Recirculating Cheese

The laptop hard disk is dying dying dying a noisy and painful death. HD Tune claims that there are no SMART errors, and no low-level scan errors, and it's not running hot or anything. But (at decreasing intervals) the drive motor makes horrible double-plus-un-good noises, and it blue-screens. Current plan is to replace the drive before (rather than after, as is my habit) it completely fails, so that I can (hopefully) recover data from it.

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In skating news, it was the last class of the summer session, and it was full-stop the best I've done this session. I did creditable (but small) loop jumps, attempted (and executed) the waltz jump-loop jump combination, attempted (and managed once) a loop-loop combo jump, got the closest I've ever gotten to a real scratch spin, and attempted the scratch spin-back spin combo.

Still, I didn't pass freeskate 4 - I still have to do the sit spin, and nail the waltz-loop combo - but I felt really...hopeful about it. I want to line up a private coach for the fall session, because I'm so hopeless at spins that there's got to be something fundamentally wrong with what I'm doing, that group instruction has failed to address.

I feel like I'm approaching my Peter Principle limit WRT skating, but dammit, I want to at least pass this level. And even if I don't, I (dammit) want to learn to spin (dammit).

Yesterday started with figure skating. Spins will be the death of me. I didn't fall this week, and the hand-sized bruise on my left hip is pretty much healed, but even my scratch spins (a freeskate 1 element) are still crap, and I'm supposed to be working on sit spins for freeskate 4.

The barn in Lexington was closed for the weekend, to give the horses a rest after the show last weekend, so no riding. I did a bunch of bike maintenance (mostly on lyonesse's bike, which we are borrowing), then (finally) off on my own bike ride (on the Raleigh with the funky handlbars). No cyclometer on this one, but it was in the neighborhood of 50 miles, out through Topsfield and Ipswich, up to Rowley, back through Georgetown, Boxford, and North Andover. It's a nice loop, but I haven't done it in a couple years, so the ice cream stand at the halfway point was a pleasant surprise.

Anniversary dinner at Evoo, where I managed to be disappointed twice in one meal - pretty much unheard of for them. The first was a peach-basil martini, which was high concept, but just didn't taste very good. The second was the pecan pie, which was pecans in a pie shell, with just enough custard to keep it somewhat cohesive. In between, however, everything was faboo as usual.

This morning, I rode early, on the trail. I gave Cheyenne his head, and we went hell-bent for leather, yahoo! This is not a horse who's afraid of galloping the fire roads, or cantering the bike paths, but he's a little careless of his rider - he's been known to run my legs into tree trunks, or my head into branches. Of course, all that hurrying meant that it took a while to walk him out afterwards...

And then off to Newburyport, for an Audubon-sponsored kayaking trip on the Merrimac River. Today is our actual anniversary (18 years?!), and this was how we celebrated. The last time I was in a kayak was when I was in the Boy Scouts, for about 15 minutes. This was a 6 hour outing (including instruction, transportation to the launch point, etc). We went from Salisbury Point (in Amesbury) to the mouth of the Merrimac, nearly to the ocean, then back up-river to Newburyport. They had it timed so that we had the outgoing tide when we were going down-river, and the incoming time coming back. It was probably less than 10 miles altogether, but it was quite long enough - my arms and shoulders are sore.

We saw a bald eagle (over Eagle Island, howaboutthat)! A number of great egrets, countless cormorants, 4 species of gulls, a kingfisher, and a great blue heron. Great blues are fairly common around here, but they're kind of special, because one showed up to our wedding reception, and spent 3 hours making the circuit of the pond next to the restaurant.

Yesterday, special aikido class with Dan McDougall, our sensei's sensei. Real good stuff. He spent a lot of time talking about the Principles. Usually class is about technique, and Dave will talk about this or that aspect of the technique, and sometimes about the feeling you're trying to capture, but not so often about the principles in and of themselves.

Today, I passed Freeskate 2. The instructor gave me the choice of staying in FS2, but thought I might benefit from trying the more advanced moves of FS3 (salchow? I can't even spell it). I have to agree, up to a point. We spent most of the last 10 weeks working on back edges and back spins. But I feel like what I really need is remedial Freeskate 1 - scratch spins, waltz jumps, toe loops, half flips, and backward 3-turns, all of which I feel really unsure about at this point. Guess I need to spend some time down at the park at lunchtime.