by day the blue will pale down into white where it touches the white of the land, after sunset it has a new circumference-orange, melting upwards into tenderest purple. but the core of blue persists, and so it is by night. then the stars hang like lamps from the immense vault. the distance between the vault and them is as nothing to the distance behind them, and that farther distance, though beyond colour, last freed itself from blue. -e.m. forster (a passage to india)
morgana sent a pic with uncle jeff in london (my cousin is visiting for a few weeks).
i really enjoyed watching the women's all around gymnastics today . . very exciting and moving! such incredible routines . . especially the floor exercise routines . . the height the gymnasts get on their flips is astounding.
chanda was visiting her friend natalie this evening, and natalie's very elderly cat, sylvester (who has a friend named joshua).
natalie's cat when he was a kitten . . so tiny and adorable.
figaro has been very interested in the computer lately, and will jump up on my lap whenever i sit myself at the desk. i don't mind if he settles down for a nap, but lately he stares intently at the screen while i try to type, and will try to bat at the cursor and the words. it's not conducive to getting work done, so i've been giving up and letting him take over the chair.
chair gymnastics . . maybe he should train for a new olympic event - though he gets a little bored when there isn't a human perched on the edge to harass.
when i opened my ipad this morning, i was greeted by apple news asking if i'd seen nathan chen's gold winning performance. i had to answer that i hadn't!
of course figaro wanted to watch it with me - though he did get a little distracted with the sunlight flickering on the ceiling.
nathan chen has a wonderful musicality as well as technique, so i really loved his routine. plus, i was a huge elton john fan growing up and know all his songs very well, so i was really drawn into the performance. i love the transition into rocket man! the build up in the music and the quad lutz sent shivers down my spine. (unfortunately, i interrupted the video for some reason, so it's continued below . . but you can easily pull this up on youtube for an uninterrupted viewing . . which i've done at least ten times!)
(this time figaro gets distracted by pluto at the door and scoots off to investigate - i guess he just doesn't appreciate figure skating as much as i thought he did). chen ends with bennie and the jets, and i liked the remix he used.
morgana has been snowboarding this past week and really loving it (almost more than skiing, i think).
on the mountain . .
a lemon from italy . .
and here in nyc i had to add a stripe of beige to my temperature blanket, as it went up into the seventies today. when i went outside and checked the temperature on my phone, it read 78!!
chanda and i are still watching parts of the olympics . . early this morning we caught up on the women's figure skating . . we don't always agree with the judges . .
tirol has had lots of snow which is great for skiing, and i think morgana has been on the slopes every day this past week.
she needs to retake her ski test, which will happen in april. until then, she keeps practicing!
it's looking very busy . .
tired . . after a full day of skiing.
a view of the alps out the bedroom window . .
and celebrating a birthday.
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on another note, chanda and i stayed up late last night watching the pairs figure skating. a dance teacher from whom she took a class with in london had his twin brother skating, so we were especially looking out for him. they are all so very good that you want them all to win, but we were happy with the final winners this year. sometimes the one who wins is not my favorite, but this year the german team of aljona savchenko and bruno massot won and they definitely were a favorite! they skated to la terre vue du ciel by armand amar, with choreography by christopher dean. it was beautiful.
above is a pic from the german team's instagram page. its' amazing how the men throw the women so high in the air. we also loved the italian team of valentina marchei and ondrej hotarek who skated to amarcord by nino rota and i was amazed how he lifted her and spun her around without her holding onto him at all. i was really hoping they could get a medal but everyone is so good that they ended up in seventh place. they skated cleaner than any of the other pairs, but i guess their jumps weren't as difficult. chanda's dance teacher's brother landed in sixteenth place with his partner and they were happy to be included in the final free skate (ruben blommaert and anna hoeke).
click here to view aljona savchenko and bruno massot's 2018 olympic pairs free skate program.
victory skate . .
team selfie pic . .
and here are valentina marchei and ondrej hotarek from italy (same program, but from a different competition):
ellen has asked chanda to dance the vermeer role for her monday class, so she's been studying korrina's dvd to learn it (korrina was about 14 when she did this).
(it was my sister with my mom on the phone call.)
we've also been watching the olympics and really enjoyed seeing red gerard's winning slopestyle run:
and chloe kim's two amazing runs on the halfpipe. you should be able to see a video of it here from digg. i get shivers down my spine watching her do this.
yesterday it snowed and rained and sleeted . . today it was sunny and cold.
morgana has been busy with guitar, acting and babysitting. chanda and i have been watching the olympics; particularly the figure skating. it's been a lot of fun, though not much else has been done: no schoolwork and not even any knitting.
