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icepixieWell, despite some setbacks, I had a very nice trip to Chicago to see ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rowdycamels and buy some skates.
(Setbacks included, in roughly chronological order:
1. Ellen and I both had bronchitis. I think Johann aggravated mine with his luxurious Maine Coon fur, so I woke up choking most nights, but at least I'm still on the upslope.
2. My entire bottle of cough syrup exploded in my bag on the way up. Thankfully, a few items of clothing sopped up most of it, but things like my shoes and my toiletries had a fine, sticky layer of red goo on them. I ended up doing laundry on Thursday night--and I will say this, at least that stuff comes out immediately.
3. I whanged the crap out of one of my toes on Ellen's toilet in the middle of the night. I now have a lovely bruise to show for it. At least I don't think I broke it.
4. Due to some birth control fail, I got no sleep whatsoever on Thursday night and nearly wound up in the ER for blood loss on Friday. [Even the nurse at my doctor's office said if I was still bleeding that much I should go to the ER.] Thankfully, it had almost stopped by the time the nurse called me back, and it did not start again. However, needless to say I wasn't up for much that afternoon and we missed out on the church and museum in the Ukrainian Village. Oh, well. Hey, I didn't bleed to death!
ETA 1:11 AM Monday morning: ...Just got back from the ER. Damn you, uterus. Anemia was not on my list of fun conditions to spend a weekend acquiring. I keep increasing the estrogen in my pill, and you keep wanting more to keep your blood to yourself, like a horrible biological reverse kidnapping/ransom note. One day, perhaps one day soon, there will be a reckoning with sharp surgical instruments, and then we'll see who calls the shots around here. [/ETA]
5. We had to switch planes coming home because of mechanical issues, and my bag didn't make it on to the new plane. At least I live 10 minutes from the airport and could just go home, eat dinner, and come back to get it when it came in on the next flight from O'Hare.)
Anyway, enough about those. Good things! I had a fabulous experience at Rainbo Sports out in Glenview, despite it being a bit of an odyssey to reach from Chicago proper. But hey, at least trains and busses actually go out that far!
One of the skate shop gurus and I mutually decided to put me in the Jackson Premiere boots, which were exactly the ones my research had suggested would be best. They didn't have exactly my size, but they had a pretty close one I got to try on, and it was so much nicer than my current skates. My heel didn't slip around! My toes weren't crunched! My insteps weren't crushed! There wasn't a piece of backstrap digging right into my Achilles tendons! The insole has actual arch support so I don't have to make Frankeninsoles!
The specs say it's rated for double jumps, but that's if you're a 90-pound teenager. For someone who weighs rather more than that and skates reasonably powerfully, they should take me through my singles. (And let's be real, at my age, a single axel is going to be a stretch. I don't see doubles in my future.)
They also let me try on a Risport, which was cool; I hadn't been considering them because I heard they run narrow, but they actually weren't. Everything from the arch on down was pretty comfortable. But ooof, my tendons would've been screaming for mercy--it was like a piece of concrete digging right into the back of my leg about an inch above my ankles. (Let's be real, I basically have cankles; no shapely definition of anklebone, no sharp distinction between leg/ankle/foot; it's all just kind of mooshed together, much in the way of a baby's leg. I think most of my body can be described with "never lost the baby fat," really.)
I also got real blades, rather than the entry level blades I've been working with since last summer. I'm super excited about having a grown up rocker rather than a baby rocker, and a spinning sweet spot that's not microscopic. (I think my coach is actually even more excited about them than I am, because a lot of her instructions for my spins and waltz jump basically boil down to "Get up on your rocker! Oh, wait, you don't really have enough of one to make that work.") I should get everything shipped to me in a few weeks.
