birthday recap, etc.
Aug. 28th, 2008 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7So my birthday was lovely. Low-key. I spent the morning running errands, mostly grocery shopping. The afternoon I spent cutting out a test run for a pair of pants-- I made them short, so as not to take a zillion yards of fabric, and figured I could wear them as shorts or bloomers. (Today I finished making them up, and made a second pair by a different method to compare them; I think I like the outside-seam version better. Lots of sewing, today.)
Then for dinner we went to Bistro Europa. This proved to be an awesome idea. We had potato pancakes, mussels in curry cream sauce, rindsrouladen, and Belgian stout beef stew. For dessert we had lambic floats. Yes. Lambic, with a scoop of vanilla gelato in it. Freakin' brilliant.
It was lovely. We had to take a little walk around the block before we could drive home.
__________
Ursula is supposed to be having her baby. Was supposed to last week. On my birthday she said she was going in to be induced, but then they didn't have a bed for her, so she wasn't. Haven't heard since, which I assume means she did go in after all, as I know people tend to be sluggish at providing updates to the wider community while actually giving birth. Still, I will keep some little mental part of my fingers crossed for her.
____________
My license expired on my birthday. How funny to think, for so long I've been looking at that expiration date (I think I got that license in... 2000? Yes, 2000, when I turned 21), and 2008 seemed so far away. Holy crap, I remember when 2000 seemed so far away. I couldn't fathom being in another century. I remember noting with excitement that I'd be 21 in 2000 so I could party for the new millennium, but then realizing almost immediately that I wouldn't be 21 until most of the way through the year. Oops. I think I spent New Year's Eve 2000 sitting at home with Mom waiting for Dad to come home from work. (He may have called us from his work cellphone, pulled over watching the fireworks from the highway.)
My sisters, of course, were all out partying. Even the younger ones.
Anyway, I am trying to get my ass in gear to get to the DMV. I was out drinking last night (I was drinking Coke, but then someone bought me a beer, so I had a beer, but at least I only had the one) and thought, if I get pulled over cuz they're trying to catch drunk drivers, and I have an expired license, they'll totally throw the book at me because I seem to inspire book-throwing despite being unfailingly courteous to traffic cops.
Ug. Anyway. So trying to haul myself out of this bathrobe (hey it's possible that nobody reading this remembers when I got this bathrobe-- it's the bathrobe monogrammed "Juanita" that I bought at the Land's End Inlet in Rochester one day while Z was at classes at RIT, so long ago... $20 for a spa-length terrycloth robe... named Juanita. How many people do you know who have a bathrobe named Juanita? I almost bought Z a white one named "Horace" but he never wears bathrobes.)... Not easy to get moving today, though, because of the next vignette:
__________________
I was out until 2 last night. I never do that. I went to Open Skate, and there were all these Boot Campers there-- our league annually hosts a Boot Camp for skaters interested in joining the league. It's four weeks of intensive training, and at the end they take a skills assessment, and then they're cleared to start attending our league practices, which start up right then after the summer off. So they learn to skate, to fall, to get up, to be safe, etcetera, and then they join us as we all remember how to block, hit, scrimmage, etc. I usually try to attend Boot Camp at least once, but I'm not going to make it this year. I hadn't met any of the girls yet. There was a handful of them at Open Skate, and I spent a bit of time hanging out with them.
Mia was there, and was teaching some of them baseball slides, but she wasn't too confident doing them-- she had always gone for one hip to land on, because the other leg had a metal plate and screws in it, but then she injured that hip, so she was trying to pick the lesser of two evils to land on. She demonstrated it a couple of times, and then I demonstrated it, and realized I need to practice. I got so timid and ginger about falling last season because my knees were so bad, and I've entirely gotten out of the habit.
So I spent a good long while working on jammer starts and one- and two-knee falls, and am sore today.
Then we all went out to the bar. There was a group of... maybe six Knockouts? There seem to always be six Knockouts when we go out, but it's never the same six, and I have to admit I kind of like that. There are a few faithful always-there ones, and then a rotating cast of usuals. Then a rare one will pop in now and then, and we all are totally psyched.
So we hung out with the boot camp girls, and Ava's was ecstatic to have us back and took our picture. We looked at the photo of the 2008 Knockouts hanging on their wall, and sadly pointed out the skaters who aren't coming back. Creepily, Courage noticed, the non-returners were in a pattern-- the photo had us standing in three rows, and there were two girls not coming back in each row, and they were always separated by one person. So row 1: no, yes, no, yes yes; row two: yes, yes, yes, no, yes, no; row 3: yes, yes, yes, no, yes, no. Creepy; kind of like a Paul is Dead thing. Only not dead, just not skating anymore.
