Good morning!
Sep. 20th, 2010 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7Spent the weekend Out. My roller derby league was just accepted into the Women's Flat Track Derby Association, which is a now-international governing body of the sport-- not only are they the organization that standardizes the rules by which the sport is played, but they also set the standard of what defines a skater-owned league (and were the ones who by bitter experience figured out that leagues ought to be skater-owned if they're going to really succeed as serious athletic endeavors) and also provide a way for more experienced leagues and skaters to transfer knowledge and build community with newer leagues and skaters. Which isn't their marketing blurb, that's just how I understand it. We've been working gradually on getting into this thing for about four years now, and it's been the goal since the first inkling of founding the league. Annually since '07 WFTDA has held regional and national tournaments, and we have watched and yearned to be included.
So it's a huge deal that we got in and I don't think I'd mentioned it here, so I am remiss. (I suppose the aggregated Tweets keep this thing more up to date-- I do wonder if people read those. I am sorry that I don't have time to write dedicated content here-- the Twitter is seen by more of my real-life people, and I mirror it to Facebook for even more real-life people, and it's the easiest thing for me to update whilst not at a computer, so sometimes I'll ping it with things I want to come here. It's probably a pain in the ass to read for the LJ peeps, but as I've said before, this LJ is actually primarily for me, and I don't mind reading the Tweets.)
Anyway. As part of our membership application, which is complicated and took us all four years (it kept changing; in WFTDA's defense, they kept changing too so they had to keep up with the changing times-- the global number of derby leagues went from about 50 to more like a thousand in two or three years, and most of them wanted in NOW NOW NOW, so WFTDA closed membership to restructure), we were assigned a mentor league-- a league of similar age and skill, but who had already completed application and was a full member of WFTDA, and was within our region. Unfortunately our region (East) is somewhat vast, and this league is... Connecticut. Nothing against CT, it's just really far.
So they set up a couple of bouts with us. Given scheduling, the fact that the bouts happened over a month after we actually got accepted is probably inevitable. At any rate, they wanted our non-travel team to go up against their non-travel team. (Each league can have one squad, usually an all-star squad, that wears the WFTDA patch and competes in sanctioned bouts which count in the overall rankings. Almost every league has at least one other team, whose members may or may not overlap, that plays in non-sanctioned bouts which do not count for WFTDA rankings but do serve firstly to give players more experience-- no practice is worth as much as a real bout for experience gaining-- and secondly to give the audiences something to watch. Some leagues make money off of bouts and some leagues lose it, but they all have to play 'em or there's no point to existing.)
Another of our league's local teams was picked to go, but decided the timing wasn't going to fit with their training schedule. So my team decided we'd go, since somebody had to. It didn't fit with our training schedule either and we wound up having to borrow four people from other teams, but it worked out well enough. Leagues offer visiting teams varying amounts of compensation to offset the costs of getting there; unfortunately, since CT is not nearby, what they could afford to give us wasn't going to cover our costs, so we had to spend our upcoming year's uniform fund. We'll have time for one more fundraiser before we have to buy uniforms, so we're hoping that works out. But at least we didn't have to have the skaters pay out of pocket, as that's a bummer and most of us can't afford much-- at the end of August we got dinged for not only monthly dues but the annual insurance premium for WFTDA's insurance, which was kind of a lot and some of us had to scramble for it. (People can't believe how much I pay to play this sport. I can't believe they're surprised. How much do rock climbers spend on their hobbies? Parasailers? Wood-turners? Hobbies are expensive, yo, and just because people like to watch you do your hobby, that doesn't mean you're getting paid for it either. Although I wouldn't mind if my league was making enough that they felt they could subsidize our dues to some extent, and I find it wonderfully reasonable that the teams have started fundraising to cover uniforms and travel expenses-- but I really don't expect to get a free ride, and I really don't expect to have my equipment paid for. I'd probably resent it if it did happen-- my skates cost around $300 on average, and many of my teammates spend far more extravagant amounts-- I've seen $400 just for the plates. I might spend a little more this season-- I'm on the edge of finally being competent and would like to see if pricey skates help-- but that's entirely up to me. I don't expect someone else to bump up my budget. Not to say that if I had time I wouldn't put together my own little fund-raiser-- maybe I will. I gotta think of something to raffle off. Ain't no way I can afford the new skates I want with enough time to break them in.)
