Day Ten - Project 6 (Project Complete)

    Was looking for Mary and Magda outside the grocery store and its connecting strip mall.  So I jogged back and forth.  YEAH!  LETTER OF THE LAW ALL THE WAY, BABY!

  Total cop-out.  

  In other news, I knit, like, every day now.  I'm making a giant, Saint's Row purple gang colour scarf for myself.  Mary has completely surpassed me in creativity and skill with the knitting possibly out of spite (either with me or knitting itself), but I'm still happy with where I am, skillwise.

  So, I'm not a runner.  I might try to find a day or two in the week to do it occasionally, as it does seem to give me more of a full body exercise compared to my bike (which I do for the diabetes), and even with the less than 50% success rate, I found my endurance did improve a bit, which I need if I'm going to tackle any sport in the near future.

  I've decided on "Learn how my car works" as my next project.  Tomorrow, I'll be starting to look at just what the heck an internal combustion engine is.  Trust me, I think I understand how Zefram Cochrane's warp drive works better, so this won't be easy.

-Mike

Day Nine - Project 6

PARTY.  HAPPY.  NO RUNNING.  HAPPY.  NO GUILT.  TOO HAPPY.

-Mike

  

Day Eight - Project 6

  So, I've done really cold, really rainy, and now, really freaking big headache.  That felt like a victory.  Plus, I've been dropping the number of walking steps in my walking intervals, and adding steps in my running ones.   Still haven't done my bike cardio.

  Also, this project overlaps with my gang's annual board game night.  It's kind of everything that's wrong with me and the reasoning for the projects, but I started it nine years ago, and my friends all still humour me, so I am so excited I can hardly breathe.  No, I'm just out of breath from running.

  Right foot is starting to get a little sore from my old hand me down sneakers, courtesy of the successful baby brother.  Can't really afford new ones, so c'est le guerre.  Anyway, I've got lots of pre-Easter chores on Friday morning, and all day Saturday, so I'm betting I'll rationalize away any last chance of making this a successful project.  To thine own self be true, right?

  Mine own self seems to be trying to sabotage me lately.

-Mike

Day Seven - Project 6

Did a little better tonight.  I was all "Here I Go Again (On My Own)" by Whitesnake, and within about twenty minutes, I was "King of Pain" by The Police.  You know, the part where you're in the pouring rain.  But. I didn't quit.  Mostly because I am so completely sucking in this project already.  Didn't do my regular exercise bike workout afterward, either.  I am racking up the owed minutes on my exercise bike cardio.  And I can't jog earlier in the evening, because that's the time I have with my kid.

  And the early morning is just a stupid time of the day.  Not just for working out.  It's stupid for everything.  It's sometimes good for dragging oneself to bed after a late night.  Other than that, no.

  -Mike

Day Six - Project 6

  I finally got back on the mule.  I reduced my intended distance.  I thought I did anyway.  I just googled it and I only took a kilometre off the whole round trip compared to last time (now I'm scared again).

  I did stretch and warm up, and I also cooled down afterward.  There was one snag.

  A freight train was travelling in the same direction as me on my return leg.  This was not some POWERFUL LOCOMOTIVE, it was huffing and puffing its car-carrier-cars along at a nice slow clip.  I mean pleasant-speed-the-trainyard-bulls-won't-catch-us-Big-Rock-Candy-Mountain-Awaits-other-hobo-reference.  Nothing too fast.

  But you see, I like Superman.  The comic books, cartoons, movies.  Christopher Reeve was on my wall when I was little.  I jumped off low rooftops with a cape and a dream.  And I remember when he ran home from high school in the 70s Superman.  So, yeah, at the end of my run, I started to put on a little racing speed.  I don't know what I was expecting.  Of course I beat it.  It stops frequently.

  So I'm guessing I overdid it again.

  Tomorrow is going to SUUUUUUUCK.

  -Mike

Day Five - Project 6

  So, the suggestions on the sites I looked at say I should stretch and warm up outside, in the weather in which I'll be jogging.  And man, everything I've ever read says you have to cool down after a workout.  I hate that.  I want to just slam on the brakes and be done.  That's how I roll.  By not rolling.  Just shifting into PARK and the engine be damned.  Hmmmm.  I think my analogy is teaching me things.  All right then.

  Oh, also, they said don't try to start off with too much.  Apparently you can put a lot of strain on yourself.  Interesting.  Just do a short neighbourhood jog.  Huh.  I guess that makes sense...for wusses!

  (He says still feeling residual soreness three days later)

  All right.  I have the information.  I have a battle plan.  I am ready to go.