We have had a rough off-season: we lost six. Though, six out of twenty isn't bad. Last season, we had to draft twelve girls. This season, it's six. The Boot Camp girls were a bit heartened, actually, to realize how many people we needed. I think the Dollies are in a similar situation to us-- needing to draft a generous handful. And the Saucies-- well, the Bylaws have changed, so that you can field all 20 of the skaters allowed on your team, during home events. The Saucies last season opted not to fill their roster, thinking that having more skaters than they were allowed to field during a game was silly; they wanted to focus their attention only on skaters who would be able to bout. (You could only field a squad of 14 for a game.) But now that no longer is true, so it would be in the Saucies' best interests to fill their roster as well, meaning they'll need to draft at least 7 (one of their skaters retired as well). Plus there's a new team, which will need... well, 18, as there are two girls already signed up for it from last season. So I don't think we'll have a problem making space, even though we have 65 new skaters attending Boot Camp: 15 of them are a crew from Rochester, there are a few commuting from Syracuse's new league to improve their skills, and then the rest will probably whittle down to a manageable number once the time commitment becomes glaringly apparent. And there are always a few skaters who drift away once we start intensive contact drills and the like, because getting hit hurts and if you don't have enough adrenaline about it, it totally fucking sucks. So we always lose a few at that time of year, after the first Blood & Thunder drill. If they hang on until the first scrimmage they're usually hooked, though.
Boring, but I wanted to kind of write down the mental math.
This year's Boot Camp crowd contains a lot of strong skaters, I was told. Last night I saw a lot of strong skating, so I believe it. The girls themselves, at the bar afterward, were saying that they've mentally compiled their own Top 20 that they believe are Worthy, but they were light-hearted about it. I guess there are a few girls who still aren't good skaters, but there always are, and a surprising proportion of them hang on grimly until they finally get it, and then wind up being valuable contributors to a team.
The girls that came to Ava's with us wound up being really amusing-- there was some interpretive dance, some dirty dance, some impromptu karaoke (not really, but they were louder than the jukebox), and some amusing interaction with Creepy Locals in the bar.
I need to write up a separate blog post, maybe an essay, on the intersection of us roller derby girls with the Creepy Locals in the bar. Ava's was chosen as our hangout because it is Cheap, Cheap, and Really Cheap; they weren't particularly nice to us at first, but we won them over. It is a cheap dive bar, sketchy as hell, and the atmosphere is nothing to write home about, but by sheer persistence we have made it our place. Many of the creepy locals have wound up being actually pretty cool, and by sheer numbers, we keep the actually-creepy ones more or less at bay.
I still wouldn't go there alone, and the first of us to arrive after practice usually stands around outside waiting for the others. It's not that it's dangerous, it's just that it's, well, a really cheap dive bar in a run-down suburb of a smallish city. And we're usually wearing miniskirts and tight t-shirts emblazoned with obscene slogans. You need to bring your own context, in the form of at least three other girls, when you go out like that.
___________________
On to the next. I am going to visit my folks this weekend, so I need to pack. Which means I need to go to the DMV already. The Cheektowaga one doesn't open until 11, but I just noticed that there are closer ones. I know there weren't, before. I don't know the other ones. Is it irresponsible of me to drive an extra few miles just to go to the one that I know where it is? Am I destroying the environment?
It doesn't help that I was out until 2 and am barely conscious at this point. Me and Juanita have a powerful need to spend today in bed. Especially since not only did I tweak my knee last night and it hurts, I also pulled a muscle in my neck this morning turning over in bed and trying to get my boobs into position. Yes: I hurt my neck with my boobs. It was really annoying. I want to dope myself up and lie around moaning, but, of course, the pain is nothing like severe enough to actually justify that, and also, I need to renew my goddamn license. What a pain in the neck.
I should start doing a morning exercise of reviewing the day, week, and month's to-do lists. That might keep me honest. Hmm... maybe I should do that.
Ha ha ha!
OK, no really, maybe I will. One of these days. Not right now, I've been sitting here too long.
Then for dinner we went to Bistro Europa. This proved to be an awesome idea. We had potato pancakes, mussels in curry cream sauce, rindsrouladen, and Belgian stout beef stew. For dessert we had lambic floats. Yes. Lambic, with a scoop of vanilla gelato in it. Freakin' brilliant.