I've spent more time in parentheses than out of them this entry. I have a feeling I haven't journaled at length in far, far, far too long. Oops.
Anyway. We figured out as a team that the cheapest mode of travel was to rent two largeish vehicles and use a teammate's employee discount at the Hilton. So we did. We had an extra seat so Z got to go along. (He bought his own hotel room.) So we rode all the way out to New Haven in this molester van. OK, it wasn't really a molester van-- it had windows, not panels. We kept joking that we were either the residents of an assisted living facility, or a church youth group. But we also dubbed it "The Rapin' Van". Because big vans are creepy. It wasn't at all uncomfortable, except for the habit it had of randomly blasting heat out the lower vents in the back while it was defrosting the windshield.
I kept up a running Twitter commentary of the hilarious things people said. I did miss a bunch of them. One was impossible to Tweet-- one teammate confessed to, when much younger, shoplifting a squeaky toy she thought was hilarious. She'd been an employee of the department store, and had smuggled it out in her underpants. This led to someone else miming frisking a clown, and getting to the personal area and having it go "Squook-awh!" Hilarity, but how do you Tweet that? Limitations of the medium.
The hotel was beautiful and far too fancy for the likes of us. It actually had the most comfortable mattress I've ever been on in a hotel. Maybe I was just that tired. But that was later.
The bout was eh, a bout. The floor was sport court-- I'd never skated on sport court, and I knew my wheels weren't the best for it, but I'm not much of a gear-head. Bald-ass wheels suit me well enough. I bought these almost a year ago and have been continuously skating on them ever since. I can't plow-stop for shit because there's no grip, but I have a non-nimble-enough skating stride that 80% of the time I don't notice if I have enough grip or not, and 15% of the time I can compensate if I lose traction, and 5% of the time, well, I'm wearing pads so if I fall whatever.
And it wasn't the wheels that gave me grief on this floor. It was the floor. Sport court is a surface made up of plastic tiles you snap together. They're ridged for traction. This shit was old and somewhat curvy, so it moved freely above whatever the substrate was-- probably concrete. The ridges slowed you down without keeping you from sliding out on the corners, and the movement of the floor absorbed a great deal of your momentum. You had to work like a dog to get moving at all, and staying moving was hard. It vibrated and shook your feet numb, and the movement also sometimes dumped you off your feet. Absorbing your momentum tended to deprive you of any ability for explosive acceleration, and since I suck at that anyway, I looked like a drunk stoned hippo out there missing blocks like a champ.
It also was striped for many sports, and the track stripes were consequently a little hard to see. We're used to ENORMOUS ROPE LIGHTS that kill you if you touch them, so numerous times I looked down to realize that I had skated over the tiny little rope duct-taped to the floor about thirty seconds ago without noticing, and was now assiduously guarding a nonexistent line about ten feet into the infield. WTF mate. Idiot. I'd have to sheepishly re-enter behind my opponents and try again. It happened a bunch of times. It was embarrassing.
Other than that it was fine. The skaters weren't super warm and friendly, but they were perfectly reasonably pleasant. I heard one complain that there was marker on her face, meaning someone had hit her illegally; a teammate kindly informed her that the marker was blue, which meant it was from a CT skater-- the Buffalo girls all had printed uniforms with numbers on the shoulders, or black marker on their arms. So either she'd wiped her face with her own arm, or she'd leaned on somebody. I thought it was funny and cute.