By fortunate coincidence, Open House Chicago was this weekend, so we did as much of that as possible. On the Loyola campus, we went to the Art Deco chapel (kind of bizarrely concrete and Communist) and Art Deco skyscraper (much cooler and prettier), and downtown we went to the Fine Arts Building and the Sky-line club. The latter was somewhat disappointing--the view was okay but not great, and other than it was just a rich people's club, which was interesting for a few seconds but no more--but the Fine Arts Building was fun. It's another lovely building, Victorian this time, and going on stage was lovely, as was visiting the luthier's workshop and seeing stringed instruments in various stages of completion. The building has a bunch of artists' studios and rooms where music teachers give lessons, so those were fun to peek into as well.
We also went to the Lincoln Park Conservatory, in large part because it was cold and raining out and it's tropical in there, and got to see the greenhouses that aren't normally open to the public. Once it stopped raining, we went to the zoo, where the male lion put on a show. I'm pretty sure he just wanted to eat the small children staring at him through the glass, taunting him with their tender deliciousness.
Because I am nothing if not adealer enabler, I brought along my China Beach DVDs, and we took a tour through some of the best episodes during the evenings. I'm pretty sure I have a convert, muahahaha.
We had some very good meals this weekend, too. To continue the Vietnamese theme begun with China Beach, we ordered in Vietnamese one night, and I got to try pho for the first time. WHERE HAS THIS BEEN ALL MY LIFE? Man, that's good. It was also the most interesting delivery meal I've ever had. I got a quart-sized plastic barrel of beef broth with delicious, delicious spices; a Chinese takeout box of rice noodles, beef, and two different kinds of onions; and a ziploc bag of bean sprouts, mint leaves, jalapeno slices, and a couple of lime wedges. Make your own meal! Needless to say, I had pho for three days straight and there was still some left over when I left.
I had delicious gyros from two different places, including one...Egyptian fast food place? downtown called Naf Naf Grill, which had the most amazing garlic tzatziki sauce. I think I was unconsciously trying to rebuild my iron levels after the massive blood loss with all the red meat this weekend. (ETA: Not that it worked...)
Good trip! Would do again without cough syrup-splosions, bronchitis, and hemorrhaging!
rowdycamels and buy some skates.(Setbacks included, in roughly chronological order:
1. Ellen and I both had bronchitis. I think Johann aggravated mine with his luxurious Maine Coon fur, so I woke up choking most nights, but at least I'm still on the upslope.
2. My entire bottle of cough syrup exploded in my bag on the way up. Thankfully, a few items of clothing sopped up most of it, but things like my shoes and my toiletries had a fine, sticky layer of red goo on them. I ended up doing laundry on Thursday night--and I will say this, at least that stuff comes out immediately.
3. I whanged the crap out of one of my toes on Ellen's toilet in the middle of the night. I now have a lovely bruise to show for it. At least I don't think I broke it.
4. Due to some birth control fail, I got no sleep whatsoever on Thursday night and nearly wound up in the ER for blood loss on Friday. [Even the nurse at my doctor's office said if I was still bleeding that much I should go to the ER.] Thankfully, it had almost stopped by the time the nurse called me back, and it did not start again. However, needless to say I wasn't up for much that afternoon and we missed out on the church and museum in the Ukrainian Village. Oh, well. Hey, I didn't bleed to death!
ETA 1:11 AM Monday morning: ...Just got back from the ER. Damn you, uterus. Anemia was not on my list of fun conditions to spend a weekend acquiring. I keep increasing the estrogen in my pill, and you keep wanting more to keep your blood to yourself, like a horrible biological reverse kidnapping/ransom note. One day, perhaps one day soon, there will be a reckoning with sharp surgical instruments, and then we'll see who calls the shots around here. [/ETA]
5. We had to switch planes coming home because of mechanical issues, and my bag didn't make it on to the new plane. At least I live 10 minutes from the airport and could just go home, eat dinner, and come back to get it when it came in on the next flight from O'Hare.)
Anyway, enough about those. Good things! I had a fabulous experience at Rainbo Sports out in Glenview, despite it being a bit of an odyssey to reach from Chicago proper. But hey, at least trains and busses actually go out that far!
