Much better practice today! I tried a different pair of skates, still 5's, and while they still don't exactly fit right, it was much better than last time. (I think the length is actually fine, it's just that I need a wider model and they don't rent them. The time may have come to buy my own...)

I think I've finally broken my knees' resistance to bending. It felt like I managed twice as much knee bend on everything today as I did on Wednesday, from stroking to swizzles to this cool slalom-y move I picked up somewhere, probably from sharing public skate sessions with all the hockey skaters in this town over the years.

I got bored with one-foot glides on flats (which I'm still not very good at in the way my instructor wants us to do) and went to one-foot glides on alternating inside edges, which are much more fun. I tried it on outside edges, but that was to laugh. Need to build up some confidence before I try that--on an outside edge, you can't just put your other foot down if you feel unstable.

I also figured out backwards stroking! Well, okay, it involves a lot more butt wiggling than the people who do this for a living, but it's going backwards without swizzles, so I will count it as a win.

At one point, I...accidentally did a forward pivot, I think? Or something very close to it. I managed it intentionally a few times as well. I can't do it from a standstill, but if I build up a little speed beforehand, it works.

Finally, I managed a much better version than usual of that crouchy move that isn't quite a shoot the duck, since I don't have one leg off the ground, but given that I'm not, you know, six, I feel like it's quite an accomplishment anyway. I even managed to get myself back upright without falling down!

(It was at this point where my knees started crying, "What did we ever do to you?!" And I reminded them of the physical therapy I had to do when I was 21 because of them. Yeah, payback's a bitch, isn't it?)

And now there is a long weekend, during which I will watch a movie, write things, and go to the Local Used Book Emporium, because the box of books for trade rattling around in the trunk of my car is getting a bit full. Wheee!

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Mixed bag of a practice today. On the positive side, my forward swizzles have become awesome. I'm clacking my toes together with the best of them, and my knee bend is pretty good. My backward swizzles were...not horrible. Not great, but not horrible. Zig-zags were about the same. And I've aaalmost taught myself a forward crossover.

Plus, the entire public session only had about twenty people on it. Eeeeexcellent.

On the negative side, I had some weird lacing problem that pained the outside of my left foot and ankle rather badly. I went down a size in the rental skates on the advice of my instructor, and I think it was a good idea, because my feet don't move around in the skates anymore, but at the same time, it feels like I...don't have enough blade? Maybe it's just a matter of getting used to the smaller skate and consequent shorter blade. Plus the weird lacing didn't help. It didn't feel too tight, just...I can't even describe it. Maybe it was just my body freaking out at actually having ankle support since I went down a size?

In other news, I have somehow, over the last two months, produced 18,000 words of the drawerfic I thought was just going to be a scene or so. If I continue to follow my vague outline, this puppy is going to be five times that long, at least. Um. It's fun, though!

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We've hit the point of the year where, in the evenings, the smell of honeysuckle hangs over the streets and lawns of the neighborhood like a veil. It's delicious. It's also finally warmed up, which is nice. Less nice is that it shot from 60s to almost 90 overnight, but that's typical for here. Sigh.

*

Skating class was good this weekend, although harder than last time. It turns out I was doing my swizzles less than perfectly--fast, but not touching my toes or heels together, or for that matter, bending my knees enough. (Though I think deep knee bend AND touching toes together is a lost cause. There's too much thigh there for that to physically happen.) So I worked on making them right, and lost all my speed. Sigh.

(Speaking of swizzles, that sounds like such a Seussian word. "He swizzled and swizzled, till his swizzler was sore! He swizzled until he could swizzle no more!")

We also learned zig-zags/wiggles, which are great fun, and if I'm correct in my thinking of how a three-turn is supposed to go, they probably teach the correct checking position for it. That's one thing I like about skating that ballroom dance doesn't always have—the way the moves build on each other. I'm sure it's partially the effect of a national standardized curriculum (well, okay, two competing curricula), but still.

As well, we did one-foot glides, which are exactly what they sound like. Alas, they are not done as a push-then-glide, which I'm rather good at, but more of a push-into-two-foot-glide-then-pick-up-one-foot-glide, which I'm less good at. (Not to the point that I fall over or anything, I just can't do them as fast.) Oh, well. That's what practice is for.

