stop... continue!
Feb. 1st, 2011 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7Listening to Electric Six's album Fire, which is over the top and silly and catchy. I don't ever find much new music so I've been listening to a lot less than normal lately. The problem with that is that I wind up with prescription-strength earworms of the most ridiculous shit, and it's caused by the stupidest, fleetingest of triggers. And I'm talking three-day nonstop earworms. Obviously I need to listen to more music in my life, but it's not easy to find new things to listen to.
'Cause I invented the night
I invented the night
I invented the night in my laborat'ry
with lust and lies
E6 is most famous for their ridiculous and controversial song "Gay Bar", but it's worth mentioning that the controversial lyrics ("Let's start a nuclear war / at the gay bar!") aren't any different from the rest of the album-- they're constantly exhorting the listener to start fires, start wars, have nuclear wars, etc. in the most ludicrous of un-contexts. They seem a tad obsessed, rhetorically speaking. (The album is called "Fire" for a reason, because most of the things in it are on fire.)
Life update:
WE WON!!!!!! My team finally won a game. We hadn't won a game since midway through the 2009 season. Yes-- we went totally winless in 2010, even with a zillion amazing rookies. I felt so, so happy when we finally won, yes for our newly-drafted rookies, for several of whom it was their first bout-- but more so for the rookies we drafted last year, who've been working their asses off for about eighteen calendar months now with little to no pause, and had never until that moment had a win.
We played our full roster, but not in equal rotation-- we opened up a large lead, but the other team responded by putting out only their stars for a whole bunch of jams in a row (derby has 'jams' sort of like hockey has 'shifts', except hockey switches out and keeps going, and derby pauses the action for thirty seconds every two minutes or so to re-set. We're way more intense than hockey, if you can believe it, so this is necessary both for skaters and for fans!). So our team did the same, and what it came down to was that we had more stars. (In my not particularly humble opinion, at least on the surface of it; I'm not going to go into an in-depth analysis cuz nobody reading this particularly cares, and not me either at the moment. Maybe later.) We had a slightly deeper rotation of really good players, I think-- at least, players who were all on the same page and with a similar skill level. It's no secret that we have no less than three of the top 5 or 6 jammers in the entire league on our team (for the record, *I* am not in the top *fifty*), and four of the top 10, but I was flattered at the after-party when several members of the opposing team came up to me and said that while they'd expected our jammers to be good, they had been caught a little off-guard by how good our pack-work (blockers) was. As a blocker I was quite pleased.
(Most teams have two really good jammers, and maybe a third decent one, and a fourth-string emergency multipurpose backup; we had a solid rotation of four. It was a nice luxury, and meant we could use our fifth in training as a very nimble and effective blocker.)
I did get mildly injured-- bruised my left knee quite badly right through my kneepad. it didn't slip, didn't slide, didn't fall down; I took a straight-on perfectly unexceptional but hard landing on it, using it for its intended purpose, and it simply didn't absorb the impact. It hurt like a bitch, and still does. I Tweeted a photo of my left knee on Sunday, and the iPhone sort of washed out the stunning depth of colors of the thing. It's super gross and really tender, but mostly not weight-bearing.
Of course I've ordered new kneepads already. I'm going to sell or give away the old ones, to someone smaller/lighter than me, or who doesn't fall as hard, or something. (I was gonna toss 'em, but y'know, it's wasteful. And they'd probably work for somebody.) I ordered the kind I had from 2006-2010 and loved. There was a coupon. I also got new wristguards to replace my 2006 ones, which are not entirely disintegrated but are totally disgusting-smelling and can't be salvaged. (I'll try, and will keep them for outdoor use, probably. They just need a really long soak and a good airing in the sun, and then again, and then again, and I haven't had time to do that for, well, since summer.)
And I got new elbow pads to replace my 2006 ones, which are fine except they've stretched or my arms have shrunk. (I actually think my arms have shrunk, but that's a bit surprising.)
Anyway-- the team is ecstatic. We had a wonderful brunch the day after. We all get along quite well-- there's drama but it's so incredibly minor I can't even make the new girls understand how bad it used to be, that this is nothing. It's nothing. There's a girl who's a little negative; there's another girl who sometimes annoys me. Christ almighty, that's it? Nobody's in jail, nobody's trying to kill anybody, nobody's threatening lawsuits-- I will be annoyed all day and all night like this and still be smiling. Go on! Be slightly socially awkward! I can take it! For real.
So we all get along quite well and it's been a lovely two years, but it's even nicer to be vindicated. Because when you lose by two points, everybody's full of "helpful" oh if only you'd tried this, you know-s. When you win by 20, they shut up and leave you alone and there's so much less snideness. I personally don't care that much about *me* winning, but the whole group is just so much happier-- there's so much less of a weight on our shoulders. Fine! We finally won! We're not wrong about *everything*. So it's pretty great.
Our goal for the next bout is to play our entire roster in more or less equal rotation.
Enough derby dorkage. What else?
The manager of the store near my house had a baby on Sunday. (Well, his fiancee did.) So I'm covering for him. That means I have a 5-minute commute instead of a 35-minute one. I don't mind this at all. I mind so little I even agreed to skip practice so that I could cover a late shift. I wasn't going anyway-- I'll be off-skates until my new kneepads come in, I think, which will give my knee time to heal. It's just a bit swollen and it would hurt to put kneepads on over it-- it would also hurt unimaginably to fall on it, so I won't. I have time to be a wuss, we don't skate again until March.
