Sideways Circles

My figures lesson with Lynne on the Chandler Ice Café. I warmed up with edges, then scribed some circles.  Since there were a total of 8 (!) skaters on the ice (plus several coaches) all doing patch, space was limited -- so I did something I'd always talked about doing: I scribed my circles "sideways".  That is, instead of the short axis being parallel to the long axis of the rink, I made the long axis parallel to the long axis of the rink.  I'd always wondered if that would weird me out.  It didn't, but read below.

Today's lesson:

• FO8 -- pretty good.  Now that I am paying attention to it, I am doing a reasonably good job of bringing my pushes in so they are the same on each side.  Yay!
• FI8 -- really nice!  I traced really well, pushes were good.  Yay :-)
• waltz-8 -- improving, actually.   The funny part was that since the circles were sideways and not too far from the boards, when I stepped forward to the FO edge to return to center the boards were RIGHT THERE.  Which both freaked me out and also seemed to help me do a little better on staying on the circle (thus avoiding a collision with the boards :-) ).  Since I've been concentrating more on getting the exit from the 3s better the other stuff is getting better also.  Still a ways to go to be passable but I feel like the logjam I've experienced with this may be breaking.  If so it will make me happy beyond measure.
• BI8 -- some time on this to finish up.  Actually not that bad, especially for not spending much time on them lately.  The R side is actually fairly good.  L side is a bit lacking in control; I tend to get up on my toe a bit and in trying to fix that I am then overcompensating and curving in too much.  Ugh.

After my lesson I worked on serpentines a bit.  Still need a better push and flow on the FOI part.  Ugh.