sara skates

When one waits weeks between blog posts, there is much to catch up on.  In no particular order:

1.  Disney with Hannah.  So Much Fun.  Cate already summarized much of it, with photos.  I have a few photos too, but have yet to figure out how to get them off of my new camera phone.

2.  Speaking of which, yes, Terry and I both have new cell phones.  She dropped her old one while taking out the recycling, so it lay in the grass by the driveway and got snowed upon and driven upon rendering it rather useless.  Through an impressive stroke of good fortune, our 2 year contract with the cell phone company had JUST expired, which means that we were eligible for $150 credits towards new phones or some such thing, so we’re each sporting phones with many more features than we know what to do with. 

3. I drove folks at Adult Nationals nearly nutty trying to sort out said phone’s features.  Mine was fedexed to me arriving an hour before I left to the airport for Chicago/Adult Nationals/AERA, which meant that while I wasn’t phone-less for the week, I did have to sort through charging it and setting it up.  I managed to scare myself in the middle of the night by not recognizing its ringtone.  I hung up on folks a few times.  Good times.

3.  Nationals.  What A Blast!!!  I skated in the very first event on Wednesday morning.  Well, technically, I was in group B of the first event, and group A went first first.  I skated really really well!  my big goals were to skate a basically clean program (not leaving out all or most of the second/third jumps in my combination jumps), and to really ramp up the presentation part – strong confident landings, looking at the judges and audience, etc. – in lieue of looking like I wanted to crawl into a hole rather than have folks look at me ROFL.  Mission accomplished.  I bobbled on my hardest jump combination (axel/loop) and it turned into a wonky axel/weird bobble thing/then I threw in a toe loop to save the combination.  My event was judged using the new IJS format – and the technical specialist turned that into two separate jump passes, which meant that my last one (fairly meaty in terms of points – a lutz/loop/toe) was not counted at all.  Additionally, I got a time deduction (I finished a second late in my program), and all in all – I placed a few spots lower than I expected – 8th out of 10.  But I was really really pleased with the skate.  I could have kicked myself in hindsight for throwing in that toe loop but it’s a learning curve – under the 6.0 system, that was the right thing to do, but under the new system – not so much.  I also skated my interp program – bedecked in pots and pans – quashing my "this is ridiculous" urges.  That too was a good skate.  It didn’t place well (12/12) but who cares.  I’m keeping that program for another year and have lots of ideas on developing it.

4.  In Chicago, I did double duty – I attended a professional conference (AERA) to boot.  The best session I attended was a poster session on a new book coming out in the field of multilevel modeling (data analysis geek stuff) – each chapter had a poster.  I walked in and shortly behind me was one of the two folks who trained me so well at Harvard’s Ed School – Judy Singer.  It was great to catch up with her.  And she gave me some ideas on how to further some current analyses  I have put my student on to tracking down information about "regression discontinuity" analyses.  It’ll be some summer reading for sure.

5.  While in Orlando, this interaction occured on the home front:

Toby (to Mama Terry):  Mama, you are odd.

Toby:  "I don’t know what ‘odd’ means, what does ‘odd’ mean Mama?"

Terry (with eyebrowed raised rather seriously):  It means, really rather strange.

Toby:  "Mama, you ARE odd!"

bwaa ha haa ha!!!

6.  Skating – I’m loving it.  The competitive season has wound down for me, so it’s the time to experiment and play with new things rather than focusing on polishing things.  I’m playing around with funky spiral sequences (and all of my upper leg muscles are all complaining), and change-edge spins, and new spin combinations, and also with changing my jump technique (to have that "back spin in air" position, rather than feet side-by-side, the old-school method).  RIT’s rink has just headed into shut-down mode, so I’m chasing ice at other rinks, but it’s all good.

7.  I just bought this book:  DominKnitTrix.  Oh My Goodness.  Don’t miss the companion website.  It’s a great compendium of how to do knitting – increases, decreases, grafting, casting on and off – what I like is the range of options it gives (including directions for a really stretchy cast-off which I will have to try – K the first stitch, pass it back to the L needle, K that stitch with the next stitch, pass it off to the L needle, repeat second step til done).  It’s not your usual basic knitting book.  There’s also a section of patterns – not the usual fare, but funky things like devil hats (with horns!) and Valentine’s candy pillows (you know, hearts with sayings – my favorite in the book says "Bite Me").  What I really like about the book is the underlying premise – tips and techniques for taking charge of your knitting and making it do what you want it to do

8.  Toby has just finished another round of his intensive "Europeds" physical therapy.  He is now pretty darned confident using his two quad canes, so the walker is moving back in line for occasional use (when we’re in a crowded area for example), rather than the more usual mode.  He still talks every second of the day.

9.  A number of times recently, kid-drawn pictures of Toby with his walker or canes have come home with him – which just make me grin.  I’ll scan them in and post them at some point – plus a story he wrote recently about having CP.  One of the things that made me really "nervous" in a way about raising a child with a disability was moving into this phase where Toby himself is aware of it and interactive about the challenges.  But you know, it’s really ok.  Parts are hard (there are times when absolutely, I wish I could take away some of his challenges).  But he’s growing a pretty healthy sense of self, and he’s still the utter fabulous little Toby that he has always been, and it’s really fun.

10. Knitting?  Some is happening.  Some mitts are almost done for a friend – the second one was in time out for a bit while I sorted out what size needle I had used for the body of the first mitt (oops, I had to rip it out twice but it finally cooperated).  I need to do a stash/UFO busting wrap up post.  I’m going to keep going with it – though I do reserve myself a day to buy yarn if the urge strikes.