I didn't like the reffing, but who ever does? I'm learning, the more I skate, that it's just a fact of life-- you're going to disagree with the refs, and you're not wrong to do so in your heart, but in the rules it says, dude, the refs make the calls. Maybe you could see from your superior angle that someone wasn't in, and maybe you were paying more attention at that moment, but if you don't get an official review right away and don't set it straight, that's just how it is. Nothing was eggregious, nothing was unsafe, nothing was awful, and we weren't defeated by the refs-- we lost because we simply didn't have as well-practiced a squad, and they had obviously all been skating together for months and worked together very well. (There were only 10 players on their team, and at least 3 of them were pulled down from the WFTDA-ranked A team-- I spoke to them afterward and they're near the end of their season, about to pull in a new crop of rookies. So they're where we were in May. If we'd faced them in May, it would've been a way different game.)
So yes, we lost. It was a good game, and we were obviously pretty well-matched in overall skill levels. We had a similar grasp of tactics-- the difference was that they had the teamwork to execute it, and to avoid our attempts at strategy. We were missing a few key players (including one who fell down the stairs and severely sprained her ankle ON THE WAY to get on the van that morning-- suck!!!!), and had four skaters (out of 14) with whom we weren't at all used to skating-- and a fifth who was a recent trade back to the squad, with whom most of our skaters hadn't skated. The 2010 KOs were based on two-man mini-teams that worked together within the packs-- and we had not one of those mini-teams intact. So I would reach for my partner, and she wouldn't be there, she'd be some other perfectly reasonable place where it was normal for her to be, but I didn't expect. And I wouldn't be able to find her in time, and the millisecond's opportunity would pass, and their jammer would whizz by for 4 more points.
We had the score within 10 for most of the first half-- they'd pull away, we'd catch up, they'd pull away, we'd whittle it down to within 3 points, we'd get ahead by one-- and then during the second half our jammer got boxed for passing two out-of-play skaters (see? contention! but if our captain or alternate never contested it, it doesn't do any good to complain! I just mention it, is all) and they had a 20-point jam and we spent the rest of the game trying unsuccessfully to dig ourselves out of it. They got our number, 4 months' break from derby meant we couldn't adjust, and then the floor sucked our will to live, and we kept them from burying us but couldn't come back to within spitting distance of a lead again. It stayed interesting, and we did stuff we could be proud of, and their audience loved the hell out of it, but it was a little disappointing, I won't lie.
I was more disappointed with our performance at the after-party, however. We had been undefeated in after parties, but having gotten up at 4:30 to drive there, we were pretty tired. And the hotel was a good ten miles away through winding little roads we didn't know at all. And we wanted to leave early the next morning. And we didn't all have our own cars to get back to the hotel with. So... most of us lamed out and went back to the hotel really early. It was sad. And disappointing. We really didn't bring our A-game to that party.
I had intended to keep partying at the hotel, but I wanted to shower first, and I got out of the shower and had to drag myself to the bed, and once I sat on the bed, I don't even know what happened. It was suddenly morning. Man I've never slept that well in a hotel. It had paper-thin walls and as I undressed for my shower I was listening to a particularly piercing teammate's account of her pre-bout rituals and thinking "Man, I'll never sleep", but either everyone shut up immediately when I lay down, or... No, I'm thinking I was just really freaking tired.
Mad props to Supernova (the coach)'s boyfriend, who drove all the way there and all the way back, with a really irritatingly malfunctioning GPS that kept throwing out sudden instructions to make abrupt wrong turns. It did this about fifteen times, no lie, before we finally shut it off and let Z give the directions home. (We've driven most of the way from CT to Buffalo a zillion times.) He was brutally effective, as a driver, and got shit done, including off-roading across an exit ramp median when the GPS told us to go north when it meant south. (We found out later that not only did the other half of the team, following in an SUV, do the same, but our bench manager, at a different time in a different car, ALSO did the EXACT same thing at the same entrance ramp! Hilarious. Maybe that's just poor signage, and not a shitty GPS, after all. I'm surprised the grass on that median wasn't a bit more worn-down.)
