February 2007 Archives

Are there heart strings connectedTo the wings you've got slapped on your back?Better climb in the window cause I'm closing the door.

Name that tune.

It appears that winter's wrath has finally found us, and the only month in which I won't be riding my bike is February. Not that I care, as long as I'm able to ski, which I got to do yesterday. It's been cold, and we had a nice two-foot dump of the white stuff on Wednesday -- couldn't get to the slopes on Thursday, but it was still fresh and fantastic yesterday. Best skiing of the whole year. Everything was just soft and wonderful, all the trails were open, and I finally got to have some fun with it. The other parts of February are here, too, though, so the temps have been below 20 for a while, and yesterday the wind was howling so hard up at Mount Snow that the main lifts were closed for most of the morning, something I haven't seen before. But it was a great day, anyway.

Everybody's recovering from last weekend's trauma. Scarring will be minimal, the cast will be off in a couple of weeks, and skiing is not contraindicated in the meantime, so we're hoping to get a day or two in during this vacation week.

Continuing my resurgent Beatles fetish, I tracked down a DVD copy of "Back Beat," a movie about Stu Sutcliffe that I remembered as wonderful, but which I only had a used rental VHS copy of. The DVD proved my memory correct -- just a fantastic movie that deals so well with youth, passion, relationships, and that incredible excitement of early rock 'n' roll. Highly recommended, though I couldn't even find a copy at Amazon. FYE was my source, ultimately.

Just finished the new Hiaasen, too, "Nature Girl." Typical madcap formulaid Hiaasen, with even more key characters than usual. It's a romping morality tale, like all his stories. You just go along for the ride. But with that out of the way, it's time to dig into "Suite Francaise," which I still intend to read even if Paris Hilton was seen holding a copy in a rare trip to a bookstore. I'm assuming someone just put it in her hand.

Our first (and hopefully last) double-header in the emergency room yesterday, a simple afternoon's skating outing turned into the kind of catastrophe that only seems to strike my kids. There was a grand plan, driven in part by the combined effects of a two-week pizza moratorium and coverage of the Chicago Auto Show on Jalopnik, which gave me an intense craving for a deepdish pizza. I designed an entire afternoon in such a way that I would end up near the Pizzeria Uno -- there would be ice skating in Troy, and while we were up there anyway, we would hop over to Latham for pizza. I even went out and got the skates sharpened in the morning so we'd be all set for wherever we ended up going in the afternoon, and after all the homework and instruments were done, we all packed up and headed to the Knickerbacker rink in Troy. Hadn't been on the ice for two laps before Bek took a fall and landed her whole body on her arm. Lots of pain, but I wasn't sure if it was just a hyperextension or not, so got her off the ice and out to her mom, who was conveniently with us. (I'm usually in charge of breaking them by myself.) Go back on the ice, get about another half a lap in and catch up to Hannah, who is doing a little backwards work and suddenly loses her balance and flies forward, slamming down face first. Her hands just barely broke the fall, and her head didn't quite hit the ice, but the frames of her glasses broke and gave her a nice little laceration above the eye which, like all head wounds, bled profusely. She knew there was blood but thought it was her nose, so she was completely focused on getting her broken glasses untangled from her hair, while I was trying to get compression on the cut. Yada, yada. Luckily, we have massive first aid supplies in the truck (which was good, because the rink had only gauze), and we were pretty close to the emergency room at Samaritan, where we were also lucky enough to beat the rush. But of course, all this meant a serious delay in my pizza needs, and I was seriously jonesing by 6:30 when we finally got out of there.

So, six stitches, one broken arm, many lost endorphins, but I did end up getting my pizza, so the day wasn't a total loss.

(So, whyizzit? The neighbor kids, who could charitably be described as "loosely parented," can get 8 or 10 of them bouncing up and down on a rain-slick, unbalanced, safety-device free trampoline all day every day 9 months of the year, and there's not so much as a cut lip. My kids are out on the ice for five minutes and all hell breaks loose.)

Driving home from dance. Bek is describing what they learned from the DARE officer about DWI. She notices the full moon rising over the river. "The only thing worse than DWI, would be DWIWF. Driving While In Werewolf Form."

When I wake up early in the morning, Lift my head, I'm still yawning When I'm in the middle of a dream Stay in bed, float up stream Please don't wake me, no don't shake me Leave me where I am I'm only sleeping