allekha | Entries tagged with skating

I had to double-check the day of the week today. What is time.

I was feeling a little under the weather from the booster, but it's better now after the ibuprofen kicked in and I had some tea. Poor Z did not react as badly as he did to the shots but still worse than me :(

Man, I am glad I don't care that much about most of the Russian skaters RN or else the weekend's schedule would be chaos. Mostly I am crossing my fingers for Misha and... I guess Zhenya Semenenko? The men have been all over the place this season. Instead, I am trying to find what VPN people are using to get Fuji On-Demand to watch Japanese nats, because they have wisened up to mine >[

I am sorry to hear Rika isn't making the Olympics - she's never been my favorite and I don't like many of her programs, but she's enormously talented. Though despite the fans wailing about how ~~Zhenya~~ stupid JSF standards have kept her from going.... if her ankle is that badly damaged now and clearly has been for a while, I wonder if she is even going to be able to compete in just over a month. I know four years is a long time to wait for another chance that may or may not come, but the fact that she did withdraw given the stakes feels like not good news.

Anyway, I'm hoping for Satton to rotate those jumps and get PCS that are even in the same stratosphere as her performance, and for Yuzu to not hurt his ankle again. I'm curious if he is actually going to go for the 4A this time, because it's getting a little tiring to hear about how he's going to try it over and over again and it to not appear. Loved his SP last year, so I was a little sad to hear he was getting a new one, but his new music is a great choice, too. Hoping Kazuki repeats his Rostelecom performance, too, and for KanaDai to shine!

(Also, Eteri needs to be Elsa and let fucking Polina S. and Yulia goooo, let alone her new BS about Zhenya. Shut the fuck up and go away with the rest of your team.)

Read: Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh - holy crap, the chapter about her medical problems and sister hit hard. The material felt a little thinner for this one, but I still laughed at several of the more lighthearted stories. I kind of wavered about what rating to give this on GR, because on the one hand I read it straight through other than the one break, but the organization was a little off, and I think a couple of the stories could have used a bit more editing to make them more story and less book report. Still recommended if you are okay with the gut-punch in the middle.

Also Taking Flight by Michaela DePrince, which I randomly found at the library - I watched First Position years ago, and her story definitely stuck with me the most, both because of the tension over her injury and her frank discussions of racism in the ballet world. I can still remember her mom talking about having to sharpie her costumes to match her skin tone, and in the book she talks about how she sought in vain any professional women in dance with skin as dark as hers.

This is a YA-level read despite some harrowing parts, though I didn't mind. The most vivid parts are definitely those describing her childhood in Sierra Leone and her life at the orphanage after her parents are murdered, as well as when she and her new sister first moved to America. In the back half, it became a bit more list-y, as though they either couldn't figure out how to make her life sound interesting or they tried to stick to a certain page limit and compressed the later ballet parts to let her adoption story have more room.

I enjoyed reading her childish delight - and cultural adjustments - to her newfound life in the US after she was adopted. But to me the most interesting part was probably a small bit at the end where she talks about how after First Position came out, a lot of anti-international adoption advocates borrowed her story to criticize her parents and her adoption as human trafficking, and someone even posed as her deceased mother to claim she wasn't an orphan. Obviously adoption (and international adoption in particular) are complicated subjects, but I can understand her being unhappy that her story was co-opted to make a point she disagrees with: as she says, she and her sister would have died very soon if they hadn't been brought to a country where they could get medical treatment, she writes of being afraid to return to her home country, there is no way she could have pursued becoming a professional dancer in Sierra Leone, and... she dearly loves her family. That comes off in ever page.

Reading: Maybe-Tomorrow, which is Not Good and which I am reading mostly for the historical interest (it's a novel about a gay high schooler in Texas written in the 50s).

To Read: Picked up Queen of the Damned at the library... I think I've heard it's the last 'good' Anne Rice vampire book? Guess I'll find out.

Read: Breaking my combo of Japan-related books, today I remembered that On Top of Glass - Karina Manta's autobiography - came out yesterday (thanks for not telling me, Kobo!). I picked it up and read it almost straight through. Very easy and enjoyable read; the various themes (eating disorder and body image issues, coming to terms with her sexuality, gender, anxiety, and of course the figure skating) are interwoven well, and she has a lot of interesting stories. Some of them are not very happy and these are told in a raw manner - crying in a seamstress's arms because after struggling to become healthy, her coach said she looked too fat in her costumes; a judge told her that she needed to walk (yes, on land) in a more feminine way; she skated their wonderful free dance at their last nationals with skates held together with duct tape, because she couldn't afford new ones. But some of them are thoughtful, funny, or joyful. I am not a dance floor person, but the way she describes how dancing makes her feel makes her love of it leak through.

I found it pretty relatable in a lot of ways, even if my experiences with gender/skating/etc have often been quite different from hers. Although one of my first dates with a girl was also a sunny picnic, haha. (Also, Jason shows up for a couple of stories because he lived with Karina and her other roommate, Britney Simpson, at one point, and he comes across as the sweetest. He and Karina apparently did a chat to promote her book, I should find it.)

Reading: Poseidon's Steed, a book about seahorses. I remember the other book I read from this author having a lot of grammar issues, but there seem to be fewer in this one.

To read: Will try to tackle one of my unread paper books next.

A pretty blue scarf appeared on the ground outside my apartment, and after it had been a day or two and nobody had come to reclaim it, I took it inside and threw it in my washing machine. Unfortunately, the fabric turned out to have a lot of small runs in it, and what I thought at first was dirt turned out to be weird brown shading. Thought I could maybe save the less brown flowers on it for applique or something, but it also smelled strangely like oil even after going through the machine twice, so alas. I tried.

