are fresh and haven't traveled as far. So far, the salads in this book are blowing my mind. Every one of them is so good and has a dressing so delicious I could eat it with a spoon.

Above: Goddess Niçoise, with green beans, cherry tomatoes, potatoes, and a delicious green dressing with chives, cilantro, and miso, among other ingredients. 

Below: Edamame Sushi Roll Salad. Holy crap, this is good. We served it with dressing on the side, and as suggested, a dish with soy sauce and a little wasabi. I dipped each bite in both and it tasted so much like sushi! The salad itself has edamame and brown rice sprinkled on lettuce, with carrots, cucumbers, avocado, and sesame seeds. And the dressing tastes a lot like the ginger dressing common in Japanese restaurants. I wanted to lick the bowl.

And, since blogging transitions are for chumps, here's some running stuff. 

This summer, I've been following the 10k training plan from Run Less, Run Faster. The point was to sort of shake things up, since I feel like I'm not really running up to my potential in races and I was getting kind of bored with my routine. I wanted to be challenged, and I'm getting my wish. Every work out has very specific time goals based on previous race times, and every single one has been HARD. But hard in a good way. I don't think I'm hurting myself and I've noticed a lot of improvement in the five weeks or so that I've been using the plan. Every run has a very definite purpose now, and it's more mentally engaging than what I was used to. 

Since I'm running a half marathon in October, I'm just using the 10k plan now to get in shape to do the half marathon plan. And it's a pretty tough 10k plan compared to what I've done. Last week's longest run was 10 miles, meant to be run at a 9:38-per-mile pace. I've been able to run most of the runs at the proscribed time, but I've taken breaks that are not part of the plan. Even though every run is specifically timed, I've tried to maintain flexibility in my attitude, since I'm just sort of training to train at this point. I just want to get used to running this way, internalizing different paces. It can be mentally grueling and difficult for a perfectionist such as myself if I take the times too literally. All the sudden a 10:00-per-mile average pace for a 9 mile run can feel like a failure because it wasn't the proscribed time. That's crazy talk and it's ultimately not helping.

In order to combat that rigidity, I decided that for my 10 mile run last week I would ditch my usual route and try a new part of town, complete with a woodsy trail system I'd never visited called Medway Forest. I ran from home to Huron College, the Anglican college affiliated with Western. There's an entrance to the trail system just behind the college. I hoped to approximate a route, based on the map and John's previous experience, that included about 2 miles on the trail system. But it's virtually impossible to know exactly how far the trail goes just by looking at the map, so I knew the route I mapped was just a guess. On top of that, trails tend to slow me down. The whole run provided a much needed refresher from the Run Less, Run Faster method. 

What was meant to be 2 miles turned out to be more like 3. Even though the trails on the map look like they kind of dead end, they are mostly connected by smaller, unofficial trails, some very rocky and some pleasantly wide and run-able. I got out my phone a couple of times to look myself up on the GPS (and snap a photo), but I knew to keep the river to my right. I eventually popped out of the trail system on Wonderland, a main drag in town, and kept going for about 5 more miles. 

I have to say, Medway Forest is kind of amazing. It's beautiful, and much bigger than it looks on the map, and the trees are tall like the ones at the Pinery. I truly felt like I was miles away from London, which was another mental escape. I definitely want to incorporate it again, maybe with the GPS watch so that I know how far I've really run.

This run was so encouraging. Running the trail portion at a slower-than-proscribed pace made the rest of the run feel amazing. I ended up taking 1:42:xx to run about 10 miles, and I'm pretty pleased with that, since I did some walking and maneuvering on the trail. I didn't feel like I'd been hit by a truck at the end of the run, and while I'm sure the cooler weather helped with that, I think it also means the new running plan is paying off. And that just gave me more motivation to get back into the plan this week! Of course, traveling for the wedding will mean some slight alterations in the plan, and at some point I have to actually switch from the 10k plan to the half marathon plan. But I'm enjoying all the fast running. Pushing myself has been so rewarding thus far.

Gym Christmas Days 12 and 13

Yeah, I missed a day of blogging. Since I turned in my second directed study and then hosted a party last night, I don't feel too bad about it. Also it's hard to feel like your work outs are that important after what happened in CT yesterday. Here's yesterday and today's Gym Christmas updates. 

Gym Christmas Day 12!

Work out: 2k swim. 

I did basically the same work out I tend to do, except there were no pull buoys, so I made an adjustment: 

• 400m freestyle warm up
• 6 X 200ms, alternating swimming and kicking (no pulling). 
• 400m free cool down. 

Finals week is a great time to swim or do anything at the gym really. I think swimming once a week has been really good for my brainz. 

GYMGO: I checked off a Get Wet box that didn't really advance my GYMGO chances.

Then, John and I had some UWO friends over to decorate "Gender Non-Specific Gingerbread Persons," as Matthew likes to call them. I used a recipe from America's Test Kitchen's Family Cookbook, and cookie cutters that my Aunt Becky gave me two summers ago - including a couple of turkeys and menorahs. 

Let's count gingerbread cookies and dough as the thing I ate.

The one menorah was turned into a martini glass, about 6 o'clock in this picture.

And one person made this very attractive Ginger Pope.

Gym Christmas Day 13!

Work out: 3-ish mile run with John around the neighborhood. Based on my perceived level of effort, I'd say we did more like 3.2 or so, since it was more like a tempo run. But we didn't map the route before or after, we just ran around for 32 minutes.

GYMGO: Socialcize, aka, GYMGO #2! Woo hoo!

Thing I ate today: definitely no more gingerbreads. I sent the leftovers home with our friends. But I did a healthy portion of the greek olive hummus I got at the store this week. Mmmm olives in hummus.

