Just 4 fun: You know you're a figure skating addict when...

1. An alarming number of sentences contain the words
'...at the rink'
'in my skating lesson the other day....'
'it's funny you should say that about [insert sport here] 'coz in skating..'

2. If you can't get to sleep you get up and practice RFO swing rolls

3. Your spouse/child/friend/colleague asks mistakenly asks 'How was skating today'?'...30 minutes later they're still hearing about it....

4. If you can't get to sleep you get up and practice loop jumps

5. Your first thought upon visting a new town: 'Does it have an ice rink?'

6. Your non-skating time is spent online talking about skating or blogging it.

7. When you listen to a nice piece of music you're brain's also making up a programme to it...

8. When stuck at a red light you contemplate the theory that the Novice Foxtrot was in fact invented by an evil sadist out to 'catch' weak learner ice dancers

9. Your decision to quit skating temporarily to 'sort your head out' lasts a whole....48 hours

10. You quit smokng

S xxx

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There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

you never stand on 2 feet anymore....

you can do double axels when asleep....

you lift the 100lb barbell and do mohawks in a circle before setting it down in front of all the jarheads to get brave enough for a pairs lift ......

you can describe 10 different kinds of ice....

you have a tough time deciding whether to skate or watch skating on TV....

you've consulted atleast 2 accountants to try to figure out how to make your skating tax deductable.....

you relate better to the kids than the parents.....

Lyle

Heh Sonic, you just described me. For number 5, before I sent out my med school applications, I actually considered how many rinks are nearby and how many daytime public sessions or freestyle sessions they have. I'm not gonna lie, some places with more rinks are higher up on my list than supposedly stronger schools that don't have any rinks.

And number 7, well, I thought everyone made up programs in their head. And usually the skater in my head is a much better skater than I will ever will be. She does triple jumps and can spin forever. Of course, she is also about 10 pounds lighter, and wears the most marvelous dresses.

. . . when your man comes out onto the ice to propose to you on bended knee, and after saying "yes," putting the ring on and getting a standing ovation from everyone on the ice, you ask the love of your life if he minds waiting 45 minutes while you finish practicing. I think he really loves me.

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

Here here on the quitting smoking thing too. Skating did that for me, too (yay!).

1. You're running late for an appointment but figure you should check skatingforums for any new posts "one more time" real quick...and then you're late.

2. You can't sleep so you re-snoseal and wax your skate soles...more than once.

3. You don't have any problems, but your friends wish you'd shut up about all the problems with the ice, rink management, skates, your last sharpening, lingering injury, and whatever else you can think to blame.

4. You are perfectly capable of doing things with 100% perfection in technique and execution, but unfortunately, you're always just a bit too tired to pull it off (or that's what you tell yourself and others, anyways ).

5. You try to infect others with your AOSS disease, and wonder why they don't like you...

6. You decide that one skating discipline is not enough, and you need to pursue more than one.

7. When shopping for groceries, your primary thought is, "I wonder if this product will help my skating more?"

8. When talking to your non-skating friends, after they talk about themselves for a bit, they say, "So let's talk about you...how's skating?"

9. It made you feel worse when you accidentally left your skates in your car overnight once than it would have if you left a baby.

10. You start fearing skating anniversaries more than birthdays.

11. When standing around talking to people or in line at the store, you constantly balance on one foot or the other.

12. You finally admit you should have listened to everything your mother used to tell you about posture.

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Casey Allen Shobe | http://casey.shobe.info
"What matters is not experience per se but 'effortful study'."
"At first, dreams seem impossible, then improbable, and eventually inevitable" ~ Christopher Reeve

When you don't need to sit or crouch down anymore when putting on socks

=-) Your car knows the way to the rink and driives there independently.
You know the hours and days freestyle is available at all the local rinks.
You don't think twice to see or do floor jumps. The fact that an adult is
jumping around on the floor doesn't even surprise you.
That your friends and family buy you skating related things for all special
occasions.
That your have a preferance on who cleans the ice.
That you spend a ton of time and money on a sport that you have limited
potential and knowing this do it anyway.
The first question out of anyones mouth to you is, "How's skating going?"
Having a bruise on your butt the size of a small country is a good thing.
You have unrealistic dreams but that you keep on retaining them
anyhow.