Been playing some ~~Harvest Moon~~ Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns lately - I picked it up a while ago and then forgot about it - and I think it might be my favorite farming sim ever already. I like the mechanics, usual boring fishing aside, the character events have almost all been really fun so far, and I enjoy having multiple festivals and multiple towns with different themes. The two things that have impressed me the most so far are:
1) You have a family!!! Not just a blank-slate 'your dead grandpa owned a farm' backstory family, but one with personality and presence. They write you letters, and you can write letters to them. Your mom and sister even come to stay over once in a while!
2) As you gain reputation with the towns, you end up making actual changes to the infrastructure, and the characters' dialogue changes to recognize it. It really makes the world feel less static and like you're more of a part of the community, even if you character has only been there a few months, haha.
You can also have a pet capybara :D All the game needs is gay marriage and less Wayne.

I finished a YOI AMV that has been sitting on my brain for a couple of years. Probably devoted too much time to it this week, but it was a lot of fun to make, and I am quite happy with how it ended up. Editing it also had me ruminating a lot on what Victor might have been going through pre-canon and what parts of that could continue even after his romance with Yuuri, which is pretty relevant to the fic I'm writing.

(And editing in the younger Victor clips also made me think of how parts of FS fandom are weirdly - not necessarily that kind of weirdly - into kids who aren't even old enough for juniors and the way that coaches and parents can now push very young kids on social media in a way that just couldn't happen twenty years ago. I'm not against posting the occasional video, but there's a difference between celebrating your child and trying to build a brand off of them. And it's almost always jumps that get the real attention; people will repost a video of a nine-year-old girl trying ultra-hard jumps all over the place, which comes with its own issues, but how often do you see 'wow, look at the skating skills on this kid'? Sasha Trusova's parents started selling her biography when she was what, 15, 16? When she still hasn't won any championships yet? TBH, sometimes I even feel a little concerned about the junior GP videos when the participants are on the younger side; 13 still seems young for having thousands of strangers on the internet critiquing and stanning you.)

Speaking of figure skating! I watched some of the Lombardia Trophy this weekend when the stream stopped going out every thirty seconds, and while I am sad for Ivett Toth (I wonder if she's still struggling with post-Covid issues?), Katya Kurakova is looking good! There were some other interesting programs and music choices, too. The only thing I've watched out of Russian test skates was Misha's SP (okay considering they just switched it, but I wish Mishin had let him keep the Nutcracker program) and T/M's SP, which I saw praise for beforehand that I don't understand after watching it. Half the choreo is basic 'turn around and wave your arm on the ding', the other half is stolen from someone else, they at least took out the WE music so it's not a total Recycled Janny Music show but the music cut is both terribly done and terribly placed, and I guess the Pygmalion theme matches their emoting abilities but seemed kind of sexist. It made me feel like it was trying to be S/M's magical Olympic FS. I also saw Kanadai's new performances, and wow, I don't know much about ice dance, but they improved a lot from last year's Nationals. Really hoping they keep the matching ponytails/buns, too, because it's adorable *_*

It got very warm here recently, so I hope the weather forecast is right and the heat will break tomorrow. And that we'll get more of the rain that fell for about five seconds earlier.

Wrist is still hurting but is on the mend. I've been able to do some coding, then talked with my dad about it to refresh my to-do list. I called the IRS without my anxiety exploding and finally received my missing stimulus check. (Meanwhile, Z got me to try driving his car in a parking lot, as in letting my foot off the brake on a gentle incline, and I panicked and slammed the brakes again at 3mph. I think it will be a while before I can attempt real driving. Also, I already resent cars for making me do things with my non-dominant foot.)

I have also signed up for this thing called Tadoku, which is a challenge for reading in foreign languages; it's geared towards Japanese, but it looks like people are using it for a bunch of other languages, too. The challenge spans all of July, if anyone else wants motivation to practice reading.

Most excitingly - besides socializing the most I have in a year at con.txt - I got to go skating again!! Only twice so far before the rink shut down for summer maintenance, but it's a start. I think having the SnowWhites helped a lot even if I can't practice much in them, since I was able to get my balance back much more quickly this time. My mohawks might actually be better than before. I started doing consecutive three-turns in circles before I even realized that I was going to do it. Muscle memory *_*

I'm not 100% back yet, but it's close enough that I should email my coach and say hi. I think my spirals will get better on their own with some more practice, and so will swing rolls. Both times I went, I got different sore muscles - my edge muscles really hurt after the first day (did I know there were muscles that tilted my foot to each side? not until they started hurt) and the ones right in front of the hip bone the second. The swing rolling muscles. Tripped a few times, but didn't fall until I'd thought about how I hadn't fell, and then proceeded to fall both back and forward in the space of thirty seconds :p It was while working on baby jumps, so hopefully that will help shake out brain jitters.

After the success with modding my SnowWhite boots, I tried it on my figure skates, and I have to say, while not perfect yet, that first session was one of the most pain-free and fuss-free ones I've had in my Edeas, and that was while they were laced such that I felt stable. Harder to tell with the second session, as I had to take a painkiller for something else, and I think I didn't tighten them correctly, but I'm hopeful for more sessions where they feel good and don't need so much adjusting!

Two weeks past vaccine two \o/ Now I just need to figure out the secret rink hours (they haven't posted them online in a year now because 'they're closed') and find out what their current COVID protocols are....

YouTube's The Algorithm has recently chosen two of my figure skating vids to start reccing at people. Why, I have no clue, and of course The Claw has largely descended on the first couple I made rather than the more recent ones, but I can't complain. (Though LOL @ the Zagitova stan who showed up to go 'but where is the elephant in the room?!' on a vid where I didn't feel obliged to include her incoherent mess of a POTO program.) I also found out through poking at the analytics that my history one was linked on the official Worlds 2021 website in one of their news posts! Not sure why they didn't link the official ISU one instead, but thanks to whoever over there liked it! Still should've cancelled Worlds or provided a real bubble!

