We did that for 14 years with Amber and Emmy, who grew up together. Then Emmy died a year ago and we adopted Mia as a 10-week old kitten. Unfortunately, whenever Mia would jump up onto the bed at night, Amber would hiss and growl at her. This would happen at least 10 times a night and I became extremely sleep-deprived. So after two months of trying to make it work, we finally adopted Mia's sister Sasha (the only kitten from that litter for whom they still hadn't found a home). It solved everyone's problems because the kittens could play with each other in the living room all night while Amber slept on the bed with us in peace and quiet, just as she had for 14 years. A year later, Amber has finally accepted Mia to the point where she won't hiss and growl at her if she comes onto the bed with us, but she will still hiss and growl at Sasha. Oh, another reason to keep the kittens out is that Mia has this funny habit of snuggling on my chest under the covers and licking my pajama top until it is soaking wet. . .

And now for my growl and purr!

GROWL

My left quads practically gave out 45 minutes into my MIF practice this morning! Am I so out of shape after just 1 week of not skating?!

PURR

Had the most thorough MIF practice I've had in awhile and even had a little breakthrough on the despised back power 3-mohawk move. I think I'm about to commit to re-testing Intermediate MIF in November, after getting a "retry" a year ago! (Can you tell I've just been AVOIDING them? LOL!)

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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

Growling:
Sit spins weren't low enough, once I looked at the video.
Camels were meh. Did one decent camel-to-sit combination spin.
No decent jumps other than waltz jumps.
Grapevines were awful - can barely crossover both ways.

Purring:
Backspins were better without the blade 'lift.' Still getting used to the new edge.
Back outside eights were better than forward outside eights. Go figure! (Pun intended)
Scratch spins were really good, fast with a tight pull-in.

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When we remodeled (actually, it was a matter of PUTTING a master bathroom into an empty room...) I INSISTED on a tub with jets-I wanted a really nice garden-style corner tub but was vetoed.

A talk with the contracter resulted in a contract modification and a kohler tub with 6 jets. Not spectacular but it does the job! throw in some epsom salts and essential oils (bergamot and orange, I don't like lavender) and you have a spa!!!!

I have seen those mats that make tons of bubble! I was going to get one but then could not find one. did you check out sharper image?

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Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

Purring:
I wish my Muffin was. She sat next to me in the old computer chair and grabbed my wrist as I began to type. Luckily her and my Lab Chow mix, Luna are like little babies and are asleep by 9pm. They do not wake me up at all.
Now if Luna would stop chasing Muffin off everytime Muffin comes out into the living room.

On the skating end of things:
According to Secondary Coach, I'm now having growing pains with my loop jump. I kept going up, and either barely landing it on the toepick or coming close to falling. This is a good problem-I got more height and some distance today!!

Started on flip, boy do I want this bad!!


Growling:
Coach did not want to spin today. Oh well.

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Adult Nationals, 2009 "The Time of My Life"

They DO look like they're purring. That's a great picture! (The raccoons that used to show up at my parents' house always used to get into the trash. My dad even resorted to bungee cords for the lids, but he had to loop them in all kinds of ways to outsmart the raccoons. (My parents also had a visiting woodchuck who liked to sunbathe on their porch.)

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Ask me about becoming a bone marrow donor.
http://www.marrow.org
http://www.nmdp.org

Awwwww!!!! They look cute in this pose. Looks nothing like our raccoons that go thru our trash cans. (I've been lucky so far. Our can has this lock thing when the lever is pulled up. To my knowledge, they have not been successful in getting the trash from the can. (However, the spiders sure have gotten attached to the lid of the can. EWWWW!!! )

Forgot to post my practice notes for Monday... not much to say about it really...

Growling:
Loop and flip are gone again. Then again, last night is like one of those days where you just feel like your boots and blades are put on wrong or something. Plus it was WAAAAAY too crowded. I ended up practicing the beginnings of my two programs, b/c I want to look like I'm having a good time... not stiff.

Purring:
Back sit is starting to look halfway decent. I see it in the reflection of the glass. Of course, I probably should video tape it to make sure I'm not seeing things.

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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!!!

I get visits from woodchucks too. They have a fondness for peanut butter sandwiches.



Growling: My stomach. Gotta get something to eat before I head in to skate in a few minutes. We'll see if more talented students show this morning, or if they sleep in and wait for the evening session. (and you'll know which my money is on!)

Rink meeting tonight at 6 pm to discuss scarce parking, new coaching fees, staff changes, etc.

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Bill Schneider

The woodchuck with the peanut butter on good! bread looks adorable!