I could think of a million.....

Chico

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"I truly believe, when God created skating, he patted himself on the back."

AWWWW!!!

I got one related to that. How about when your man complains that he has nothing to do while waiting for you, you hand him a camera and say "Here! Shot me doing this jump/spin/footwork/etc..." Needless to say, he now asks the morning before I go to my Monday night session (which I'm not going to tonight since I already had a lesson this afternoon and want to save it for tomorrow morning's lesson with secondary coach... ) if I want him to film me doing something tonight???

I'm gulity of Sonic's #1, and #5-7!

I'll also add "You might be b***** when you're PMS'ing, but you're 10 times WORSE if you don't skate for more than a week!"

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Cheers,
jazzpants

11-04-2006: Shredded "Pre-Bronze FS for Life" Club Membership card!!!
Silver Moves is the next "Mission Impossible"
(Dare I try for Championship Adult Gold someday???)

Thank you for the support, you guys!!!

That's very true for me.... I've been really irritable lately, because during the past few months I've been very limited in how much I can skate. I've missed more skating than I ever had before (mainly because of my dad being in bad health, long story). What's worse is that some of my relatives don't seem to care much... even though THEY would make a big deal when they have to miss something they like doing.

Sorry for the ranting.

I think it was Icecatepairs who said that you can always tell a skater because they have coffee stains down their fronts caused by drinking coffee in the car on the way to the rink at some unearthly hour of the morning!

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Mrs Redboots
~~~~~~~~
I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

... when you need a Palm Pilot to keep track of what time you are supposed to be at what rink because every day of the week is different and it changes every few months.

... when the only person who knows where you are at any given time is you coach.

... when you spend more time on the ice than with your family and friends.

... when you have "lost touch" with just about everyone who doesn't skate.

... when you schedule you vacation to suit available ice time.

... when your boss knows that if you are not in the office you are either skating or in physiotherapy

... when you coworkers no longer ask you what you did on the weekend because they already know.

(And I have only been at this 9 months!)

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Dianne
(A.O.S.S.? Got it BAD! )

when I can't sleep, I do mental runthroughs of my skating programs, or try to come up with chorepgraphy for new program ideas. I'm asleep by the spiral sequence.

Staff meetings are punctuated by co-workers asking how I skated over the weekend.

Skate viewing parties among your friends is common. (Don't forget about Skate America this weekend.)

Most of your adult friends are skaters.

You plan months in advance what you're going to "throw" at Adult Nationals.

You see someone with the license plate RBO and translate it into "right back outside".

You have a medal hanging in your office or a picture of you skating in your office.

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Champagne in 2005, 2008, 2009 - who's next out of the pre-bronze club...?

Wang chung!

I am a newbie with only 2 months under my belt, but already have a few things to add!

• When you are held up in traffic on your way to the rink, and start getting narky cos it will take a whole FIVE MINUTES of precious skating time away
• When you are not skating, you are thinking / dreaming / reading / talking / blogging about skating
• When your work colleagues don't bat an eyelid at you contorting yourself into weird positions whilst / or balancing on one leg
• When you get into work, and the first question everyone asks you is "How was skating last night / over the weekend?"
• When anyone can't get hold of you, they know you are skating. For sure.
• When you worry about going out to the pub, cos you don't want a hangover the next day - yes that's right - when you are skating!

Oh dear. It really is an obsession.

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Amanda

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance . . . "

My Skating Journal

You know you're a figure skating addict when...

∙ You keep copies of your rulebooks in the office.
∙ You always have gloves in your pockets. (Plus stickers and markers, in my case.)
∙ Socks + smooth floor = spin practice.
∙ You navigate by ice rink location. ("That's near the Woodbridge rink, I know where it is.")

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• If your coach isn't in, the 'once a week' skaters ask you where he/she is as they know you are there all the time and probably know their whereabouts - and even more worrying is that you do know their whereabouts! (One parent even asked me for my phone number in case she couldn't get hold of the coach sometime as she knew I would probably know what was going on!)
  
• You think it is in no way odd to spend your precious and limited annual leave on skating courses with kids from 9yrs - 16yrs old rather than go on holiday with friends
  
• All your other annual leave is used up by test and competition days
  
• On the rare occasion that you are not skating on a Saturday or Sunday morning, and you get to sleep in late, your family don't realise you are actually in the house
  
• Your top 25 most recently played tunes on your ipod are either ISU compulsory dance music, your current free skating and free dance programmes or potential pieces to skate to
  
• Non skating friends actually have to ban you from talking about skating
  
• You have gloves and tissues on you at all times
  
• You have compulsory dance patterns on your notice board at work (and noone thinks its weird!)
  
• EVERY waking moment is spent thinking about skating (and every sleeping moment)

(And I'm glad to know everyone else choreographs to any music they hear!)

When every time you go shopping for "some nice new work clothes", the only things you come away with are things you can skate in. Eh, you can just wear jeans to work again this week.

Wasn't it Tashakat who once said that you knew you were an addict when you went to work still in your skating kit - and you knew it was time to get help when people didn't raise their eyebrows....

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Mrs Redboots
~~~~~~~~
I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