I'm sore today. I could feel during warm-ups that I was not as fit as I ought to be. I told the bench manager that I was used to playing an every-other-jam rotation, and as long as I was blocking (not jamming), I ought to be able to keep that up with no problem, but I wasn't in my full season shape and so I miiiight need to sit down. By the halfway point of the second period, I was feeling the lead in my legs and thought I might need to ask for a break, but I looked around and anyone who might sub for me looked to be in even worse straits-- lots of pulled groin muscles from the floor, some sore legs and necks from falls, or bewildered looks of being lost without their normal partners and not able to adjust to the unfamiliar play-- so I figured I'd just keep going out there. I was a little sorry-- I know I missed a few chances because I was just too exhausted-- but for the most part I at least did myself credit. I wasn't ever going to be an MVP but I held my place.
So I got a lot of work to do but since I have three months until my next bout, I've got a lot of time in which to do it. I definitely, definitely need new skates, though.
Which I can't afford, because I just bought a new camera instead. Ohhh! That's another story entirely. Which I don't have time for right now.
So, the short quick version is that while I still want the just-announced Nikon D7000, I just don't know how long it'll be before I can get one. It won't be released until the end of October. It probably won't go up for employee purchase until December or January. And right after the holidays, I almost certainly won't be able to afford it. We're looking at April or so before I'd have a chance to buy it. I can't handle it any longer. I can't wait that long. I could wait until December or so; my camera's OK and I can do portraits and scenery and fun stuff with it. But I want so badly to take roller derby action shots, and my old camera is terrible for those.
So when some guy came in on Friday afternoon with a used D300 body he wanted to trade in for store credit towards a D7000 when they come out... I thought about it for about 3 hours, played with the camera, looked it over, texted with Z, and finally, at 5 to 5, bought the damn thing.
It's an older model, yeah-- 2008?-- and doesn't do video, takes only Compact Flash (no SD, which is more standard now, and less prone to damage, though slower and less stable overall-- but cheaper, for sure, in the larger sizes), doesn't have a few of the features I was really looking for. But it was $800 instead of $1200, and the eBay guy said he didn't think it would go down in value *that* much once the D7000 came out. So if once I get my hands on a 7000 I can't live with the 300 anymore, I can probably sell it for at least what I paid for it.
And, it's compatible with all the same lenses and accessories. So I can start picking up lenses and flashes and things now, and keep them if/when I sell it on.
The only thing is that it's a brick. It's so heavy. It's probably twice the weight of the Rebel's body. And there's no auto modes, really, so I have to give a lot more thought to the settings. Which I can do; I've read the owner's manual and should have some time soon to sit with it and pick through them and customize them. I took it with me to CT and took a bunch of pictures. Many came out underexposed, so I'm a bit concerned about that. (Why? What is it thinking? The Rebel underexposed things sometimes and I usually could figure out why. So I have to get the hang of this one. I realized immediately looking on the computer that it underexposed at the skating venue because duh, the floor was white. But there are some outdoor shots that are under, so I have to take a good look at the metering settings.)
But I'm already getting the hang of it, and it is so much more camera than I'm used to, that I can't not be excited.
Ha, I said I didn't have time and here I am going on about it endlessly. Well, I don't have time to post pics-- I have to edit them.
And I don't have a lens. I'm torn between hunting for used ones and saving up for nice new ones. I'll have to research-- I just don't know enough.
And I don't have money. Phooey.
So it's a huge deal that we got in and I don't think I'd mentioned it here, so I am remiss. (I suppose the aggregated Tweets keep this thing more up to date-- I do wonder if people read those. I am sorry that I don't have time to write dedicated content here-- the Twitter is seen by more of my real-life people, and I mirror it to Facebook for even more real-life people, and it's the easiest thing for me to update whilst not at a computer, so sometimes I'll ping it with things I want to come here. It's probably a pain in the ass to read for the LJ peeps, but as I've said before, this LJ is actually primarily for me, and I don't mind reading the Tweets.)
