sara skates

cookies.

If you’re a fan of Reese’s Cups (or most other combinations of chocolate and peanut butter), run, don’t walk, to the nearest well-stocked grocery store and get some of Hershey’s Reese’s peanut butter cup sandwich cookies.

Holy cow, they’re yummy.  They’re sort of like an oreo, except:

*the cookie "melts" more when you bite it – more like a shortbread cookie
*it has a layer of chocolate dipped onto the inside of the cookie
*and then the center is peanut butter filling (not ‘icing’ but more like the center of a Reese’s cup).

I’m relatively off of sugar these days and these are a total deal breaker…

Thanks to The Gimp Parade for the link – (admittedly it was from an older blog post – way back on 8/1, oops).

But check out these photos from the 16th anniversary celebration of the ADA in New York City.  The event was organized by the group Disabled in Action of Metro NY. 

Seeing a scad of crips all in one place at once is pretty empowering.  I have lots more to say, but work is calling at the moment….

Admittedly, my teaching "focus" has shifted since I switched over to being the Institutional Researcher for the college, rather than a faculty member doing some insitutional research as part of my job.  I teach less (way less, only "on overload" when I choose to accept an overload assignment), but I have managed to maintain my student-mentoring focus with my grant. (Other parts of my grant work have been utterly neglected, but let’s not go there.)

I have three students working on the grant.  One is a grad student, one is an undergrad, and one is a recently graduated undergrad who is still working a little on the project.  I emailed all three suggesting they (a) submit a presentation or poster proposal to the SAS Global Forum, and (b) submit an application to the SAS Student Ambassador program.  Two bit the bullet and submitted proposals.

The Global Forum is SAS’s annual professional conference – attended by SAS geeks from a variety of fields and disciplines.  I went to one back in the early 90s, or possibly I am mis-remembering and I went to a regional one – back when it was called NESUG.  They are large conferences, with lots of hard-core SAS users in attendance.  I confess I felt a little out of place there – I use SAS, and I’m pretty good at it, but not at that level.  Or perhaps it was just that I was professionally young, and hadn’t yet found my "confidence" at such things.  Anyway.

The Student Ambassador program is competitive and recognizes and supports a few students who use SAS in their fields – paying their way, and highlighting their presentations. 

I just got word today that at least one of my students has been selected – the recently-graduated student.  He will be presenting on using SAS to graphically display longitudinal data analysis trends at the individual and group level.  One of the real highlights of this grant research is having access to solid longitudinal data – so far, there are 10 waves of data collection available on deaf children and their siblings – with information about their schooling, families, etc.  It is hairy data to sort through precisely because it is longitudinal – but the promise it holds is definitely exciting.

And I am a very proud faculty mentor!  Which is nice to feel – while teaching is not a core part of my IR job, I’m keeping my hand in it – and it is rewarding.  And I sure don’t miss all the grading – bwaaa haaa haaa!

Cece was my tea swap partner and she sent a fabulous box of goodies!

There’s sock yarn in a really great combinations of deeps reds and purples, a set of hand-painted knitting needles, rooiboos tea (my fave!), honey, chocolates for the grownups and some for the kids (the latter have already been consumed).  Plus Cece cracked me up with her note….she had emailed me a heads up saying that her card "sucked" – but it made me laugh — as I pulled out one half of it from the box and it says:

g-
odies make
Cece

Which oddly, almost made sense

Thanks Cece!

Toby checked out a book from his school’s library – on taking care of pet mice and rats.  He is enthralled with the whole idea – and is lobbying hard for a new pet (yeah, not so much).  His current tactics involve maybe for his birthday – which is not until March, and he’s worried that he’ll forget.  So tonight, I’m at the computer poking around for some music, he’s at the dining room table with a brownie, and he yells out "Mom, how do you spell ‘you’??".   I answer, and go find him a few minutes later.  With this note to show:

Toby ples remdynd mom that you wat a mac for yoour brthta.

(Translation though it’s probably not necessary:  "Toby, please remind mom that you want a mouse for your birthday.")

