2011, european heaven (pt 1)

Contrary to what the title suggests, I (unfortunately) did not spend all of 2011 in a European heaven. But I'm limited by rhyming options this year, so I'm going with that. It's hard to believe that this year is over...a part of me still feels like the Olympics (in February 2010) were just yesterday. They were not. Anyway, I am at least a little more organized than I was a this time last year, due to missing Challenge, so I figured that I would start my year-in-review posts. Considering that I posted all three of them in February last year, this is a huge improvement.

January:

I kicked off the New Year sitting on an Amtrak train in Jackson, Michigan, craning my neck to see fireworks from the window. A last-minute gap in my work schedule allowed me to join Christina and Jules in Michigan after all, but by the time I knew my schedule and could buy a train ticket, the one that would have allowed me to ring in the New Year with them was out of my budget. So I arrived in Royal Oak after 1am, and they picked me up on their way home from the New Year's party that they had attended. We had a stellar couple of days together for our belated Christmas.

I also went to a Charlotte Martin concert in January!

CharMar is one of my absolute favourite musicians, and I had not seen her perform before. The show was incredible. She débuted many of the new songs from her album Dancing on Needles, and I fell in love with "Warrior," which I am still patiently waiting for her to release as a B-side...

Of course, the main event in January was, once again, the Canadian Figure Skating Championships. They were in Victoria, BC, this year, so the trip was looking like it would be quite expensive, at first. I managed to save money by flying into Seattle and when one of the skating families found out that I planned to stay in a hostel, they found space for me in their rooms. Skating families are fantastic! Flying into Seattle also meant that I had a great excuse to fly in a couple of days early, so that I could spend some time in Vancouver with Lori! Of course, it rained the whole time, but she had tons of Road to Avonlea episodes available on PVR, so all was not lost. After 2 days with L$, it was off to Victoria! I was busier at Canadians than I have ever been, since I doubled up on coverage and was working for both Ice-Dance.com and GoldenSkate. It was exhausting, but exhilarating, and I'm still so relieved that the pieces fell into place for the trip to be a possibility.

Day 1: Grueling 15-hour day at the rink for novice short programs, the junior ladies short, where I snagged this amazing Ina Bauer shot of Julianna Sagaria, and junior dance practice.

Day 2: Another 15-hour day for novice free skates, junior pairs short, and the novice medal ceremony, which was way after bedtime for some of the kids on the podium. The novice dance event was my favourite to shoot all last year, because the top 6 or 7 teams were so talented and had such wonderful free dances. I hated that it was the first event to end this week! So one of the standout moments of the day was Madeline Edwards & Zhao Kai Pang's championship-winning novice free dance. They also set a new Canadian record. I love this shot, snapped a couple of seconds after they hit their end pose, because it's so easy to tell how thrilled they are with their skate.

Day 3: Three junior programs, but I was able to sneak out after the junior free dance to head back to the hotel early, eat an actual meal (and not just a bagel slathered in Nutella), and catch up on photo organization and submissions. Photo of the day is Nicole Orford & Thomas Williams in their first-place short dance. They also won the title the next day, which meant that their coaches & my friends went 3-for-3 on the national dance titles below the senior level. Awesome! Anyway, I had the privilege of shooting Nicole & Thomas quite a few times in their début season, but this shot might be my favourite.

Day 4: Finally, the schedule worked in my favour! I shot senior dance practice in the morning, and then I had time to get out of the rink and breathe. I met some of the novice dancers & parents at Roger's for sundaes, and embarked on an amusing turbo-shopping adventure to find a black skirt for Maddie, before heading back to the rink for the junior free dance, men's free, and medals. Photo of the day is Kelly Oliveira & Jordan Hockley, a team I loved watching for several years. I didn't have any idea then that this was my last time to photograph them as a team. I sure miss those smiles! At IDC, we called them our prozac team, since they always gave such a bubbly performance.

Day 5: First day of senior competition! However, the POTD is from practice, since I knew that I wanted this shot of Kaitlyn Weaver & Andrew Poje, and I knew that I needed an angle that I wouldn't be able to get from the media seats during the competition. The first time that I saw their short dance, via a tiny feed on my computer, I knew that I wanted to get this shot at Canadians. I had missed it a couple of times in practice the day before, so this was my last chance, and it was one of those moments where I knew that it was perfect the instant that I clicked the shutter. Love those moments!

Day 6: Two of the senior frees, ladies and pairs. POTD is, without a doubt, Meagan Duhamel & Eric Radford's reaction at the end of the free skate that would propel them onto the podium and send them to Worlds. I think that even people who don't know the backstory can understand what this moment meant to them, but for those of us who have watched Meagan's career unfold over the past decade, well, it probably means a bit more.