Anyway. As part of our membership application, which is complicated and took us all four years (it kept changing; in WFTDA's defense, they kept changing too so they had to keep up with the changing times-- the global number of derby leagues went from about 50 to more like a thousand in two or three years, and most of them wanted in NOW NOW NOW, so WFTDA closed membership to restructure), we were assigned a mentor league-- a league of similar age and skill, but who had already completed application and was a full member of WFTDA, and was within our region. Unfortunately our region (East) is somewhat vast, and this league is... Connecticut. Nothing against CT, it's just really far.
So they set up a couple of bouts with us. Given scheduling, the fact that the bouts happened over a month after we actually got accepted is probably inevitable. At any rate, they wanted our non-travel team to go up against their non-travel team. (Each league can have one squad, usually an all-star squad, that wears the WFTDA patch and competes in sanctioned bouts which count in the overall rankings. Almost every league has at least one other team, whose members may or may not overlap, that plays in non-sanctioned bouts which do not count for WFTDA rankings but do serve firstly to give players more experience-- no practice is worth as much as a real bout for experience gaining-- and secondly to give the audiences something to watch. Some leagues make money off of bouts and some leagues lose it, but they all have to play 'em or there's no point to existing.)
Another of our league's local teams was picked to go, but decided the timing wasn't going to fit with their training schedule. So my team decided we'd go, since somebody had to. It didn't fit with our training schedule either and we wound up having to borrow four people from other teams, but it worked out well enough. Leagues offer visiting teams varying amounts of compensation to offset the costs of getting there; unfortunately, since CT is not nearby, what they could afford to give us wasn't going to cover our costs, so we had to spend our upcoming year's uniform fund. We'll have time for one more fundraiser before we have to buy uniforms, so we're hoping that works out. But at least we didn't have to have the skaters pay out of pocket, as that's a bummer and most of us can't afford much-- at the end of August we got dinged for not only monthly dues but the annual insurance premium for WFTDA's insurance, which was kind of a lot and some of us had to scramble for it. (People can't believe how much I pay to play this sport. I can't believe they're surprised. How much do rock climbers spend on their hobbies? Parasailers? Wood-turners? Hobbies are expensive, yo, and just because people like to watch you do your hobby, that doesn't mean you're getting paid for it either. Although I wouldn't mind if my league was making enough that they felt they could subsidize our dues to some extent, and I find it wonderfully reasonable that the teams have started fundraising to cover uniforms and travel expenses-- but I really don't expect to get a free ride, and I really don't expect to have my equipment paid for. I'd probably resent it if it did happen-- my skates cost around $300 on average, and many of my teammates spend far more extravagant amounts-- I've seen $400 just for the plates. I might spend a little more this season-- I'm on the edge of finally being competent and would like to see if pricey skates help-- but that's entirely up to me. I don't expect someone else to bump up my budget. Not to say that if I had time I wouldn't put together my own little fund-raiser-- maybe I will. I gotta think of something to raffle off. Ain't no way I can afford the new skates I want with enough time to break them in.)
I've spent more time in parentheses than out of them this entry. I have a feeling I haven't journaled at length in far, far, far too long. Oops.
Anyway. We figured out as a team that the cheapest mode of travel was to rent two largeish vehicles and use a teammate's employee discount at the Hilton. So we did. We had an extra seat so Z got to go along. (He bought his own hotel room.) So we rode all the way out to New Haven in this molester van. OK, it wasn't really a molester van-- it had windows, not panels. We kept joking that we were either the residents of an assisted living facility, or a church youth group. But we also dubbed it "The Rapin' Van". Because big vans are creepy. It wasn't at all uncomfortable, except for the habit it had of randomly blasting heat out the lower vents in the back while it was defrosting the windshield.