One of the skate shop gurus and I mutually decided to put me in the Jackson Premiere boots, which were exactly the ones my research had suggested would be best. They didn't have exactly my size, but they had a pretty close one I got to try on, and it was so much nicer than my current skates. My heel didn't slip around! My toes weren't crunched! My insteps weren't crushed! There wasn't a piece of backstrap digging right into my Achilles tendons! The insole has actual arch support so I don't have to make Frankeninsoles!
The specs say it's rated for double jumps, but that's if you're a 90-pound teenager. For someone who weighs rather more than that and skates reasonably powerfully, they should take me through my singles. (And let's be real, at my age, a single axel is going to be a stretch. I don't see doubles in my future.)
They also let me try on a Risport, which was cool; I hadn't been considering them because I heard they run narrow, but they actually weren't. Everything from the arch on down was pretty comfortable. But ooof, my tendons would've been screaming for mercy--it was like a piece of concrete digging right into the back of my leg about an inch above my ankles. (Let's be real, I basically have cankles; no shapely definition of anklebone, no sharp distinction between leg/ankle/foot; it's all just kind of mooshed together, much in the way of a baby's leg. I think most of my body can be described with "never lost the baby fat," really.)
I also got real blades, rather than the entry level blades I've been working with since last summer. I'm super excited about having a grown up rocker rather than a baby rocker, and a spinning sweet spot that's not microscopic. (I think my coach is actually even more excited about them than I am, because a lot of her instructions for my spins and waltz jump basically boil down to "Get up on your rocker! Oh, wait, you don't really have enough of one to make that work.") I should get everything shipped to me in a few weeks.
By fortunate coincidence, Open House Chicago was this weekend, so we did as much of that as possible. On the Loyola campus, we went to the Art Deco chapel (kind of bizarrely concrete and Communist) and Art Deco skyscraper (much cooler and prettier), and downtown we went to the Fine Arts Building and the Sky-line club. The latter was somewhat disappointing--the view was okay but not great, and other than it was just a rich people's club, which was interesting for a few seconds but no more--but the Fine Arts Building was fun. It's another lovely building, Victorian this time, and going on stage was lovely, as was visiting the luthier's workshop and seeing stringed instruments in various stages of completion. The building has a bunch of artists' studios and rooms where music teachers give lessons, so those were fun to peek into as well.
We also went to the Lincoln Park Conservatory, in large part because it was cold and raining out and it's tropical in there, and got to see the greenhouses that aren't normally open to the public. Once it stopped raining, we went to the zoo, where the male lion put on a show. I'm pretty sure he just wanted to eat the small children staring at him through the glass, taunting him with their tender deliciousness.
Because I am nothing if not a
We had some very good meals this weekend, too. To continue the Vietnamese theme begun with China Beach, we ordered in Vietnamese one night, and I got to try pho for the first time. WHERE HAS THIS BEEN ALL MY LIFE? Man, that's good. It was also the most interesting delivery meal I've ever had. I got a quart-sized plastic barrel of beef broth with delicious, delicious spices; a Chinese takeout box of rice noodles, beef, and two different kinds of onions; and a ziploc bag of bean sprouts, mint leaves, jalapeno slices, and a couple of lime wedges. Make your own meal! Needless to say, I had pho for three days straight and there was still some left over when I left.
I had delicious gyros from two different places, including one...Egyptian fast food place? downtown called Naf Naf Grill, which had the most amazing garlic tzatziki sauce. I think I was unconsciously trying to rebuild my iron levels after the massive blood loss with all the red meat this weekend. (ETA: Not that it worked...)
Good trip! Would do again without cough syrup-splosions, bronchitis, and hemorrhaging!
no subject
Date: 2014-10-20 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-20 10:48 pm (UTC)I think my horrible, horrible periods of yore kind of inured me to any scary aspects of this experience. It was a lot like a regular period, only turned up to 11. Mostly it's just been inconvenient, especially when sleeping was out of the question because I had to get up every half hour and change things out. I hope I'm on the road to recovery as well, but this has taunted me for the last four days by stopping for several hours before starting up again, so I don't trust it right now.