One of my most favorite things about being a mom is watching your kids grow into productive language – spoken, written, whatever.  It’s really cool.

The skates fit well, so they came home with me!  The drive up to Toronto and back home was pretty miserable – it rained the whole way, and I timed it perfectly so I hit downtown Toronto rush-hour to head home (oops).  Going through the Buffalo area was surreal – the snow from the storm last week has all melted, but a slew of trees are down (snapped in half, many of them), with tons of debris still everywhere, and not much power on.  I’m sure that after the storm it looked like a tornado had whipped through – although the structures were still standing.

I skated in the new boots and blades for the first time this morning.  They are STRANGE to get used to!  Though honestly I think the blades are going to be a bigger adjustment.  I have newfound "ankle mobility" – which once I am used to controling, I will like.  The blades have a different rocker shape and radius-of-hollow sharpening than I am used to – I will give them some time.

The boots I think I will like. I need to figure out how to control all
the ankle mobility – the bending forwards is *great* . It’s a little
(ok, a lot) weird to also be able to point your toe and have your ankle
bend "backwards". It’s particularly odd on things like getting into a
spin. Though there were a few times when I hit an edge and it just
FLOWED – there was none of the usual "fight" to keep my knee bend
against the pressure of the boot in front.

This is distinctly NOT like breaking in a new pair of regular boots. I
feel like there’s this new technique stuff I have to figure out with
respect to the ankle mobility. Once I figure it out – it’ll be fine -
but right now – it feels like a totally different animal!  I was doing some dance today, and hit an edge and did this totally wavey wiggly thing because my ankle was trying to figure out where to be – my dance coach was there and he said it was sort of like suddenly having a whole box of crayons to paint with rather than just black and white.  Which is an interesting image – and sort of true – much foot movement that was restricted before now will have a much bigger range.

Anyone touched by issues of girls, body image, self-esteem, etc. should watch this film, produced by the "Dove self esteem fund" (yes, related to Dove Soap).  It’s short, and quite powerful about the distorted image of femininity in the media.

Toby has pronounced the new hat and mitts "too itchy".

Some time adding a thin fleece liner could be in the future….

No, not loops of yarn –

but patch loops!  I am *finally* getting back patch loops to look, well, like loops.  They have been a LONG time coming.  They still need work to get them test-ready (pretty and consistently so), but they’re not half bad.  On both the outside and inside edge ones one foot is better than the other, but they’ll even out.

The fourth figures test (and to some extent, the USFSA Adult Gold figures test) both feel within reach.  Forward brackets are the most un-ready at the moment.  I can do them really well in freestyle boots, and even the quick bracket-three-bracket pattern from the Novice Moves test, but the precision, shape and edge finesse they require on a patch test still elludes me (they’re not clean, or quite the right shape, certainly not all four of them for the test – right and left foward inside, and right and left backward outside).

Anyway – maybe by this spring I’ll tackle the test…

Edited to add visuals of what loops are:  There’s a photo of Tenley Albright doing a back outside one in my sidebar, here, I’ll put it in this post:

and a schematic:
Each of the larger circles is about the same size as my height.  The inner loop is two blade lengths long and one blade length wide – roughly.  The goal is to lay out tree repeats on each foot – with each repeat tracing over the previous attempt.  Part of the reason they’re so difficult to do is (a) b/c they’re a small figure, and (b) the inner loop requires that you essentially speed up and then slow down rotation.  Once you figure it out, they’re totally do-able.  Getting to that point takes way too long.

And I forget who this is – someone with the initials SWG (!) doing a back inside edge loop:

NYStateThruway.Gov has some great pictures.  At around 6 am today, they closed a 90-mile stretch of it since it was functioning like a snowed-in unplowed parking lot chock-full parking lot.  It re-opened today at around 5 pm.  That link has both parking lot and reopening photos…both rather impressive.

We got virtually no snow, but Buffalo really got socked.  Tons of trees etc. are down, and lots of folks are without power and probably will be for a while.  The snow should melt off pretty quickly.