Day 7: Canadians comes to a close with two incredible events, the free dance and the men's free skate. In the free dance, Vanessa Crone & Paul Poirier and Kaitlyn Weaver & Andrew Poje were so fantastic and so close that I almost forgot that the headliners had withdrawn earlier in the week. In the men's free skate, Shawn Sawyer and Patrick Chan delivered the most incredible back-to-back free skates I have ever seen, finally topping Chris Mabee and Jeff Buttle in 2005. (No offense meant to Chris and Jeff, I still adore those moments, too.) It's funny—during the competition, I am so focused and so worried about my action shots, and initially, those are the ones that I look through first. But months after the event, when I go through the photos again, it is almost always a photo from the emotional reaction that jumps out at me...

...like Vanessa & Paul's reaction in the kiss & cry, when they found out that they'd won the Canadian title. Again, I had no idea that this would be the last time that I would see this familiar scene.

...and like Shawn Sawyer's extended celebration at the end of his free skate. I think that his flawless performance surprised even himself, and for me, it was the most incredible moment of a wonderful week. And I don't think I have ever left an event more exhausted than I left Victoria.

February:

February kicked off with a big, white, fluffy bang. Chicago had its worst blizzard in something like 30 years. People who didn't listen to repeated warnings and tried to drive home on Lake Shore Drive were stranded until the wee hours of the morning, but I didn't mind the blizzard much at all, tucked inside my house, watching the snow drift all the way to the top of my patio door while I sipped hot chocolate and probably ate Nutella.

Fortunately, the blizzard came the day that it did and not a day later, because just two days after the dumping, I was on a flight east for my second skating event of the year. The eventual destination was Oshawa, Ontario, for EOSIC, but since I'd forgotten to make my plane reservation while I was at Canadians, I ended up flying to Buffalo, taking a bus to Toronto, and taking the commuter train to Oshawa. Quite the ordeal. I wasn't too excited about the actual competition at first, since it was a StarSkate event, and I did not know most of the competitors. But of course, once I was there, I had a great time shooting. I especially enjoyed the Triathlon event, which I had never shot before, since I got to follow the same girls through three phases of the competition. A few highlights:

Francesca Joanette, one of the most expressive skaters in the junior bronze event

I even got to shoot some dance! Here's Chelsea Sheridan & Alex Gunther in the pre-juvenile Fiesta Tango.

Casey Barber, gold triathlon skills

Marisa De Souza, bronze triathlon interpretive; this Chicago program is one of the only skates that I still remember at the end of the year, such a joy to watch

Rebecca Marcinek, gold triathlon free skate

I don't think I did anything interesting the rest of February. At least, I didn't take any photos. I wrote a lot of Olympics-in-review and year-in-review posts in February, so I'm guessing that it was cold and I stayed inside all month.

March:

March kicked off with beautiful weather. I remember this because I left my coat in the car when I went to a concert on March 3, and I did not suffer from frostbite or hypothermia as a result.

The show was Made Avail's CD release party, but they invited Superchick, and that was why I was there.

Specifically, because I grew up in church/school/jazz band with the Superchick bassist, Matt Dally. I was hoping to see more folks that I knew there, but the only person I knew besides Matt was his mom, who was running the merch table. I'm also remembering now that I think I promised to send her photos, and I don't think I ever did...perhaps I should see if I can find her email address. Anyway, Superchick always puts on a great show, but this show was even more fantastic because the lighting was just perfect. I got so many great shots, most of which have still never seen the light of day.

The following weekend, I went to see Stars on Ice with my mom. This was my 10th event (or so) of the season, but this was my mom's first time seeing live skating since Disney on Ice with Girl Scouts, circa 1993. I was excited for the chance to take her, but a little worried that she would hate it. She didn't, though, and she even wanted to talk about who was good and who wasn't on the drive home. Our seats were crap (sometimes Stars on Ice gives the photographer a good seat, and sometimes they can't be bothered; this was a 'can't be bothered' day), but Mom was willing to scootch at intermission.

Mom and I were both most excited to see Jo, who was definitely on our "good" list.

I can't remember if Sasha jumped or not at that show, but she was into the dramatic flair, at least, and I really enjoyed this shot.

I was also thrilled to get a dramatic!Evan!spin! photo, and even more thrilled about the angle. Perfectly in front of the SOI sign! Tell me again why they haven't hired me as their official photographer yet. Haha.

At the end of the month, Mom went to a conference in San Francisco, and asked me if I would go with her. I couldn't turn down an almost-free trip to one of my favourite American cities, so off I went! Unfortunately, a sunny California weekend was not in the cards for us, but we went out in between the showers and made the best of it. We went to SFO in 2007 for Thanksgiving, and it was the first trip that I took with a "real" camera. I was anxious to get better shots this time, now that I have a bit more experience, and I even sprung for a wide-angle lens rental. I typically rent with BorrowLenses, and they are based in SFO, so I was able to do a local pick-up 3-day rental. Awesome!