  (Few Hours Later)

  I didn't go.  It turns out, I'm a-scared.  I have this horrible feeling that everytime I try this, I'm going to hurt myself more and more, and then die.  And I can't die yet.  I should have more of a story arc than that.  Maybe when I've only got one more project to do - for the "Oh, how sad" factor.  Or, maybe when I'm a month from retirement, and than the maverick rookie student teacher I've been training has to go on a mad spree of revenge!  "Old Schooling", starring someone I like from a while ago, and introducing someone I've never heard of, in the summer blockbuster of the...summer.

  I will run tomorrow, okay.  I promise.

-Mike

Day Four - Project 6

 Oh, COME ON!  I hurt more today than yesterday!  This is a rip!  This is why we fat people stay fat.  Mary said I really need to talk to someone who knows how to run, or look at a running clinic's website, or do some kind, any kind, of preparation.  Yeah, right.  That makes sense.  There's probably some kind of drug on the market that makes this stuff easy for atrophied slobs.  They should give me some of it.  Free.  Because I deserve it.

  Okay.  I'll get some running tips.

-Mike

P.S.  Ow.

Day Three - Project six

  Ow.  Ow ow ow.  Groan.  Hiss.

  I am prematurely old.  This is a condition which I have caused in myself.  I know this.  What I don't seem to know is that I can't just up and start new physical activities without paying for them the next day.  "But I did things just like I did when I was 18, and I could do it then."  Boo, idiot.

  Too much pain.  Can't run.  Weak.  Feeble.

  -Mike

Day Two(!) - Project 6

  Ok, so as it turns out, in knitting parlance, I dropped a stitch.  In real terms, the Shakespeare project and the trip to visit family and freaking Love's Labour's Lost means I miscounted.

  To tell the truth, I can't believe it took five projects for me to screw up the count.  I'm going to have to do a double run sometime during the next nine....eight days.

  It's Friday night, I jogged for close to an hour, then did my exercise bike cardio for over an hour.  I have decided to not feel guilty, and to drive a variety of cars off a variety of bridges in Grand Theft Auto.  I will write something cute and heartfelt and witty and insightful tomorrow.

-Mike

Day One(?) - Project 6 (Start jogging outside)

  I really needed a break from all the big think.

  I put this one on the list because for a number of reasons.  One is that it is a really good introductory Physical Challenge project.  It might help me with endurance, with the eventual sports, and possibly help me become a faster runner.  The second reason it that it is cheap.  I can run on a treadmill all day long (or an hour), but treadmills are expensive.  So are the gyms that frequently house them.  The outside world is somewhat free if you simply want to walk on it.

  Lastly, that fact about running on a treadmill is absolutely true.  No matter how out of shape I am, I can jog on a treadmill for a LONG TIME.  I don't know why.  This will seem unimpressive to the rest of you, but for me, it is very strange.  When I am outside, jogging at a pace slower than I would use on a treadmill, my lungs  start to burn.  It only takes a few minutes.  My lungs don't do that in a nice, air-conditioned gym or on a friend's treadmill.  In summer it's bad enough, but it winter?  I really don't ever want to be in a life or death struggle in the cold.  Wolves that would never come near the smell of man would take a look at me and say, "Come on guys, this is the DEFINITION of weeding out the sick and old!  let's put the human out of its misery!"

  I'm sure someone knows why this is.  I never quite hit something useful with my searches on the internet.  I think I'll have to ask my doctor about it next time.  In the meantime, if it is not killing me, I have to try and beat it.

  I went for an easy jog tonight.  I did an interval run to the drugstore two kilometres away (2.2, actually, thankew, Google),  I don't have a pedometer, or in fact, a watch, so I simply counted every right footstep.  After a hundred, I switched to a walk, then after a hundred count again, back to jogging.  I went to the store, bought water and orange juice, stuck it in a backpack, and continued the same to home.  I even counted the steps in the store.  How obsessive is that, huh?  I'm going to look into jogging tips on the internet tomorrow, and then see if I should make it a little harder tomorrow, or go at the same level to see if I can do it with a little less hunka-hunka-burnin'-lung.  That's terrible imagery.

-Mike

Day Ten - Project 5 (Complete)

I finished Julius Caesar, and I am into Antony and Cleopatra, allowing me to continue to rip off HBO's casting to make the performance in my head more familiar and easier to comprehend.  I only read Othello, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, A Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, and Julius Caesar completely, having just waded into Antony and Cleopatra.  I wasn't expecting Love's Labour's Lost to so completely defeat me.  I learned that Shakespeare's tragedies that don't have teenagers in them are absolutely awesome stories.  I also learned that if Shakespeare was here, right now, and he told me a joke, I would kick him in the codpiece and spit in his ruff.