Got a pretty bad headache yesterday that I thought was my fault for being lazy about putting in my contacts, but revealed itself to be a migraine while I was waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in. Blegh. Ended up curling up on the couch with my laptop in dark mode since I couldn't sleep, and there went any plans I had to be productive for the evening. Today, though, I finished fixing up a bunch of code tests I had broken at some point! Now to make them less of a mess, and implement that front end, and....

Commencement has now become even more of a mess, because all the computing systems have been down for days, including the one where you schedule the COVID test you're supposed to get. I can't be mad about them not emailing us about the deadline extension to schedule it, because the email system is also down... at least I had no finals to panic about. (They cancelled finals because nobody could access the LMS, either.) Poor students, what a way to end an already strange year.

Wednesday reading:
Read: Finished another volume of Mononokean in Japanese. Still sad about the manga having ended, it's been one of my favorites, and the ending was announced so suddenly, too ;_; I'm not 100% happy with the last chapter, but it's happy enough and also happens to be very sequel bait-y (and also soooo pretty).

Reading: Almost but not quiiiiite done with the book my mom sent me, Voices of Early Modern Japan. More on that when I'm finished, but I'm pretty impressed with the array of content in it, and it's super interesting.

To Read: After this, back to finishing the book on Edo era sex workers.

As of Wednesday, I am fully vaccinated! T-11 days to full immunity! I got lucky with the side effects in that I pretty much had none; my arm didn't even hurt as much as with the first shot. (I did have a headache the morning after, but it was the same headache I'd had before I got shot #2.) The poor man waiting out the fifteen minutes in the row in front of me almost fainted, but they were super prepared - there were five medical people on him immediately to make sure he was okay. It seemed like they treat a vaccine fainting reaction similarly to when you nearly faint when donating blood. He was okay pretty quickly, thankfully.

Z, unfortunately, while being statistically less likely to get side effects, got hit by them hard that night and the day after :( Fever and body aches and everything. He is now doing much better and is currently being more affected by getting used to his new glasses - he got his prescription updated after a decade and his eyes changed a lot.

I am counting down the days until I feel safe to go skating again. Till then, I took out my roller skates again when the weather was co-operative. I've been increasingly frustrated with how quickly they started to hurt my feet... so I went fuck it and modded them myself. I have not been desperate enough to take a craft knife to the sides yet, but it turns out that you can just use a hair dryer to soften them. I made something to help expand them where they need expanding, but it was hard to get it in and the inside doesn't really heat up, at least with the hair dryer I have, so I, uh, just wore my thickest socks and laced it on my foot. While they still need more work, my right foot is no longer in spiking pain after less than fifteen minutes and I can practice mohawks and three-turns for longer, so. Progress!

A mysterious package arrived on my doorstep earlier this week. I was confused because the only package I'm waiting on is from Russia (it has been in St. Petersburg for a month! At least they finally processed it through the shipment office two weeks ago) and this was from a US book store. Turns out my mom bought me a new book as a surprise 🥰 She saw the subject - daily life in the Edo period through actual documents of the time - and knew I would love it. Can't wait to read it!

My mom also encouraged me to sign up for in-person commencement when I was hesitating - they only let me know last-second that I was even eligible to sign up as a December graduate, and the safety protocols sounded a bit obnoxious. But oh well, it's one event. I do wish they weren't so disorganized, though. They asked us to fill out this form and then it was that form instead, the hooding ceremony is on Saturday whoops no it's on Friday morning hope you don't mind lol.

Anyway... I rewarded myself for finishing another job application last night by getting the new Pokemon Snap. The game is too addictive. Some of the pokemon are super cute, and I love seeing them in their nice little fake ecosystems. It's also really fun to throw apples - sorry, fake apples that are totally fluffy and non-harmful - at their heads to make them annoyed xD Research!

Soooooo it turns out that I did get revisions requested back on my thesis... and I didn't notice for a week because a) the email got eaten by the school's really bad spam filter despite the account creation and confirmation emails getting through and b) the spam filter didn't send me an email about eating it like it usually does (no, our email system does not just have a spam folder, you have to either get an alert email or check it manually on another site - yes, our email system is inexcusably terrible and still doesn't work on mobile, either). They told me that 'some' of my page numbers 'appeared' to be at the wrong height - not only are they all at the same position, I took out a measuring tape and verified that it's the height they're supposed to be, so dunno wtf that's about - but they were right about my citations being fucked up.

So I spent at least six hours straight working on my reference section by hand, wheee. I ended up removing one altogether because I'm, ah, not sure it was actually published at the conference where it was said to be published. Like, the paper exists, I have it on my hard drive, but it's not listed in the conference's proceedings, and nobody else who cited it has page numbers for it, so... not sure what was happening there.

Anyway, I felt very bad about the fact that I took a lot longer to return it than I was supposed to (I started as soon as I saw them!) and have been checking its status on the submission site since. No dice yet, but since the deadline for submissions just passed, they're probably a lot busier now.

Though figure skating news is currently pretty dour (Rusfed has very rapidly moved to tie with USAG on my personal list of Burn It Down), I apparently taught someone that Ina Bauers are named after Ina Bauer. It tickles me that there still exists footage of her doing them! I am also jealous of her spread eagles. I'm still struggling to get a t-stop on one side.... And in other happy FS news, Fleur Maxwell apparently came out at least back in April :D That makes five whole out elite women!