Day 1: Scoped out the walk to Mom's conference and also picked up my lens rental. Introduced my mom to the magic of eating quick meals at Whole Foods, instead of at a sandwich shop. Took the ferry to Sausalito and spent the day walking, drinking cappuccino, and browsing art galleries. Dinner in North Beach, walked back to our hotel just off Union Square.

Great views of San Francisco on the ferry ride!

And I fell pretty hard for both the Ferry Building and wide-angle photography.

Day 2: Mom's conference started, so I was on my own. Met up with Tina for lunch at the Ferry Building (Blue Bottle Coffee & Cowgirl Creamery & Scream non-dairy ice cream!) and wandered the Saturday market, too. Walked and photographed all afternoon, through the Financial District, Chinatown, Nob Hill, and Union Square. Met up with Mom after sessions ended, and went out for sushi.

More Ferry Building photography

View from Nob Hill, looking north down Stockton Street, all the way to the bay

I also decided to try HDR more on this trip, and here's one of the crazier results. I don't know, I really like something about the effects on this shot at Union Square.

Day 3: On my own most of the day again. Took the cable car to Ghirardelli Square (I would do this every day of my life if I lived there, I feel), then continued west to the Palace of Fine Arts and the Presidio, where I thought that I would see the Golden Gate Bridge, but I did not. Treated myself to froyo twice. Photographed Alamo Square once the afternoon sun went away. Paid homage to the Full House house. Met up with Mom, and had dinner at the fabulous Hyde Street Bistro, which I found a Yelp, and which I later read about in a travel magazine. Guess I picked a good one!

The Palace of Fine Arts is other-worldly!

My effort at the postcard shot. Much better than the 2007 attempt, but still not zingy enough.

Day 4: No photos, since I had to return my lens on the evening of Day 3. During Mom's morning sessions, I walked around Union Square some more, but the real highlight came at lunch, when I brought her to the Blue Bottle Coffee shop on Mint Plaza. Most perfect cup of coffee ever. I can still taste it.

April:

Much of April was spent finishing my last lit class ever, in which I wrote a killer paper that compared the two most recent film adaptations of Sense and Sensibility to the novel. It was a good way to end my lit class career. Of course, even with concentrating on school, it's not like I could deal with staying home all of the time.

So once again, I spent the second weekend of April in Ottawa, shooting the Gloucester Spring Skate. I had fun shooting the interpretive events and a lot of cute little ones, but I did not have fun when my shutter died. It had been acting funny for most of the day, and at least I had my backup 20D close by. Until that one died, too. Oups. So I had to spend the second day shooting with Phil's backup Nikon. Everything felt backwards, so it was challenging, but I made it through. And at least we didn't have to close up shop on one of the rinks. Of course, it was just about the last thing that I needed. I sent the 50D off to get fixed as soon as I got home, using the money that I made from the competition, but I still haven't been able to afford to fix the 20D. It also seems silly to fix a 20D (soooo 4 models ago), but I am having a hard time imagining being able to afford an upgrade. Everyone cross your fingers for me for more photo sales and freelance work. But anyway, a couple of random shots I liked from Gloucester:

Beyond the photography that weekend, I had a wonderful weekend with the Ottawa family, and as was the theme of the year, I didn't realize that it would be my last event with them. I am really missing my regular trips to see my "Canadian li'l sis."

Right after the semester ended, I was off to Toronto for the annual Canadian Stars on Ice weekend. We went to the usual Friday night show at the ACC, which I photographed, of course.

This program of Kurt's wasn't my favourite (I am getting a little tired of voiceover programs), but it was quite photogenic.

Another photogenic one was this quirky ensemble number that reminded me of the way SOI used to be, pre-budget cuts.

We were feeling a serious lack of energy and commitment from the skaters during the show, so for the first time in a long time, we didn't feel like going to another Canadian show. Jules, Christina, and I skipped Hamilton and spent our Saturday in Niagara-on-the-Lake instead. Christina took us to some touristy sites we'd never seen before, like the world's smallest chapel:

and we feasted on a Whole Foods picnic in the park before doing some photoshooting on Lake Ontario. Note to self: when the plan is to save money and skipping eating in a restaurant, buying picnic fare at Whole Foods with the girls doesn't actually save money...but it sure is tasty!

And that's it for my first four months of the year. I'm expecting the summer months to take some time to put together, so I hope I'll have that post ready by January. No promises, though. ;-)

busy summer

I can't remember the last time that I had nothing to do. So even though my spring semester ended over a month ago, I haven't really stopped and I'm just as stressed as I was when I was finishing up my term paper. So here's a recap:

April

- I went to Ottawa to shoot the Gloucester Spring Fest skating competition. Great weekend for spending time with my Ottawa fam, not such a great weekend for camera shutters. The shutter died on both my main 50D body and on my backup 20D. On Day 2 of the competition, I had to shoot with Phil's backup body & a lens borrowed from a friend—and it was Nikon, so all the controls felt "backwards" to me. But I was glad that they had them!