  This project doesn't really end here.  Like knitting, which has become a daily relaxation, I'll be keeping up with the Shakespeare (though not to relax, just to feel a little smarter).  I'm almost caught up to Mary in her reading of Shakespeare's plays, so we can discuss them at length again (which, as I said before, is kinda fun).

  It's a nice thing to have now read enough of Shakespeare to feel confident enough to say I think some of his stuff is crap.  It actually increases my love of Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Lear.

  I learned to never read, listen to, watch, or countenance in any fashion, Love's Labour's Lost.

  I hate that play.

  -Mike

Day Nine - Project 5

  Wednesday, March 20th

  Love's Labour's Lost is done.  I mean, I finished it.  Mary told me that it actually had a sequel, The Love's Labour's Strike Back, or some such.  But it has been lost to the ages.

  I would like to thank Weishaupt's Bavarian Illuminati, and paper-eating weevils.

  I started Julius Caesar.  I have been enjoying picturing the characters as the cast of HBO's Rome.  Ciaran Hinds and James Purefoy are awesome.  It's a nice change from picturing Love's Labour's Lost featuring the cast of....oh, something that sucks....Big Bang Theory.  Oh, no.  Too much.  I went too far and hurt my soul.

  Julius Caesar is as good as I remember it from 2nd year of university.  It was one of the few plays I actually read before withdrawing from Shakespeare 200 because I was failing.

  I like it, I like the characters.  I don't want to say anything more.  Brevity is the soul of wit.  Silence speaks consent.  Something else wise that justifies no more talking.

  Man, four nights to get through Love's Labour's Lost.  That's just embarrassing.

  -Mike

Day Eight - Project 5

Tuesday, March 19

  Friends, do you suffer from sleepless nights?  Does the constant tossing and turning from insomnia fill you with a desire for self-annihilation, for nothingness?  Do you, like the Bard said, wish to once again "Sleep, perchance to dream"?

  The cure is here!  Away with nights staring at your ceiling, finely crafting the insult you should have used on your seventh grade bully a quarter century ago, had you not been busy bleeding on the playground!

  Love's Labour's Lost is the answer!  In just three nights of attempting to read this.....classic(!)(?)(+/-)... you'll be able to sleep!  In fact, you'll be UNABLE to NOT SLEEP!  Your conscious mind will rebel at the thought of entering the play's fantastical precincts, and you will fall into sweet, protective unconsciousness, maybe even with a 10 lb Shakespeare tome falling heavily onto your snoring nose.  It's just that simple!

  Love's Labour's Lost may not be right for everyone.  If you suffer from Type II Diabetes, Sleep Apnea, Restless Leg, Headaches, Stuffed Up Nose, Delusions That EVERY Shakespeare Play Is Great Literature, if you are pregnant, are hoping to become pregnant, or hoping to engage in activity that might make someone pregnant, Love's Labour's Lost might have serious (no, not light-hearted or comical) side-effects.  Talk to your doctor to see if Love's Labour's Lost might be right for you.  And talk to your librarian about a book that might be more enjoyable.

  Love's Labour's Lost should not be used while operating heavy machinery.  It should not be combined with other prescriptions for this condition.  Combining Love's Labour's Lost with The Illiad may cause coma or even be fatal.

  Isn't it time you bored yourself to sleep?

  Isn't it time....for Love's Labour's Lost?

-Mike

Day Seven - Project 5

Monday, March 18

  Read another couple of pages of this....misdemeanor against humanity.  If you ever get a time machine, do like I said, go back and give it to Mark Twain.  DO NOT GO TO AN ELIZABETHAN ERA PARTY.  It would be like first-semester political science students, and hipsters, and drunken hockey parents, and panda bears, all together.  "Dangerous Thing" levels of little knowledge, mixed with toxic amounts of self-amusement, mixed with unbelievable degrees of indulgence and over-indulgence, mixed with pointless existence.

  Wow.  I hate a lot of things.

  One of them is Love's Labour's Lost.

  There is no end in sight of this.

   I memorized the following from Macbeth.  It may not be word for word, but I've noticed my memory starting to go in the last couple years, so I'm proud of it:

  Life's but a walking shadow;  it is a poor player
  Who frets and struts his hour upon the stage
  And is heard no more;  It is a tale told by an idiot
  Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

  If Shakespeare hadn't also written those words, I would say that Love's Labour's Lost was proof of idiocy.

  -Mike

Day Six - Project 5

Sunday, March 17

  Back from our trip, late bjournal entries done.  And it is time to start Love's Labour's Lost.

  Half an hour later...

  Really?  The writer synonymous with our language?  This?

  Five more minutes...

  Mary practically said she hated this, but then said I'd probably like it.

  Does Mary hate me?