Otherwise, I'm playing some games and working on writing - mostly my FTH auction piece, now that I feel like I can write something long that isn't my thesis again. We'll see what I'll get finished once that is done.

Z and I had a quiet little dinner together for Thanksgiving. Not as good as one at home, sitting at the little coffee table and eating by ourselves. But we had fresh vegetables arranged nicely on a pretty plate, a spinach cheese pie (my mom gave me the recipe she always uses), and mashed potatoes in my new souffle dish with orange dogwoods on it (bought with some matching ramekins - I managed to freak out eBay with my VPN in the process of buying it, whoops). For dinner, homemade egg-white brownies and whipped cream. I had to direct, but Z did half the work and we managed to stay on top of all the dish-washing as we went along. And his cat Koro didn't eat any of it!

I am thankful that nobody I am very close to has gotten sick, and that my parents and friends are not COVID deniers.

Today, I went skating again; my edges are mostly back, I improved on spins today, and my waltz hop is more confident. Really, I'm at a place where I have enough back that I need lessons to improve again. But last I heard my coach was injured or something, plus I'm probably only going to go again once before Christmas. Z and I are thinking of visiting my parents for Christmas, so we'd be self-isolating for two weeks beforehand (no idea if it's required by law back home, but I like my parents not being dead, so). And who knows if I'll want to go again after we get back, or if the rink will even be open?

At least I can take the off-ice skates up to the nearby tennis court whenever. They still need to be adjusted a bit and edges are much trickier in them, but it's great skating with nobody else around and I can listen to podcasts if I want.

In happier news, ICE ADO TRAILER yes finally :D I'm not holding my breath on it coming out soon (maybe for 2022 Olympics??) but I want Victor backstory so much.

It's been an exciting couple of days. Z's new roommate just moved in yesterday, and as he's coming from out of state to do his next year at university, he has to quarantine for two weeks; because he can't stay completely separated, Z is also quarantining so he can stay with his cat. So we spent a couple days together beforehand before we are cruelly separated for two weeks.

I decided to make a couple of small cakes to eat, as Z will be missing my birthday. I decided to use a couple of small decorative tins I have, as I've had good results from them before and they make nice cute single-serving cakes. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember what I used to release cakes from them last time and I guessed wrongly, so they ended up as piles of crumbs. (Delicious, matcha-flavored crumbs, though.) Lucky for me, I remembered a video on how to deal with this exact situation, so I didn't panic. The video says to use buttercream, but I already had some ganache prepared because I had planned to cover the sides with it, so I used that and:

Lined the cute tins with plastic wrap after washing them

Coated the inside of the tin with ganache

Added a layer of crumbs, a layer of ganache, another layer of crumbs, and then a final layer of ganache

Sealed with more plastic wrap, turned on a plate, and cooled in the fridge a few hours

It was sooo good and so rich that we had to split them into two servings. Maybe they even turned out better this way! Though I think for my actual birthday, I'm going to see if the local bakery has any single-person cakes to eat while I videochat with my parents.

We also watched some Star Trek TOS and an anime movie called Giovanni no Shima or Giovanni's Island. It's a film about two young brothers living on one of the Kuril islands just before and in the time after the end of WWII.

The first part of the film follows their growing friendship with a young Russian girl whose father is part of the occupying forces, and there are some really cute moments, like how they begin to play with her through gaps in a sliding door and how the Japanese class and Russian class learn to sing each other's favorite songs from adjoining classrooms. There's also a good depiction of the children starting to learn bits of each other's languages and being able to play even when they don't understand each other. (All the Russian dialog was recorded by native speakers, and so were the bits of Korean later in the film). The second half, when they are forced into an interment camp as they wait to be repatriated to the mainland, is much sadder, and also weaker in plot and more cliche.

Night on the Galactic Railroad is referenced often, and the idea of a train rolling through space is a frequent motif in the film. I haven't read the book, but the movie explains the main ideas it leans on well enough, and it also leads to some beautiful animated sequences.

Shortly before I left, my skating friend R called me and asked if I was free - he's a photographer, and his model was apparently having partner issues and had just bailed on him and his photography partner, Y. So I agreed to help out last minute, even though I know nothing about modeling. R says he actually finds it easier to work with people who don't model, like me and Y, because they don't make weird faces xD

I slapped on some of my really old and not good cosplay foundation to try and cover up the fact that my skin was freaking out a little bit before he picked me up. We found me an outfit from R's costume collection that fit me okay, didn't show off my binder, and bonus, covered the ugly scratches on my legs from when I tripped a few days ago. The shoot was outdoors, in a local park that has beautiful scenery, so we didn't have to stand close to each other when taking the pictures. We got a good amount of walking in, and Y is also an interesting person to talk to. (And he's Russian, and when he overheard us talking about skating stuff, I finally got an explanation as to why 'Trusova' is such a funny family name - apparently, the root means something like 'coward'! He said it's the kind of name that would get you picked on at school.) Curious to see how the photos and the behind-the-scenes video we took will come out!

Today has been much quieter. Ran some code, then took a break to edit the Swan Lake video. I am now at my least favorite part, the 'attempt to white-balance and brighten 90 different skating videos' part. Though I will say, watching uncle Dai do Hip-hop Swan Lake to the Dance of the Little Swans is an absolute delight, and possibly my favorite part of the video :D And now back to Ubuntu to do more programming and such. We had a very gentle thunderstorm earlier, but it has now petered out to drips and otherworldly yellow lighting.

Today, I did a guest lecture for my professor's summer class. I think the first half was a bit listless (my throat hurt from practicing and I was a bit nervous - honestly, I think I might've had a bit too much caffeine, too) but did better in the second half where I was more excited about the topic. If I do it again, I might try to retool the first half to have more of that. The students asked some fun questions, so hopefully they enjoyed it.

