Looping

Arrrrgh. The blades I ordered for my skates are a quarter-inch too short, according to the guy at the rink who sharpens, mounts blades, and otherwise supervises equipment. They look fine to me and measure exactly the 1/4" from the end of the boot they're supposed to. I think he just has a preference for end-to-end mounting. On the other hand, he's effectively the only game in town, so...I guess I need to get the longer blades. Sigh. At least returns are free from the place I ordered them.

Today I started working on a back scratch spin. If you're wondering what the difference is between that and a forward scratch spin, it's that you're on the leg furthest from your direction of rotation. I spin to the left, so for a forward spin, I'm on my left leg; for a back spin, I'm on my right.

P taught to me as "an inside three turn that keeps going, with your free foot in front." At the moment, mine is more like an inside three turn that goes around once and crashes to a halt because my lizard brain is busy screaming that with my left foot in front I am going trip and kill myself. So of course P had me practice just doing an inside three turn and putting my free foot down crossed over the turning foot once the turn was over.

This is going to be a work in progress for a while. Years, perhaps.

Incremental progress on the forward scratch. I managed one at the very end of the session today, after rehearsal, that actually felt decent. The tracing was a lot tighter than it normally is for me, which means I centered it and got on the right spot of the blade. (I don't travel in the "spin while moving down the ice instead of staying in one place" sense you hear commentators tut about--frankly, I don't get enough revolutions to travel with--but I typically have my weight wrong and lean to the inside, which results in a tracing where the loop of one revolution is a circle about a foot wide, rather than infinitesimal.)

P also gave me an exercise to prepare for doing half loops. It consists of skating backwards in the loop takeoff position, jumping straight up on on the right foot and then landing on it with the left leg swung back in the landing position. It is exactly as horrifying as it sounds. My lower back was also like, "You're kidding, right? You must be kidding," because that landing is harsh. Eventually my back just threw in the towel and I've been wearing a heating pad since I got home.

(PT for my back is...I actually think it's making things worse, but perhaps it's a matter of getting worse before it gets better. So skating has been an adventure lately.)

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

I just watched the first two episodes of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. I'm on the fence. I really liked the crusty, older doctor in the first episode and Dot, the maid, in both episodes. (Dot and Constable What's-his-name are admittedly adorable as well.) The whole Detective Phryne and Girl Friday Dot is an excellent dynamic. I'm starting to wonder if Phryne is going to collect a lost lamb of a younger woman or girl in every episode, given her unexpected desire to foster Jane in the second episode. The twist in the first episode absolutely caught me by surprise, so that was good. There are some funny moments here and there. I cannot tell the two Communist taxi drivers apart at all.

But. Phryne...kind of annoys the hell out of me in some ways? Despite all the hints about her poor childhood, she's drawn like one of those rich characters who can't relate to the salt of the earth underlings and eventually get some kind of comeuppance. There's a kind of irritating nobility to her character, I guess.

Jack Robins (Robinson? I forget his name, which is indicative of the problem with him) is as dull as dishwater and I do not buy the brewing romance between him and Phryne for one second. So, so dull. I am not looking forward to further developments on that front.

The seasons are pretty short, so I guess I'll at least watch S1. If nothing else, the set design is lovely, as are the costumes, given what they have to work with. (I loathe the dropped waists of 1920s dresses, so while I like the hats and the fabrics and the shoes, the actual clothing does little for me.) And I hear Phryne gets a plane soon. That should be fun.