Skulls in the Stars

Whew!  One more stressful deadline is passed, and successfully!  On Sunday, I passed my adult bronze ‘moves in the field’ figure skating test!  Of course, most readers probably have no idea what that means.

The USFSA (U.S. Figure Skating Association) is the official organization for U.S. figure skating, and they administer ranking tests which can be used as personal achievement goals or to determine one’s level for competition.  I’ve been figure skating for some thirteen years, and haven’t bothered with testing for about ten years.  This year, though, my skating coach convinced me (i.e. bullied me!) into testing again.

Apparently I don’t have enough going on, with classes, tenure planning, book writing, blog writing, research, and house stuff!

I decided to follow the “adult track” of testing, which is more compressed and less rigorous than the standard track that the young kids do.  The adult track consists of pre-bronze, bronze, silver and gold levels.  I was grandfathered into the pre-bronze level from my previous tests, and therefore took the bronze test.

“Moves in the field” refers to skating elements such as various turns and edge transfers, basically all those techniques that can be used to get from point A to point B.  To give you an idea of what is involved, here is the official test book figure of the “5-step mohawk” pattern I had to perform:

To give you a sense of the terminology, RFI = right front inside, MO = mohawk,  LBO = left back outside, etc.

Fortunately, I passed the test, and even enjoyed the experience somewhat, though I strangely find such tests more stressful than skydiving.  Now I’ll hopefully have the mental capacity to get my tenure package out of the way later this week…

In a completely unrelated note, I started playing the XBox360 game Batman: Arkham Asylum this weekend.  The game is really, really good; I’ll probably review it in its entirety once I finish it.  I’ve you’ve ever wanted to be Batman, this game is the closest you’ll probably ever come!