So, in the month and a half or so that I haven’t blogged, I have:

• Cooked Thanksgiving dinner (surprise, surprise)
• Gotten into medical school WHOOOOO!!!!!!!
• Gotten several more medical school interviews, including two in my home state of Wisconsin (first visit back in 9 years)
• Road-tripped to Ann Arbor
• Bought an iPhone
• Received a Playmobil hospital for my 27th birthday
• Received a Martin parlor guitar for aforementioned birthday

and …

• taken up running!

If you know me, you know that the latter is the most surprising of all. I hate running and I’m bad at it. But fortunately, my friend Kelly also fits both of those criteria.

How did we get ourselves to do it?

Well, first, it is technically one of my goals. So there’s that. Plus, many people we know are of the crazy running variety, and they’re all really quite more excited about us running than we are. Anyway, it’s nice to have a fan club. Especially when all you did was run 90 seconds and then nearly die. More importantly, we bought shit. Lots of it.

My inspirational pants -- except mine have green plaid at the top!

Our very first important order of business was to go to New York Running Company at Columbus Circle, where a nice young lady fitted us with $100+ pairs of shoes. I also got some running shorts.

(Three weeks later, a charming woman at the University Village Lululemon in Seattle magically and seamlessly convinced me to spend $108 on a pair of running pants. But that’s another story. Ironically, Kelly was in New York also secretly buying expensive bottoms from the aforementioned Magical Temple of the Money Sinkhole.)

Then, we found out that my aforementioned brand-new iPhone (Kelly got one about two weeks later) can be fitted with a great app called RunKeeper. This thing tracks you via GPS and tells you your pace at any point, your pace and splits overall, and draws a nice map of you huffing and puffing your way around the Central Park Reservoir. (The Pro edition, which I bought last night, also allows you to set up intervals, so it can tell you when to walk or run or whatever — this becomes important below — and gives you the option of controlling your iPod through the application.)

We started out alternating running and walking with no set agenda. In our third week, with Kelly in New York and me in Seattle for Thanksgiving, we tried the famous Couch to 5k running plan, starting in Week 2. That amounted to 90 seconds of jogging followed by 2 minutes of walking, repeated for 20 minutes. I saw my life flash before my eyes multiple times.

There was no way out, however, because Kelly and I could track each others’ compliance via the RunKeeper Web site.

This week, we moved on to Week 3, which has us doing the following two times: 90 seconds running, 90 seconds walking, 3 minutes running, 3 minutes walking. The first time we did it, Kelly had to pep-talk me through it by trash-talking the ugly girl running in front of us.

This morning was “Week 3, Day 2,” as they say, and it went much better than last time. To be continued.

That was the first and last time I ever did yoga. Until October, 2009.

Recently, I had just gathered up the courage to return to the gym when the cold weather struck. Since then, I’ve been having major knee pain in my left knee — chondromalacia patella (with hope that this link to the Mayo Clinic will provide me with some med-school karma). Basically, chondromalacia patella is the softening of kneecap cartilage (the patella), which happens because of alignment problems between the kneecap and the femur. Apparently it happens most in younger women, particularly active ones (ha).

See how his leg is GLOWING? (Also, is that a Sim?)

I was originally diagnosed with chondromalacia patella in the summer of 2003. I’ve tried hydrocortisone ultrasound and a lot of physical therapy. Mainly though, it’s gotten worse — hard to walk up stairs, no bending anywhere near beyond a 90 degree angle; basically, I’m old. One time I fell on the flat part of a ski slope (don’t ask) and I couldn’t get up because I couldn’t put near that much pressure on my knee. It just buckles. (When I’m on a slope, it’s fine because I use gravity to help me tip back upwards. I know what you’re thinking: I’m a very accomplished skier.)

This summer my knee was actually doing pretty well. But ever since it got cold, I’ve been having all kinds of stupid aches.

So I started up my little exercises again. But I wanted a little bit more strengthening without too much effort (I’m still me), so I went for yoga. I can’t do any poses that involve bending the knee beyond 90 degrees, which is a little limiting, and I can’t spend any money, because I don’t want to.

