I love thinking about JZ with her swirly cape.

I love thinking about JZ with her swirly cape.

It's a lovely sight. She has a very stately skating style too, which suits it.

The heater guys have left for lunch. (Well, 20 minutes ago -- skipping and skimming takes a long time.) My fluffy cat has come out of hiding. (Behind the sofa.) She is still disgruntled and is occassionaly letting out a mournful sound.

I went down to the basement to visith the other one. He has climbed up into the pipes etc that are in the basement ceiling and just sits there and looks at me as I call him. Well, if he stays there all day and I can coax him out once the heater guys leave for real -- it will be okay.

Behind the sofa

Was she drilling?

t /obscure joke

Eddie Izzard...cats hiding power tools when we come in. Right?

erika gets a dollar.

Perversely, my ice-skating memories are all from Southern California. (I lived near an ice-skating rink.)

I love ice-skating, cause it is the only sport I'm a natural at. Normally you can find me in the dictionary, next to klutz. (Really: they sloughed off the whole "alphabetical order" thing.) But put me on ice skates, and I'm klutzy for two minutes, and then I'm on the ice doing figure ones. (Hey I never said I was natural Olympic material. But I can ice skate without falling - for a really long period of time. I was able to do it the first time I ever ice skated. And I still can.)

I used to take figure skating lessons when I was much, much younger. I remember being a part of the drill team and having early morning practices. We had to clear the ice for the hockey team, but not before doing our kick line down the length of the rink. That kept the eager hockey boys from sneaking onto the ice too early. Weak ankles kept me from making progress in competitions and I finally quit.

I have taken the kids skating. K-Bug does pretty well and CJ is absolutely without finesse but also without fear.

I love both ice skating and roller skating in spite of the fact I haven't done either in well over 10 years. To pick one memorable time with either is nigh impossible. Like Cash, I took roller skating lessons for a number of years and, while I ice skated every winter, I only took one semester of lessons in high school. Still, I think my favorite thing to learn was the jumps. The first time I completed a salchow on roller skates was a thrill beyond belief. My favorite on ice skates was the split jump because it was the only thing I could do better than the chick in our PE class who had been skating in competition for years.

Roller skating screwed up my knees. I've never ice skated. The old four-wheeler skates may have been too heavy for my feet (see above re: knees), but at least you could stand on them, which is more than I ever thought about narrow pieces of metal.