I also asked him again about fall funding as I never heard back. It sounds like our email system might've eaten the last email, if he didn't lose it himself. For a tech university, our email system sucks so much. Anyway, it sounds like he has something if I do some work or whatever, which is what he said before, so we're going to talk about it in a couple hours. Fingers crossed! I'm fortunate enough that I can live without getting it, but it would be nice.

Did a fair amount of programming this week and also need to do some code cleanup and a few tests of tweaks later, but I also need to get started on what writing I can do while my code is running. And also see if I can get that other machine to run stuff on.

Also need to finish this fic for RSOB! I am going to try and get it done tonight 'cause I want to post it. Or at least start posting it.

Have been doing some book reading while waiting for code to run (and fic reading and let's play reading - sometimes these things take a while). Unfortunately, my last couple of book choices (one from the library, one picked at random from the stuff I downloaded from Archipelago Books) did not turn out so well. Maybe I'll go through Kimono next as I know I'll like it.

I also watched the Peggy Fleming trophy when I had the chance. On the one hand, the USFS player is terrible and I'm still miffed at how much permissions I had to grant to even get the player operational, and it was also a great demonstration of why virtual competitions are not as easy as 'idk, stream it??'. Also didn't understand the scoring. On the other, I enjoyed most of the skaters. The men especially did well, as did Sonya (never heard of her - I assumed she was an adult skater at first - but I'm in for anyone with interesting choreo, bi-directional spins, and tuck single axels, even if they're doing Hallelujah). I was extra happy to see so many people recognizing my fave Emmanuel for his lovely arms and movement :)

Current Mood: weird

I spent all of yesterday and several hours this morning hunting down a very annoying bug in my code, which I found after fixing a different bug. At least it is gone now. All I had to do in the end was add a copy.copy() to a couple of lines. Might've been easier to find if I could use the debugger, but, uh, it froze when I tried, so I'll see if it's still not working after I upgrade Ubuntu again and hopefully get to a newer Python version.

Called my parents the other day, and despite the nothing that has been happening, managed to have a solid half-hour chat with both of them while I was waiting for my chickpea curry to cook. My mom just got approval to go back into work, since there's nobody else in her lab, but she's only planning on going for a couple hours at a time to do things that she can't do at home. She's also only teaching online next semester, because all courses need to be half online anyway and it sounds like it's going to be really obnoxious to do in-person teaching. At least she already has experience teaching online, so she has some idea of how to adjust her classes. Good luck to all the teachers out there. (I am hoping our seminar is online so I don't have to go into campus and get tested every other week.)

Oh, and the test results came back from my blood donation. As of Monday last week, there are no detectable COVID antibodies in my blood. I celebrated by going out to grocery shop (I got delivery after I went to the protest, just in case) and thankfully hit the store when almost nobody was in there.

My foot is still mysteriously hurt (get better already, damn it) and so I'm trying to rest it, but I've exercised every day this week so far anyway. I want muscles :| The stretching I've been doing has also been working - I was doing a variation on the dancer's pose the other day and found that when warmed up, I can now touch my foot to my head :D I only did it for a second because I don't want to hurt anything. A haircutter spin will be mine one day... if I can learn how to balance in a layback position first....
( I've been watching The Untamed and also watched Disclosure on Netflix; cut for length )

Did another post about figure skaters for Pride Month this year. I think I came close to crying three or four times while writing it (because of the AIDS-related deaths). Have half a mind to get a Wikipedia account so I can add to some of their pages, as some were quite thin and they're not in any of the LGBT sportspeople (etc) categories.

Not much news of when I'll be able to get back to the rink myself except 'August, maybe, assuming that reopening doesn't fuck everything up and shut everything down again' (I confess to not having much hope on that one).

While I was waiting on my advisor to get back to me about something, I started playing through the itch.io BLM bundle I got. So far, it's been 50/50 'enjoy'/'why am I playing this', which isn't bad considering the huge number of games in there! And I see my advisor has now found enough time between meetings to read my thing and respond, so I should maybe get some work done before playing more.

Today I made saffron buns! Never had them before, and when I ordered groceries, I was finally able to get yeast, if only in packets. I wish they tasted sliiightly more of the saffron, but to be fair, I only had whole-wheat flour, which probably overpowers the taste some. They are still good.

two buns in twisted s-shapes on a glass plate on a wood table

two buns in twisted s-shapes on a glass plate on a wood table

Also attended some sessions of an online AI conference, which was heavy on the themes of bias and ethics in AI and diversity in CS. Interesting and important work! Though it did make me wonder if there's a named equivalent of, say, Murphy's Law for tech-related meetings - it takes a minimum of three CS people to get a projector working properly, and the same seems to hold for Zoom.

As a break from writing, I have slowly been working on my follow-up to my 'watch every single Carmen program in FS', which is 'watch every single Swan Lake program in FS'. On the one hand, my prediction that I would enjoy them overall more than Carmen programs seems to be true; I love the Swan Lake score and nobody's trying (and mostly failing IMO) to be sexy. On the other... some people could really use a dancer to show them how to do swan arms prettily instead of flapping their hands up and down, if they must do the swan arms. And could whoever is putting together the music please think of something other than the same moody, vaguely dramatic cut with the main motif that everybody else is skating to, especially since Black Swan came out? There's lots of beautiful music in the ballet! I've watched thirty of these things and I don't think the section from the dance of the cygnets has been in one of them, and that's one of the best parts! Maybe that specific piece isn't good music for skating to, I don't know, but... really, there's more in there.

Okay, the variety is actually not bad considering they're all sourced from the same ballet and from Black Swan - I think I just got a run of very samey ones. I've already watched Cyberswan and several programs using the folk/foreign princess dances. There's also a Russian one with vocals that I am curious about, but I can't seem to find what the song is called, let alone what it's about.