I've taught myself a one-foot snowplow stop now as well, largely because at the practice session after my class, I staked out a lane at one end and spent the entire half hour going back and forth along the horizontal axis, and I got tired of stopping by running into the boards.

We don't meet next week because of Memorial Day, but I'm crossing my fingers that the next class will include forward crossovers. I may give them a go at one of the public sessions this week, just because I've always wanted to figure out how to do them.

My knees chose this week to politely inform me that they were not consulted when I was signing up for this, and also, could I please remember that I am much, much closer to 30 than to 5? I'm currently telling them to hush.

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Ahhhh, this is so fun! Since the class was advertised as being for 13 and up, I was a little worried it would be me and a gaggle of giggling 14-year-olds, but in fact it was me and two moms taking classes along with their kids. (All the classes meet on the same rink, just in different areas with different instructors.) None of us had ever taken lessons before, so we were all starting more or less from scratch.

Anyway, the first thing we learned was, as advertised, how to fall down safely. The idea is to crouch as much as possible and take the impact with your thigh. Getting up was a bit harder, and made me glad I wore gloves.

We then learned "marching," which is exactly what it sounds like except your feet are in a V. Obviously this is very basic, but it was helpful for me in that doing it made something click in my brain about how to distribute my weight when skating forward so that I'm not constantly toe-pushing. Still can't help myself sometimes, but the idea is there. We also marched backwards, which was pretty awesome but somehow not recreatable in the practice session that followed after. Maybe next week.

Finally, we learned swizzles both forwards and backwards. I can now say I have skated successfully around the rink backwards thanks to these things. ;) Again, they're something I've done before on my own, but having someone tell me how to distribute my weight and insisting I bend my knees more made them work so much better.

At the moment, I seem to be the class member progressing the fastest. This is an unusual position for me, because in dance classes/practices, I've usually been the one who's enthusiastic but definitely in the bottom half of the class. Maybe I have found my niche! Or maybe it'll all come crashing down next week, who knows.

\o/!

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Trip report and photos below! Thumbnails are clickable to a 1024x768 size (and if for some reason you want the full 4320x3240 size of any of these, just comment with the file name and I'll send it to you; this goes for any of my photos, BTW). If you prefer to view all the pictures at once, go to this Flickr set. I'll warn you that those captions are basic and much more boring than the ones below.

Me getting attacked by a Dalek, among other pictures of that nature, will be coming in a later post.

( Day 1: Arrival, wandering, buildings, and Seattle from on highCollapse )

( Day Two: Pike Place Market, Museum of Science Fiction, Museum of FlightCollapse )

( Day Three: Cicely—I mean Roslyn, Snoqualmie Falls, Underground SeattleCollapse )

( Day Four: A bridge troll, the center of the universe, mossapalooza, and the mountain that nearly killed usCollapse )

( Day Five: Tulipalooza, windswept beaches, and sunset over the San JuansCollapse )

( Day Six: SeaTac tries to get us to Mars, Salt Lake City has impressive mountains, and I have impressive souvenirsCollapse )

Yay Seattle! I very much enjoyed my whole time in Washington, and would contemplate moving there but for a.) liking my current place of employment, and b.) knowing that the great weather we had was an aberration, and I just can't deal with gloom. But it's a delightful area. I'd like to visit again one day.

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Returned from adventures in the Pacific Northwest! I have 680 photos on my camera card, lots of souvenirs, and my knees are still protesting at five days of wandering around a city, hiking up a mountain, and traipsing around in assorted woods and on assorted beaches, so I think it was a vacation well-spent. A full report will have to wait until I get my photos loaded onto my computer (and also for Ellen to send me the pictures she took of me in front of a windmill, getting attacked by a Dalek, and enacting a Star Trek redshirt's death, because I feel no photoblog of this trip would be complete without those), but for now, highlights:

- Traveling with rowdycamels! Getting to meet and hang out with rivendellrose!

- We won the weather lottery. It was sunny or partly cloudy for the entire time we were there, minus some car travel time and about half of the downward part of a mountain hike (though at that point, we were so glad it waited to start hailing/raining until we were out of the snowy part of said mountain that we didn't much care). I actually got a bit of a sunburn on my nose.

