Dichroic Reflections

unrelated brain dribbles

I always knew Maria was bright. In a conversation we were having about an entry of hers she wrote, "I do agree that semantics is very important here." I get so annoyed with people who say, "Well, that's just semantics," as if that were a reason to brush something aside as unimportant. Come on, people, semantics are the meaning of words and words are all we have to express our hopes, wishes, dreams, faith, deductions, fears and thoughts! How much more important could they be?

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Knitting certainly is an expensive hobby. My city's Stitch'n'Bitch (Stitch'n'Bitch Stitch'n'Bitch Stitch'n'Bitch!! - take that you greedy people claiming trademark!) group has a lot of smaller meetings in the different parts of town, and last night I finally got to the monthly gathering at an Australian wine store only a mile from my house. I enjoyed myself; I'd planned to take this morning as my off day from exercise, so I didn't have to rush home, and some of my favorite people showed up. Including this silly person, who actually flew in all the way from Atlanta just for this meeting! I didn't spend quite as much as she did, but between two glasses of wine and the bottle I bought for Rudder for Valentine's Day, because it was from a part of New Zealand we enjoyed and was rated as a top wine, it wasn't a cheap evening. (Shh, don't tell Rudder about the wine. I got him some good truffles the other day too, but that's sort of coals to Newcastle for someone who's in the Netherlands at the moment.) Hey, I didn't say the knitting supplies were the expensive part.

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The other night I was watching that Celebrity Skating show. I could have predicted Bruce Jenner and Tai Babilonia would win - oddly enough, because of my rowing coaching experience. Granted Jenner was the oldest one there, and it's been quite a while since he was an Olympian, but he's just done enough different sports where he would have to have a good awareness of his body - where the different parts of him are in space. I figure things like wrist position must matter in shotput and javelin throw, and hip and leg angle on the high jump. He may be a bit rusty and his body will have changed a bit since those days, which could account for the fact that evidently the pair didn't do all that well in their first few showings, but once he gets used to moving his body as it is now, that knowledge must make him more coachable than anyone who hasn't done that kind of sport. As for teaching rowing, I'll take a ballerina over a football player anytime - the ballerina can straighten her wrists, can control the rollout of legs, then body, then arms during the recovery, and won't get upset if s/he gets big ugly blisters, even if they are on hands instead of feet.

Posted by dichroic at February 8, 2006 01:41 PM