I have finally given in and started to use my rusting Instagram account, mostly because someone's started doing interviews with LGBT+ skaters and allies on it and I want to watch them. (I still don't really get how to Instagram, though. Or why Instagram.) Tomorrow will be an interview with Mae 🥰 Really happy to see this happening, esp. after the whole Yagudin... thing. (Also happy to see Zhenya posted a comment in support of Adam, even though it's probably not the best move politically and she's been friendly with Yagudin in the past. And lots of other skaters have done so, too :) )

(Side note, but why are so many people involved in Russian FS who are old enough to know better acting like such children on social media? I get that there are some strained relationships involved, but warring with others with petty posts and personal attacks and poetry - are they twelve?)

I saw R this weekend before the protest - I helped him with some socially-distanced filming of a photoshoot. This time, the model was clearly very experienced, and watching her constantly adjust her poses reminded me of those videos of Taobao models. It was also great just to see R again for the first time in three months! His mom gave me some baby spider plants, which are now sitting in the window next to the money plant she gave me. I think I need to buy more potting soil to house them, and the money plant could probably do with a bigger pot soon. Outside, I didn't plant a garden this year because of a bunch of uncertainty - though maybe it's not too late to put in some flower seeds? - but my mint is springing forth in its pot and I think my lavender might not be dead.

( Rare ships on bingo talk; cut because table )

I had a meeting with my advisor and committee member yesterday, which I thought I was prepared for and I thought would finally let me sit down and start programming... and it did not go the way that I expected, sigh. I have another week to come up with something new. It's frustrating, because I feel like the conversation circled around some of the same things we were circling around one or two years ago. Maybe it's a sign that we never really addressed it properly. Ah, well. Nothing to do for it but work on it.

Afterward, I went out and did some jumping practice in the yard - my headphones almost flew off, whoops - and then today I took a walk in the park near sunset. I climbed up in one of the blooming dogwood trees at the top of the hill, with its pale blossoms lit gently from the side by the soft colors of the sunset. And then I convinced my brain to let me climb up further and watched the sunset for a bit, the bright orange clouds against the desaturated teal of the sky. I probably scraped my bare legs, but it was lovely and worth it.

In fandom things:

I posted a Lilia fic inspired by a comment someone left on another recent fic of mine. Really struggled with tagging it because it's about her old relationship with Victor and her changed relationship with Yakov post-divorce and her new relationship to Yuuri as a performer as she watches his programs... and I don't know what AO3 tags go with that.

Wrote half of a guest post for the Frozen in Time skating blog that went up today, about Mao's 2014 Worlds programs and Adelina's 2014 Olympics programs (I said nice things about her because I like being popular). The other guest writer's writing is very nice.

I'm very excited for rareshipsonbingo. Glad to have something to replace RSOI this year!

Reading Wednesday:
Read: DNF Guardian. I got to the chapter where it switched from the translator who wrote not-great-but-serviceable prose and had a fair amount of grammar errors to the translator who put comma splices and wrong dialogue punctuation in almost every sentence. Life's too short for that. Maybe I'll try the drama sometime, but I have to say, I didn't find the first part of the novel that interesting.

Reading: The Interior Life by Katherine Blake. I'm really enjoying it so far! The conceit is that a bored housewife begins imagining a story the way she used to when she was younger, and the historical fantasy story she dreams up becomes increasingly elaborate. The book uses two different fonts to show the difference between her life and her daydreaming, as sometimes they intermingle quite a bit. She starts to change her life based on the story by listening to medieval music and reading up on history, imagines herself as the characters at points, and thinks of them talking to her and giving advice.

So far, I've found both stories interesting. And as someone who imagines stories a lot, I've found a lot of it relatable, including the part where the main character finds herself going back over parts of the story because she can't make it continue, or struggling to force the story one direction but finding that while she can imagine it, it doesn't stick, or pausing at one point to wonder if her characters should be eating rice in not-medieval-England. I am suspicious that there will be a 'these are both real stories and the MC is connected to the people in another world'-type twist, but we'll see. Bonus: the book was free on the author's website \o/

Will read: I might try another cnovel? That MDZS(?) one is really popular, right? (Yes, I know nothing about cnovel fandom except the tiny bit I have osmosed.)

The Carmen analysis is done, it and the vid have been posted, and I am ready to never watch a Carmen program again (or at least not for a few seasons). Thinking of eventually doing the same with Swan Lake, though.

Also skating-related: I am so excited for Zhenya's Masquerade SP! Can't wait to see it. That music suits her perfectly. I am still a little upset about her Edeas, but at least the summer and next season are sounding good.

Had a skating lesson myself this morning and spent a very exciting hour practicing:
-basic stroking
-edges along the line
-T stops
-changes of edge
And we ran through the Canasta Tango a few times.

Afterward, I went to pick up a few things from the pharmacy. Naturally, antiseptic anything is completely sold out, but there was still a little isopropyl alcohol left. I'm trying not to get too paranoid, but I have been washing my hands a lot and I did swab down my phone and bus pass and stuff with alcohol when I got home. My university has already moved to Pandemic Alert Level One and someone died of flu in student housing, so I really don't want to get sick.

Alert Level One is 'cancel large events, beg students not to go to large events, and clearance is required for outside seminar speakers'. Alert Level Two is shutting down campus for a month. I at least wouldn't be horribly affected, but the plan if campus is shut down is to teach through online courses, and from what I've heard + my time TAing, our university is not really prepared to do that effectively. So, uh, good luck to all the teachers and students.