  I mean, I like puns more than the next 8 year old or really silly grampa, but puns on slang have a half-life of...borrow from Warhol, carry the 2.... Seven and a half minutes.

  Puns don't last well.  If I left one in the fridge, it'd last a few months, then go stale, or rotten.

  The PLOT/PREMISE/EXCUSE FOR THIS PILE OF FANCY WRITING:

  A ruffed, He-man-Woman-hater's Club?  With books?  A book club.

  Remember the end of Bambi?  Bambi, Thumpy, and Stinky, or whatever, who the hell watches Bambi anymore, anyway?  The end, where the three boy animals are schooled in bein' "Twitterpated" (okay, I guess I remember a bit), and then each one sees a pretty girl of the appropriate species and takes off, leaving their friendship and promises of staying guy-pals forever and ever in the dust.  That's this freaking play.

  I hate this play.

  This play is dumb.

  I have only read a little bit.

  But it is stupid.  Big Stupid.

  Magnum Stupus.

  And I have to keep reading.

  -Mike

Day Five - Project 5

  I don't hate farce.  I like Trey Parker and Matt Stone's That's My Bush, precisely for the farcical situations and premises.  I love Moliere, specifically A Doctor in Spite of Himself.  But A Comedy of Errors has the most ridiculously flimsy pretense of a premise, and then ignores the fact that at least three of the main characters are in the know about what could be the cause of all the mistaken identities.  If you are going to have the crazy misunderstandings, and the sudden starting/stopping of pointless, mindless violence, maybe you shouldn't have the ridiculously slow Shakespearean style dialogue.  I mean, this above all, to thine own self be true and all that crap, but DUDE.  Get thee to a freaking clue.  Moliere - zing zing ZING - fast dialogue.

  This one does have the first appearance of "Butterface/But her face" in popular culture - 400 plus years before someone in America (I'm assuming) felt they hand-crafted some really clever sexist invective.  I don't think that really qualifies as a plus.

  I might have laughed more if it had been titled "A Tragedy of Errors".  Then the rare attempts at humour might have been surprising, at least.

Mary's already complained about Love's Labour's Lost.  I'm going to start it tomorrow when we get home from our trip, but if you want to see something better and more summatively descriptive, please look at her comic version.

http://shakespearethisyear.blogspot.ca/2013/03/day-70-what-i-learned-loves-labours.html

-Mike

Day Four - Project 5

  Amongst the time spent with family, I was able to finish King Lear.  To start:  a HUGE FREAKING PLAY.  As far as Shakespeare goes, this one has more believable human motivation and decision making.  Most of Edgar's decisions (The brother set up for a crime he didn't commit) - playing the madman even after he'd in all likelihood be safe and/or exonerated - seem ridiculous, but nearly everyone else, I get.  You kind of get the feeling that everyone is in the right and everyone is in the wrong (except for Cordelia and Kent).

  The dialogue is some of the most enjoyable I've seen yet.  Kent insults the steward Oswald in what is without a doubt one of the top ten put-downs of all time (sound now, alarums for I will spoil thee):


"A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats, a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, action-taking, whoreson glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch, one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition." Kent does beat him into clamorous whining, case you were worrying.


  I can see Samuel Jackson running through any or all of it with a few judicious M%$#&$@!*%amp;S thrown in, for good measure (for measure).

  I've been trying to memorize a line from many of the plays of Shakespeare I've read this year, and that one, while awesome, is not my favourite from Lear.   Edmund's "Now, gods, stand up for bastards!" goes into my list alongside Murderer #1 from Macbeth telling the king he's got the stomach for dirty work, and despite my hate of it overall, Merchant of Venice's excellent description of learning vengeance and violence from the hypocritical Christians stated by Shylock.

  I'm not optimistic about a Comedy of Errors. If he had to tell us it is a comedy in the title, Methinks the laddie doth propound too much. I'll read it and get back to you.


-Mike

Day Three - Project 5

  Hi folks.  Grand-mere passed away today at the age of 103.  I mentioned her briefly a few posts back.  She was awesome.

  We're gonna be out of town for a few days.  I know this is coming right on my just posting my delinquent posts, but I'll update on Lear et al as soon as I can.  Family trumps fun projects.  I've got my 10 lb Shakespeare with me, so I'll read when I can.

  Tell the people you love that you love them.  All the time.

- Mike

Day Two - Project 5

  Oh, Man.  I mean, I know I read Romeo and Juliet twenty-one years ago, so I should have just skimmed it, but DAMMMMMMMMMMMMMN....