I kept up a running Twitter commentary of the hilarious things people said. I did miss a bunch of them. One was impossible to Tweet-- one teammate confessed to, when much younger, shoplifting a squeaky toy she thought was hilarious. She'd been an employee of the department store, and had smuggled it out in her underpants. This led to someone else miming frisking a clown, and getting to the personal area and having it go "Squook-awh!" Hilarity, but how do you Tweet that? Limitations of the medium.
The hotel was beautiful and far too fancy for the likes of us. It actually had the most comfortable mattress I've ever been on in a hotel. Maybe I was just that tired. But that was later.
The bout was eh, a bout. The floor was sport court-- I'd never skated on sport court, and I knew my wheels weren't the best for it, but I'm not much of a gear-head. Bald-ass wheels suit me well enough. I bought these almost a year ago and have been continuously skating on them ever since. I can't plow-stop for shit because there's no grip, but I have a non-nimble-enough skating stride that 80% of the time I don't notice if I have enough grip or not, and 15% of the time I can compensate if I lose traction, and 5% of the time, well, I'm wearing pads so if I fall whatever.
And it wasn't the wheels that gave me grief on this floor. It was the floor. Sport court is a surface made up of plastic tiles you snap together. They're ridged for traction. This shit was old and somewhat curvy, so it moved freely above whatever the substrate was-- probably concrete. The ridges slowed you down without keeping you from sliding out on the corners, and the movement of the floor absorbed a great deal of your momentum. You had to work like a dog to get moving at all, and staying moving was hard. It vibrated and shook your feet numb, and the movement also sometimes dumped you off your feet. Absorbing your momentum tended to deprive you of any ability for explosive acceleration, and since I suck at that anyway, I looked like a drunk stoned hippo out there missing blocks like a champ.
It also was striped for many sports, and the track stripes were consequently a little hard to see. We're used to ENORMOUS ROPE LIGHTS that kill you if you touch them, so numerous times I looked down to realize that I had skated over the tiny little rope duct-taped to the floor about thirty seconds ago without noticing, and was now assiduously guarding a nonexistent line about ten feet into the infield. WTF mate. Idiot. I'd have to sheepishly re-enter behind my opponents and try again. It happened a bunch of times. It was embarrassing.
Other than that it was fine. The skaters weren't super warm and friendly, but they were perfectly reasonably pleasant. I heard one complain that there was marker on her face, meaning someone had hit her illegally; a teammate kindly informed her that the marker was blue, which meant it was from a CT skater-- the Buffalo girls all had printed uniforms with numbers on the shoulders, or black marker on their arms. So either she'd wiped her face with her own arm, or she'd leaned on somebody. I thought it was funny and cute.
I didn't like the reffing, but who ever does? I'm learning, the more I skate, that it's just a fact of life-- you're going to disagree with the refs, and you're not wrong to do so in your heart, but in the rules it says, dude, the refs make the calls. Maybe you could see from your superior angle that someone wasn't in, and maybe you were paying more attention at that moment, but if you don't get an official review right away and don't set it straight, that's just how it is. Nothing was eggregious, nothing was unsafe, nothing was awful, and we weren't defeated by the refs-- we lost because we simply didn't have as well-practiced a squad, and they had obviously all been skating together for months and worked together very well. (There were only 10 players on their team, and at least 3 of them were pulled down from the WFTDA-ranked A team-- I spoke to them afterward and they're near the end of their season, about to pull in a new crop of rookies. So they're where we were in May. If we'd faced them in May, it would've been a way different game.)
