Goodness, only a few seconds to post -- I've been working a lot of overtime again, trying to wrap up everything at work before I go on leave this Thursday.

But the news of the day is:

We have moving inside 3-turns on both sides!  They rather abruptly started solidifying on Saturday.

We have passed Delta!  (Patch scan to come.)

We are now in Freestyle 1 ( Read more... )

Goodness, but November was an eventful month.  By Christmas, I will have new versions of everything that was damaged - my shoulder, my foot, and my car!  Lots of fresh starts for the new year.

On Thursday, I bid a loving adieu to my 1997 Nissan Altima, my longtime faithful companion, aged 152,290 miles.  A dealer offered me $750 for his final ( Read more... )

Score!  Cathy wanted to see like a half-dozen moving FO3s in a row, but I did them, thank God.  She said it was the last Gamma patch they had -- since we're switching to USFSA in January, they're not ordering any more of the ISI type.  Whew! 
( Read more... )

I picked up my skates today after leaving them to be sharpened. I felt the blades, and they were indeed crisper; but when I got on the ice, they didn't have that extra-hard sideways "bite" that usually takes two or three sessions to wear off.  (I usually have difficulty turning, spinning or doing snowplow stops for my first few skates after a ( Read more... )

I'm not sure I had a lesson at all last week; it was nice to see Cathy again.  (I forgot to give her the Christmas music I compiled for her again...ack!)  We discussed our goals for the next three weeks; I'll be having two lessons per week from now until December 13, and then I won't have any lessons during the second half of December or the entire ( Read more... )

There are certainly lots of ways I can stay involved with skating once I take some time off.  I've agreed to post occasional updates to our FSC website, which actually shouldn't take much time, but my first task is to get the site back UP -- apparently, the hosting company's last invoice was overlooked, and they deactivated it!  :p  There are also  ( Read more... )

I didn't quite plan it this way, but yesterday, I skated for five hours over three sessions!  Since everyone is offering extended holiday hours, Cathy and I had planned an extra lesson at noon.  Our rink (Willowbrook) was to open right *at* noon, and I wanted time to warm up, so I skated from 10:00 to 11:30 at Memorial City Mall, near my house.  I ( Read more... )

I took The Commonly Confused Words Test recommended by
( Read more... )

What's that they say about "when it rains" ... ?

The little toe on my right foot has been hurting on and off for about a month. I thought maybe my skates were too tight, although they had felt just fine for the first two months, so I had them checked; there didn't seem to be a problem. I wondered if I had broken it, but the GP said that the x-ray ( Read more... )

Today's Alexei avatar illustrates that I would have needed three appendages to keep my balance on the ice this afternoon! There were extra freestyles this morning and lots of kids released early from school on the ice ... and yet it had obviously not been resurfaced all day. It felt exactly like I still had my guards on -- so much so that I ( Read more... )