sara skates

There is:

 *knitting lessoning:

Alyson is working on a scarf for Amy – which has teal and purple stripes, using a fibonacci stripe sequence with purples heavy on one half, and teals heavy on the other.  We’ll beg, plead and con a photo out of her when it is finished.

She is rather good at reading her knitting – she knows when a stitch has gone haywire, and is sorting out how to fix ‘em.

Check out her learning swatch:

The top third has QUITE even tension – she is well on her way.

*The knitting lessons included gauge lessons:

Note the simlarity to the Rasta-talking man-o-war jelly fish
from a Shark Tale preview. This
particular hat (my Olympic Knitting project) failed in implementation due to some severe gauge issues. It’d fit a yeti quite well. Amy claims to have a small head, but it’s not
that small.

*Skating. Need we say
skating? I don’t think there’s
photographic evidence. Amy showed folks
how to do flying mohawks right into double toes (she claims it’s easy), and is
trying to convince me to don many pots and pans for my interp routine. So far she has toured 2 of local area rinks,
we’ll undoubtedly hit a third tomorrow before their flight home.

*Local phenomena:

Local phenomenon?  Several years ago, my father visited and we drove to see Niagara Falls. We simply got on the freeway and headed there
– knowing there would be ample signage to point us to where we were going. As we approached, I spotted much mist
billowing up ahead of us and said “Oh – there they are!” Dad (in his infinite SURENESS) exclaimed
“naaah, that’s just some local phenomenon.” It certainly is a local phenomenon, a rather spectacular one.

*Art museum:

Hannah was afraid of the dead guys (Christian iconography)
and the mummy. Amy subsequently had a
nightmare about a mummified ship (who knows). There were a few nice Georgia O’Keefe’s in a special exhibit – the
reason for trekking to the museum in the first place … nice, despite the other
fear-inspiring exhibits.

*Sleeping.

Apparently we have a comfy guest bed. There has been much guest sleeping. Despite the promise of nearly empty ice this
morning, Amy stayed home and got up at oh, about 11:30 am.  And skipped skating.  Much to my chagrin of course, but I will drag her there tomorrow before the plane leaves.

*Tortured children:

Terry was tickling her.  Demons anyone?

The only unfortunate part is how far away they live (rather like Cate and Rhys – great great friends who live too darned far away).  We are accumulating miles on our credit card though, a trip to North Carolina is undoubtedly in our future.

–Co-written by Sara and Amy

I’m not a big meme-er (this could be my first) but I have enjoyed reading "six weird things" and Cece tagged me, so here goes.

The rules:  Tagged ones must write a blog of their own six weird things (and state this rule clearly).  Then tagged ones are to tag six others…consider yourself tagged if you feel so inclined.

1.  Barefootedness?  Not for me.  It gives me the willies.  I could care less if you go barefoot, but my feet don’t like it.

2.  Nor am I a big fan of – um, water.  I drink tons of it.  Showers I tolerate – I like being clean, I don’t mind being IN the shower, but getting in (and therefore getting wet) and then getting out (and being wet) I could do without.  Ditto swimming.  I’ll do it, but I don’t look forward to it (or enjoy the post-swim thing).  Yes, I know this is weird.  Toby’s weirds out at getting doused too – it could be a preemie hypersensitivity thing.  I wasn’t as preemie as he was, but then, back in 1963, I was about as preemie as they came.

3.  I must sleep on the right-hand side of the bed, particularly if my sweetie is in the bed too.  That’s if I’m looking at the headboard right; if I’m in the bed and looking to the foot-end – I’m on the left.

4.  I’m a piles and clutter person, but other folks’ piles and clutter bother me. Only if I have to live with it.  Your piles and your clutter in your house?  Love it.  Like I’m not the only messy one out there.  Terry’s piles and the kids’ stuff in my house?  Drives me nuts.  Mostly only when I’m premenstrual though. And yes, I work hard at editing out much commentary and/or whining about it.  Since it’s all over-shadowed by the plethora of Sara knitting/skating/etc. piles.  (Let it be noted that I LOVE being in the house after we have made a big push to get rid of everyone’s piles and clutter – mine included.  In fact, all the more reason to invite houseguests.)

5.   I’m totally a cat person, but I feel way happier with a dog around too. Barney is big and hairy and in the way about 90 percent of the time, but I’d totally not like living in a dog-less house.  Cats?  Connection on a totally different level.  I wanted to be the cat lady on the house boat in Amsterdam when I was growing up.  The poezenboot lives on – though I’m not sure about the woman who started it.  I last saw her and the cat boat when I was about 11.

6.  Terry’s top pick is that I have a lump on my head.  It’s a cyst of some kind, if I were bald it’d be quite the oddity.  It doesn’t bother me.  Much to Terry’s chagrin.  At some point, I’ll get around to getting it removed.  Meanwhile, oh, whatever. 

Terry claims there’s nothing else weird to be known about me.  Although she probably thinks if she admited to ANYthing, it’d be a rough night (or more) in this house

Onward to the Santa frenzy.  Hannah stayed up to watch The Sound of Music in its entirety tonight.  Messing up my plans to WRAP everything tonight.  She did – however – cover her eyes for the entirely sedate and short-lived instances of Maria and the Captain kissing.  I think there were only two kisses.  It cracked us up to see her covering her eyes.  Her whole body languages was like "ewwwwwwww!".  It’s not like she’s never seen kissing – we kiss, goodness knows kissing (and more) is all over advertisements these days. 