So yes, we lost. It was a good game, and we were obviously pretty well-matched in overall skill levels. We had a similar grasp of tactics-- the difference was that they had the teamwork to execute it, and to avoid our attempts at strategy. We were missing a few key players (including one who fell down the stairs and severely sprained her ankle ON THE WAY to get on the van that morning-- suck!!!!), and had four skaters (out of 14) with whom we weren't at all used to skating-- and a fifth who was a recent trade back to the squad, with whom most of our skaters hadn't skated. The 2010 KOs were based on two-man mini-teams that worked together within the packs-- and we had not one of those mini-teams intact. So I would reach for my partner, and she wouldn't be there, she'd be some other perfectly reasonable place where it was normal for her to be, but I didn't expect. And I wouldn't be able to find her in time, and the millisecond's opportunity would pass, and their jammer would whizz by for 4 more points.
We had the score within 10 for most of the first half-- they'd pull away, we'd catch up, they'd pull away, we'd whittle it down to within 3 points, we'd get ahead by one-- and then during the second half our jammer got boxed for passing two out-of-play skaters (see? contention! but if our captain or alternate never contested it, it doesn't do any good to complain! I just mention it, is all) and they had a 20-point jam and we spent the rest of the game trying unsuccessfully to dig ourselves out of it. They got our number, 4 months' break from derby meant we couldn't adjust, and then the floor sucked our will to live, and we kept them from burying us but couldn't come back to within spitting distance of a lead again. It stayed interesting, and we did stuff we could be proud of, and their audience loved the hell out of it, but it was a little disappointing, I won't lie.
I was more disappointed with our performance at the after-party, however. We had been undefeated in after parties, but having gotten up at 4:30 to drive there, we were pretty tired. And the hotel was a good ten miles away through winding little roads we didn't know at all. And we wanted to leave early the next morning. And we didn't all have our own cars to get back to the hotel with. So... most of us lamed out and went back to the hotel really early. It was sad. And disappointing. We really didn't bring our A-game to that party.
I had intended to keep partying at the hotel, but I wanted to shower first, and I got out of the shower and had to drag myself to the bed, and once I sat on the bed, I don't even know what happened. It was suddenly morning. Man I've never slept that well in a hotel. It had paper-thin walls and as I undressed for my shower I was listening to a particularly piercing teammate's account of her pre-bout rituals and thinking "Man, I'll never sleep", but either everyone shut up immediately when I lay down, or... No, I'm thinking I was just really freaking tired.
Mad props to Supernova (the coach)'s boyfriend, who drove all the way there and all the way back, with a really irritatingly malfunctioning GPS that kept throwing out sudden instructions to make abrupt wrong turns. It did this about fifteen times, no lie, before we finally shut it off and let Z give the directions home. (We've driven most of the way from CT to Buffalo a zillion times.) He was brutally effective, as a driver, and got shit done, including off-roading across an exit ramp median when the GPS told us to go north when it meant south. (We found out later that not only did the other half of the team, following in an SUV, do the same, but our bench manager, at a different time in a different car, ALSO did the EXACT same thing at the same entrance ramp! Hilarious. Maybe that's just poor signage, and not a shitty GPS, after all. I'm surprised the grass on that median wasn't a bit more worn-down.)
I'm sore today. I could feel during warm-ups that I was not as fit as I ought to be. I told the bench manager that I was used to playing an every-other-jam rotation, and as long as I was blocking (not jamming), I ought to be able to keep that up with no problem, but I wasn't in my full season shape and so I miiiight need to sit down. By the halfway point of the second period, I was feeling the lead in my legs and thought I might need to ask for a break, but I looked around and anyone who might sub for me looked to be in even worse straits-- lots of pulled groin muscles from the floor, some sore legs and necks from falls, or bewildered looks of being lost without their normal partners and not able to adjust to the unfamiliar play-- so I figured I'd just keep going out there. I was a little sorry-- I know I missed a few chances because I was just too exhausted-- but for the most part I at least did myself credit. I wasn't ever going to be an MVP but I held my place.