  When I was 16 in grade 11, and had a teacher who was then a mentor and hero and friend and would become many years later a beloved colleague, I had to study this exercise in everything wrong with teenagers.  At the age of 16 I decided these two idiots were idiots.  Now, years past my peer-group misanthropy, I am a teacher of teenagers.  And NO, I do not think they're idiots.  I have more respect and understanding for teenagers now than when I was one.  But they do lack a sense of scale.

  In their defense, they haven't had the years to gain a sense of proportion, objectivity, self-awareness.  I remember what it was like, feeling that life would always be like THIS, feelings would always be THIS WAY, and whomever one was dating at the time was THE ONE TRUE LOVE OF THIS OR ANY ERA.  But what adults forget is that WE didn't just learn from our elders' experiences.  We learned from our own.

  Juliet and Romeo, however, didn't learn from anything.  These idiots WERE, ARE, and E'ER SHALL BE, idiots.  You really want to yell at the book.  Or go to a 17th century performance and yell from the penny-admission standing-room-only rows and yell.

  "Jeez, dude, wait a few weeks!  You just fell out of love with the last one an hour ago!"

  "Hell, girl, you're thirteen!  He's older than you by a few years!  Oh, and his family HATES you!  He might be trying to trick you to humiliate you!  Just cuz the internet and camera phones don't exist yet doesn't mean guys can't try to mess with your reputation!"

 
"If you love him, and have married him, banishment or no, GO WITH HIM!  He's RIGHT THERE!  If you're scared to leave home, MAYBE YOU'RE TOO DAMNED YOUNG TO GET MARRIED!"

  "Don't kill yourself!"

  "Don't kill yourself, either!"

 "IDIOTS!"

  I don't like Romeo and Juliet much.  I like the Friar, who's a little less idiotic than the rest.  And I like Benvolio and Mercutio.  I like the concept of Ruffed Toughs.  Oh, yeah, gonna bite my thumb at y'all, knowumsayin?

  Okay.  Taking a breather.

  On to King Lear.

 -Mike

  Dedicated to Jim Campbell.  The English teacher I'm trying to grow up to be.

 

Day One - Project 5 (Ten Shakespeare Plays in Ten Days)

  Days late.  Again.  I never said I would post every day (or make a post for each day), but it has become the mode for the bjournal, or at least the exception that tests the rule.  Rule fails.

  I chose this project for a number of reasons.  The first is the same reason that all the "Read the works of [FamousDeadLiteraryFigureHere]" are attempted.  It's Edmund Hillary's "Because it's there."  The IT is not the works of said notables.  The IT in question is the glaring gaping hole in my reading as a supposed English Language Arts teacher.  I'm good at grammar, and I owned a lot of classics of literature as a pretentious teenager.  I haven't actually read that much.  When I talk to real well-read personages (see reason 2), a cold wind blows through the part of my brain inhabited by my IT.  Reading some more Shakespeare is probably not a bad thing for me.

  The second reason is I fell behind in reading Shakespeare a month ago.  My partner has a blog (one of many) describing her attempt to read all of Shakespeare's plays in a year.  I've mentioned this before.  And when she started it in the new year, I figured (given my IT of previous reason) sure, why not, I've got no other demands on my time.  One Shakespeare play a week - it seemed doable.  I read (as previously bjournaled) The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Winter's Tale, Macbeth, and Racists Merchant of Venice.  Yeah, Merchant of Venice did my head in.  I just couldn't deal with the constant hatefulness of it.  It's kind of funny that What I started focusing on in my project at the time was Mark Twain's books, and specifically Huckleberry Finn.  But I do believe there was more social commentary in Twain's usage of the "N" word than Shakespeare's stage direction "Exit Jew" and the like.

  So I've read Othello.  Of my spoils, I do anow alert thee.  It's got racism, it's got sad unfairness, it's got violence against women.  But it's got heart.  It's got strong emotional believability.  O man, it's got Iago.  I still love my man Oberon (Midsummer Night's Dream), the selfish, debonair, thoughtless villian unleashing chaos (Puck) on the world because he didn't get his way, but Oberon lives in a romantic comedy world.  Iago lives in Venice - not the stupid, I-need-you-to-get-me-money-so-I-can-pick-a-box-and-try-to-reality-show-win-the-rich-lady-of-Belmont Venice, but a darker, harsher Venice under threat of war.  Iago is like hate for hate's sake.  When he kneels down with Othello to swear an oath to help him, I shivered.  Back when my hometown of Halifax, NS (I love how I still write as if the people who read this aren't almost entirely my family) had an artsy, indy movie theatre, I saw Othello, starring Lawrence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh.  I remember thinking it was awesome.  I have loved Lawrence Fishburne in everything he's done.  Even if the movie sucked, he didn't.  I watched The Matrix Strikes Back and Return of the Matrix for him, no one else.  Come on, Mr. Clean!  Apocalypse Now, when he was "Larry" Fishburne!  Okay, my revels now are ended.