I got to shoot quite a few Interpretives at Gloucester, which is a departure from usual competitions, to say the least.

- I joined a small group Bible study, which might sound like a small thing, but I'd been wanting to get involved in one for years and finally found one. I just feel really fortunate to be in the group that I'm in and to have the opportunity to get to know a great group of ladies.

- I wrote a pretty awesome term paper on Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and how the 1995 Hollywood and 2008 BBC film versions have interpreted it. I worked really, really hard on it and ended up with an A in the class, so I am proud of how it turned out.

- I went to Toronto for the 4th consecutive Annual Canadian Stars on Ice Weekend. Jules, Christina, and I only went to one show this year, since we all thought that the tour was a bit lackluster this year. Some good programs, but overall, too many people on the ice who didn't look like they wanted to be there.

Joannie Rochette was marvelous, as always. She lit up the arena in the second half with "Show Me How You Burlesque."

Jamie Salé & David Pelletier, in one of the few moments in their Prince number where they weren't dancing facing opposite directions.

I thought that Kurt Browning's "Downstream" was the best program in the whole show. Just gorgeous.

So instead of going to the Hamilton show, we picnicked in Niagara-on-the-Lake on Saturday and then Jen joined us for bougie brunch and shopping on Sunday. Great weekend with the girls!

May

- I had to get right to work, as I had some writing deadlines right at the beginning of May. I'm also transcribing a big block of focus group interviews, which I'm supposed to finish before I leave for Europe, but this will definitely not happen. Between all of this, I've also been trying to work on my thesis, but I've been frustrated with how little time I've had. It rained most of the month in Chicago, so at least I didn't mind staying inside!

One nice day, I did get out to see a Sox game with a group from church. I grew up going to a game every year with my family, but before this game, I hadn't been since 2004! This meant that this was my first try at shooting baseball. I discovered that it's much easier than skating, since they stand in the same places and do the same things over and over again. Ha. I would love to shoot more baseball from closer to the field. Although I got a lot of good shots, I was lacking eye contact up in the bleachers.

This also means that it was my first time seeing this sign!

June

- I'm getting ready for the big summer trip of 2011: London, Normandy, Brittany, Paris, Edinburgh, and Cardiff! Woooooo! I'm thrilled about the opportunity, but it's stressful because there's so much I want to get done before I leave, and also because tuition for the course is about twice as much as I thought it would be, so I have to completely clean out my savings account. I don't anticipate being able to afford food in London. Since I'm going to be there for 2 weeks, this might be a problem. I don't think I can bring that many fruit strips.

- Yesterday was a really stellar kickoff to my birthday week. After church in the morning, I walked over to the Printers' Row LitFest and wandered the tables for a bit before having a froyo/latte lunch. Then I met my mom at Symphony Centre, where we went to the CSO's final concert of the season, Mahler's Ninth with Haitink conducting. It was brilliant, as can be expected from Mahler+CSO+Haitink! Finally we capped off the night with dinner at Piccolo Sogno. It's in my neighbourhood, and I've been wanting to go for a good three years, but have never planned it far enough in advance. For a Sunday night at 6, I had to make a reservation two weeks in advance, but I was so glad that I did! Magical patio setting paired with artichoke tortelloni? Yes, yes, yes. Only a chocolate hazelnut molten cake with a scoop of hazelnut of gelato could have made it better. Good thing that was on the menu, delivered to our table with "Happy Birthday" written in chocolate sauce and complete with a candle!

But after such a delightful day yesterday, today's return to the grindstone was inevitable. I started the morning by writing a post for my travel blog about New England, and I've been slowly piecing this together all day as I take little breaks from transcribing. It's beastly hot out, but my next task is to hike down to school to pick up reading materials for tomorrow's class. I might just have to grab a froyo to make the walk less brutal.

art and cioppino: san francisco, day 1

Two weekends ago, I enjoyed a little vacation in San Francisco with my mom! Well, vacation for me, conference for her. She was in sessions most of the time, so I was responsible for planning the itinerary for our free day together and also for finding post-conference restaurants each night. I love picking restaurants.

I arrived late on Thursday, March 24, and Mom was already there. She'd arrived Wednesday evening so she could have two days to sightsee before the conference started, but I have Thursday afternoon class, so I decided to just fly out after class. Thursday turned out to be a bit of a bust—terrible thunderstorms in the Bay Area, so I'm glad that I didn't blow off class for that.

