Livre d'Or

Does any restaurant exist which:

• Is located in Cambridge or within a reasonable half hour's drive of there?
• Serves interesting, tasty food for veggies and meat-eaters?
• Can cope with gluten-free and other special diets? Able to tell you exactly what's in the food and make substitutions if necessary?
• Is realistically (not just theoretically) accessible to wheelchair users?
• Can cope with a party of 20?

Blehhhh. Not being able to think of any such place (let alone one that actually seems appealing) is causing a load of drama that I would really rather not be dealing with.

My joint birthday party with jack at the weekend was great fun. Lots of lovely people, including people I haven't caught up with in far too long, including deborah_c and hobbitz. It was my first experience of having a party that included small children; they were wonderfully entertaining and not at all destructive. But it also felt like a life milestone: I've reached the stage where several of my peers have kids. Also, purplecthulu pointed out that I have now reached the age of majority in hobbit terms. When it got to the late night stage, the thing that seemed like a really good idea was to impose a fairly formal structure, with a conch and points of order, on a discussion about government mandated traffic-light labelling on food.

On the negative side, though, my asthma was bad enough to scare me pretty much throughout, and not responding to drugs. ( health and relationships )

Feh. Lots of couples have worse issues with illness or career stuff or geography getting in the way of the relationship. We'll be ok, but celebrating milestone birthdays is somewhat dampened by this situation.

Grr, I got most of the way through drafting a long post about this article on brain sex differences when I discovered that the article in question had gone behind a paywall between my starting my post and being ready to publish it. Somebody posted it on Twitter, I think ruthi but now I can't find the link I was looking for, so perhaps it was somebody else?

My point was going to be that I think it might be an interesting starting point for discussion with people who justify sexism because sex differences have a supposedly innate or biological basis. Eliot doesn't sound as polemically feminist as people like, say, Cordelia Fine or Deborah Cameron, both writers I strongly admire, but that's coming from the standpoint of someone who basically accepts their conclusions already. But since the article has now been hidden from public view, I can't discover whether I'm right that it might be more persuasive to a skeptical reader. Most annoying; I really do hate charging readers for access to scientific papers.

Anyway, the bit of my post that I'd already written compared Eliot's article with the NYT article about dieting that everybody was linking to at the end of last year. So I've put the half-written post behind the cut since I think the topic is still at least somewhat interesting even without the key point I wanted to make.

( truncated post, mentions dieting and body image )

The end of the academic year has been really lovely, for several reasons.

( celebrations and excursions )

Anyway, I had a completely fantastic time and feel very well recuperated from a long term. Productive and generally successful, but long.

I made it, people. I went to the gym twice a week for a whole year. I'm a little discouraged by the thought that I have to keep doing this for the rest of my life, but on the whole I'm quite proud of myself. I've only missed weeks when I've been on holiday, that is away from home for a week or more, not because I didn't feel like going to the gym. And I can do things that I couldn't even have thought about doing a year ago, which is also really pleasing.

( various noodling about this (includes mention of weight and body stuff) )

Of course, the main huge advantage I had was a truly excellent gym buddy, mathcathy. Since she never once called me to say she was too busy or too tired or just couldn't be bothered to exercise, I never dared call her to cancel (other than a couple of occasions where I had a genuine good reason.) Having an awesome partner isn't particularly dependent on having plenty of money, time or confidence, but it is a huge piece of good fortune and means I really can't take much of the credit for successfully keeping up with my routine for a year. Thank you ever so much, Cathy!

Anyway, I've been offered some exercise equipment for Jesus' my birthday. I think I probably want a set of weights rather than a machine, because I'm realistically a lot more likely to use them (and they'll take up less space if I don't!) My plan is to try to do the weights at home, if not every day then at least three or four times a week, meaning that when I'm in the gym I can use the whole 45 minutes for cardio and thus get fitter more quickly. I assume I can't go very far wrong with just buying a bunch of heavy things of different sizes, but is there anything I should know about acquiring a set of weights? Or do you have any better ideas for what I should ask for for a present?

A while back, jimhines, (who is generally a worthwhile feminist blogger, though he talks about a lot of other stuff apart from politics), wrote a very cute post about an alternate version of what his life would have been, had he been female. This seems a very cool idea, and I thought I might copy it. The trouble is that I think in most respects my life would have been the same or slightly worse had I been male. Still, a thought provoking exercise.

( The boy who blogs as Lev was born in an alternate universe back in 1978 )

I think doing this exercise could be a useful way of thinking about sexism and perhaps avoid getting entangled in pointless debates about terms like "privilege". Also, it's always fun to imagine alternate versions of your own history. (Somewhat easier for me since I do have brothers, so the early part of the story at least is fairly possible to predict!)

Work is sending me on a course in London next month, and I've arranged things so I can have a few days in the metropolis. Would anyone like to get together between Friday 18^th November and Wednesday 23^rd? And can anyone offer me crash space for some of that time? I should mention that jack isn't going to be around for most of the weekend, so if you have a preference for seeing me sans partner, this is probably a good time to speak up.

( tentative logistics )

So angelofthenorth's wedding made me realize that this getting married plan is actually happening. I don't know of any weddings in my social circle between hers and ours. (There may be some that haven't been decided yet, of course!) But anyway, our intentionally long engagement, which was supposed to allow time for planning and decision-making without too much time-pressure, has nearly all gone. There's only half a year left, which means we need to come to some definite decisions right now, in order to allow people we're paying to do complicated things to book us in.