  Othello is good.  It is sad.  Read it.

  For those of you interested in my Shakespearean itinerary, it is actually at the whim of my good lady partner.  Mary decided on the order of the plays for her yearlong task.  This project is a chance for me to get back in her game.


1. Othello
2. Romeo and Juliet
3. King Lear
4. The Comedy of Errors
5. Love's Labour's Lost
6. Julius Caesar
7. Antony and Cleopatra
8. Coriolanus
9. Titus Andronicus
10. The Two Gentlemen of Verona

  It was fun, before I got sidetracked, discussing each play as we read them.  I have taken the advice of friends, coworkers, distant relatives, students, and strangers who heard me talking about the projects.  Mary had asked if I wanted to read the plays with her before I got the idea for my One Thousand Days.  It was fun, and it was nice to feel like I had this format for bettering myself.

  And that's how I started thinking about my own thing.  So this project, hot on the heels of another reading project (well, one heels back), is just cuz.  Just cuz I like talking to Mary about this stuff.

  I love you, Mary.

-Mike

http://shakespearethisyear.blogspot.ca/

Day 10 - Project 4 (Complete)

  Mary, who loathes knitting now, was the one who taught me how to bind off.  I watched a video from http://www.knittinghelp.com and the woman demonstrated it exactly how Mary showed me.  I took the loose end of yarn once it was cut and fed it into the last loop, and it seems pretty tight, but it's not like I sewed it in with some kind of knitting-sewing-needle thing, which they have and I'd never heard of, because I spent ten days learning the absolute basics.

  I learned I like knitting.  It's not as awesome as reading Mark Twain, sure, but it's heaps better then making my back and legs sore with tons of stretching.  One Christmas in recent memory, I baked homemade bread for everyone.  This was awesome because (a) there are still people who like getting homemade stuff, and (b) I'm so poor I can't really afford Christmas.  So win-win.  I might try to make a few scarves this year, in and around all the other things that need doing.  But if I start now, I might be able to make a handful without having it take over my life.

  Here is the incredibly lopsided thing that my kid was bouncing off the walls in anticipation of giving to her stuffed animal:

Is it just me, or does it sort of look like a cape? 

  Well, it is wool, so technically, if her toy lamb wears it, it makes Lambie marginally more real, right?  Dad for the WIN!

  Magda is asking for knitted police uniforms and other costumes for her stuffed animals.  This could save me a fortune in presents if I get better at this.

  I've learned....to be cheap.

  -Mike

Day Nine - Project 4

  We spent the day visiting Mary's mother, and her sister and sister's family.  I spent the time we were chatting knitting, especially when visiting her Mom.  I like how supportive she is - professing to be very impressed that I can barely do more than a knit stitch.  Heck, Mary's aunt and grandmother (Grand-Mere is 103) were blown away when they saw me change a diaper three years ago - My kid's, not mine.  I think the assumption of men being unwilling or unable to do these things raised me a little in their estimation, like a monkey that can wear a fez while riding a tricycle.  But these are women I respect, and I will take any estimation I can get.

  I have officially told my little girl that the super dishrag is definitely going to be a blanket for "Lambie", so I can't take it back now.  Magda sleeps from 7 pm to 7 am without fussing, I ought to be paying hourly wages and contributing to a pension plan for that sheep puppet.  A half-assed blanket is the least I can do.  Plus, Magda is psyched.

  Still haven't figured out binding off, Knitting's finishing move, and I'm so wiped from driving, I'm considering the hours of knitting while chatting with the in-laws my time served.

  Tomorrow is what I've learned.  (Can you guess?  It starts with "K")

-Mike  

Day Eight - Project 4

  I am writing this on Sunday and am also pretending it is Friday.

  I've gotten better at keeping my stitches loose but not too loose.  I've also hit 40 stitches on my needle (up from 20), so I really need to pay more attention to what I'm doing.  I probably can't chew gum while I do this either.  On the upside, it was the last day before the March Break, and most classes didn't have new work for the students to do, so when I was covering a colleague's class, I was able to knit once the students finished their work and played math games.  A little more knitting after school and my two hours were covered.  I'm going to play video games and unwind as if March Break is a good thing for a substitute.

-Mike

Day Seven - Project 4

  No help.  No growth.  No improvement.  Zero Sum Knitting.  Took the longest time tonight to knit one whole row after the purling fiasco of yesterday. It was like the yarn was back to school after summer break, and bragging about how it's completely forgot how to work, and how its mom totally doesn't care if it stays up all night playing video games and stuff.  Lost the thread there for a second.  Basically, I didn't get a moment to get some knitting help on my lunch break.  On the upside, we had a fun chess tournament at school.  So the totality of my knitting work tonight is one row.  One row that for whatever evil was woven into my bottomless scarf took me three or four times as long to do.  I hate purling.  It's stupid and has a stupid name and probably face if I took the time to personify it.