All we get are chipmunks and squirrels and rabbits that drive the dog crazy (they sit on the other side of the fence just out of her reach). But the WORST is the ground squirrel. He lives under the A/C unit. His tunnels aren't too bad, we are able to fill them to keep it from tilting, but we've had to go to all kind of lengths to keep the dog from trying to dig him out. We are scared the unit will crush her!

Oh- skating?

quiet purring I only got about 15 minutes of skating in yesterday. I told myself that I needed to run through my entire test without a warm up. My jumps and spins and crossovers were just barely fine. My spiral could have been higher. So now I'm confident I can do it under "haven't been practicing an hour" situations. My two foot spin was eh, but then I did another that was really nice. My one foot spin isn't always a scratch spin, but if I feel it getting off in the wind up, I can pull my foot to my ankle and get the 3 revolutions out of it. I'm hoping for a nice scratch spin though.

Growling Cedar Rapids Roughriders were displaced from their rink, so my LTS class and public session was canceled for their game. The plus side- while we were teaching the non-canceled LTS classes they were warming up off ice- mmmmm good looking boys on that team!

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-Jessi
What I need is a montage...
Visit my skating journal or my Youtube videos (updated with 2 new videos Sept 26, 2009)

We don't have many small critters - the larger critters EAT THEM! Lots of coyotes, a few wolves, a cougar (around somewhere but seldom seen), and, of course bears.

Purring: Had a good workout pushing back edges to SCARY speeds, trying to get more height in the Waltz jump, and getting the 3-turn/pick happening WAY faster in the Toe Loop. I hadn't seen coach by her normal arrival time so I assumed she wasn't coming and continued pushing

Growling: THEN my coach showed up so I had to push for another half hour! - despite being a bit tired already

Purring: It was good though - we got the first 30 Seconds (25%) of my Interpretive choreographed.

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

We get siberian squirrels around here. It's because they escaped during world war 2 from a nearby zoo, and housed themselves on the territory of our university, which is in a large park. Everybody thought they were tremendously cute so they were never hunted down.
And because students leave their bags of trash lying around instead of throwing them into the containers like normal people, the squirrels come to the student housing blocks looking for food. They tear up the bags looking for goodies, driving our janitor nuts.
Anyway they're really cute, especially in summer they become very bold, you can almost feed them off your hands.

I think they're supposed to be ground squirrels, but I've seen one climb a tree pretty much like normal squirrels.


No skating for the moment, got the flu.

[\QUOTE][\SIZE] Ya'll must be a city girl? When one lives on the edge of the wilderness, ANYTHING showing up in the yard is possible. When a bear is no longer afraid of or cautious of humans, there is danger of it seeing people as food. Since I do not intend to be lunch for a 450 pound bear and would rather keep my friends in their "undigested" condition, the bear had to go. I never faced a bear before and had never been close to one that size! Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I became a redhead Saturday afternoon but it was my will or the bear's and the bear lost [/SIZE][/QUOTE]

City girl now, but longing to be a country girl. I understand the bears are really getting hungry and out of control due to the drought.

Growling - no skating this morning as I stubbed my toes on the dang chair getting out of bed this morning. Ouch! Don't think I broke my toe, but it hurts like heck.

Growling - I really like my artistic program so far but it seems to take forever to get it choreographed. Spent another half hour today and added about 3 things. Coach and I are on the same wave length for it. She'll start a move and I'll finish it.

Onto dance lessons and mohawks were hit and miss today. Reviewed the Fiesta Tango. People complain about the mohawk in that but since I tend to rush mohawks, I rather like the quickness of it. Of course for me the challenge is the dratted step behind. Also when she showed me the 3 backward strokes and then cross over, I knew it was going to be trouble because my other coach has tried to work with me to do back crossovers by picking up my foot because I don't shift enough weight on the skating foot and sure enough that was an issue.

Purring the secret to mohawks for me is knee bend, knee bend, knee bend, even with the strokes before the mohawk. Concentrating on knee bend in the strokes before loosens me up to do it.

Even though I won't be testing the Fiesta for a long long long time, working on it is a fun way to improve my back crossovers and mohawks of course.

j

Awwwwwlll! Okay, yes, it's probably annoying when you're trying to sleep. But still....aawwwwwwwwlll!

This morning's practice was completely listless. I was the only person on the ice the whole time. That doesn't help provide any motivation, and I had none of my own to push myself.

Skills seem to be disappearing faster than I learn them.

I hope my poor attitude is because of the anti-biotics for the oral surgery Friday. I've got several days worth left to get through.

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Bill Schneider

Yeah. . . I usually let the sisters in first thing in the morning to snuggle for 15 minutes and they're pretty irresistible. Here's a picture of the licking bandit herself (last year when she was still a kitten):

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

sorry, duplicate message

Purring:
Had a great time skating the morning session this morning. I find that the kids that skate this session get straight to work with no fooling around.
Also found a good off ice class for myself.