So far, I’ve been following Yogatic’s Yoga for Beginner’s. Firstly, this Esther person appears to be German; I of course find her accent soothing. Second, she seems reasonably normal and not too hippy-dippy.

I’m hoping that I can strengthen up my muscle a little bit so I can start running. It’s either that or the nuclear option, which is surgery (there are several kinds, including drilling), and, based on my experience, totally avoided with chondromalacia patella patients. (Given that I have no clinical expertise, I can’t comment on the merits of surgery. But certainly my condition has gotten worse, not better. Still, I haven’t been 100% compliant with physical therapy, but then, who is?)

Stay tuned for more soul-wrenching battles between my disdainful self and my self that kind of enjoyed doing yoga.

Achebe, who won the 2007 Man Booker Prize

This 1958 novel by Chinua Achebe is considered the classic modern African novel. It’s on pretty much every list (including, obviously, this one). It tells two stories: that of the fall from grace of Okonkwo, a powerful Ibo tribesman, and that of the effects of white colonization and evangelism. (I assume the time period is late nineteenth/early twentieth, but it’s not specified.)

The novel contains some important themes. First, Okonkwo, whose father was clearly a loser, is a fairly unlikeable protagonist despite being successful and ambitious. One of the major points Achebe is making, which does not relate to the question of clashes between cultures or colonialism, is that even a virtuous character trait or value (ambition) can be crippling when it is pursued to the exclusion of all other traits.

The second group of themes concern cultural issues, even if the coming of the Europeans doesn’t happen until at least 2/3 of the way through the novel. Considering the time period in which this novel was released, some Ibo traditions likely came across as barbaric to Western readers: justice administered by tribe elders dressed up as spirits, different forms of restitution for wrongdoings (e.g. when a cow is let lose, the owner can rely on other tribespeople to fetch it, but must pay a fine, etc.). The system is effectively collective (there is no chief, which later confuses the Europeans). But ultimately this system is effective. Similarly, the Christian/European tradition of justice (“government” in the Western sense) is also effective. But when these two systems come together, they are not compatible. Naturally, this relates to themes of cultural (mis)understanding, etc.

Indeed, in their relationships to each other, each group has made clear assumptions about superiority and inferiority, and has judged the others’ beliefs. In the same way that the Christians believe the Ibo to be headed for hell, the Ibo see the Christians as ridiculous for believing in the Trinity.

Achebe must have known that showing Western audiences a culture that believes in abandoning twins (perceived as evil) in the Evil Forest and shunning certain people (e.g. those dedicated to certain gods) would not come across as particularly pleasant. On the other hand, the colonists enter the picture after they destroy a whole village, and they then go about destroying the internal coherence of Ibo institutions simply by their very presence and interference in Ibo ways of administering justice. (I should mention, though, that the Christians, particularly their first leader, and not at all portrayed in an entirely negative light.) Thus, neither culture is externally irreproachable, at least from a modern Western perspective, but Achebe makes the point — more clearly from the Ibo viewpoint — that they are internally consistent … until the point where they are affected by external forces. The Ibo justice system ultimately loses its legitimacy when some of the most powerful men in the tribe are arrested by the Europeans, and the Ibo realize their inability to counter the power of the Europeans with force (which, of course, Okonkwo, the ultimate in masculine pride, wants to do).

Finally, of course, in Okonkwo’s relationship to his son’s conversion to Christianity (disinheritance) and the growth in power of the colonists, we also see a commentary on the importance of adaptation. Even if the culture of the missionaries is imposed and illegitimate (Okonkwo, we would say, is correct in that), the response of total stubbornness is ultimately fatal for Okonkwo.

One of the things I liked most about this novel is that Achebe describes everything, from random descriptions of cooking or other domestic chores to the main character’s accidental killing of a fellow tribesman and subsequent exile, in the exact same tone. It actually has a very peculiar effect. Moreover, there is no build-up that warns you of the coming importance of any scene, and some scenes that appear to have significance (I’m thinking, for instance, of when Okonkwo’s favorite daughter, Ezinma, is randomly taken away for the night by a high priestess) subsequently have no further effect on the plot. In some ways, this sometimes has the unsatisfying effect of muting the emotional impact of certain points in the plot, but in other ways I found it refreshing. At the very least, it was an interesting experience.