  There is a slim, possibly starving itself to be popular, chance that I just have not really figured out how to purl correctly.  I don't think you should believe that, and should simply get on board the purling is lame train I just built out of spare run-on sentences recently.  As a person who admires scientists, I have a wannabe obligation to examine all possibilities, even the highly laughably unlikelihood that I simply screwed up.  I'll double check my math and get back to you.

  Can't even locate the wire that plugs the camera into the computer.  Man, Zero Sum Knitting.

  Three more days to figure it AND binding off.  Wow, I just realized what I've really given myself is a hundred deadlines over which to stress and worry.

  -Mike

Day Six - Project 4

  Purling seems to be my next big hurdle.  I got knit stitches down so that I could knit while running my chess club. This is a purl stitch.  "Right, so you know the stitches that you were told to keep a little loose?  Well, all of a sudden they are going to tighten up like a stressed person's air passage, and even if you are using mono-molecular cyberpunk-era knitting needles , the needles will not get thorough the stitch without first going through the yarn a half dozen times so as to stretch and ruin each stitch in its inevitable turn."

  And I was doing so well.  

  A colleague offered to help me today, and if she has a break at the same time I do, I'm totally taking her up on it.  I might ask one of the seventh graders, who grabbed my needles and started knitting like a champ at the end of lunch.  I've got a chess tournament to run tomorrow, so that should be easy.

  I'm still knitting the same piece from yesterday, and I'll show some pictures tomorrow.  I'm thinking I'll do what everyone who doesn't know what they're making or how to end it does.  Giant Doctor Who scarf.

  -Mike

  

Day Five - Project 4

  Eu-Freakin-Reka!  So, to be clear, I am the most awesome Knittist that ever knat or will have ever knut.  You wanna see the knifty and knice work I have done?  Behold.

Oh, yeah.  I TOTALLY did that.

    Just for the record, to get a sense of the consciousness-obliterating amazingness that is my handiwork, here's my only ever selfie...selfy?  Selfee?  I'll ask one of my students, they care about the correct spelling of best-before-due-date-slang.  Whatever, here's the pic with a sense of the scale of my achievement:

Can you deal with THIS?  No, you can NOT.

   I think I actually achieved a couple moments of that zen level of medititation crap while knitting.  I was not ticked off, and I was actually enjoying myself.  Mary and I were listening to a William Gibson audiobook of essays and trying to knit.  Mary allowed me to photograph her expressing her feelings on the experience of knitting.

I need a portmanteau word for attractive and aggravated.

   Despite the fact that I have completely and for all time knocked the world of knitting on its ear, I think tomorrow I will try purling for the first time.  And if you think my potential dishrag .5 is astonishing, wait till you see it with knitting that looks like...whatever purling does that differentiates it from knit stitches.

  Good Knite!

  -Mike

Day Four - Project 4

  All right.  I can Cast On.  It doesn't look beautiful, but I can do it.  I can even start to knit stitch.  But I did it so tightly that I couldn't do a second row.  I have the pattern down, so I might have to practice and practice till just these first two steps don't tighten up like the arteries I feel closing in response to the stress that knitting is making me feel.  "Really, you can have my knitting needles when you pry them from my cold, dead hands. Seriously, I want you to take them.  Just wait for the rigor to settle down, and remember to check your blood pressure regularly when learning to knit."

  For my beloved three people who read this, my apologies for the lateness of my posting.  Despite the crazy amount of stuff to do this week, I'll be posting regularly again tomorrow.

  I have no jokes to finish my post.  Knitting has pierced my soul and I can no longer tell jokes.  Nothing is funny anymore.  There is only sadness and pain and yarn.

  -Mike

Day Three - Project 4

  Another day of rousing frustration and personal failure.  I watched a number of videos on the internet all showing me how to cast on, knit and purl, and reminding me that I'll come up with my own way of doing things.

  I have.  I use the wrong way.

Saw one bunch of Youtube videos with hip, cool people talking about all the hippest, coolest, knitting news and methods.  I swear, hipsters, man.  "Now when I knit, I like to get my yarn by taking apart old sweaters."    Oh, for love of criminy.  Now me, when I like to make a sandwich, I like to get my mustard and bologna and bread from sandwiches I just dismantled, so my refrigerator footprint is smaller.  GET A KNITTING APP FOR YOUR PHONE!  I'm hoping this nonsense is regular updates on all the places one can get cool retro yarn before it becomes cool and mainstream, and not just playing another stupid phone game, but a game where you knit.

