and Efanor is in mourning. I told him it would all be back next year, but I don’t think he believes me. :D

I think we might have picked up a bit of a bug at nationals. Every joint in my body is aching, and Carolyn says she’s sore as well. Also have had a niggling headache for two days now. Ah, well….not debilitating, just annoying.

Edits on Ring of Intrigue are going well, and an idea for a short story is percolating.

And the fishies were out in the middle of the pond this morning.

Life is good.

Film at eleven.

Who was it that decided kitchen appliances must be pretty? I buy a toaster for one reason: to toast the edible substance upon which I then place my peanut butter. I don’t need an object d’art for my countertop.

This morning, I was cleaning the kitchen and because we are planning on going back on strict atkins for a couple of weeks, I decided to tuck the toaster away in a cupboard. First, however, I needed to clean out the crumbs. Being the lazy sort that I am, this normally consists of upending it over the garbage can and shaking, but this time, more drastic measures were required.

Somehow, one of the skinny, low carb buns we use had crept way down to the bottom and lodged sideways under the elements. Obviously, this was a recent escape attempt, since it was not a blackened corpse…not to mention we hadn’t burned the house down, but it was dessicated to the consistency of rock, so I couldn’t break it up with a knife either.

Extrication would have to happen from the bottom.

So…I go looking for a removable tray. And looking. Several minutes later…still looking. Now, I’m not exactly mechanically inept. I’m looking all over for buttons to push, levers to flip or twist…finally, just breaks in the plastic contraption that constitutes the bottom of this object that might indicate a removable baseplate.

Nothing. Is that even legal? I mean, talk about a fire hazard!

Finally, I find a hidden dip in the plastic, a faint fingertip sized indentation which, low and behold, facilitated the removal of a slender metal shelf, which slid out smoothly, scattering crumbs all over the floor rather than into the aforementioned garbage can…and left the dessicated corpse inside the toaster, still lodged between the elements and the perforated plastic bottom portion of this contraption, which apparently exists for no other reason than the little feet (which could easily have been on an open plastic addition), and completely ineffectual electrical cord control tabs.

Well…at least I can now get at the expletive deleted chunk of no-longer-edible substance with the most immediately available tool (I am, afterall, a card-carrying member of the tool-using species Homo sapiens) a nut-pick that was sitting on the counter, for some reason unknown, but it was there, so it got utilized. Another several minutes chopping that chunk of rock into pieces small enough to squidge out the small opening in the side, and finally, I have a clean toaster.

Now all I have to do is spend the next fifteen minutes cleaning up the mess I created cleaning the toaster.

Next time I need a peanut butter fix, I’m taking it straight out of the jar.

With a spoon.

Another tick off the “todo” list. CC finally has a new flyer. If you’d like to help us out by printing a handful and putting them up (in legal places :D) or putting them out at a convention, you can download the pdf at the Closed Circle freebies page.

It should print fine at the “fast draft” setting.

Thanks everyone!

Tho you wouldn’t know it to look at it, except the index is a little bit smaller, and the background now fades much more prettily on the main CC site theme. But the files are much smaller and load much faster.  I’ve been meaning to do this and got reminded by one of our wonderful guests. Sorry. Didn’t mean to make you sit for an hour while the single page downloaded. Anyway, next time you visit the store, refresh your screens and you should get the new images in your caches.

Ja ne!

Dance finals were magnificent. Davis and White’s free is a phenomenal rendition of Phantom of the Opera. I shuddered when I heard earlier this season that that was their music choice. It usually overwhelms the skaters. I shouldn’t have worried. I knew from the TV that it was a great program and it was even better in person. Belbin and Agosto were as great as always, but I kind of question their choice of music, esp in an Olympic year. It’s Ave Maria  by Guilo Caccini and Amen from Rossini’s Stabat Mater. Yeah…I don’t know them either. They did it fabulously, but the music doesn’t reach into your gut and twist the way you want it to. Their FD score was very good, 106.60 to D&W’s 108.76, but it hasn’t got the audience appeal these two usually get. Anyway, third went to our little shit-kickin couple! YAY! Their long dance was very different, very beautiful, and earned them another spontaneous standing O. Fourth went to a great brother and sister team, Madison& Kieffer Hubbell. They s/b right in the hunt in the next four years.

Ladies went very well. Top three, Rachel Flatt, Marai Nagasu, and Ashley Wagner skated clean and exciting programs to spontaneous standing Os. Sasha sort of lost her jumps…looked to me like she was coming down with her toes pointed, which doesn’t work real well, and she gave up stupid level points on her spin and straightline footwork, but on the strength of her component score managed to hang in for pewter. The ringside moment for me was when Sasha came out to receive her medal and hugged each of the girls before taking her place on the podium. It was really cool. (OSG…did you get any of that? I hope I hope I hope.)

I hope, because the lowest moment for me tonight was taking my poor, dying camera out and discovering I’d left the memory chip at home in the computer. No pics from the Dance or Ladies final. Sigh. I’m sure I can get some online that are better than anything I was getting, but I like having my own. Ah, well.

We had a great time and made some lovely new friends: Hi, Jay, Hi, Judy!

Anyway…I’ll try and get some more of my reactions down before I forget them in the next few days, but I think we’re going to be cleaning house and taking down Christmas decorations tomorrow.

Ja ne!

To head out for our final day of competition, I was cruising looking for info on what to me is the standout skaters of both 2007 and 2010. Maia and Alex Shibutani. They are, in a word, breathtaking. Here’s a link to a European telecast…oh, for this kind of expert coverage!

Back soon

HEY! Lookie there! It imbedded it! Cool! Later.

More soon, but the short version? Shibutani and Shibutani were even more wonderful than I dared hope in Junior Dance, the Senior Dance looks like a serious horse race, and Sasha looked incredible in practice and did a great job in the short, standing second only to the phenomenal Marai Nagasu. If these two ladies do as well in the long as they did in the short, I think we’re looking at our Olympic Team. Wheeeee