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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Justin C who wrote (63067)	10/12/2002 9:40:52 AM
From: Crocodile	Respond to of 71178

Well, I've rather enjoyed this chat with myself. Now I shall move on to something semi-productive Well, I've rather enjoyed this chat with yourself as well. (o: I'm afraid that I don't have any "recital" stories to tell. I remember making a couple of requests to take music lessons when I was young, but I believe that my parents practiced the Delay-action-for-a-couple-of-months-and-she-will-forget-about-it Strategy. Heck, turns out that they were right. It usually worked. However, there was one persistent desire that comes to mind, and that was to take tap-dance lessons. I may have mentioned this before. When I was in Grade Three, one of my classmates used to do a tap-dance routine at the Christmas pageant and also at any talent shows at the school. She had sparkly red shoes and a matching red, sparkly baton. I think my desire to take lessons had nothing to do with fame and fortune, but everything to do with the red sparkly shoes and baton. They reminded me of Dorothy's ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz. How I coveted those red shoes. The Year of the Red Tap Dance Shoes passed uneventfully. No lessons. No shoes. But, as Grade Four year rolled around, there was an announcement that a former Ice Capade would be giving figure skating lessons at the local arena. Learning to skate like Barbara Ann Scott seemed almost as alluring as dancing in ruby slippers. This time, my parents relented and signed me up for 12 lessons. In our little town, the local skating arena was nothing more than a huge wooden barn. It was used for horse shows in summer, and hockey games in winter. Please keep in mind that we're talking "small town" in the Frozen North of the early 1960s. No Zamboni or artificial ice. Just a couple of guys who sprayed water on the rink on an extra cold day, and occasionally scraped off the powdered ice fragments with their push shovels after a hockey game or figure-skating lesson. The roof was there for the sole purpose of keeping the snow off the ice and so that there could be lights and benches for those who came to watch the night-time hockey games. I took about 5 out of my 12 lessons and was doing quite well. I was a fearless little devil and rapidly learned to zoom along the ice on one foot, do small jumps and even a couple of spins. It seemed I had found my perfect performance niche. But then , on one ill-fated Monday evening, just the night before my Tuesday after-school lesson, we had a very heavy snowfall that caved in the arena roof, leaving nothing but a giant heap of snow in the field. The figure-skating course came to an abrupt end at Lesson #6. Much to their credit, my parents made a little backyard rink behind our house so that I could continue to harbour my delusions of grandeur -- of one day growing up to become an Ice Capade. I and a couple of friends continued to practice our spins and glides to the tune of music playing over the turquoise, plastic, kitchen radio which we dragged outside and set up on a wooden chair. Odd thing about that winter. "Somewhere over the Rainbow" was enjoying a resurgence in popularity and seemed to be playing every time we skated in the backyard. Looking back on that, I think it must have been some form of karmic compensation for not getting my Ruby Slippers the previous year. And no, I never did grow up to be an Ice Capade. (o:

To: Justin C who wrote (63067)	10/12/2002 10:10:17 AM
From: Crocodile	Respond to of 71178

You might well have enjoyed this. Yesterday, I stopped in at the university where I did my graduate work to see the annual "Butterfly Emergence". For several years, the university biology department has released butterflies in the greenhouses after raising them in the labs. This is the week when the butterflies make their brief appearance. The butterflies were, as per usual, rather spectacular. As you might expect, I took quite a lot of photos. All are of tropical species that would be found in the rainforests of Costa Rica and the Amazon region. Blue Morphos, Scarlet Swallowtails, and so on. Wonderful butterflies with enormous wingspans, often 5-8 inches across, or with long "tails". The greenhouses are very small, but crammed with tropical plants and timed to have many flowers in bloom for the butterflies. It's delightful to stand in the short aisles as 2 or 3 massive butterflies brush your face lightly with their wings as they glide by, apparently playing Follow The Leader. Surprisingly, some visitors are a little nervous of these butterflies, which, admittedly, are the size of small bats. However, they are entirely innocuous.. even a 12-inch butterfly that is kept off in a screened area by itself, presumably to protect its massive wings from damage. Wonderful place to visit for a short while. But hot and humid. Very difficult to take photos as the camera lenses were steaming over as quickly as I could clean them off.