The only way a campus shutdown may affect me is if a) the computer I use on campus has its power shut off (but I can still run code on my own machine) b) I finally have a date for my proposal and I would prefer it to happen. Maybe if necessary, we can all do it over video? Will cross that bridge if it comes to it.

Anyway, there is still work to do while waiting for the proposal and writing to get done, and I also need to get back to my FTH recip and the creator who has emailed me so far. Might squeeze in some video games if I have time - I recently raised myself a ruling queen who married her prince charming in Princess Maker 2 :) The new translation sucks, so if I play it again, I'll do it in Japanese.

Good news: My advisor... still has not read my proposal in full, but I sent him an updated version with a couple of changes he told me to make from skimming it, and he now says he's read enough of it to say it's good enough to schedule the actual proposal!!! This whole process feels glacial, but it's moving!

In more fun news: I can cross off one of my New Year's resolutions, because I can now do a very bad catchfoot spiral on my worse side :D Though on Saturday, my coach was more excited that we may have discovered the muscle I need to do back outside edges properly. I think it's the fourth or fifth muscle I've discovered through skating. Just a couple of minutes of practice made it hurt a lot a few hours later, so there's work to do there.

I would also like to thank the mother at the rink today who wasn't on the ice, but still at least tried to get her young kids to stop flopping and zooming across the center very close to where I was practicing because, as she told them, "the man might get upset". Yes, I'd be upset if I accidentally sliced a kid's face up with my skate coming out of a spin, or if they ran into me from a blind spot. I think they were young enough that they really needed more supervision, but hey, I've seen enough parents at public sessions not make any effort to corral their young kids when they're being reckless (or even bring them over to play in the center when multiple people are practicing there) so I appreciated it.

Another skating-related thing: I got bored while waiting for some code to finish running, and I started wondering how many Carmen programs there have been. One thing led to another, my analytical brain took over, and now I've got a folder full of them, a spreadsheet filled out, a Python program taking shape for some stats, and a Premiere project going. The answer (depending on how you count) is at least 93, 84 of which I could find on the internet. Having watched all of them, I think maybe there have been enough Carmen programs.

When I had my skating lesson on Saturday, my coach was happy with my spin progress :) I confessed to practicing on Spinny McBoo (my dumb nickname for my off-ice spinner - it's like a little metal turntable) even knowing that their usefulness is debated, but he approved of it, so whatever \o/ Might be spinning a tad forward on the toe pick, but it's really hard for me to bring it back without slamming back way too far, so that's something to work on. I'm also doing a lot better on entering it from an edge.

I left my boots with my fitter this weekend for a sharpen + more adjustments, then took it easy today because my ankles hurt. Didn't even wear my new kneepads. (I got tired of bruises from going over the toe in my catchfoot spirals, but they've come in handy for lunges and at least one real fall. I bought fancy rhythmic gymnastics ones, so they're thin, flexible, and very comfy, and now falling on my knees doesn't hurt!) There was a dumb country song playing at the rink, about a guy selling turnips by the road who gives directions to a pretty girl who stops to ask, then pines after the romance they could have had when he doesn't know her name or literally anything about her.

Anyway, a bit behind, but Snowflake Day 4: In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

Dividing these into three areas:

Japanese
・Add five cards to Mnemosyne every day - this is one of my main ways of actively studying
・Get through a Kanji in Context lesson every week - this plus the above I am tracking with a calendar Z gave me for Christmas. Every day has a different picture of his cat! It's incredibly cute :3
・Try to do more listening comprehension - I don't have any good opportunities to speak in Japanese at the moment, but I should do more that isn't reading

Skating
・Pass the next two dance tests - will probably do with coach; he thinks I'm nearly ready for the tango if I do it with him and get to the point of finishing each step properly
・Pass the first adult test - it's mainly been the inside mohawk holding me back, but I think I might finally be getting it down well enough
・Jump an actual salchow and not... whatever it is that I do when I try to do a sal
・Fix my bad side spiral enough to do a catchfoot
・In general, continue to work on strength (incl. upper body strength) and flexibility (fucking turnout is not my natural thing, but I want it :|)

Writing
・Finish THESIS - I would reaaaaally like to graduate, thanks
・Finish off five languishing fics in my folders and post them this year
・Try to comment more on fic I read, especially outside of exchanges
・Do a first pass of editing on That Origfic and finish That Other Origfic

Current Music: Inferno (feat. Benjamin, mpi) - Promare OST - Hiroyuki Sawano

Or at least it is on dictionary.com. So, some happy things:
・Last weekend, my coach had me do back crossovers... and for the second time in a row, he didn't have any corrections for me. It's going to happen eventually, I know, but for now I'm happy that they've apparently come along well even though I don't practice them that much. R took video for me earlier this week, so I know there are still aspects to work on sometime.
・Still having trouble with mohawk turns, but we made a lot of progress on them this week.
・I discovered that one piece of Yuri on Ice background music is almost the right BPM for the rhythm blues pattern dance, and besides being pretty, is very very simple with very obvious timing. Hearing the beat has been difficult for us, so I converted it to the right BPM and we will try to practice with it.
・Free skating time at the university starts next week! Only two hours a week but I can use at least one of them! The other nearby rink is opening!
・For Halloween, Z and I watched an episode of Goosebumps, which I had missed entirely as a child despite liking the books. It is very bad. We ate baklava my mom sent me as a present instead of having Halloween candy. I have the rest sitting in my freezer and have managed not to nom all of it in two days despite the temptation.
・I am slowly picking the last of my eggplants. We got another warm spell, so the plants haven't died yet, but I think the frost will come soon. They produced a ton of fruit this year. My anise hyssop also grew a lot, and I have discovered it goes well in Assam tea.
・I managed two treats for ToT, besides my assignment, and might write a third. I received a nice FE3H fic featuring huddling for warmth, a creepy treet about a cherry tree with bodies buried beneath, and an interesting ficlet with worldbuilding and ghost jellyfish. Just started reading through the rest of the collection!
・Did some cleaning today. I should do more, but some is better than nothing. Also started a batch of yogurt after forgetting to do so for a few days now.