I can’t say whether I appreciated the social commentary independent of the fact that this was the first major novel to address these issues and be read internationally. I doubt it. But then that seems to be a theme: I wouldn’t have liked Gargantua so much if it hadn’t been for the publication date. Still, I think I’ll read Achebe’s sequel (No Longer at Ease).

Adour by Alain Ducasse.

It was amazing. First, it was the first Michelin-starred restaurant I’ve been to since 1998, when I went to Jean-Luc Figueras — a place with a “Kama Sutra-like dining experience,” according to Frommer’s — in Barcelona, Spain (my mother took me, and the bill was $100).

The Master

Ducasse, the French chef par excellence (he has fifteen Michelin stars, although he’s now technically a citizen of Monaco, not France) has had an interesting history with New York, as chronicled in this New York article from when Adour first opened in January 2008. He had originally come to New York with an uber-French place at Essex House, which didn’t work. I think Adour does.

(I learned from this article, incidentally, that Ducasse has been voted — unanimously — to take over the Jules Verne restaurant at the Eiffel Tower. It might actually make going there worth it.)

Adour is in the former home of Lespinasse (moment of silence), in the St. Regis Hotel on 55th and 5th. The setting is pretty amazing, with the wine cellar surrounding you in glass cases (although, as New York notes, many of the bottles are out of range for most people).

The menu:

After kirs royals (yes), we had …

Appetizers: I had sweetbreads “meunière” with an “egg purse.” The egg was poached, and the mirepoix was cut into centimeter-long equilateral triangles. The sweetbreads were amazing, particularly with the egg yolk. David had the foie gras terrine with figs. I actually am not a big fan of foie gras, and David claims that he’s had better, which, after tasting, I believe to be true.

Mains: I had Elysian Fields rack of lamb with scallions, boulangère potatoes, and natural jus. The meat was cooked medium rare absolutely perfectly. I certainly did not need the steak knife they brought me. The outside was a deep, dark brown with no hint of bitterness, and immediately underneath, straight through to the center, was fucking gorgeous, perfectly pink meat. The sauce was delicious. David had milk-fed veal with “carrot contrast” not sure what that was, but there were carrots) and sweetbread-stuffed lettuce (although our server, who presented the dish in French, called it cabbage, I’m pretty sure it was lettuce, which is what the menu said). David said the veal was overcooked, but he ate the goddamn thing so fast that I didn’t get to confirm.

Cheese: Four cheeses — goat, tome of something, a blue, and some kind of crème — presented with unnecessary “autumn” condiments, by which they mean compotes. One of them, which I believe was pear, was actually good though. Strangely, no one told us what the cheeses were, and I didn’t get around to asking.

Dessert: I had the “Pear Composition” with a honey parfait and maple ice cream. The cookie on the bottom was kind of hard to cut, but the ice cream was delicious. David fawned over his fluffy, “exotic” vacherin with mango marmalade and a passion-fruit emulsion. Also had some macaroons and chocolates (they’ll wrap extras up for you, but we’re much too chic for that).

Although I’ve seen some complaints on the Internets, I thought the service was excellent. Of course, the French waiter loved us. He came to our table to tell us about our entrees in French, but forgot the word for sweetbreads in French (ris de veau) because he usually has to say it in English. This led David to think he was American, whereupon David complimented the dude on his French, which was … hilarious.

The only thing I would complain about is the two couples who both zoomed through the table next to us: a dour nouveau-riche Russian couple and then a young, rich American power couple who disinterestedly picked their way through foie gras and venison before rushing off to their next event. Jackasses.

