hildy89: (skating)
Huh. With ABC/ESPN losing its skating contract, we no longer have regular coverage of the ISU Grand Prix series aside from Skate America. Universal Sports is showing live coverage of Skate America without commentary. None. No pithy filler on someone's coach/personal problems/costumes/etc. No technical observations on someone's layback or flutz. Just the skater and the music. The only thing we hear is the announcer in the background and the on screen scoring. That's it. *blinks* I'm not used to this. I don't even know what to make of it.

Updatish

Sep. 26th, 2008 08:19 pm
hildy89: (library card)
The new job is a job. My mother used to words "unchallenging". Not a good sign when my smart mouth wants to quote Missy in "Bring it On" -- "What about doing something that actually requires neurons?" I don't think that would be terribly popular. A lot of library tech work is just that, very basic day-to-day stuff, especially when you're moving/expanding/shifting a collection, existing or otherwise. If I had any good advice for people who want to work in libraries: infinite patience (in infinite possibilities), strong back, and good shoes. I'm grateful for the job, but lord is it going to be a long stretch until Columbus Day.

Security is a little tight, so sadly I haven't really enjoyed the nearby Ronald Reagan Building. I was however treated to a free concert at Woodrow Wilson Plaza. That was a weird twist on "name that tune" or as my mother and I used to call the game "But can you skate to that?" The performer was Chuck Brown, the so-called Godfather of Go-Go music, lots of loud heavy beats and rhythms combined with guitar and clarinet and maybe another instrument. They maxed out their decibels. They were performing a fairly bumping piece that had quite a few people swaying their hips. The melody was strangely familiar. I couldn't place it though. For a minute, I thought it was a classical music piece like "Bolero" or something like "Kismet". Then I closed my eyes and I could see Philippe Candeloro landing a jump at the end of a phrase. Yes, it was the "Love Theme" from the "Godfather". That I recognized it through skating and not from seeing the movie says something about me. Not sure what.

The laptop is still hosed. I tried replacing the a/c adapter and the connection is just too loose to hold. It's really frustrating. So I get to talk to tech support. This can only end in tears.
hildy89: (home)
It's not a good sign when your little WeatherBug display on your taskbar turns blood red and says 100, is it? I can only hope it's slightly better tomorrow and that Scarlet Thread has good air conditioning for the class tomorrow.

Shoujo Beat must have sensed I needed a cooling off. They're previewing the skating manga Sugar Princess in their latest issue. I didn't quite laugh at the opening pages at the idea of a rank beginner landing a double axel their first time skating, much less turning her into a pairs skater. But the accompanying article on the sports popularity in Japan was nice. I do wish they'd given more credit to Arakawa, but their focus was on Mao Asada and Miki Ando, along with a little bit on Mirai Nagasu. With her dual citizenship, the Japanese federation is apparently hoping they can woo her over.
hildy89: (skating)
Sports Illustrated has opened a huge free archive of its articles and covers from 1958 down through the ages. Where was this years ago when I doing skating research?

For future reference: Sports Illustrated February 13, 1961 and the cover article "Mother Set the Style". Painful article on Laurence Owen, 1961 US figure skating champion. Laurence, her mother and sister and the rest of the US team were killed in a plane crash outside Brussels, Belgium on the way to the World championships. The crash wiped out a whole generation of US skaters, coaches, and officials.

Sports

Jan. 26th, 2008 04:08 pm
hildy89: (hail to the redskins)
Dan Snyder has learned nothing in his time with Joe Gibbs. He fired both Gregg Williams and Al Saunders and already hired coordinators even though he has no head coach. And the current favorite: Jim Fassel, the old Giants coach. Ick.

US Skating championships are on NBC. That's breaking my brain. And yet there's Dick Button still covering the sport. Jaime Sale has really short hair. I almost didn't recognize her! And then we get Hammond, Hamilton and Bezic. *sighs* And only seven months until Beijing...
hildy89: (home)
It's April, but you wouldn't know it here. The temperatures have hovered in the 30s all day and we had a little dusting of snow over night. The poor Cherry Blossoms are probably glad they're almost done with their cycle. If they'd waited a few days, they'd have gotten frozen out.

