JANcich & hanDLEY

10 Things I'll miss about London

1. The beautifully manicured parks and gardens, especially St. James Park.
2. Great beer and good pubs.
3. The often-comical, sensationalist headlines of the Evening Standard. (Today's is "New Drug to Make You Look Younger.")
4. Riding through Central London on the top of a double-decker bus.
5. Jacket potatoes.
6. Being an ocean away from American politics.
7. Tea at St. Martin's in the Field.
8. The crepe stand.
9. Not having to drive.
10. All of the wonderful people I've met.

I've only got four days left in the city I've come to love dearly. Boo!

DC Metro

I am getting settled into our new digs in downtown Silver Spring.  At present, there are fewer packed boxes than unpacked.  That is a good thing.

The move was actually pretty difficult and took my Dad and I over 7 hours to complete.  There was a lot of walking, then getting into an elevator, then walking some more just to get one load of stuff into the apartment.  This was on top of the loading the truck Monday, driving all day on Tuesday and driving for about 3 hours on Wednesday morning prior to the same-day move-in.  I can say the northwest Ohio and norther Indiana are pretty darn boring.  But when you get the Ohio/Penn border, things become more interesting.  I also have a whole new respect for truckers.  That is a serious profession.  I am pretty excited to be living only 2 hours drive from the Appalachians to the west and only an hour or so to the ocean on the east.

Downtown Silver Spring is really a great place.  We have just about everything we need within walking distance.  I went running twice already in Rock Creek Park.  It's much bigger than I expected.  I could probably run there for hours and not run out of trails.  I even got lost already.  This always happens when I run somewhere new.

The Metro (DC's version of the The Tube) runs pretty darn well.  I took a journey today in about 25 minutes that would have taken an hour in London.  I determined today that my London style speed-walking totally kicks ass on DC speed walking.  London is the only city where I have ever been out walked by anybody.  Americans as a whole don't walk very fast.

I have a bunch of pics to post on George Orwell's London from a little walking tour I did a few days before I left.  I hope to get to that and writing captions for the Paris photos soon.  Until then, this post is all I've got.

-K

DC here we come...and an example of my idiocy

Kyle and his dad are officially on the road today in a stylish, 24-ft. Penske moving van bound for Silver Spring, MD. They hope to get 600-some miles in today and drive the rest of the way tomorrow. That way, we'll be all moved into our new place by Thursday. I do feel like a total slug over here in London while my husband, in-laws and friends do all of the heavy lifting and long-distance driving. Thanks guys! On the bright side, my dissertation will be handed in tomorrow. Hurrah!

Now for an example of my idiocy...

This morning, I woke up to the sound of heavy rain -- very heavy rain, in fact. It was coming down so hard that it was making quite a racket on my windows and coming down in bucketfulls. I remembered that I'd left most of my windows open, so I jumped out of bed to close them. As I got close to the windows in the kitchen, I noticed I could make out blue sky underneath all of the rain. As it happens frequently in London, it can rain and be sunny at the same time. However, I thought it very odd that I was seeing blue sky and experiencing the heaviest downpour ever since I moved to London at the same time. Just as I was starting to think I was losing my mind, the rain stopped. I peaked outside and realized it wasn't raining at all -- they were just washing my windows. Duh!

Which title do you prefer?

It's time to give my dissertation a title. Which one do you like best?

A. Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW): A Case Study in the Development of Groupware Applications That Support Collaborative Writing"

--- OR ---

B. Sarah's Thesis (By Sarah)

On being neighborly

Last week I awoke with a start at 3 a.m. thanks to the wailing and sobbing coming from the flat next door. Even though I could hear her loud and clear, I got out of bed and put my ear against my front door to see if I could make out why she was making so much noise. Along with her wails, I heard a male voice, speaking in a language I don't. His voice teemed with urgency and impatience; I imagine he was insisting she be quiet.

This is the second time this summer I've been woken in the middle of night with the sound of her hysterically crying. The first time it happened, in early July, Kyle was here, too. We both got out of bed and seriously debated calling security and/or London's version of 911. Though we could hear no sounds of physical violence, it certainly sounded as though the woman next door was being hurt in some way. Before we could make a call, she stopped crying, so we instead decided to mind our own business.