Growling:
Did another lousy runthrough of my program. I think part of it is the rink sound system- sometimes I can hardly hear the beginning of my program and by the time I do hear the music, I'm far behind and try to rush elements and we all know what happens when we do that.

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Adult Nationals, 2009 "The Time of My Life"

Purring: Spent ages taking the Fiesta Tango apart, and then putting it back together again. Coach is diagnosing some of my problems, but thus far I'm having trouble fixing them.

Growling: Knee-bend, staying down, relaxing..... you name it, I don't do it!

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

All of the animals are soooo cute! My stupid cat seems to be having super purring fits at 4 AM lately, which means he gets on the bed on DH's side, walks across him (that's 15 pounds of cat) to my head, where he purrs loudly and paws at my face until I wake enough to settle him in the crook of my arm while rubbing his belly. Sometimes he repeats this after I've fallen asleep and stopped rubbing the belly .

OK, I'm going to nit pick, in a friendly way, I hope. Not sure what you mean by "step behind". Maybe the LFI cross behind that follows the RFO cross roll? The 3 backward strokes in the Fiesta are B progressives and the cross over is not a crossover, but a cross front. It really is quite different from a B crossover, and that may be why you are having trouble with it. This is all dance terminology, and I have to wonder if your coach is familiar with it. You should ask her. I would love to have a lesson on this dance, but I'm afraid of the FI Mohawk at speed, and don't have good enough control of the free leg afterwards to be sure I wouldn't trip my partner. Have been working on it alone.

Purring:
Even though I was at the rink earlier than I like, I did work on FI Mohawks, and both L and R were feeling better and more controlled. Same with all F threes. I'm now holding the BI edge on the Prelim alt FO threes to about a foot or two of the line. Prelim power threes are also working again on both sides! Practiced one foot spin with more success than I've been having lately.

Growling:
I'm not a morning person, and it always scares me a little to practice early in the day. I need to get those Prelim power threes going in the proper pattern, not just on the lines!

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Yeah, I know what you mean. . . My husband does that. . .

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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

I'm talking about two different things. The step behind is after the progressive, where you step in front, then pick up your foot and put it behind you - very similar to the Cha Cha step behind. I have trouble putting my foot down behind me.

And yes, I know the backward thing is a cross in front, but it really is the same issue for me as with crossovers, because I need to have my weight squarely on the skating foot in order to pick up my foot and set it down in front. I know they are different, but the issue of distributing my weight is the same for me.

I'm pretty sure my dance coach is familiar with the terminology, being that she's tested up to International. When I only have a half hour on the ice, I don't mind that we don't spend a lot of time on vocabulary

j

BAW HAW HA HA HA! I gather your husband doesn't frequent this board

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

So cute! I'm such a sucker for cats.

Ours usually sleep on our legs at night, but since I've been injured, they've learned not to step on my legs at night or they'll get tossed off the bed. So now my husband gets the 14 lb cat on his legs and the smaller cat curled up on his chest at night. It's very cute

Ooh, Morgail, way to train the cats to keep your DH still all night so you get to take over the rest of the bed.

Rusty - Nah, my DH doesn't visit the board, but probably wouldn't have been able to resist posting the same response if he did, LOL!

Sorry, the non-cat-lovers on the board must be getting a little tired of all this off-topic chat by now. . .

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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

Purring: I passed PreBronze MITF and Freestyle today YAY!

Good, because if I had to repeat that experience again (or the constant constant practicing only test elements), I'd have thrown myself on my own toepicks.

During warm-up, I think I also managed to land my best waltz-jump so far-- it was long, and I felt like I was floating. Too bad I couldn't repeat that, but it felt great.

And the club members, their parents, the officials, everyone was so nice and helpful and supportive of this adult taking her first test without her coach! (she couldn't make it, so I just did my best) We hear a lot of "catty" things about skating, but this just reinforced one of the main reasons why I just love the sport and the supportive environment.

Growling: I didn't do everything as well as I would have liked, and some of the judges contradicted each other, so I don't exactly know what to think. I can't wait to go over everything with my coach.

And I had to re-test the 1 foot spin because, even though I counted 3revs and two of the coaches counted 3 revs, one counted 2... so the next time I managed to eke out a 4th rev (annoying, since my spins were broken today! I usually pull off five or more revs in front of my coach, in both directions)

Can I join PreBronze for life?

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When asked what his "secret" to success was, Wayne Gretsky said: "Skate to where the puck is going and not to where it has been."
Is the figure skating version of this: Skate as if you're doing an axel and not just learning how to hop?