I finally cleared off the World Figure Skating Championships off the dvr. They were held in Tokyo this year and true to form, it really was the Asians turn to shine. Representatives from that continent medaled in three separate disciplines. If they ever figure out ice dance, we're all in big trouble! The Japanese ladies are still skating great guns, even though my favorite Arakawa turned pro. All of them either have a triple axel or quad in their arsenal, but they've also acquired a nice bit of artistry too. There's even a South Korean girl Kim Yu Na in the ladies event who blew the field away in the short program. She's coached by Canadian Brian Orser and I hope they figure out her back problems, because she'll be fun to watch in the future. (She beat Sasha Cohen's old record, so I'm doubly pleased and impressed.) The Chinese still own the pairs event. This may be Shen & Zhao's last event and boy did they go out in style. Amazing to think how much they changed the sport. I still remember seeing them for the first time in Nagano and going "Wow!" over their tricks. Now I go "wow!" over their whole performance. I'm curious what effect Michelle Kwan's popularity and prominence had on the Asian skating boom, if any.
hildy89: (sophia)
Gacked from [livejournal.com profile] tv_elf:

What kind of Soda am I? )

Actually I prefer Sunkist, but this is my other choice, especially when I'm not awake.

It feels like spring here. The temperatures are in the 70s. It felt heavenly outside when I went out to lunch. But of course I'm stuck inside for another 45 minutes.

Not much news to report from work. I've moved desks across the aisle. We're experiencing blown circuit breakers every other day, which is really irritating.

Showed absolutely no restraint last night in purchasing two more books, even after swearing to myself I was going to cut back. But it was a skating book! Nikki Nichols wrote a book Frozen in Time about the 1961 plane crash that killed the entire American skating team. I've been interested in this topic for over a decade, so it's interesting to see it in one place in some fashion. The photos from the crash are depressing. I'd seen the plane damage but I'd never seen the pictures of anything found at the site, like the rusted pair of skates or a sooty copy of the Sports Illustrated issue that featured Laurence Owen, the new ladies champion and crash victim. I also bought the paperback of Faery Reel anthology, because I'm getting through the Green Man one.
hildy89: (sweep it good)
Feeling much better. The bug had mostly cleared up by Friday and today my stomach feels mostly normal, rather than plotting to overthrow the monarchy.

Congrats to our guys and the Canadian men in the Olympic curling event! Yes, we do rock! We even sweep up beforehand! (You should have heard the Minnesota crowd's cheer "Jeepers, creepers, where'd you get those sweepers..." You could really hear during the US-GBR match when they were the only match being played.)
[livejournal.com profile] olympicicons has a couple more curling icons within a larger post.

Also pleased Arakawa won her gold medal. Honestly, while watching the Grand Prix events this year, I said "Geez, the Japanese girls are skating like wildfire, I wouldn't be surprised if one won it all." I didn't expect to get that prediction right. The Japanese are not unlike the Canadians in that they're notorious for putting a lot of pressure on their skaters to perform well. Some of them hold up and others crumble. I had a feeling though, when "Olympic Ice" dissected the girls' practices and Arakawa was always mentioned as just going out and steadily getting it done. Sometimes the less showy approach does win.
hildy89: (Default)
My icon never felt so appropriate until right now. So the snowstorm finally appeared overnight. It's still coming down in places. This should make tomorrow interesting.

And [livejournal.com profile] bwaypella, Michelle Kwan is out of the Olympics. I'm sure some people are rolling their eyes and saying "I told you so", but I'm upset. And sad. She had two chances and the world passed her by. I just she'd been given one more.
hildy89: (skating)
Have I mentioned how much I loathe basketball? Especially games that run over and lose half the skating coverage? I do have to remember to add the fudge factor in the DVR. I never do and that's why I have the end of an NBA game instead of the dance final. *sighs*

I found my old Handspring PDA and have been trying to see if I can upload fic onto it. I can't find my old Wordsmith disk. Unfortunately the upgrade is for Palm OS 5, which is far beyond my paltry capabilities. I'll have to dig around and see what my other options are. [livejournal.com profile] neadods, don't you use your Palm for fic reading? Or have you switched to the Dana? What do you use?

ETA: Aha! I had the Handmark version of Wordsmith, so the upgrade was different. Now the file pops up. So I can read some of the longer fic now. All's right with the world. Except ESPN.
hildy89: (girl hunt ballet)
Yay! LJ is back. I can waste time again.

The Day that LJ Died: *dies laughing*

Watched a lot of skating for the last few days. I'm slowly catching up on [livejournal.com profile] mad_season with my comments on Nationals.