Curiousity was getting the best of us, though. What could possibly make someone cry like that in the middle of the night? Kyle decided she must have received some very, very tragic news, perhaps from her home country in a different time zone. I approached guessing from a different perspective. What would make me carry on like that? I decided her laptop computer must have eaten her dissertation, making it lost forever.

When the weeks went by after the first episode and not a single sound came out of the flat next door, I assumed the couple must have moved away. Presumably, they had lived next to us for an entire school year, but we had never caught a glimpse of either half of the couple. I tried to picture what types of people could be attached to those voices. I decided she must be tall and somber, with persistently watery eyes, hunched shoulders and a frown. I pictured him as a bit brash, muscular, with an air of arrogance and an icy gaze.

I finally did pass them in the hallway one day as I was coming home and they were going out. My mental picture of what these two would look like was completely off. They were both very short -- she probably wasn't even 5 feet tall with heels on and maybe weighed 80lbs. (I later decided about 40lbs of that must be lungs.) He was thin and friendly looking.  Both were painfully shy; when they caught my gaze in the hallway, they both smiled and looked at the floor.

And so the second time I woke up in the night to the sounds of her cries, I wasn't as alarmed as I was the first time. I quickly ruled out calling for help and did what any good neighbor would do. I shut my bedroom door and put a pillow over my hear to drown out the noise. And I fretted about whether she was alright.

Hitting the Wall

After I graduated from college and become seriously involved with a certain, charmingly handsome Ironman triathlete, I became interested in running a marathon. The appeal came from the sense of accomplishment I knew I'd feel after I'd dragged myself to the finish line: if I could run 26.2 miles in one go, I could do anything.

Several years of knee problems later, I haven't yet run more than a 5K. But this summer I am getting a taste of what it feels like to "hit the wall," an analogy marathon runners use to describe the a feeling of defeat they usually experience the 18-20-mile mark. Folks, I have officially hit the wall, so to speak,  on writing my thesis.

The first two chapters came easily.  I cranked them out in between our June trips to Berlin and Edinburgh.  I also completed the practical, programming-based part of it surprisingly quickly last month in between visits from Tom (father-in-law) and my parents. After my parents left, I was in a bit of a funk; I knew my days in London were numbered and Kyle would be heading back to the States soon, so I didn't get much accomplished. During Kyle's last week or so, I was the Queen of Procrastination. It was much easier to spend time with him than to get down to work.

But then Kyle left and I was faced with the prospect of having nothing else to do but finish the last 7,000 words of my thesis. When my Internet connection went out Saturday, I knew a higher power was telling me to stop screwing around and just get it over with.

So I wrote 4,400 words over the weekend. First thing Monday morning, I cut about a third from that total and kept going. I've just got one tiny (relatively speaking, of course) section and my introduction and conclusion to go. But I. Just. Can't. Write. Anymore. One glance of the flickering cursor on a blank Microsoft Word document makes me wonder why the hell I thought this master's thing was a good idea.

I am feeling that overwhelming sense of defeat that exhausted marathon runners feel when they hit the wall, when they are so close to finishing the race but the finish line still seems too far off. By my calculations, I still have about 2,000 words to go, about 15% of the total word count. I'm still searching for the will power to write on because I know my finish line -- the act of turning in a bound book with my byline on the spine -- will be an awesome feeling of accomplishment, worthy of being celebrated with heavy drinking.

EDITED TO ADD: Though it pained me greatly, I was able to wrap up that third chapter today. It ended up at a hefty 5,750 words. At times today I think I would have preferred jumping out the window than to write those words, but I'm relieved its done nonetheless. Tomorrow I'll have to take another look at them to make sure they aren't crap. ;)

 

Paris photos
I've had a few queries from readers (Ok, really just my mom) about the photo captions for the Paris photos. Unfortunately, Jandley.com's chief photo caption writer has left the country and is currently apartment hunting Stateside. That leaves me to try to remember the subjects of all of those photos, which, sadly, would not turn out well (Sorry Guillaume!). I think I'd end up labeling 70% or so of them "Paris, France." If I get a chance in the next few days, I will try to label the easy ones, like the Lourve and Notre Dame. Kyle will get to the others.....eventually.