I’m thinking I’m not going to be able to justify the Typepad charge to my bank account if I don’t blog a bit more regularly.  Suffice it to say life has been busy.

*I’m doing lots of dishes and laundry every evening.  Terry’s feeling way better, and is starting to sleep at night (in a bed!  Oh My!), and her back muscles have loosened up from the spasming they were doing, and she’s regaining some function of her right arm.  But she’s still pretty much useless as far as laundry and lots of dishes go.  If I don’t do at least a load a day, it’ll get overwhelming REALLY quickly, so I’m fairly motivated to keep at it.  Although it has seriously cut in on my knitting time.

*Conversation Terry had in the car with Hannah.

H:  Toby, when I’m 100 you’ll be 97.
Terry:  Ha HA – when I’m 100 you will be 66.  And when you’re 100 I will probably be dead.  What do you think Mama Sara would do if I were dead?  {Sara annotation:  huh??????}
H:  Marry a daddy.
Terry:  (Stiffling a guffaw).  Mmmm.  And how about me, what would I do if Mama Sara were dead, find a daddy too?
H:  Nope, you’d find another mama.

Alrightey then.  My theory is it’s all those frilly skating costumes (not that I’ve worn them lately – my garb of preference on ice lately is of the legging/pants variety) and Terry’s perpetual baseball cap.  Who knows.

*Work.  Busy.  Went to VA for an NSF PI conference.  Didn’t get to touch base with my grants officer though, as for some reason he has been shipped off to Portugal.  No, I don’t know why.  While I was gone, my office got moved.  To the next door (though much bigger!) office.  It is SO grown up.  I have a table to sit at with other folks and look at things on paper and everything. I mean, in addition to my very spacious and new desk.  Etc.

*Skating – decent.  I have been taking a new glucosamine/hyleuronic acid supplement to help with noisy knee joints.  Yes, it’s helping – my knees are much quieter.  They not as achey either.  Which could be because I am adjusting to the new boots biomechanically.  Or not.  I don’t really care, since they’re not aching.

*I’m teaching a course this quarter – a write-a-research-paper course to ASL/English interpreting students.  It’s a blast.  There are only six students.  I’m trying something new this quarter – well a few things.  The first experiment was having them help design the syllabus.  I think it’ll work well.  Though they’re complaining about the lack of pre-ordained Do This list.  The second has to do with using Mind Mapping rather than outlining for the syllabus and class discussion notes.  For class discussion, I love it.  For the syllabus, I like it – though I don’t think the students love it.  We’ll see.

*We suck as friends, as we have neglected to call Rhys for her birthday – which we’ve been meaning to do since oh about Saturday.  We’ll just stretch out her birthday celebration – yeah, that’s it.  Happy Birthday Rhys!  (Rhys is blogless.  Her sweetie is not.  No, I don’t know if they typically use the word "sweetie".)  We were guilt-free until Monday (her actual birthday).  Then there was a brief guilt respite today, when informed that the weekend and Monday was super busy and the phone rang a lot – it’d be nicer to get a call tonight.  Yeah.

*Photos?  One of these days.

I whomped both knees again this morning – for the third weekend in a row.  And I got home and promptely ordered kneepads.

About a year ago, the topic of knee pads came up and I more or less thought to myself "Nah, you hardly ever fall on your knees, why bother."  Apparently self has changed.  I mostly attribute it to tackling some hard-for-me footwork – which doesn’t really describe last week’s fall (on a forward crossover, practically from a standstill), but it does describe today’s so whatever.

And consistently banging BOTH knees is a talent.  So much so that one of the two versions of skating kneepads I could find sells them singly, not by the pair.  (Why "skating" knee pads?  They’re fairly trim, and don’t have plastic on the front – that’d be overkill. The version I got attaches via velcro straps – so I can put them on/off  without taking skates off.)

I started tackling the choreography for an interp program this morning – to a Sandra Boynton song called Pots and Pans.  Technically, it’s not a Sandra Boynton song – but by the Bacon Brothers with Mickey Hart.  If you check the link, DUH the reason it has such great rhythm to play with is because those folks have Footloose and the Grateful Dead as their claim to fame.   My big skating goals this year are shaping up to mostly center around upping my footwork ability and developing any sense of using my upper body in skating – moving arms out of neutral zone every now and then.  Let’s just say that at the moment, if my arms do anything other than stay solidly in compulsory school figures neutral position, my feet immediately become clutzy.  This program won’t have much in the way of jumps in it – but it’ll have a lot of feet and arms.  And bruises as near as I can tell.

My other program (freestyle, to a bunch of stuff from the Afro Celt Sound System – african celtic fusion music!) is shaping up.  It has a lot of rhythmic stuff going on too – and is a real stretch for me.  Hopefully in a few months parts will get easier.

I’m off to bed so I can skate early in the am – I’ll leave Terry with the kids plugged in to some sort of media and I suspect they’ll all be fine when I get back hom.  Terry’s doing ok.  She’s starting to be awake more, and she has migrated from our new comfy recliner chair to a non-reclining (but still comfy) chair in our living room.  She might even try to sleep prone in a bed tonight – whoo hoo!