PBS must have been listening to my telepathic plea for Championship Ballroom Dancing. They've been showing the 20th anniversary special from a few years ago, showcasing past and present champions in solo and group routines. They did a fun latin vs. standard routine and Fred Astaire tribute. It was nice to see some old favorites again in the various tempos. The cabaret programs still feel like pairs skating on the floor with their lifts and tricks. From the last team, the girl was seriously built and reminded me of some of Moskvina style pairs teams with her ultra extended flexibility.
hildy89: (skating)
The job is going fine. A little mindless, but surprisingly soothing.

Sad news from the US Figure Skating championships. Angela Nikodinov was involved in a car crash with her parents and coach in Portland. Her mother was killed in the crash. Understandably Angela has withdrawn from the competition. This was supposed to be the year Angela returned after all the tragedy and injuries. She looked really good in the one Grand Prix event I saw her in. It's a real shame.
hildy89: (skating)
Today was cold. I don't think I really need to go further than that. I had good intentions of going to the CVS writing marathon at Panera. I must have just missed a bus at the Metro station. After a bitterly cold wait for nearly an hour, I opted to go home to warmth as I was having trouble feeling hands, toes and face. Very frustrating experience.

I came home to work on laundry and watch US Nationals. My skating comments are over in [livejournal.com profile] mad_season. I was mostly happy with the results with a few disappointing exceptions. Worlds should be interesting anyway. They're being held in Dortmund, Germany this year.

And clearly I am my father's daughter. The NASA channel is one of his favorite ones, watching mission briefings and Q&A sessions all the time. I've replaced my desktop background with one of Mars. I read an interesting article about the science fiction reaction to the Mars exploration. [livejournal.com profile] sailormac had mentioned that she hadn't seen any signs of little men in Roman armor wandering around the surface. And alas, I didn't seen any fuzzy red aliens with sneakers either... poor Gossamer.
hildy89: (Default)
I really don't need "Your Song" stuck in my head. Thank you so much "Moulin Rouge".

I've been out of skating fandom officially for the better part of four years, since skatefans moved from the old udel server. I've occasionally posted on rssif, but I've never felt a regular again, and haven't wanted to. So I wrote a SOI review and guess who is now "Miss Popularity" with several sites for one skater? Not terribly surprised, actually, since skating fandom is almost as small a world as skating itself. So why am I so skittish? Why did I post the reviews in the first place if I didn't want people to see them? They'll have to use the links for now.

Oh my god

Dec. 29th, 2002 10:21 pm
hildy89: (Default)
I'm back from Stars on Ice. More later on [livejournal.com profile] mad_season. Right now, "oh my god" covers my night quite nicely. And not a chair or vanity in sight.

Mad Season

Oct. 27th, 2002 09:30 am
hildy89: (Default)
I mentioned my skating blog in my last post. I've gotten fed up with Blogger. And I quite frankly like the LJ interface better. [livejournal.com profile] normadesmond suggested I cut and paste the old entries and backdate them so I keep them all together. So I created yet another journal [livejournal.com profile] mad_season and have been slowly moving the old articles over. So if you add the journal to your friends list and you don't see anything showing for awhile, I'm still moving things around. I hope to continue updating the journal throughout the season now, although I'll lose my sidebar. Now to find a situable skating icon...

hildy89: (Default)
I usually don't comment about figure skating over in LJ. I have a separate blog, Mad Season for skating and Olympic commentary which I intend to update throughout the season, if Blogger cooperates. Their template errors are getting rather irritating.

Anyway, I was perfectly prepared to watch Michelle Kwan in Skate America this weekend, since my TV Guide announced it would be on on Sunday afternoon. So being a paranoid VCR programmer from long habit, I double checked the schedule in several places. Um, why does the guide on the digital cable say "A Bug's Life" is going to air... and *why* isn't skating listed in either of the *other* places either?

So I'm officially ticked off. WJLA, our ABC affiliate, has totally screwed over DC skating fans for years now. I remember previous competitions bumped by ACC basketball. In 2000, some bright person in the office decided they'd rather watch Tiger Woods than Michael Weiss' long program at Nationals. And he's a local skater to boot. They finally wound up showing it during the late news hour which was nice of them. In 2001, they bumped the entire ladies long program from Worlds for a pre-Oscar program. Not the Oscars themselves, but some Hollywood critic expounding and previewing who would win! ABC finally acquiesced and showed the finals in late night.

Unfortunately that isn't an option Sunday night. Redskins are playing the Sunday late game and ABC is nicely airing their Sunday programming so I don't miss Alias too!

I sent them a comment asking them to clarify their schedule and reminded them not so nicely that Worlds is being hosted in Washington DC this year! And gee wouldn't it be nice if the local affiliate that will air the competition got behind the sport for once?

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