It was lovely. We had to take a little walk around the block before we could drive home.
__________
Ursula is supposed to be having her baby. Was supposed to last week. On my birthday she said she was going in to be induced, but then they didn't have a bed for her, so she wasn't. Haven't heard since, which I assume means she did go in after all, as I know people tend to be sluggish at providing updates to the wider community while actually giving birth. Still, I will keep some little mental part of my fingers crossed for her.
____________
My license expired on my birthday. How funny to think, for so long I've been looking at that expiration date (I think I got that license in... 2000? Yes, 2000, when I turned 21), and 2008 seemed so far away. Holy crap, I remember when 2000 seemed so far away. I couldn't fathom being in another century. I remember noting with excitement that I'd be 21 in 2000 so I could party for the new millennium, but then realizing almost immediately that I wouldn't be 21 until most of the way through the year. Oops. I think I spent New Year's Eve 2000 sitting at home with Mom waiting for Dad to come home from work. (He may have called us from his work cellphone, pulled over watching the fireworks from the highway.)
My sisters, of course, were all out partying. Even the younger ones.
Anyway, I am trying to get my ass in gear to get to the DMV. I was out drinking last night (I was drinking Coke, but then someone bought me a beer, so I had a beer, but at least I only had the one) and thought, if I get pulled over cuz they're trying to catch drunk drivers, and I have an expired license, they'll totally throw the book at me because I seem to inspire book-throwing despite being unfailingly courteous to traffic cops.
Ug. Anyway. So trying to haul myself out of this bathrobe (hey it's possible that nobody reading this remembers when I got this bathrobe-- it's the bathrobe monogrammed "Juanita" that I bought at the Land's End Inlet in Rochester one day while Z was at classes at RIT, so long ago... $20 for a spa-length terrycloth robe... named Juanita. How many people do you know who have a bathrobe named Juanita? I almost bought Z a white one named "Horace" but he never wears bathrobes.)... Not easy to get moving today, though, because of the next vignette:
__________________
I was out until 2 last night. I never do that. I went to Open Skate, and there were all these Boot Campers there-- our league annually hosts a Boot Camp for skaters interested in joining the league. It's four weeks of intensive training, and at the end they take a skills assessment, and then they're cleared to start attending our league practices, which start up right then after the summer off. So they learn to skate, to fall, to get up, to be safe, etcetera, and then they join us as we all remember how to block, hit, scrimmage, etc. I usually try to attend Boot Camp at least once, but I'm not going to make it this year. I hadn't met any of the girls yet. There was a handful of them at Open Skate, and I spent a bit of time hanging out with them.
Mia was there, and was teaching some of them baseball slides, but she wasn't too confident doing them-- she had always gone for one hip to land on, because the other leg had a metal plate and screws in it, but then she injured that hip, so she was trying to pick the lesser of two evils to land on. She demonstrated it a couple of times, and then I demonstrated it, and realized I need to practice. I got so timid and ginger about falling last season because my knees were so bad, and I've entirely gotten out of the habit.
So I spent a good long while working on jammer starts and one- and two-knee falls, and am sore today.
Then we all went out to the bar. There was a group of... maybe six Knockouts? There seem to always be six Knockouts when we go out, but it's never the same six, and I have to admit I kind of like that. There are a few faithful always-there ones, and then a rotating cast of usuals. Then a rare one will pop in now and then, and we all are totally psyched.
So we hung out with the boot camp girls, and Ava's was ecstatic to have us back and took our picture. We looked at the photo of the 2008 Knockouts hanging on their wall, and sadly pointed out the skaters who aren't coming back. Creepily, Courage noticed, the non-returners were in a pattern-- the photo had us standing in three rows, and there were two girls not coming back in each row, and they were always separated by one person. So row 1: no, yes, no, yes yes; row two: yes, yes, yes, no, yes, no; row 3: yes, yes, yes, no, yes, no. Creepy; kind of like a Paul is Dead thing. Only not dead, just not skating anymore.