So on Friday, we were both looking forward to exploring the Bay Area! We went to San Francisco together in 2007 and both loved it, and we wanted to do something different this time. One of her friends suggested Sausalito, so I did a bit of research and we planned to take the ferry over on Friday. First, though, I had to pick up a rental lens in SOMA. Since BorrowLenses, a fabulous mail-order lens rental company that I always use when I need glass, is based in SF, they do local 3-day rentals at various pick-up locations around the city. I'd never used a wide-angle lens before, so I was excited to try the Canon 17-40mm f/4L lens. We stopped for breakfast at Whole Foods on the next block over, and my mom and I both tried Icelandic yogurt. She liked it better than I did, but I didn't hate it either. It's similar to the Greek yogurt that I've had.

Next, we headed to the Ferry Building! The F-line (streetcar) was packed, so we took a bus that follows the same route. None of the other tourists appeared to have caught onto that.

I'm pretty smitten with the Ferry Building. We went past it on the 2007 trip, but never got out of the streetcar, so this was my first time photographing it, and I went a little nuts. I'd also forgotten about the palm trees on the Embarcadero. I never think of SF as a palm tree sort of town, but there they are.

Inside the Ferry Building are a bunch of really interesting shops (mostly food-related) and restaurants. I already had plans to eat there with a friend the next day, and we'd just eaten our Icelandic yogurt breakfast, so Mom and I didn't buy anything, but I was definitely tempted by the Ciao Bella gelato shop. Just a few days before my trip, I'd noticed that my grocery store in Chicago had started carrying Ciao Bella, and I loved the key lime pint that I'd bought.

The San Francisco-Sausalito ferry has been hailed as one of the greatest ferry rides in the world. I'm not keen on boats in general, but got used to them fairly well on my Canada trip last summer, so I was looking forward to the views and not thinking about the boat aspect.

Great views indeed! I can only imagine how much more spectacular this view would have been on a prettier day, if the water could have reflected more blue from the sky.

Same goes for this shot of the Golden Gate Bridge, although it was really neat to be able to see it from this angle.

In Sausalito, one of the first things we did was stop at the tourist office, where a very nice lady was kind enough to point out the entrance to a delightful wooden boardwalk along the boat docks. There were a lot of boats, which led to an amusing conversation between my mom and me...we don't really get the whole boat concept, unless you actually live on a lake. Like, how often would you even use a boat that isn't in your backyard? Personally, I would much rather spend my extra money on traveling or art or even a nice car! But then again, I don't really like boats, so maybe that is clouding my judgment.

We walked around for a bit, then settled on a restaurant on the east side of the main downtown

area for lunch, where I ordered a salmon burger and yam fries. Doesn't get much better than that! Then we walked up to Caledonia Street, which is kind of the "local" version of Main Street, so the locals don't have to fight tourists. It wasn't too crowded on a blustery Friday in March, but I'm sure that downtown is super clogged on sunny weekends during the summer. Caledonia Street was a lot of fun and featured two of my favourite Sausalito stops, Studio 333 and the Pinestreet Papery. Studio 333 is a huge art gallery in a renovated warehouse kind of space, featuring work from over 40 local artists. We especially liked the . The Pinestreet Papery is a delightful little shop featuring cards, books, decorative papers, stationery, etc. I love a good paper store.

We headed back towards the main part of town after that, and climbed a huge staircase/ramp conglomeration to the top of a giant hill. We're talking, like, 5-6 stories up. It was brutal, but the view of the bay was pretty grand. I took this from someone's driveway. Can you imagine waking up every day to a view like this?

Back downstairs, a patch of blue sky had moved in, so I took a ton of photos of downtown, including this one of the Sausalito Hotel.

Here's the west end of the main street, where Bridgeway curves around and follows the bay to the Golden Gate Bridge. Around back of the curvy building is Piccolo Café, whose sign out front proclaimed that it had the best cappuccinos EVER. Of course we had to try. I think it's pretty bold to say that they're the best ever, I mean, forever is a long time. But the cappuccino I had was pretty heavenly!

We visited some of the galleries in this part of town, but for the most part, they were a lot more formal than Studio 333, so we didn't linger anywhere too long, since we weren't buying. However, the exception was the Hanson Gallery, which was friendly and bustling and featured some work that I loved by Scott Hanson. We saw this piece (or a similar one), a map of the United States made of out pieces of license plates. My mom and I both loved it, and one of the employees heard us talking about it, so came over to tell us a little bit more. My mom mentioned that she was sure I'd love a Canadian version, and the guy brought us over to his computer because the artist has made a couple! Seriously, if I could afford it, one of those would be on the wall in my living room, pronto! I'm actually already starting to wonder if I could create something similar out of my photos from the trip...

It was starting to rain when we left Sausalito, but an enchanting blue sky was hanging over San Francisco when we got back, so of course I had to shoot the Ferry Building again!