Yep! I resemble that remark, LOL!

I am also guilty of scheduling vacation time so that I don't miss out on valuable practice time, so the only time I feel comfortable scheduling a week of vacation is in April or May, after AN is over. But since I will have just taken a week off for AN (and usually 2 days off for Sectionals as well), that's about the worst time to ask for another week off from work! And I never want to leave town over a weekend because I'll miss my 3-hour marathon practice on Sunday. My poor husband. . .

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

. . . this one was from today . . .

When your workplace is participating in the Wear It Pink day for Breast Cancer Awareness and you joke about wearing your skates around work "because they've got baby pink skate guards"



. . . .at the same time thinking "A whole day wearing them at work! That'll break in the little b*$@&*s . . ."

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Amanda

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance . . . "

My Skating Journal

ha ha, tha standing on one foot thing is so true! I find myself doing it in the playground at my sons school!!!!

oh, and when you find yourself walking to said school, and have to fight the urge to 3-jump along the pavement.

oh, and when you can't sit still through stricly come dancing!!

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Level one Field Moves......PASSED 05.06.08
Level one Free dance.....PASSED 02.10.08

GOALS FOR 2009

• Level One Compulsary dances.......PASSED 19.02.09
• Level One Elements.....................PASSED 10.07.09
• Level Two Free dance.................PASSED 19.02.09
• Level One Free...........................
• Level Two compulsory dances.......

Loving it, Loving it, Loving it!!!!!

HA! Oh yes...

...when you waltz jump up curbs

...when you accidentally trip on a city street and crash onto the pavement wearing a suit and heels and in front of 100 people, but it doesn't phase you at all because you do that all the time at the rink anyway (minus suit and heels)

...When you stop going out to lunch because two lunches out = one freestyle walk on fee

...when the only thing that will get you to lose that new 10 lbs is the fact that you'll look like a sausage in the skating dress you bought prior to gaining the 10 lbs

...when you will only move to cities with ice rinks and only those with good ice time

...two margaritas = one freestyle walk on fee

...you rush to the bathroom at work because you think you just figured out the correct positioning for a flip and you have to check it out in the mirror

...you've done salchows at bars.

When skating rinks are a requirement for all holiday destinations.

toooooo true

When you find yourself carping about how bad the ice was last night to co-workers, and realise their eyes have glazed over

When your wardrobe is full of black lycra/cotton lycra (our ice stains white clothes, black is the go)

When you find yourself practising arm movements and poses as you walk to the toilets at work.

When you are standing outside on the deck for all the passers by to see (having a smoke - haven't got as far as giving up yet) and realise you are leaning on the railing stretching in spiral position/ standing on one leg/ practising arm movements and poses again.

When the favourites(bookmark) folder on the computer titled Skating has more sub-folders and entries than anything else

When you mark the passing of a week by how many days before you skate again.

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Karen

I skate - therefore I am

Love these. I can relate to the PMS thing and not skating. It really is worse when you don't skate.

Chico

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"I truly believe, when God created skating, he patted himself on the back."