Oh, and the relevance to this blog? I’ve changed my goal from eating at Per Se to “gathering” 10 Michelin stars. For kicks. 5 fewer than Ducasse, and not quite as well-deserved …

Rabelais’ tales of the giants Gargantua and his son Pantagruel come with their own backstory, namely, the books’ history. First, the inestimable Norwegian Book Clubs consider Gargantua and Pantagruel to be one book, comprising “Pantagruel,” “Gargantua,” the “Tiers-Livre,” the “Quart-Livre” and, potentially, “Le cinquieme et dernier livre des faictz et dictz heroiques du bon Pantagruel” or perhaps just the first sixteen chapters of that book, which are themselves referred to as “L’isle sonante.” Considering that I have read infinitely more Rabelais by this point than pretty much everyone I know, I decided to leave it at the first two. (Actually, while Pantagruel is Gargantua’s son, “Pantagruel” was published first. But I read Gargantua first because it comes first chronologically and also, in later editions, they were printed in the reverse order.) Incidentally, “Pantagruel” was modeled after a “chapbook” published in Lyon in 1932 called “Les grandes et inestimables chroniques du grand et enorme geant Gargantua.” (Gargantua and Pantagruel are Arthurian giants.)

The pilgrims being eaten in a salad

Then there is Rabelais himself, who in addition to being a doctor — cool — was a humanist and a major critic of the Church and the conservative crazies at the Sorbonne. He was labeled everything from a Lutheran to an atheist. Like Shakespeare for English, he invented many words that are still used in French (although not at the same rate, of course, as Shakespeare). He published, incidentally, under the pseudonym Alcofribas Nasier, Abstracteur de Quinte Essence, which is badass.

I never thought that I would have an educated opinion on this matter, but I seriously prefer Gargantua to Pantagruel. (I think that is a common preference.)

First, the story is better. It tells of the birth (his mother is pregnant for three extra months, and then he crawls out of her ear), education, peregrinations (he goes to Paris, where he first urinates on the people and drowns a good number of them, then takes the bells of Notre-Dame to put on his mare), and later life of Gargantua. The latter part of the book tells of the “guerre picrocholine,” where Gargantua fights against Picrochole in a war that starts because of fouaces, a type of bread. Then there’s the part where Gargantua accidentally eats five pilgrims in a salad.

Then, at the end, Gargantua builds an abbey for a monk in his service, named Jean. Its motto, ““Fay ce que vouldras” (“Do what you wish”) is part of Rabelais’ vision of responsible citizenship in a global community (oh wait, no, that’s the Concordia Language Villages motto), where people study religion in a non-hypocritical and humanistic way.

The story in Pantagruel is less engaging, and there is less of a clear message. There is another good giant-related moment when they package a bunch of peasants in giant leather balls so that Pantagruel can swallow them and they can go chip away at the blockage in his intestines. No, seriously.

Meanwhile, my “break” books (I’ve been reading one to two “non-required” books between required ones) are a new Le Corbusier biography and Death With Interruption by Jose Saramago (whose Blindness is actually on the list, but which I’ve already read). Only Saramago can take a silly counterfactual (what if everyone went blind?! what if no one died?!) and make it not only thoughtful, but thought-provoking and lyrical.

But the real news, that is, what I will discuss here, is that I’ve been working on my goal of learning fingerpicking on the guitar.

About 9 months ago I bought the book “Fingerstyle Guitar” in the Beyond Basics series by Mark Hanson. It’s really quite awesome. I’ve done maybe four pages, learning some basic patterns with basic chords, and am now building up to a terrible but, as I understand it, pedagogically useful song called “Canyon Canyon.”

I’ve found this book to be really good and easy to follow. What I can’t decide is whether that’s a function of the content, or of Mark Hanson’s educational genius.

I haven’t been playing much more than 10 minutes a day, but it’s actually been enough to get a pretty good handle on the general rhythm and patterns. More to follow.

This is totally off-topic, but somewhat related because it discusses an album I like (but that doesn’t count as one of the thirty because I discovered it before I began this project). Also a non-project goal of mine is to attend more concerts and stuff in New York, in case I have to leave next year …

David, Jenn and I went to see the Decemberists at Terminal 5 on Saturday — and it was *awesome*.