The venue and catering are sorted, the celebrants have agreed in principle to be present. The two big things that aren't even decided are the dress and the un-honeymoon. (There are a couple of things where we've made a general decision but need to fix up the details, notably the guest-list and the artwork.) But, dress.

( I fear I'm becoming a clothes bore )

Plus, I need to find something for jack. I find it really sexist when the bride puts lots of money and effort into a marvellous dress, and the groom just hires a generic suit. Besides, we seem to be still living in a Beau Brummel world, where men's formal dress comes in various shades of grey or black, and is designed to look good on men who have the classic inverted triangle body shape, broad shoulders and slim waist, and even tailored I don't think that is going to really show jack to his best advantage. What I'm hoping for a is something along the lines of an eighteenth or early nineteenth century style frock coat, either an earlier justacorps or a slightly more recent but still very period cutaway coat. But I haven't had any success in finding such things; reenactment garb and stage costumes, yes, but not actual serious clothes. Also, steampunk. Steampunk is all very well, but I am pretty certain that something from an earlier era, Regency or earlier still, would work better for jack. Does anybody have any ideas?

Now I think of it, I'm not sure the naked icon is quite the thing for talking about clothes! But I don't have a better one.

So the start of the academic year coincided with the start of the new year in the Jewish calendar (5772). This has made my life incredibly intense, but it's been very positive.

( they look so young! )

Anyway, overall I'm feeling pretty satisfied and not too stressed. But note that I didn't manage to post this at the weekend because although I had plenty of free time, I ended up spending nearly all of it vegging out, I was just too tired to put DW posts together, let alone do any of the productive and useful things I'd planned for my rare days off.

Yom Kippur starts tomorrow evening; it's going to be a bit tough going straight into the liturgy from a very busy day of teaching, and apart from anything else I barely have time to eat before the fast begins. But I am getting help from the wonderful hatam_soferet, which will make it far less daunting. Plus she actually can sing, which may help to mitigate the issue that everybody wants incompatible and impossible things out of the musical aspects of the service. Have an easy fast and a good conclusion if applicable, and I'll virtually see you on the other side.

I like Manchester very much. Every time I step off the train into the city I can feel a distinct sense of brightening. But honestly I don't know the city at all well; when I make plans to meet or take friends there and they ask me for suggestions, I often end up saying, dunno, I, um, just like walking around and soaking up the atmosphere.

( what I did on my summer holidays )

I feel a bit silly about this; I live barely and hour away from Manchester, and I am a great fan of the place, but in practice I rarely go there. And when I go there, I don't take advantage of all the city has too offer because I'm too busy being awed by how cool the city is in general. I want to go to Manchester and intentionally drink in excellent pubs and eat in fantastic restaurants. I want to take friends to explore the city's culture, whether it's famous tourist destinations or little quirky out-of-the-way places. I even want to plan shopping expeditions deliberately, rather than just wander about looking for shinies. I want to get involved in the famous gay scene. (I totally planned to do Manchester Pride this year, but I just didn't get things together to go to Manchester twice in one weekend.)

And I want to maintain connections with the three progressive synagogues there. I have the closest connections with Menorah (Cheshire Reform), and they do some great educational events, but that's out in the suburbs and somewhat of a pain to get to by public transport. I'm fond of Jackson's Row, but the only way I'd get in is by playing on personal connections with the rabbi there; I'm not in a position, financially or time-wise, to actually join the community. And Manchester Liberal, the community I'd really like to work with because they're small and new and Queer-friendly (and the other week they did an accessibility service, how cool is that?), basically only meet on Friday evenings when I'm already committed in Stoke.

I think basically what I want is to live in Manchester (not an hour away). I've realized this may be part of why I was so keen for lethargic_man to take up the offer of moving with his previous job to Manchester: for me, that opportunity would be a wish from a fairy godmother! If only I could keep my current job, which is perfect for me, with my current institution, which I really like and appreciate, but live in Manchester rather than here, my life would be basically perfect.

I need to figure out whether I actually want to move to Manchester even absent a fairy godmother. The pros would be that I think I'd be a lot happier living there; I'm a medium-sized city girl at heart, and Stoke just has too little going on for me. My Jewish life would be amazingly better. And even if I had to give up my current spacious semi for a flat, I think that would be worth it. The cons would be job stuff; I'd probably have to get a new job, and yes, Manchester does have universities but there's no guarantee that I'd get a job at all, let alone as good as my current one. Or else I'd have to commute from Manchester; that would probably blot out all the advantages of living there rather than here. And I am committed to my community here; it's not unthinkable that I could come up to Stoke just for Friday nights, though it would be a pain and I'd be less able to support them if I lived out of town. And Manchester is just enough further away from my friends in London and Cambridge that it might tip the balance. As it is I'm spending most of my fun budget and nearly all my leisure time visiting people in the South-East, and that's probably why I don't just pop up to Manchester and do fun stuff.

And when I start thinking like this, I start getting itchy feet in general. Do I really want to commit myself to spending the rest of my working life in one job and one town? Getting engaged kind of means I can't just run off on adventures at the drop of a hat any more, and part of me resents that even though I don't have any specific adventures I wish I was having. Moving to anywhere that was not Manchester would have all the same disadvantages, only much worse: I might not find a job, I would (most likely) be further away from SE England, I'd have to drop my involvement with the community here. I suppose this is what you call having roots, isn't it? Weird sensation for me, when I've always assumed I'd spend my life flitting from country to country on short-term contracts.