- Seattle and the surrounding areas have amazing food. That was the best I've ever eaten on vacation--or possibly at all--in my life. Every meal was incredible, whether it was seafood, Thai, vaguely-Mexican vegan, crumpets/pastry/fruit from the Pike Place Market, whatever. We got ourselves a cooler and did most lunches as picnics, and even those were great, although possibly some of that was because we were so hungry from hiking or long drives that many things would've tasted good.

- I got to walk through Cicely! It was awesome! And yes, I did indeed buy the t-shirt.

- I drove the entire length of Seattle in rush hour traffic and survived! I also drove in and around Pioneer Square and survived!

- Tuuuuuuuuulips. So many tulips.

- Evergreen trees everywhere.

- We did not die by falling off the side of a mountain. Although I think we came close more times than I would like to think about. There's one section of the trail up to Lake Twenty-Two that has already featured in my nightmares, and probably will continue to do so for some time. I don't think I took a picture, but imagine a very steep drop on one side, a tall, crumbly snowbank lining the other side all the way up the rest of the mountain, and a slippery, ice-crusted, nine-inch-wide "path" between the two. We should've turned back, but as was our constant refrain, "We've come this far!"

- Speaking of Lake Twenty-Two, there will definitely be pictures, but for now, the experience in a nutshell: "This isn't a trail, it's a creek/rock field/eight-foot-high snowbank!"

- While Deception Pass bridge and state park were very nice, Google found us an even better city park in Anacortes on a spit of land sticking out into the sea, where we watched the sun set over the San Juan Islands. (Admittedly, it was a very windy, very cold spit of land. Still.) Also, we got to wander among some very friendly deer.

More to come later. I don't know that I ever quite adjusted to Pacific time, largely because Seattle is so far north that it was still daylight until about 8:30, which was so bizarre for late April that I just gave up on ever figuring out what time it should be. But while I'm not sure it feels like midnight now, after the past several days, it definitely feels like BEDTIME.

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Noooooo. I have a cold. Right before I go on vacation. Via plane. Where said cold will instantly transmute into a sinus infection. Noooooooooooo. :(

I'm hoping it's at least partially allergies, because I was hiking around in woods and fields yesterday, but I have a feeling it's mostly cold. Nooooooo.

My pictures were mostly blah, so there are only three under the cut, but I had a good time yesterday anyway. Yay for local people who like to wander around taking pictures!

( Woods, flowersCollapse )

*

In other news, the drawerfic I was planning to play with a bit and then forget about has somehow grown almost 13,500 words. Also a plot. Um. I think at some point it's no longer going to be drawerfic, although that point may come after I file off the serial numbers.

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Teaching Freshman Composition in GIF form.

All of them are accurate, but I have to say the two for "Introducing myself to the class during my first semester of teaching" and "Introducing myself to the class during my second semester of teaching" (and particularly the difference between them) are spot on. There was notably less oversharing in my second semester of comp, and I was glad of it.

*

In other news, yay for skating! I got up to a pretty good clip, dodged many kid!obstacles,* and did not fall once during today's public skate session! I...have not quite taught myself front crossovers, since I never actually crossed my right foot over my left (more like put it directly in front of the left), but I at least got the feeling of what I need to be doing. I'll get there one day.

I hope I'll learn at my lessons how to stroke without jamming my toepick into the ice every time I push off. I mean, I'm pushing off mostly with an inside edge, it's just that I don't manage to lift the skate up in time to avoid the first spike of the pick digging into the ice. I'm going to bet this is called "toe pushing," which I know is a bad thing you're not supposed to do. I just need to figure out how not to do it.

I also need to figure out how to keep the laces from loosening around my ankles. I had to stop and tighten them three times over an hour and a half just to keep the boot properly supporting my ankle. kyriacarlisle, is there some trick to it? Well, besides "get something better than rental skates," but that's not an option as of yet... ;)

The feeling of skating is even more addictive than I remember it being. There's something about the speed and the smoothness that makes you want to keep going forever. By the end of the session, my right ankle was in agony, but I kept telling myself, "One more time around, then I'll quit. Well, maybe one more..."


* Apparently the tiny kids now get to use walkers instead of flailing and/or hugging the boards like we did in my youth. Talk about your traffic hazards.

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This week! This week has been awesome!

