So Jane and I and Steve and Tracey all showed up, somewhat annoyed to find no available ice.
But we got the grocery shopping done. We may go out with Joan to lunch tomorrow, just for a non-cooking holiday.
We bought 26.00 worth of bargain chicken, and Jane is in there grilling all of it: we’ll dice it, freeze it, and have chicken for fast dinners. She’s also prepping broccoli and cauliflower.
Meanwhile having worked through some very hard scenes in the book, I’m going to go into the office and perform a mail sort.
We’re going to put up the tree tomorrow. It’s starting to snow again on Sunday, and will continue through next week, but at least we have the major load off.
And the diet, while slow and a little frustrating at times, is still working.
Well, I’d better hit the office and start sorting paper into piles.
Should’ve staged your own local remake of Battle of the Blades…;)
Speaking of blades….have you been watching Stars on Skates? I missed the third segment….but I’m having fun watching it. Are they *really* practicing and rehearsing without any protection or helmets? Some of these skaters look scared to say the least. I am loving Johnnie Weir and Dick Button, not so much Laurieanne Gibson.
Yep, we’re watching it, and it’s scary. Adults tend to fall backwards and hit their heads, because of their center of gravity. An adult starting out should wear a helmet, and an older adult should wear half-pipe wristguards (for about 6 weeks, until they learn how to keep their arms out from under a fall) and Crash Pads (a kind of gel-insert the size of a dinner plate that goes over either hip and the tail bone. I still wear those and the helmet, and now and again I need them.)
Wear those and you’ll take the hardest fall without damage. Omit them and your insurance and will should be up to date. An adult’s high center of gravity and high mass are a guaranteed nasty fall, and no jacket, coat, or knit cap will save you. The ONLY thing I’ve had work to save my head else is one of those Norwegian/Finnish-cap style pompoms, and I think I know why they were invented in that region. But the sad truth is, knit caps usually fly off at first impact, and your head usually bounces three times when you do a full-backward fall.
And while a skilled instructor can use one index finger to keep you from falling (the balance shift is that minuscule)—you can die just stepping out onto the ice if you hit it just wrong. Helmet, helmet, helmet. It’s cheap, a bike helmet will do, a half-pipe helmet will do better, and if you’re not in great shape and don’t remember to bend your knees (they’re never bent as much as you think) some hockey kneepads aren’t totally out of line—because if you engage your toepick, you’re going down forward onto your knees, (and if you’re going fast, you’re going to go airborne and forward, at which point the wrist-guards are a good thing.)
The main thing is—you can die doing this. People do. Going out with no protection and expecting to be brilliant is just not realistic, so you just figure you’re going to fall now and again until you learn how not to, and you take measures to assure it does no damage until you learn how to assure it doesn’t by clever positioning of your body-parts. Just because the pros (who have a layer of solid muscle in their butts and ALL the right reactions to save arms and chins) can bound right up from a fall smiling, does not mean that the novice will get up as easily.
So, yes, that program scares me spitless, when I watch that one woman continually engage her toepicks and go down forward (I’d vote her off fast for her own protection, so she can make progress more slowly) and some of the others on the verge of getting too wound up in the pressure to do dangerous things without the trained reflexes to handle it if something goes wrong—that’s the other time you get hurt: when you’re almost-good and push it.
I was watching the Cup of France last week when one of the best skaters in the world had her spin travel over a deep rut that caught her blade and diverted it in mid-spin, much as a train gets diverted onto another track. She was only thrown sideways, and aborted the spin but kept with her music. A broken leg, and a nasty break, was the alternate possibility in that moment. (One reason figure skaters and hockey skaters get along somewhat like cats and dogs: hockey ruts are nasty surprises, but high-level figure skaters, particularly the men, do produce them too.)
Anyway, I watch it flinching all the way. And I hope nobody gets hurt.
Hockey ruts. BAH! Speaking as one who very painfully knows, my blade ended up in a $30,000 one. Wish I was joking. Freak accident, though.
I second what you say about helmets, wrist guards, & pads for beginners. Great advice.
My city opened up “the largest outdoor synthetic ice rink” in “the world” last night (seriously, how do they know?). I think I’ll check it out sometime. I’ve only ice skated twice in my life, but I was really good at rollerblading back in the day and found it transfered over nicely the few times I did go skating. In five minutes I was doing crossovers and frightening the crap out of everyone. I’ve managed not to fall yet too, though I know how to fall from skating on pavement. They are trying to revitalize the downtown area. Back in my 1930s my grandpa briefly moved up here from the south to play the fiddle out on the river where people skated there, but the river doesn’t freeze solidly enough these days. So synthetic it is.
Sweetbo, I hear synthetic is rather hard to skate on. I’ve never been on one, but apparently you have to push (i.e. “work”) harder to skate. I’ve hear multiple complaints that synthetics dull your blades unblievably fast. if you go, I would love to read your impressions.
This is a state of the art new synthetic surface that is supposed to be better than the older versions. We’ll see. I had to play volleyball on a new rubber floor in high school and discovered rubber burns were much worse than wood floor burns since the rubber actually did give you a burn as well as a rawness and there was less slide so you always burned instead of sometimes just slid like on wood. I wonder what the friction type is with the synthetic ice.
Once a diet hist my brain, I start cooking within its parameters — like making lasagne with thin cut eggplant in place of noodle; and home made pork and mushroom sauce (with no sugar) to line the dish and the top; or a bread-free substitute for ricotta turnovers.
Getting fat is sort of the old Italian way, but maybe I can cook around it. 🙂
That sounds good!
Winter’s almost here and I already hate ice. Now I’m scared to go outside 🙁
And what the heck is synthetic ice?
Similar to artificial snow? Snow from the snow making machines was never quite as good as the real stuff that fell from the sky. That was, however, a number of years ago and no doubt the quality has improved since then.
Synthetic ice in this situation consists of interlocking sheets of material. Mats that fit together seamlessly. You sweep it and treat it once a week with water or something, but otherwise it doesn’t require much work, certain temperatures, or resurfacing.
I’ll tell you, I’m not fond of the sort that turns up on old snow in parking lots. Yaktrax are very good; carry in your pocket, little rubber figure 8 with studs, turns any pair of shoes into good traction on ice or mixed ice-pavement. http://www.rei.com/gear/feature/search/Google/Yaktrax/?s_kwcid=TC|13029|yaktrax||S|e|6248438525&cm_mmc=ps_google_OW-_-Category%20-%20Footwear_TOF-_-Footwear_Ice_Cleats_Yaktrax-_-Yaktrax&mr:adGroup=1772503745&mr:ad=6248438525&mr:keyword=yaktrax&mr:placement=&mr:match=e&mr:referralID=NA&gclid=CM-exLaM1KUCFR9NgwodwQ_0iw
These are serious grip, easy to slip on, don’t scar your shoes, and fit any pair with very little fuss.