The Lottery

Firstly, I don’t even really like concerts, especially when I don’t know the band. I only go if I expect to know a significant majority of the songs. But the Decemberists are, potentially, my favorite band ever. Still, recently concerts have become so distinctly uninteresting, and largely no different from listening to the CD, except that you’re surrounded by a bunch of douches.

This concert, however, was amazing.

This was the “lottery” concert, in which the Decemberists played whatever song was pulled out of a giant bingo wheel. The MC for the event was John Wesley Harding, who is apparently some folk singer. I am unfamiliar.

Basically, John Wesley Harding would spin the wheel, draw a ball, and the Decemberists would play whatever the song was (including two epic long songs, The Tain and Crane Wife 3). Occasionally, the ball said something that was not a song including: Marcel and someone else crowd-surfing, Nate and John making out, and Colin Meloy makes up a song on the spot. It was amazing. Then some dude would use a tennis racket to send the ball into the crowd.

Totally adorable

In other words: “The premise for this show was that in a glaring oversight, The Decemberists had a free day on their Short Fazed Hovel tour, so they decided to do this one-time Lottery Show. There was no setlist; instead, John Wesley Harding acted as Master of Ceremonies, pulling balls with songs or actions written on them (as he called them, the Great Balls of Diablos!) from a big lotto spinner hung with silver streamers on the side of the stage.”

Laura Veirs was the opening act, but she’s on Yankee Bayonet, which randomly was the first song they did — and she was so unprepared she didn’t even have a headset! (Otherwise I hate her. Her songs suck.)

Overall I thought the combination of songs wound up being pretty good, if a bit random. Also the Decemberists didn’t change any of the order or any of the song, except switching the Island and Crane Wife 3, which were drawn in reverse order. Colin and the others seemed totally into this show, and they were visibly into the whole lottery thing — between every set (three songs) they would line up on stage and nod their assent or kind of shake their heads in disbelief when certain songs were drawn.

Set list:

1. Yankee Bayonet (w/Laura Veirs)
2. July July [everyone was really into this]
3. The Raincoat Song
4. Bridges & Balloons
5. From My Own True Love [I believe Colin forgot the order of the verses on this one]
6. Bachelor & The Bride
7. The Rake Song
8. Culling of the Fold
Marcel [sound guy] and Some Other Dude Crowd Surf to a Waltz [they each started from one end of the venue and high-fived in the middle]
9. I Was Meant For The Stage [totally amazing -- I mean, the perfect concert song]
10. The Island [Colin definitely forgot the words but Jenny corrected him, all three parts]
11. Crane Wife 3 [entire]
12. Annan Water

Encore 1:

Nate & John Make Out
Colin Writes a Song
1. The Tain [entire -- 20 minutes!, unlikely to ever hear this in concert anywhere else]
[all of the song sets were drawn in groups of three, but then when they drew this, Colin was like, we're not playing The Tain and two more songs! ...]
2. The Perfect Crime 2 [awesome]
[the Decemberists leave the stage but eventually come back]

Encore 2:

[but then they did wind up playing three songs total!]
Mr. Blue Sky (ELO cover) [Colin did a lot of jumping around on this one]

My year, we had to read Les confessions by Rousseau, Les châtiments by Hugo, and Electre by Jean Giraudoux. As far as I know, no one has ever read beyond Book I of Rousseau, which is the famous discussion of his childhood. I really loved both Les châtiments and Electre and, interestingly, it was the last lines of each text that totally got me.

At the end of Electre (drawn from the Greek tragedy by the same name, told by Homer, Sophocles, Euripides — you know, those guys), everything has devolved into chaos. And I still remember the last line:

La femme Narsès: (…) Comment cela s’appelle-t-il, quand le jour se lève, comme aujourd’hui, et que tout est gâché, que tout est saccagé, et que l’air pourtant se respire, et qu’on a tout perdu, que la ville brûle, que les innocents s’entre-tuent, mais que les coupables agonisent, dans un coin du jour qui se lève ?

Le mendiant: Cela a un très beau nom, femme Narsès. Cela s’appelle l’aurore.