Had a skating lesson on Sunday. It went well! I asked to work on spins, and I learned that while mine aren't great, there's not as bad as I'd thought they were. The scraping noise is supposed to be there, according to my coach. Taking video of myself reveals that I keep tilting my head, which is probably not for the best. We worked on jumps, too.

My coach also had me do back crossovers, and he was quiet for a long few moments (unusual), then started saying things like, "Actually, these look pretty good. Yeah, I'm seeing a real understanding from you here." He didn't have a single correction for me about them! That's pretty rare. I will take it as encouragement.

R and I had practice on Tuesday and it was okay. We tried his new wireless ear buds for listening to our dance music, since we can't access the sound system at that rink, but they didn't work acceptably (thanks, Apple). Ever since I got my skates sharpened, we've been struggling a bit with matching our speed, since I seem to be skating faster for... some reason. Is skating on dull blades that much slower? I should ask the sharpener when I see her next.

Have Read: Read The Birchbark House... not actually this week, must've been last week. Anyway, the description of 'Little House but Ojibwe girl' is spot-on. Because of that, I was hoping I would really like it, but I felt oddly meh about it afterward. Perhaps my expectations were too high for a children's book, but I did take issue with things like multiple plot threads being dropped or sudden character development coming out of nowhere at the very end of the story in a way that didn't make sense.

I spent some of my reading time being confused about what age it was meant for, because the language seemed very simple to me, so I was thinking around six to eight. But then there are a couple of intense death scenes on-page, including one where a woman kills her pet, which doesn't seem like it would go in a book for six-year-olds? Granted, this one is a me thing as I don't read a lot of children's books, so I'm not familiar with what's considered appropriate for different ages.

For something that is such an obvious response to Little House, there were a couple of scenes where it was too Little House for me, like the scene where the MC and her sister deal with crows in their corn. There's a very similar episode in one of the Little House books where the Ingalls family deals with blackbirds in their corn. Maybe it was a coincidence; certainly I don't know if she's read all of the Little House books, but it was similar enough that I was surprised to see it there.

A lot of the dialogue in the book is written in Ojibwe. I am willing to give this book a lot more of a pass on it than I usually would, since it's there for cultural and educational value, but I still found it jarring since the characters aren't code-switching. Most of it can be understood through context, but there were a few times when I had to stop and leaf into the glossary at the back to understand what had just been said.

I think it's great and necessary that there's a Native counterview to the very popular Little House series, and I certainly enjoyed some parts of the book (I especially liked the stories that were told to the children). I just wish I'd found it more engaging. Might check out the second one and see if I like it better.

Yesterday, I read The Turk, a book about the historical Mechanical Turk automaton, its inventor (who also did other interesting work and wished that people didn't focus so much on the Turk), its influence on other inventors, and its connections to computation and chess-playing algorithms. I felt like the last chapter could have been trimmed a little, and it's rather behind the times in terms of AI game-playing nowadays, but it was an easy and entertaining read, and I would recommend it. Very interesting to see how showmanship played into how believable the automaton was, how none of the operators gave away the secret, and how many aspects of culture it influenced - automatic looms, Babbage and his engines, Poe and his Dupin. The book also does a good job of drawing out the mystery of how the trick worked until near the end, for those of us who haven't heard the details before.

There were a lot of other automata mentioned in the book that I was disappointed to find do not appear to have any surviving pictures. At least on the internet. There is a short video on Youtube of a recreation of the Mechanical Turk (the original, alas, was lost to fire) but it has several inaccuracies. There's also a BBC video that isn't very informative and is still slightly wrong. Couldn't find anything else, although the maker apparently takes the Turk to chess events sometimes.

Will Read: I think I still have a couple of unread books laying around my apartment. And I really should get back to Genji before I forget everything.

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Allekha

May 2025

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Reading on a... Wednesday?
Reading on a Wednesday
Face all made up, living on a screen
In other news
The world is so GREEN outside my windows now, and the dogwoods are in bloom!
I took a walk in the park in pouring rain yesterday, and I got very wet but it was surpisingly fun
I hate our school email system SO MUCH
My thesis is submitted! And now I wait to hear about the formatting and enjoy free time again
Yellow-Colored Sky
Work ^ !Work
It turns out that you probably cannot ice skate on Europa
Summer has really hit here recently
Saffron and Swans
Is it still a Swan Lake program if you don't flap your arms at least once?
Dogwood sunsets
There is no alert level three
Habanera may never leave my head again
I have been very ready to be over this cold for three days now, but still coughing
Today's word of the day is 'squee'
Skating and books

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A Song in the Trees

Entries tagged with skating

Reading on a... Wednesday?

Reading on a Wednesday

Face all made up, living on a screen

In other news

The world is so GREEN outside my windows now, and the dogwoods are in bloom!

I took a walk in the park in pouring rain yesterday, and I got very wet but it was surpisingly fun

I hate our school email system SO MUCH

My thesis is submitted! And now I wait to hear about the formatting and enjoy free time again

Yellow-Colored Sky

Work ^ !Work

It turns out that you probably cannot ice skate on Europa

Summer has really hit here recently

Saffron and Swans

Is it still a Swan Lake program if you don't flap your arms at least once?

Dogwood sunsets

There is no alert level three

Habanera may never leave my head again

I have been very ready to be over this cold for three days now, but still coughing

Today's word of the day is 'squee'

Skating and books