Awesome Item the First: For work I volunteered to do a video project on women's health for a big report my department releases every two years. I spent Monday-Wednesday interviewing basically anyone I could get who happened to be female about their favorite exercise, what they think a healthy diet is, what it means to be healthy, etc., and then yesterday I worked from home (...working from home is awesome and I need to figure out how to do that more often) to edit said video. SKILLS BUILT THROUGH FANNISH VIDDING LED TO ACTUAL MONEY. THIS IS GREAT.

Awesome Item the Second: One of the grad students I hang out with a bit at work and I are going hiking/photographing next weekend at a park I've been wanting to revisit for a year or so now.

Awesome Item the Third: Tomorrow, since I have to go downtown to get myself yet another lens cap*, I'm going to take myself to a public skating session in preparation for starting my lessons next month.

Awesome Item the Fourth: SEATTLE IN TWO WEEKS, OMG.

Awesome Item the Fifth: I got a vid idea on the way home from work today. It should be entertaining.

Awesome Item the Sixth: This video. Seriously cool. Apparently it's in real time, which is frankly amazing.


* I lost my current one while rescuing a baby duck. Well, okay, I lost it while I was leaning over a pond to investigate what was wrong with a baby duck (it had a bread tie/twisty tie wrapped around its neck several times and was miserably trying to pluck it off with its beak), and since I couldn't get to said duck without going for a swim, I ended up calling the park service to rescue it, but it's all in how you elide things, yes?

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I watched De-Lovely last night, which is a biopic about Cole Porter that came out in 2004. I knew absolutely nothing about Porter except that he wrote "Night and Day" and "Anything Goes," and was otherwise well-regarded as a Broadway/jazz standard composer in the first half of the twentieth century. Now, of course, I know much more. I was iffy on the "Cole Porter's ghost and the director of a musical based on his life talk about the musical as it goes on" structure, but by the end I had warmed to it. Actually, I thought it was a bit reminiscent of Copenhagen, which is one of my favorite movies.

I also have new respect for Porter as a lyricist. Holy crap, those lyrics are awesome! He must have been, like, a living rhyming dictionary or something. And even more impressive, the rhymes almost never sound forced. First they're surprising, and then when you think about them for a second, you realize how inevitable they were. Obviously he was, you know, not a bad composer either.

The "unconventional" love story was not bad either, although admittedly the entire movie was basically an excuse to feature as many Porter songs as possible, and I was totally okay with that.

Since I'm on the topic, have a link to this very cute ensemble skating number to one of the songs from the movie ("Let's Misbehave"). Charleston and tap dance on skates! Yes!

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I just registered for a figure skating class! It's a seven-week group lesson that starts in early May, aimed at teens and adults with abilities from zip to...what looks like it might be single-revolution jumps. You just keep taking the same class as you progress at your own pace, apparently. I have a feeling I won't need to worry about jumps for a while, though, given that the first item on the first test level is "falling down and getting up." ;)

The really-astoundingly-cheap price includes admission and skate rental to one practice session and one public skate session per week, which is handy since I work literally across the street from the rink.

(That's really what drove this. I've wanted to take lessons on and off since watching Kristi Yamaguchi win the 1992 Olympics when I was seven, but never had quite the right combination of having the money, having the time, being in a city that had a rink, and being so close to said rink on a regular basis.)

Next on the exercise + social activity + skill-building + money hemorrhaging agenda: Inquiring about ballroom lessons at local studios. Because Monday nights at the dance club far away from me are just not ever going to happen.

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It's heeeeeeeeeeeeere! Hem's new album is officially out!

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In high school, I had a friend whose musical taste was lodged firmly in the 1970s. She got me to listen to quite a bit of Fleetwood Mac, Blondie, and Simon & Garfunkel. She also attempted to get me into The Velvet Underground, but that was unsuccessful because, seriously, have you heard Lou Reed's voice? Yikes. But despite that musical education, three days ago was the first time I'd ever heard "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)."

My first thought was that this song must have been written either while high or about being high. On the other hand, I have had moments where good weather, no obligations, and a generally pleasant mood have combined to make me feel, well, pretty groovy. In fact, I do have vague memories of not only greeting, but dancing with a lamppost after one ballroom competition in college when I was feeling particularly silly. So who knows?

Either way, it's a fun song. Happy Easter, everyone. May it be groovy.

