Circle-8

 My lesson with Danette on the Chandler Ice Cafe.  Really nice ice and about 10 skaters.

I had first lesson, so no warmup; and per my discussion with Holly yesterday, I skated in my freestyle blades, not my patch blades.

For today's lesson we just worked on the circle-8 from Bronze Moves -- the entire lesson!  Some takeaways:

• we experimented with having some intro steps -- of course in patch there's no such thing, but they are allowed in MITF.  I think I'll keep this, as it meant I can solve the issue of difficulties with the RFO.  If I'm skating in the middle big circle, I stood at the edge of the circle and pushed to the L foot, then to the R foot on the dot to start the move.  This gives me plenty of speed even if I don't push particularly hard.
• the key takeaway from today, I think, was Danette's observation that, while, yes, I do need to do a better job of turning the skating foot, one thing I can do that will really help is to not put the new skating foot done until I'm actually pushing.  That is, in the past I've put the new foot down -- and then pushed.  Instead I turn the pushing foot and then set the new foot down as I'm pushing.  This results in a much, much better push.  This seems to help a lot!  
• one issue that did arise -- I think it's from the change to starting with the RFO again w/intro steps, is that I'm now having trouble controlling the LFO edge.  I'm a bit flat for the first 6 feet or so and so the circle is really large and I feel like I'm falling out of the circle.  I think this is fixable.

Still more work to do on these before testing... but I have real hope now!