So I got a lot of work to do but since I have three months until my next bout, I've got a lot of time in which to do it. I definitely, definitely need new skates, though.
Which I can't afford, because I just bought a new camera instead. Ohhh! That's another story entirely. Which I don't have time for right now.
So, the short quick version is that while I still want the just-announced Nikon D7000, I just don't know how long it'll be before I can get one. It won't be released until the end of October. It probably won't go up for employee purchase until December or January. And right after the holidays, I almost certainly won't be able to afford it. We're looking at April or so before I'd have a chance to buy it. I can't handle it any longer. I can't wait that long. I could wait until December or so; my camera's OK and I can do portraits and scenery and fun stuff with it. But I want so badly to take roller derby action shots, and my old camera is terrible for those.
So when some guy came in on Friday afternoon with a used D300 body he wanted to trade in for store credit towards a D7000 when they come out... I thought about it for about 3 hours, played with the camera, looked it over, texted with Z, and finally, at 5 to 5, bought the damn thing.
It's an older model, yeah-- 2008?-- and doesn't do video, takes only Compact Flash (no SD, which is more standard now, and less prone to damage, though slower and less stable overall-- but cheaper, for sure, in the larger sizes), doesn't have a few of the features I was really looking for. But it was $800 instead of $1200, and the eBay guy said he didn't think it would go down in value *that* much once the D7000 came out. So if once I get my hands on a 7000 I can't live with the 300 anymore, I can probably sell it for at least what I paid for it.
And, it's compatible with all the same lenses and accessories. So I can start picking up lenses and flashes and things now, and keep them if/when I sell it on.
The only thing is that it's a brick. It's so heavy. It's probably twice the weight of the Rebel's body. And there's no auto modes, really, so I have to give a lot more thought to the settings. Which I can do; I've read the owner's manual and should have some time soon to sit with it and pick through them and customize them. I took it with me to CT and took a bunch of pictures. Many came out underexposed, so I'm a bit concerned about that. (Why? What is it thinking? The Rebel underexposed things sometimes and I usually could figure out why. So I have to get the hang of this one. I realized immediately looking on the computer that it underexposed at the skating venue because duh, the floor was white. But there are some outdoor shots that are under, so I have to take a good look at the metering settings.)
But I'm already getting the hang of it, and it is so much more camera than I'm used to, that I can't not be excited.
Ha, I said I didn't have time and here I am going on about it endlessly. Well, I don't have time to post pics-- I have to edit them.
And I don't have a lens. I'm torn between hunting for used ones and saving up for nice new ones. I'll have to research-- I just don't know enough.
And I don't have money. Phooey.
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Date: 2010-09-21 02:25 am (UTC)I only see some of your tweets on fb -- fb is so strange about what it lets us see -- so I do click on the link here and it is terribly annoying. So you see? You are so loved that I click on a link. :)
Great description of the event. I cannot WAIT to see a match. With you in it. That would rock.
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Date: 2010-09-21 03:54 am (UTC)You shouldn't have to click a link to read it, though-- I just stick it behind a cut, because someone else on my f-list Tweets in-fucking-cessantly and has it echoed to her LJ not behind a cut every single day and it's like a whole page load of @-replies and meaningless hashtags I can't puzzle through, and I thought, "I will never do that to my flist."
I tried out for the travel team last year expressly for the purpose of playing in the match vs. Albany last June. I didn't make it, though. So I didn't get to play. Of course. October 2nd, Albany is playing us, here in Buffalo. I look forward to watching that one. Apparently they're a pain in the ass to skate against-- eh, some teams are like that-- so I'm not super sorry to miss it. And I didn't really actually want to deal with the travel team, so I'm not heartbroken not to be on it. But I am sad; nobody I know bothers to come to the local bouts, so the only fans I have are the ones I've earned. Which is sort of nice, that total strangers have been wooed by me sufficiently to cheer for me, but sort of sad; everyone else has like moms and cousins and things, and I don't.