Then we walked to North Beach, a mostly Italian neighbourhood in the northeastern part of San Francisco for more seafood with some Italian flavour.

I'd scouted out Caffe Sport on Yelp on the ferry ride back, and it turned out to be a fantastic find. This shot is of Green Street outside the restaurant. The inside of the restaurant was covered in all sorts of random stuff. It was like Buca di Beppo on crack, but less commercialized, you know? Then our waiter told us that the owner had actually made most of the things on the walls—random posters, painted tiles, bits of mosaic, etc. Really neat. Caffe Sport serves meals family-style, so my mom and I split a house salad (simple but delicious), salmon ravioli (a special), and the signature cioppino. Cioppino, WOW. It had lobster pieces (still in the shell), scallops, mussels, clams, and I don't know what else, but it was all incredible. My mom and I are suckers for fresh coastal seafood, and that definitely hit the spot. And since dinner was such a hit, we topped it off with cappuccino and a cannoli for dessert. The cappuccino was wonderful, but only our second-best cup of the day. Hard to beat the best ever, you know!

We decided to walk back after that, since I wanted to walk through Chinatown, but it was getting late, and everything was closing up. We ended up walking down Stockton by chance, but it turned out to be an excellent choice, since Stockton St. tunnels under Nob Hill for a less strenuous walking experience.

It might be a few days, but I have posts on days 2 and 3 in San Francisco still brewing!

stress, pasta, and bit o' recognition

It's nearly 1 a.m. and I am blogging. It's nearly 1 a.m. on a day when I worked at 6.30 a.m. after only sleeping 3 hours, and I am blogging. I did have a little nap this afternoon, but not much. There's so much work to do and I am really overwhelmed and not doing well at channeling this energy into work, so I'm reverting to one of my favourite tactics: get the fingers moving on the keys, any way I can. Then get back to work.

So here's a blog in 3 parts.

Partie Une: Stress

(Does one say "partie une" or "partie un?" Partie has got to be feminine, right? But 'une' still looks wrong. Francophones, please advise.)

This course I am taking, on British Romantic Lit, is way more stressful than I thought it would be. I've read most of the material before, written papers on most of the material before, and liked most of the material before, but something about this course is not working for me. I don't feel like I'm connecting to the material the way that my professor wants us to. I don't know. I'm just not handling it well. I have to do all this work by Thursday and I need to go to the library tomorrow, which I hate, and beyond the library and the research, I have to reread Frankenstein for Thursday's class and write a final draft of my research proposal, because that's due too, and oh, I basically have to leave directly from class on Thursday to get to the airport because I'm going to San Francisco for the weekend.

The other source of stress is my thesis, aka the book on my trip across Canada. It was my goal for the semester to get a first draft done, but the semester ends with April, and between thesis and the research project, I'm not sure if this is possible. True, there have been times when I haven't worked as hard on my thesis as I should have, but overall, I have been working pretty consistently. And when I've let my thesis sit for a few days in a row, it hasn't been due to slacking off, it's just been to prioritize other deadlines.

Anyway, the present deadline I have is to deliver a chunk of work to my adviser tomorrow. Hence being awake and heavily caffeinated at 1 a.m. I wanted to give her Ontario and Québec, but I have 17 pages on Ontario and I'm not done yet. It's a big province and I was there for a long time. So I guess it will just be Ontario and I will view the deadline as another failure. Well, half failure.

My problem is that if I stay up all night writing, I'll get Ontario written, but then will I have the energy to go to the library and read Frankenstein and write the proposal and pack for San Fran and get up at 5 a.m. again on Thursday for another early day? If I can make it through class and if I can get to the airport on time, I'll have a long plane ride to catch up on sleep, but that was going to be designated reading time so I had less to worry about in SF, where I wanted to actually enjoy the city. Then again, it's supposed to rain all weekend, so maybe having reading material in SF isn't such a bad idea.

And oddly enough, writing all of this out has made me feel a little less stressed. At least I have organized my stress now, pinpointed the sources, you know. I think that counts for something. But moving on...

Partie Deux: Pasta

I love pasta in restaurants. I always have. One of my first grown-up, not ordered off the kids' menu meals was fettucine alfredo at the Olive Garden. I think I was 5. It was a huge deal. I had to split it with an adult, of course, but it was love at first bite for me and pasta.

So when I moved to Michigan and into my first apartment, it was natural that I should turn to pasta. It's easy to make, and it can be prepared in single serving sizes very easily. I defaulted to the packets of pesto that you mix with olive oil and milk for sauces, but occasionally switched it up with a bottled tomato sauce or the alfredo packets.