11.  Spinning?  Not so much lately. I’m still pining away for Cate’s wheel   I really should just deal and spin something on my long-ignored Louet.  It does spin after all, and I was perfectly content with it until spoiled with perfection.

12.  Teaching – is winding down.  Students turned in rough drafts of their research papers today, 2 more weeks to go and then their final presentations.  They’re doing well.  They’re stressed and insane at the moment, but they’re doing well.  My stressed and insane time will come when grades are due…

13.  And that wraps up this random edition.  Good to read that others have been doing the random dance today.

A friend sent out an email with a slew of photos – the subject header of the email was "when graphic artists get bored".  Some of them were great – a swimmer doing the butterfly down a highway and other visual illusions. 

This one is fibery though –

You can click on it to embiggen.

cute eh?  It’s a vegetarian sheep LOL.

Adult Nationals is next week – wheee!

I’m having a good spurt of skating these days.  About a week ago, I started working with one of my coaches on improving my axel technique.  Way back when (1979-1981) I learned to jump with my feet side-by-side in the air.  These days, kids learn to get into the "backspin position" in the air – where the free leg (the left leg if you rotate counter clockwise) is bent slightly and in front of your landing leg.  You get faster better rotation using this postion – it’s a tighter air position.  Here’s a good example – Alexie Yagudin talking about proper technique for triple and quadruple toe loops!  With such mult-rev jumps, you can really see the in-air position (since he’s hanging in air for a while…).  Here’s another example – Peggy Fleming narrating re salchow jumps.  And THIS is a really cool example of some vintage skating – Ulrich Salchow himself skating back in 1911.  He only does a couple of jumps (including a salchow – yes, named after him) – and the quality of the video is a bit poor – but he jumps with his free leg at the side, not crossed.  He spins like that too!  He does some really cool edges and turns and footwork though.

At any rate, In regaining all of my kid skills, I simply reverted back to what my body knew before.  Since getting a double salchow is taking a while – I figure it can’t possibly hurt to try and improve my technique – especially since it should help get faster better rotation and therefore perhaps a double jump

My friend Amy was also picking apart what she saw in these photos.   (Picking apart?  That’s a good thing.  Folks who can pick apart technique at the micro level are few and far between.)  The photographer at Easterns in Feb. caught a few of my axels in my freestyle program from exactly the right vantage point – you can click forward and back a few shots and it’s like a little flip book of my axel LOL.  Amy pointed out a number of things – my arms are too high, my hips are too closed on the take off, etc. etc.  In fact she really wasn’t quite sure how I was able to rotate the jump at all LOL with such closed hips.

So – project axel.  Two things have clicked this last week.  I have changed the "rhythm" of the jump – before, it was sort of a constant even kind of rhythm from the step forward through the take off and rotation and landing.  Now, I focus on "snapping" the hips as I take off – really it’s opening them – and on getting the free leg crossed in front.  Crossing the free leg depends on not closing in the hips (you can’t cross the leg open if you’re pidgeon-toeing from the hip).   I also have lowered my arms – focusing on just letting the rotation happen, rather than powering or muscling through the jump via my upper torso. 

They feel easy.  Easy!  Even doing axel/loops has become easy.  Before – doing the loop combos were a real hail-mary kind of thing – sometimes I managed but usually not.  Somehow it has just clicked together this week.  No I don’t know how…

So that’s fun.  After competing next week, the double sal will move back to the top of the obsession list  

Program run-throughs are going pretty well too.  About 6 weeks ago, I thought I had a ton of endurance work to do since getting through a program was truly difficult in the air-capacity department.  After instigating a three-hour coughing fit one night after a run-through – I figured out it was more than simply an endurance issue. I seem to have developed exercise/cold-induced asthma.  Solutions are to exercise in a warm place (um, newsflash, rinks are cold) or to use an albuterol inhaler before exercising.  Albuterol it is.  It works like a charm, I do not seem to be susceptible to my heart racing after using it, and I can breathe.  Through program run-throughs even.  In lieue of endurance, I have been working hard at fine-tuning the presentation part of a freeskate – trying to look like I enjoy being out there, rather than someone who would like to have folks stop staring at her.  Yes, I realize the irony of my chosen sport.  What I LOVE about skating is how there are constantly new things to work on – you figure one thing out, and there’s always more.  The part I’m not so suited for is the extroverted love of performing part. 

I’ll be spending some time next week at an academic conference in Chicago too – it’s going to be a busy week.  Typically I try not to mix competitions and work – but it’ll sort out I think.  There will be a few presentations related to the grant work that I am in the middle of – so hopefully it’ll jump start that too.  (That, of course, deserves its own blog post.  As does the really cool kid art from Toby’s friends at school, where they’ve drawn Tobes with his walker and with his canes; and a story about my inability to knit a simple stockinette rectangle.  Eesh.)

What’s it look like when you tell your 10 year old daughter that she and she alone gets to join mom on a work trip to Orlando FL?  As in Disney?  When buddies Cate and Rhys and the supertwins will (conincidentally) be there too?  And you’ll be there for 3 days but mom will be tied up only for part of one of those days?

Like this:

and like this:

and this:

and a few minutes after the news, like this:

I’m thinking we’ll have a good time.  We’re staying at one of the swanky resort hotels, and hitting up Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and one of the water parks.

Toby is going to be Ticked Off.  As he has been asking about going to Disney for a while now.  But the trip conflicts with one of his intensive PT 3-week sessions, and you know, it’s ok for Hannah to get some really special solo time   We’ll get Toby to Disney at some point.