Gym Christmas Day 2

Gym Christmas Day 2!

Work out: 30 minutes on the stationary bike at the rec center, and then about 5 minutes of stretching. It was supposed to be a day completely off from exercise, but three days in a row without running just made me want to work out somehow.

GYMGO: checked off another "Grab Bag" square, top right corner.

Photo: Viryta (pronounced VEER-tah), a sweetened and infused whiskey beverage that the Lithuanian side of the family always makes at the holidays (recipe here). I'm told the appropriate word for toasting with a drink like this would be "Sveiks!" I got the urge to make viryta this weekend. And I'm storing it in old mason jars, because I'm a hobo. 

What's for dinner: Spicy Pumpkin Soup, from a blog called Make It Naked. Looks tasty!

AMS/SEM/SMT New Orleans 2012

Last week, John and I traveled down to New Orleans for the academic conferences we normally attend, except this year, all three of them happened at once: AMS/SMT/SEM, aka 

THE TRIUMVIRATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had a pretty good time and saw a lot of interesting papers. I think my absolute favorite was an SEM panel on women who play guitar in various pop/rock music settings, and the gender implications. It turns out, if you are a black woman playing guitar, people feel free to come up to you and say racist/sexist things while you're playing, or otherwise insult you, or put money into your jean pockets as though you are a stripper. The panel included three smart women talking about their field work, one of whom is from Toronto. After speaking with her, I decided we have to try to get her to come to UWO to speak. 

My second favorite (though in some ways better than my favorite, it's hard to say) was another SEM panel on music in prisons. Unfortunately, one of the presenters was unable to attend, but the two who were there did an excellent job. The first spoke on music as a way for women in a Louisiana prison to create private spaces and maintain relationships with other prisoners while incarcerated. The author was simultaneously working on a documentary about the same topic, so he played some clips of the women who he spoke with, and it made his paper very moving. The second presenter spoke on his own experience as an inmate in a prison in NY state. Once he started talking, I immediately wanted to ask him a million personal questions, but shied away. Somehow this guy ended up serving a 6 month sentence after earning a PhD at NYU, so there must be an interesting story there. His paper focused on the way men used the special music room available at the prison, and it was also a very personal, moving story. I almost didn't make it to this panel because of the CSW 7 AM breakfast, after which I'm almost always exhausted. But I'm so glad I stayed up and went to it. 

I also went to the Committee for the Status of Women breakfast and lunch meetings, and had productive discussions at both. I have high hopes for a good session at the 2013 meeting in Charlotte. I think I've mentioned before that SMT has a pretty awful gender discrepancy, and the CSW always has a thoughtful discussion about it at our lunch meeting every year. For next year, I'm hoping for us to extend that discussion to the actual paper session that we get on the program, so that the relatively private lunch isn't the only place where that conversation happens. 

Saturday night of the conference usually involves a bunch of parties hosted by different universities. Before we started party hopping, though, we went with our friend Anna (who also delivered a pretty great paper!) to a reception/sing-along hosted by the North American British Music Studies Association Reception and Musicale, where they had free finger food (alligator sausage), beer, wine, and a booklet of part songs. This was one of the most fun and memorable parts of the weekend, especially getting to see so many academics trying to sight read after 2-3 glasses of wine.  

                       

Especially these academics:

                                  

Of course, we spent a lot of time wandering around New Orleans, especially on the first night we got there: Halloween.

We traveled with our new friend Ian, a masters student at Western. He and John eventually settled on drinking "hand grenades" while we were walking around Bourbon street. I think it was at this point that another colleague, who shall remain nameless, shouted, "What makes a conference better? Street drinking!!!"

We ate a bunch of different good restaurants. For lunch: Remoulade's, not far from the hotel. Dinner: Bourbon House, actually attached to our hotel. Ian tried a sampler flight, and after dinner we both had "bourbon milk punch," basically a bourbon milk shake. John also had raw oysters basically every chance he got.

(Milk punch, above, John with oysters, below)

We also made our way to Cafe du Monde twice for beignets, coffee, and hot chocolate. 

(Here's a half-eaten beignet, below...I think I will try to recreate this at home at some point)

Also dinner, somehow not pictured: El Gato Negro, for Mexican food. They made guacamole at our table and served us tasty margaritas in to-go cups. I also had a pretty sweet veggie taco there with squash and tomatoes. 

John and I stopped in to Cafe Beignet so that he could get espresso at one point. Even though the pastries looked amazing, it was the near the end of our trip and I was starting to feel kind of gross from so many days of really heavy food.

On Sunday morning, we were able to eat at the Green Goddess, a great place for vegetarians and omnivores alike. I had some amazing grits and sweet potatoes biscuits (yes, carbs only for me, thanks). It started pouring while we were there, so they moved us inside to a very small courtyard. I took a picture, looking up:

Sunday afternoon, John and I went to the Audubon Aquarium for a mental break from music.
They have a big, scaley fountain in the lobby.

We spent some time in the Amazon rainforest section, which also had some big catfish. 

They also had a lot of beautiful sea horses. We watched them swim and wrap their tails around these stems, then lick the algae off of them (I guess? Who knows what they eat?).

They also have a big "Carribbean" tank with a lot of rays, giant fish, and a bunch of sharks.

Oh yeah, and this awesome sea turtle.

Sunday night, we walked along the street a final time and saw the gallery belonging to this artist, whose dog painting is all over town:

I think my only real regret is not seeing inside St. Louis cathedral. Another time, I guess. Here's part of the back at night. My other regret would also be not completing a conference Bingo, but that's my next post...