When I moved back to Chicago, I went shopping with my mom at Sam's Club to stock up on foods that I could buy in bulk, since I didn't have a car and there wasn't a full grocery store within walking distance of my first apartment in the city. One of the things I bought was a 5 lb. monster bag of pasta. And since that was before I knew about how taking 9 hrs of grad credits was a huge rip-off, I was so painfully broke that year. I ate pasta all. the. time. No matter how much I ate, the amount of spaghetti in the bag never decreased. The pasta stopped tasting good, but I felt like I didn't have a choice. Then one night, it backfired. The pasta actually made me gag and I couldn't force down anymore. And I still had at least 2 lbs of that freaking bag of spaghetti left.

It's been like this for two years, friends. Sure, I still love pasta in an Italian restaurant, but at home, I haven't been able to stomach it. I tried different brands of pasta, different sauces, but everything made me gag. It's been rough.

But this week, I had a breakthrough. I don't know why, but on Monday night, I was wandering aimlessly in the grocery store, and I found myself in the pasta aisle. It had been a while since I'd tried it, so I thought I'd give it another go. I ended up trying a new noodle, one I'd never cooked at home before: ROTINI. Rotini is fun and whimsical and cooks in 3.5 minutes! Win-win-win! I paired it with tomato florentine sauce and I loved it. Now I just have to make sure I don't overdose on rotini. Don't worry, I bought a small box.

Partie Trois: A Bit o' Recognition

The ladies at Ice-Dance.com and I definitely do not keep the site going for recognition. We don't do it for thanks, and we don't get paid for it. We just do it because we love skating, especially ice dance. For me, personally, it is linked to a possible career path that I am exploring, but IDC honestly isn't about furthering my own goals or anything like that. I guess I feel some sort of responsibility to share our coverage with the World Wide Web because I know that we do a good job. I'm floored by the talent and dedication of the dancers that we photograph and write about, and I want to honour them, too. We all have a sense of pride in what we do.

So for friends that aren't as heavily invested in the skating world as I am, the short story is that the World Championships were supposed to be this week, in Tokyo. For obvious reasons, they have were postponed. Last week, there was a ton of press about what the options were, so the IDC Staff decided to weigh in. We all had ideas and the article we wrote was passed between all 4 of us before it finally went online. I didn't do any of the rough draft work because I had the first draft of my proposal due last week, but I spent a couple of hours composting the various drafts, throwing in a few more thoughts, and piecing together the final version. So we published the article and did what we usually do—posted links to the IDC Facebook and Twitter accounts. A couple of people said nice things about it on the thread on FSU (skating's main discussion forum) on the subject of Worlds, but shortly after we published, a delusional Virtue & Moir bandwagoner hijacked the thread. And we moved on. The news kind of slowed over the weekend and we all had various things happening, so I was happy with what we'd put together, but I wasn't really thinking about it on Saturday night when I opened an email from Daphne, the IDC administrator.

It turned out that PJ Kwong, Skate Canada announcer and commentator and author, had read the editorial we'd written, had loved it, and had written a blog about it. Okay...whoa. Not expecting that.

Even though we're all really proud to be associated with IDC and we know that we do quality work, we're still underdogs in the media world. People keep getting their media from the web more and more, but web media is still the last one invited to the table. We're the first to get our credentials cut when we're short on space. I don't know about the other federations, since I've only covered big events in Canada, but Skate Canada prints out articles and clips newspapers and puts things on the wall in the media center at its big competitions. But they only print and clip from newspapers, not websites. Well, one of my photos made it onto the wall at Nationals this year—but it was uncredited, stolen by one of the Victoria newspapers off of the IDC website and printed without my consent. They were even careful enough to crop my name off the edge of the photo. So not quite the same thing.

In conclusion...I don't do this for recognition, but it feels really, really nice to get a bit of recognition on occasion. Thanks, PJ Kwong. You've always seemed like a really nice person.

And not to overexpose myself, but I really am proud of the joint effort that brought about this editorial, so if you'd like to read it, it's here.

And with that, my fingers are clearly moving across the keys with no problem at all, so it's back to Ontario.

the sweater + doop doop

30 Days of Skating

Hey, remember when I got through 15 days of this, and then I went to Canadians and forgot to finish? Me too. I opened my blog because I wanted to write about the situation with Worlds and Japan, but my thoughts on that are far too scattered, so I'm channeling my energy into a different skating post. Just for fun.

Day 16: What is your favourite ladies professional/show program?

This is turning out to be a tough category to pick from. Shows and galas always seem to be full of girls skating to GFBs (Generic Female Ballads, for those of you that don't speak FSU) and everything kind of looks the same. And when the girls try to do something different, it often comes off looking fake and overchoreographed. So it's a tough category, and I'm going to pick two true classics for my favourites.

