Six little speedskaters
Speedskating season begins again... yay! My son is #7 -- the one in the green with the orange helmet with blue frames. Notice how all of these kids have completely different start positions? It's actually kind of funny... but whatever works.

Jacob is a speed demon on the ice, but his starts can use some help.  He loses precious seconds at the beginning and has to spend the first two laps just vying for position.  So that is the goal this year -- better starts (and qualifying for nationals ;) ).

A/N: This is for the 50 sentences LJ community; Pairing: Azulaang. Consider each one of these sentences a story in and of itself; they in no way relate to each other. Also...damn... this was HARD. I have a lot of respect for everyone who has done the 50 sentences thing.

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Just finished Stephanie Meyer's latest... and I gotta say, I am disappointed.  Talk about... anti-climactic.  Am I the only one who wanted an epic battle and all hell to break loose?

It was like... bad sex.   A lot of build-up, lot of hovering on the edge, and then everything goes limp.

Ah well, hopefully the Twilight movie coming out at the end of the year won't suck.  It'll make me feel better.

Okay, so I never post anything in my own journal about Avatar.  But all the fandom wank is really beginning to get to me.  I mean, I've seen up to episode 11 now... which leaves 9 episodes left, 2 of which are going to be used as the series finale.  And some of the deluded fans are STILL insisting that Zuko is going to miraculously fall out of love with Mai and into love with Katara, and such a thing is going to be reciprocated.  Lets completely ignore two and a half seasons of character development and visual proof that Kataang is the sailing ship of canon...

There are certain people (won't mention any names) on LJ and on Deviantart that have written up tremendously long and insightful (and woefully pathetic) essays on WHY Zutara will happen in the next seven episodes...

I swear, some of these people are more blind than Toph.

We are a family of skaters.  I played hockey (on a boys team, even) growing up... my husband was an inliner, and has converted over to short track; my son and daughter both are on our local short track team, and at the same time they continue with freestyle and skating club... and now, we are also looking into synchronized skating (as if we don't already spend enough time on the ice as it is ;) ).

The thing is, with experience in three different aspects of the ice skating world, I've learned an awful lot about blades and blade care.  The simplest blade to care for are the short track blades.  Sharpening is a snap -- so long as you have the right equipment (jig, roughly 80 dollars and sharpening stones/deburring stones roughly 50-100), and it is pretty straight forward.  Place the blades in the jig, make sure they line up, and then push the stone back and forth until you raise a burr.  Turn the jig around and repeat.  Remove the skates and deburr.  Very simple, and very easy for an athlete to maintain and monitor the condition of the blades themselves.

Hockey skates are easy too.  There are no picks and no edges, so its a simple matter of taking them up to the local sports shop and asking them to put them on the machine.

Figure skates however...

I just learned that I completely destroyed a less than 1 year old pair of wilson majestic blades by bringing them to the sports shop for the guy to put on the machine along with my hockey skates.

Apparently, he's nipped off quite a bit of steel at the 'toe-pick' and completely messed up the rocker of the blade, shortening the life of the blade considerably.    Also, I should have been bringing them to someone who specializes in sharpening figure skates, and insisting on a 'light freestyle' sharpening based on my daughters level of skill.  

Who knew that such a simple thing as sharpening blades could be so complicated? 

Now I get to surf the internet and read up on the intricacies of figure skating blades and sharpening techniques.  Joy.

:)