After years of whining about wanting to go ice skating, I finally went Sunday. Jeff was a good sport and came along. (I think he may have actually liked it.) Skating on an indoor rink is a lot different than on the lake in my ancestral back yard. I'm pleased to report that I didn't fall, but that's not to say I was a regular Dorothy Hammill after a twenty-mumble year hiatus.

And let me say, at the risk of sounding like an old fart - in my day, we taught ourselves to skate, with those double-bladed training skates. We didn't wear helmets, and we certainly didn't have those little plastic tripod things (think grandma walkers) to teach us balance on the ice. And not once can I remember my parents coming out to take pictures as I glided by. Too cold for Mom, for starters. Dad was likely off playing tennis at the indoor tennis courts.

Skating is a Zen experience, if Zen means you're concentrating so much on balancing and not running into stupid little kids that you're not worrying about all of life's problems. So I bought a pair of ice skates (black, thank you very much) last night on E-Bay. Rental skates suck! Too tight on the ankles. And there's another ice rink about a mile from the office, so I can even skate during my lunch hour if I'm ambitious - and you know I am.

It's still not quite the same as skating over a murky green frozen pond, with a little fire going in the vacant lot. The up side is, there's no way I can fall through a thin spot in the ice in a rink. I hope.