We have had a rough off-season: we lost six. Though, six out of twenty isn't bad. Last season, we had to draft twelve girls. This season, it's six. The Boot Camp girls were a bit heartened, actually, to realize how many people we needed. I think the Dollies are in a similar situation to us-- needing to draft a generous handful. And the Saucies-- well, the Bylaws have changed, so that you can field all 20 of the skaters allowed on your team, during home events. The Saucies last season opted not to fill their roster, thinking that having more skaters than they were allowed to field during a game was silly; they wanted to focus their attention only on skaters who would be able to bout. (You could only field a squad of 14 for a game.) But now that no longer is true, so it would be in the Saucies' best interests to fill their roster as well, meaning they'll need to draft at least 7 (one of their skaters retired as well). Plus there's a new team, which will need... well, 18, as there are two girls already signed up for it from last season. So I don't think we'll have a problem making space, even though we have 65 new skaters attending Boot Camp: 15 of them are a crew from Rochester, there are a few commuting from Syracuse's new league to improve their skills, and then the rest will probably whittle down to a manageable number once the time commitment becomes glaringly apparent. And there are always a few skaters who drift away once we start intensive contact drills and the like, because getting hit hurts and if you don't have enough adrenaline about it, it totally fucking sucks. So we always lose a few at that time of year, after the first Blood & Thunder drill. If they hang on until the first scrimmage they're usually hooked, though.
Boring, but I wanted to kind of write down the mental math.
This year's Boot Camp crowd contains a lot of strong skaters, I was told. Last night I saw a lot of strong skating, so I believe it. The girls themselves, at the bar afterward, were saying that they've mentally compiled their own Top 20 that they believe are Worthy, but they were light-hearted about it. I guess there are a few girls who still aren't good skaters, but there always are, and a surprising proportion of them hang on grimly until they finally get it, and then wind up being valuable contributors to a team.
The girls that came to Ava's with us wound up being really amusing-- there was some interpretive dance, some dirty dance, some impromptu karaoke (not really, but they were louder than the jukebox), and some amusing interaction with Creepy Locals in the bar.
I need to write up a separate blog post, maybe an essay, on the intersection of us roller derby girls with the Creepy Locals in the bar. Ava's was chosen as our hangout because it is Cheap, Cheap, and Really Cheap; they weren't particularly nice to us at first, but we won them over. It is a cheap dive bar, sketchy as hell, and the atmosphere is nothing to write home about, but by sheer persistence we have made it our place. Many of the creepy locals have wound up being actually pretty cool, and by sheer numbers, we keep the actually-creepy ones more or less at bay.
I still wouldn't go there alone, and the first of us to arrive after practice usually stands around outside waiting for the others. It's not that it's dangerous, it's just that it's, well, a really cheap dive bar in a run-down suburb of a smallish city. And we're usually wearing miniskirts and tight t-shirts emblazoned with obscene slogans. You need to bring your own context, in the form of at least three other girls, when you go out like that.
___________________
On to the next. I am going to visit my folks this weekend, so I need to pack. Which means I need to go to the DMV already. The Cheektowaga one doesn't open until 11, but I just noticed that there are closer ones. I know there weren't, before. I don't know the other ones. Is it irresponsible of me to drive an extra few miles just to go to the one that I know where it is? Am I destroying the environment?
It doesn't help that I was out until 2 and am barely conscious at this point. Me and Juanita have a powerful need to spend today in bed. Especially since not only did I tweak my knee last night and it hurts, I also pulled a muscle in my neck this morning turning over in bed and trying to get my boobs into position. Yes: I hurt my neck with my boobs. It was really annoying. I want to dope myself up and lie around moaning, but, of course, the pain is nothing like severe enough to actually justify that, and also, I need to renew my goddamn license. What a pain in the neck.
I should start doing a morning exercise of reviewing the day, week, and month's to-do lists. That might keep me honest. Hmm... maybe I should do that.
Ha ha ha!
OK, no really, maybe I will. One of these days. Not right now, I've been sitting here too long.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 02:17 pm (UTC)Pain in the neck - very funny! I'll tell you what, my halter type bathing suit hurts my neck (I gotta get far enough in the water that the boobs float) so badly it give me a headache.
And just so you know,
no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 03:56 pm (UTC)provided it as an ID at least twice to car rental people without them noticing
used it as ID elsewhere more than a dozen times and was only called on it once, when I pretended to be totally surprised and thus it was accepted anyhow
was nearly denied access onto a plane (that was a real surprise, let me tell you!)
and finally, got stopped by a police officer...who let me go without even a warning. But that's when I got a new license.
Tell me if Ursula has her baby!!!!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 09:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 09:57 pm (UTC)Good to read that you had a good time :).
I wonder what position do boobs sleep in O_o