The first is "The Sweater," a bit of comedic genius by one of my favourites, Josée Chouinard. There's just something about it that still makes me giggle now, and something about it that made me wear out my tape of it when I was about 13. I didn't tape a lot of skating in those days, but I was determined to have a tape of "The Sweater," so I sat with a video tape and the remote at the ready every time skating was on TV, just in case Jos happened to be in the event and she happened to be skating that program. I finally got it, but I didn't understand that rewinding a tape without stopping it is bad for it, and that tapes wear out after a while, so using a tape that had already been used for countless episodes of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman was probably a bad idea. So the tape didn't last long, but the memories are still there.

I like to think that my second pick was part of what inspired "The Sweater." I will never, ever forget the first time I saw Kristi Yamaguchi's "Doop Doop" or how much I loved the entire thing. It's so quirky and goofy and I just ate it up. I want to say that the year was 1994, I know the event was Ice Wars, and I know that I was eating Market Day Split Topper pizza while watching skating in my parents' bedroom. They were probably watching a movie or a game or something out in the living room, and I almost preferred it when they took over the big TV, and I got the little TV in their room, because I could close the door and get lost in the skating world. The skating world seemed so far away to me then, and so glamorous. I remember watching Ice Wars because I was taking very careful notes on the event so that I could write about it for some school project. I guess it was the first time that I wrote about skating. And Kristi's program was the one to get the best review from me...despite the fringed epaulets.

Honourable Mentions:

Michelle Kwan's "Fields of Gold" - Of course I still wish that she'd had the skate of her life and had won gold in a home Olympics, but I think this program was even better without having won gold, you know? Totally heartwrenching.

Joannie Rochette's "Summertime" - After considerable thought, I think this is my favourite Jo show program. I feel like it's a good choice, since she liked it enough to reprise it last year on tour (she originally skated to it in the 2007-2008 season).

Yuka Sato's "I Love You Always Forever" - this program began my obsession with this song that is still ongoing even today, after like 15 years!

Angela Nikodinov's "To Love You More" - Okay, okay, I know I just railed on GFBs, but this is a special program and it was perfect for her. Plus, I love Céline Dion more than I can possibly explain in this post, so to me, this isn't a GFB.

busy break

Technically, I'm on spring break this week, but I'm not any less busy this week than I was last week during midterm week! So I'm not really feeling the "break" part of this week, but it's definitely spring in Chicago. This isn't to say that the weather is nice, just that we're experiencing some of that cold, damp, muddy weather that we look forward to every March here in the Windy City.

I did a phone interview last week with Tanith Belbin & Ben Agosto, Olympic silver medalists in ice dance who are currently touring with Stars on Ice. They were a great interview because they're very poised, they come off as very friendly, and they can pack a lot into a short amount of time. I was able to squeeze the 15-minute phone call into my midterm schedule a week ago, but I didn't have a chance to write the article for a few days. It went live on ice-dance.com today: read it here.

This is also deadline week for IFS, the figure skating magazine that I started writing for a couple of issues ago. I normally plan ahead better, but the timing of this deadline was tough, and I was still gathering information and frantically reading books at the beginning of the week. I'm reviewing two books in one of my columns, which are going to be my 4th and 5th reviews for the magazine, so I guess that's kind of becoming my thing. I like reviewing books and take that task very seriously, so I'm trying not to rush through them.

And of course, I'm trying to keep plodding through my thesis, but I'm having a tougher time with energy and motivation this week. I was so looking forward to working on my thesis this week, but with everything else going on, I guess it's not the relaxing break that I was looking forward to. I have stuck to all of my deadlines with my thesis adviser so far, but I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to keep this one.

When I need a break from the written word, I'm also working on my old scrapbook from 2004, which is proving to be a bit of a challenge, since I can't locate quite a few photos from spring/summer 2004. I'm hoping to find backups at my parents' house this weekend. I thought I had a stack of backup discs here, too, but I can't find them.

This is my most recent page, in progress. I finished it yesterday.

Which brings me to two other projects: 1) cleaning and 2) organizing photos. Both are ongoing and monstrous tasks. I'm not exactly the best housekeeper, especially when I'm busy, so I have all kinds of piles of things to sort through. I cleared a bunch of stuff out of my bedroom last week, but somehow new piles have already appeared. I'm enjoying the extra space right now (my roommate moved out in December and I haven't found a replacement yet), but I definitely kept at least the living room cleaner when B lived here.

The photo organization is also a huge task. It's time for a portfolio update, so I'm trying to figure out which of my skating shots from this season that I should print. I'm also well overdue in posting photos, so I'll try to get a couple more sets edited this week. It's also nearing the end of the season, so I need to make sure that I have double backups of everything. Being a part-time sports photographer is a never-ending task. I can't imagine keeping up if I did this full-time!

And spring break week culminates with seeing Stars on Ice on Saturday. I might be going alone, which will be a weird experience, but at least it's just the U.S. tour and I'll be reunited with the girls for the traditional CSOI weekend in April/May.