Please update your records to reflect my figure skating skills

Just now it was hailing outside, then pouring big huge raindrops and hailing at the same time, it seemed like (is that possible? hmmm maybe not). Nemo is getting BIG and he's stinking up the garage bigtime with all his poop. He's not trained yet. Lovely.

Went ice skating in Yosemite last Saturday. The sun was shining through the trees and huge mountain-rocks, and it was beautiful, and there’s a big open fire pit next to the rink, and it was lovely. But the point is that I skated on figure skates -- successfully -- for the first time. I used to in-line skate a lot, and played roller hockey sometimes, so I'm really used to allowing my heel to lift up and the front of my foot to go down -- you can when there's a wheel there. The first time I ice skated after in-line skating for years, I wore figure skates (with that evil ridged blade thing at the toe), and promptly fell flat on my face (I believe this is called a toe pick) like a million times. My hips were a bloody, bruised purple/blue and I was miserable. What was so annoying is that I could have skated on HOCKEY skates just fine, since they have the sense to curve up so you can don't have to keep your feet all flat. Ever after, I've rented hockey skates when I skate (like once a year tops), and all is well. At Yosemite, they only have figure skates to rent, imagine that. Well I wasn't going to sit and not skate, but I was very dismayed. I asked the guys working there if anyone had any hockey skates just sitting around, I begged and pleaded for them to be just kidding, they really did rent hockey skates - good joke, huh?!, I threatened to write my congressman, etc., but nothing I did made a pair of hockey skates manufacture themselves in my presence. SOOOO I got on the ice with a dumb pair of skinny shiny tan things, feeling all prissy and Kristi Yamaguchi-ish. Kristi might argue there was no resemblance at all. Whatever.

But then I made an amazing discovery. Gingerly at first, then with more confidence, I found out that I could actually do it!!!! That other time, it seemed that one second I would be skating, and the next second, I would be facedown on the ice. But somehow I was able to skate without moving the front of my foot down in that very bad way, and pretty soon I was zinging around the curves, crossing over, skating backwards (technically, skating backwards shouldn’t have been a problem anyway since that stupid ridgy thing is in the front), doing triple lutzes, spinning like a top, and throwing my friends up in the air and catching them. OK, that last stuff is not strictly “true” but anyway I was an ice-skating wonder, I tell you what. My roommate N and I weaved artfully between skaters, facing each other, one backwards and one frontwards, just like in Monster, except that we're not lesbians and I didn't go out and kill eight truckers afterward. It also seemed like figure skates support your ankle better. I will probably still get hockey skates in the future just because, but now my (considerable) skills are not confined to the hockey skate realm only, and this made me happy.

Happy Birthday, Dr. King

There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become reality. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

----quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

You know,

just because I have nothing interesting to report doesn't mean I don't have things to report:

I finally got some pretty dark pink curtains for my red, pink, and orange room. And a curtain rod. Currently I have old purple curtains nailed to the wall. But now when I go to put up the curtains with my handy dandy portable drill (drills are amazing inventions. They screw screws into the wall, easy and quick-like. It's crazy. Why didn't someone tell me about these before??), I can't find this one piece that goes into my drill. It's that round piece that you put in the hole in the front before you put in the actual drill bit. Where would such a piece go to? If that piece were missing, could I get a replacement piece from the hardware store? Do I have to buy a whole new drill? These are the questions that have caused my curtains to stay in the package on the floor of my closet for two weeks.

Nemo has been eating the sheetrock off the unfinished walls of the garage. I hope it's good for him.

Don't get the Blockbuster version of Troy. They cut out certain parts, as it were. Helloooooo, when a certain asspect, I mean aspect, of a movie is alluded to in a review, you expect the film to, you know, reveal it. Whatever!

Me and Tara Reid, we know how to put it down

Happy New Year!And Boldog új évet! Courtesy of MS Word Clip Art, that's Happy New Year in Hungarian, of course. Huge bulldogs all around, sweet. So, New Year's was fun. The 31st is my friend K's birthday so they usually have a combination party thing. We ate and played games and banged pots and pans outside at midnight. Yes cutting edge, yes dangerous, yes out of control, but we all escaped with our lives, believe it or not. A friend of mine went to a Valenzuelan party at which everyone got a cup of 12 grapes and everybody popped one grape per second into their mouth for the last twelve seconds of the year. Hmmm….this would seem to put a bit of a damper on the New Year’s Kiss, not to mention the New Year’s Countdown Out Loud Together...not sure how that all turned out...

Over the holidays, one of my cute, athletic, smart, and funny nephews took up - yes -CROCHETING. What a renaissance man he is. We got him a plastic needle (OK, mine's plastic too) -- "Mr.Blue" -- and he learned amazingly quickly. Mr. Blue goes in the door, etc., Mr. Blue goes out the door, Mr. Blue’s legs go over the top of the door frame, Mr. Blue should be in Cirque de Soleil, Mr. Blue goes in the door again. Or whatever. Anyway, I’m faster than he is. Of course, if that should change, I’ll have to off him. Um, he’s SEVEN. That would be embarrassing.