  I have determined that the older and closer to death I get, the less afraid of the nothingness beyond I shall become, because of my increasing annoyance with and contempt for the generations immediately following me.  "Hey, great-grandpa, how are you feeling today?"  "O hell, boy, what are you wearing on your head?  Someone unplug these things."

  Knitting still seems utterly incomprehensible.  I can play video games where it requires a whole lot of combinations of movements and patterns of button pressing and character abilities.  But, knitting, man.  Maybe I'd get better at it if knitting gave me little achievements to unlock.  Or finish moves where a bad guy dies when I knit a stitch.

  Maybe I just suck at turning yarn into clothing.

  I was at a family party today, where multiple family members can knit, and one in fact was. I didn't even mention I was trying to learn.  I think this is the fastest I have ever developed a complex about something.  WHOOHOO!  New personal best!

  Sigh.

  I bet Mark Twain could knit.

 - Mike

Day Two - Project 4

Yeah, so.....

  I have done many, many things that have made me feel stupid, and inept, and ignorant in my 3.73 decades. Eleventh Grade Mathematics.  Guitar Hero on the hard setting.  Snowboarding.  Taxes.

  Knitting is without a doubt the hardest thing that I have ever tried to figure out.  Hands down.

  I watched the library dvd last night (Friday, March 1st).  It was like watching the "Church Lady" from SNL.  The needles I got are apparently not the kind  I should've been using, and my non-wool yarn from the dollar store means I'm a filthy communist who doesn't care about the hardworking shepherd and his/her disappearing way of life.

  I brought the Knitting for Dummies book with me to my daughter's gym/dance class this morning, and one of the dads who has heard about my projects suggested (a) learn to ride a motorcycle, and (b), upon hearing that I was trying to knit, that I should add swim the English Channel.  Knitting for Dummies talks about the wonders of knitting at work, at stoplights, I assume after the end of a particularly stressful round of boxing.  Then the book proceeds to explain your step by step actions on one page, and displays incomprehensible diagrams on the following.

  It was Mary's birthday.  I focused on that instead. I made burgers, and poutine, and a pretty blue and pink cake (I was aiming for green and orange, but I didn't have the right food colours).  It was a good day, and I think I won't feel guilty about my stressful project when the birthday seemed to turn out okay.

  I could totally swim the English Channel.

 -Mike

Day One - Project 4 - Learn to Knit

  I'm posting early, because Mary's birthday is tomorrow, and I'm moving the computer so she can enjoy kicking back and relaxing.  I'll report on my knitting progress in two days.  I've got dollar store yarn and cheap starter knitting needles, Knitting for Dummies, and a how to DVD from a woman who looks sufficiently...what's the feminine of avuncular...I swear, Mary told me once...oh, for....A woman who looks Auntological.

  I'll post pictures of my progress just as soon as anything remotely resembling progress is made.  Have a great weekend.  I want to say something clever about my transition from project 3 to for, something about the spinning of yarns and all that.  No, I got exactly nothing.

-Mike

Day Ten - Project 3 (Complete)

   Well, this project, as anticipated, did not come close to meeting the objective.  I guess the lesson learned in project 3 is do a little prep work before adding something enormous to the project list.

  But failure aside, the objective of the academic goals are to make me a more well-read person.  Mark Twain now climbs the charts of writers I love to rub elbows with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Neil Gaiman, Christopher Hitchens, Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Marshall Smith, and others.  This was the most enjoyable project yet.  I really don't want to spoil anything, so I didn't really do fair reviews of the books.  That said, I don't care, I was having too much fun reading Twain's stuff.  I'll be trying to keep scheduling time for more of his stuff when I'm supposed to be concentrating on new projects.

  I didn't finish Roughing It. I should clarify and say I haven't finished it yet.  Twain's time in Salt Lake City is really amazing.  One of the greatest writers of his age, he was walking around and observing and reporting on a new religion in its infancy.  I find myself wishing I had his first hand assessments of the birth of the "Big Three" monotheisms.  Mark Twain travels to England and meets Wells' time traveller, and incredibly well-penned hilarity ensues.

  I find myself getting a tad bit tangential, so to recap:

-  Due diligence in adding of projects to the list in order to attempt to do them justice
-  Perhaps some sort of alerting to spoils in order to do more comprehensive reviews and prove I read what I've said I read
-  Mark Twain is AWESOME.

  Oh, Heckfire and Tarnation, scratch the first one.  It's no fun to try easier projects.  I might as well get all vice presidential and shoot at birds from the back seat of a car.  It's no crime to try these things and fail.  It would be pointless to not keep trying.

-Mike