still around :) ... in... ARIZONA!!!

Damn, it's been awhile. Obama was my last post - and he's been in office long enough that I dislike him already. But that's another topic.

I lost my friggin' mind this afternoon and bought a pair of rollerblades. I'm traveling up to nor-Cal soon and my friend up text-messaged me a week ago as a followup to the voicemail he just left -"Oh, and bring your rollerblades!"

WHAT rollerblades, I was thinking... they got left in Uruguay with a whole hell of a lot of stuff when I moved out of there. Besides, the last pair was THOROUGHLY worn out - I think I'd been through five or six bearing replacements and at least three stoppers. I know for sure that along with the rollerblades I left behind a new-in-package stopper designed for those 'blades - I bought 'em in 1993.

Damn, I wrote several paragraphs about WHY I bought them in 1993. That's off topic ;)

Anyway, its been five years since I've been up on ANY kind of wheeled footwear. HOLY CRAP! I thought it would be very simple but um, not quite. First of all I had the dog with me. I had this idiot idea Shaggy would pull me and it would be sort of chill.

NO. First of all descending the stairs was not as easy as I'd remembered it being. I live on the second floor so I had no choice.

Shaggy didn't quite know what to make of me being four inches taller OR moving quite so randomly. Suddenly I was able to move MUCH faster or slower than normal. As such she held way back and it was more ME pulling HER. Note to self: do not try to walk dog and rollerblade at the same time. I walked her long enough that she did what every good dog should do THE HELL OUTSIDE :) and then cleaned it up.

I climbed the stairs again to let her back into the house and then it was ON - there had been little glimpses of the previous skill I'd had years ago but the dog was slowing me down.

Perhaps that was a good thing. (The slowdown)

I went around the block as fast as - indeed, faster - than I dared ;) "Faster" is relative, I suppose - but I didn't KNOW I was going faster than I wanted to be until I'd gotten there. I kept thinking, "OK, it's June 30th... you have two hours until you have full health coverage again - WHY DIDN'T YOU WAIT?!" But that thought only crossed my mind when I damn near fell.

(Yes, in 1 hour and 14 minutes from now I have what passes for healthcare coverage in this country. But that too is the topic of another post...)

Ah well, I can go out and practice one more time tomorrow night before the weekend. :)