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Best drinking song ever. Apparently a raccoon, possum, dog, and several birds have quite the hoedown. Plus, you can dance to it! (Admittedly it's not a perfect swing, but it's not a bad one!)

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Apparently when one is scraping the bottom of the Google barrel on certain subjects, one runs into things like this.

...It seems the Cooking Channel was scraping the bottom of a barrel as well.

(I do hear the show is actually quite good, as cooking shows go, and Boitano is a personable host who makes things actual humans with non-industrial kitchens can do, but the bizzare-o factor, it is high.)

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I know I said I was off to do something productive, but I just ran across Gaelic Storm's version of "Cecilia," and it is a trip. You should listen.

ETA: Also The King's Singers cover. Although whereas Gaelic Storm's is actually good, this one...does not work very well. But it is kind of hilarious.

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Apparently commercial figure skating compilation DVDs a.) exist, and b.) are on Netflix. Mwhahahaha.

Anyway, I ran across this program Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman did back in 2004-05 and...eh, the music doesn't do much for me, but JUST LOOK AT IT.

In addition to the opening "yep, just going to flip my partner all around my body like she's a scarf or something, no big" move, check out the lift at 0:26, where he turns around between throwing her in the air and catching her, how is that even possible OMG. Apparently it's called "fly high say bye," and they got it from Brasseur and Eisler, which...yeah, these two kind of are (were? not sure if they're retired or not) the new B&E, with all their fearless, death-defying tricks. (B&E, I have to say, were always the one pair I was genuinely frightened to watch. Half the time I had to look through my fingers.)

Also, while I rarely notice this sort of thing, I really have to say that John Zimmerman is an exceptionally good-looking man. I want to, I don't know, paint him or something.

This DVD also had a program by Kitty and Peter Carruthers, who of course I knew of because Peter was and probably still is the commentator du jour of just about every eligible event aired on ABC, but I'd never actually seen them. And they were fun! They vamped around (heh) to organ-y music I associate with vampire films and possibly Bugs Bunny, which Google assures me is Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. They did a cool traveling death spiral that I didn't even know was possible, and now I wonder where it's gone. I'd love to see it more often. They had some nifty-looking skating in between the tricks, like a sequence where they pull each other into bigger and higher waltz jumps. The big jumps and other tricks are nice, no doubt, but I miss the in-between stuff that's gotten shafted with increasing focus on tricks. Sigh.

There was also Torvill & Dean's exquisite "Bridge Over Troubled Water", which is just...wow. Words can't really express how lovely it is.

Roca & Sur's incredible "The Prayer" was on there was well, although I've already seen it approximately 5,823 times. Watching it after that T&D number makes it very obvious that Christopher Dean choreographed it. He really likes his instant-replay-like dramatic repetition, as well as choosing one or two thematic moves to repeat across the length of a program. Not that both aren't incredibly effective, mind, but it's kind of amusing to realize I can sometimes pick out a Dean program without prior knowledge now. "Oye Como Va" is another obviously-Dean program. And it is fan-frickin'-tastic. R&S always did so well with Dean choreography. (Or when they stole liberally from Torvill and Dean. Though I suppose that concept is not exactly earth-shatteringly original. And this is probably heresy, but Renee and Gorsha's is way more entertaining.)

On second thought, I'm not sure I would've pegged "Casi Un Bolero" as Dean, though it is also very lovely and R&S do it so beautifully. (Presumably Meno & Sand did a competent job with it as well, although one really can't tell since the camera operator and editor chose to focus entirely on Gorsha and Renee. Given how much more ice dance than pairs this number was, and how much it was right in R&S's wheelhouse and, er, less so in M&S's, this was probably wise.) That was always my favorite Rumba to dance to.

Right, now I'm just rambling, so off I go to attempt something productive.

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Song/Artist: "Don't You Give Up On Me," Milo Greene
Fandom: The Cutting Edge
Length: 3:28
Summary: Kate and Doug take the two steps forward, one step back approach to the Olympics—and each other. Somehow, it still works for them.

( Streaming embed and download link under hereCollapse )

Toepick!

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At ten o'clock this morning, I had a blank timeline and a dream. Nine hours later, I have a vid! Well, the first draft of one, anyway. All three and a half minutes of the song are accounted for, and I think there only needs to be a minor amount of tweaking. I love it when these things come easy!

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