“Narsès : (…) What is it called, when the sun rises, like today, and everything is spoiled, everything is devastated, but you can still breathe the air, and everything is lost, the city is burning, innocents are killing each other, but the guilty agonize, in a corner of the day that begins ?

Electra: Ask the beggar, he knows.

The beggar: This has a very beautiful name, Narsès. It is called dawn.”

Victor Hugo, French deputy, poet, and hater of dictators

Anyway, I also remember, like many others, the last lines of “Ultima verba,” the last poem in Hugo’s Châtiments, which is a brutal take-down of the regime of Napoleon III. (Note that Hugo originally supported Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte for president, but then the dude got too big for his britches. Hugo also came from a royalist family, but eventually came to be a democrat. Modern-day politicans could learn something from this guy’s willingness to admit his youthful ideological indiscretions.)

In “Ultima verba,” Hugo explains why he continues to live in self-imposed exile (even though he was granted amnesty). This is obviously a very powerful ideological statement, but it’s also just simply pretty, so it’s Text #1.

Last lines:

Si l’on n’est plus que mille, eh bien, j’en suis ! Si même
Ils ne sont plus que cent, je brave encor Sylla ;
S’il en demeure dix, je serai le dixième ;
Et s’il n’en reste qu’un, je serai celui-là !

“If we are only one thousand, well then, I’m among them! If even
There are only one hundred, I will face Sylla [a Roman dictator -- see, I learned something in high school]
If there are only ten, I will be the tenth
And if only one remains, I will be he.”

As you might imagine, I have no desire to subject this text to my tortuous translation, so I link to it here, with translation, although it appears to take significant license. (Also, the actual poem is longer than the one I linked to, but in my experience no one cares about the first six stanzas, and I’m not learning them anyway.)

I’m doing the best I can on the first. Now I’m just waiting for med schools to show me some love.

As for the second …. Well, Carter told me about an ingenious solution she used during her dissertation writing. I was immediately hooked, because it involves those little foil star stickers. Basically, you put a sticker in a notebook every time you write for 10 minutes. 10 minutes!

I have further complicated the system (of course). I have calculated that by working only during business hours (minus when I have to teach) on Monday through Saturday, I can work a maximum of 42 hours. So I’ve decided that any time I get to 30 hours in one week (180 stickers, pretty), I can buy myself a present. First goal: a pasta machine.

It’s all just really a convoluted way to allow myself to buy stickers and crap I don’t need. But hopefully I’ll get a workable dissertation out of it.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reflecting on some of the goals I’ve written, and how their form makes it impossible to accomplish them before I actually turn thirty. Which totally misses the point of this project, which is to allow me to cross things out using this HTML tag: see how this is crossed out?.

The problem goals are:

Things to Do #9 and #10: do more cooking projects and find new musics and Things to Learn #7: learn one text by heart every week (which was too much anyway).

To this end, I am changing my goals (always a good way to make them more attainable):

Things to Do

9. Do each of the following things at least three times: canning, pasta-making, bread-making (more to be added potentially)
10. Find 30 new albums I like, including at least 20 by artists I didn’t know before

Things to Learn

7. Learn at least 50 texts by heart.

Usually, I go to Shabbat evening services, and I can read the devil out of those prayers. By which I mean, I have them memorized. Unfortunately, I show up at the High Holidays (coming up, I hear), and we have to read some random thing, and then I follow along haplessly with my finger.

I don’t really have any desire to speak Hebrew. I have owned, since God knows when, a Hebrew in 10 Minutes a Day book. I used it for 10 minutes once. But ultimately, modern Hebrew is spoken by 7 million people, all of whom live in the same country. (I use this same excuse to explain why I don’t want to learn Chinese — “They all live in China!” — though of course you would have to mutiply the 7 by some large factor. When really, I tried to learn Chinese and failed.)

As a respected authority on Hebrew-language pedagogy, I have decided that the best thing is for me to find some free Web sites where they have texts that also have audio. The audio is key. (Or, alternatively, transliteration.) Hopefully, slowly but surely, I’ll build up to my goal of reading Hebrew “really fast.”

In the meantime, I’m getting out my colored pencils.