I like working at the other location because 1) the guys there aren't tired of me yet, so I can be a horrible person and not offend them yet, and 2) the heat works there so I have the opportunity to dress like a normal-ish person. Whee!
Not that I will, but I do appreciate not having to wear three pairs of tights. (Or a pair of stockings, a pair of tights, and a pair of leggings, with legwarmers and booty shorts overtop, plus a skirt, a tank top, a t-shirt, another t-shirt, and a sweater.) I'm at an awkward weight/shape at the moment-- I'm down below obese again, if you follow the Bullshit BMI-O-Meter-- isn't it funny? At 195 I have a BMI of 29, which is "overweight". At 200 I have a BMI of 30 which is "obese" and I can bona-fide contribute to Teh Obeesities Epidemic ONOZ! The difference? Usually muscle mass.
At the moment I'm lighter than normal, and smaller in the midsection, but larger in the thighs. So my pants WON'T STAY UP no matter WHAT. It's like they're on a mission to hit my knees. So i have to wear skirts most of the time. (It's weird, though; when my thighs get big but not jiggly, like they are, it's usually at my heavier points, so I'm heavier. I think the difference is that over Xmas I didn't have time for normal eating, so I've probably lost weight and broken my metabolism a little again. Blech, I hate doing that.)
Anyway. I want to do outfit blogging for February, but we'll have to see if I manage to have time. I set up the camera and a little backdrop in the basement. Maybe I'll get to it. I did take photos of my boutfit, but not the hair. Alas! We'll have to see.
'Cause I invented the night
I invented the night
I invented the night in my laborat'ry
with lust and lies
E6 is most famous for their ridiculous and controversial song "Gay Bar", but it's worth mentioning that the controversial lyrics ("Let's start a nuclear war / at the gay bar!") aren't any different from the rest of the album-- they're constantly exhorting the listener to start fires, start wars, have nuclear wars, etc. in the most ludicrous of un-contexts. They seem a tad obsessed, rhetorically speaking. (The album is called "Fire" for a reason, because most of the things in it are on fire.)
Life update:
WE WON!!!!!! My team finally won a game. We hadn't won a game since midway through the 2009 season. Yes-- we went totally winless in 2010, even with a zillion amazing rookies. I felt so, so happy when we finally won, yes for our newly-drafted rookies, for several of whom it was their first bout-- but more so for the rookies we drafted last year, who've been working their asses off for about eighteen calendar months now with little to no pause, and had never until that moment had a win.
We played our full roster, but not in equal rotation-- we opened up a large lead, but the other team responded by putting out only their stars for a whole bunch of jams in a row (derby has 'jams' sort of like hockey has 'shifts', except hockey switches out and keeps going, and derby pauses the action for thirty seconds every two minutes or so to re-set. We're way more intense than hockey, if you can believe it, so this is necessary both for skaters and for fans!). So our team did the same, and what it came down to was that we had more stars. (In my not particularly humble opinion, at least on the surface of it; I'm not going to go into an in-depth analysis cuz nobody reading this particularly cares, and not me either at the moment. Maybe later.) We had a slightly deeper rotation of really good players, I think-- at least, players who were all on the same page and with a similar skill level. It's no secret that we have no less than three of the top 5 or 6 jammers in the entire league on our team (for the record, *I* am not in the top *fifty*), and four of the top 10, but I was flattered at the after-party when several members of the opposing team came up to me and said that while they'd expected our jammers to be good, they had been caught a little off-guard by how good our pack-work (blockers) was. As a blocker I was quite pleased.
(Most teams have two really good jammers, and maybe a third decent one, and a fourth-string emergency multipurpose backup; we had a solid rotation of four. It was a nice luxury, and meant we could use our fifth in training as a very nimble and effective blocker.)
I did get mildly injured-- bruised my left knee quite badly right through my kneepad. it didn't slip, didn't slide, didn't fall down; I took a straight-on perfectly unexceptional but hard landing on it, using it for its intended purpose, and it simply didn't absorb the impact. It hurt like a bitch, and still does. I Tweeted a photo of my left knee on Sunday, and the iPhone sort of washed out the stunning depth of colors of the thing. It's super gross and really tender, but mostly not weight-bearing.
Of course I've ordered new kneepads already. I'm going to sell or give away the old ones, to someone smaller/lighter than me, or who doesn't fall as hard, or something. (I was gonna toss 'em, but y'know, it's wasteful. And they'd probably work for somebody.) I ordered the kind I had from 2006-2010 and loved. There was a coupon. I also got new wristguards to replace my 2006 ones, which are not entirely disintegrated but are totally disgusting-smelling and can't be salvaged. (I'll try, and will keep them for outdoor use, probably. They just need a really long soak and a good airing in the sun, and then again, and then again, and I haven't had time to do that for, well, since summer.)
And I got new elbow pads to replace my 2006 ones, which are fine except they've stretched or my arms have shrunk. (I actually think my arms have shrunk, but that's a bit surprising.)
Anyway-- the team is ecstatic. We had a wonderful brunch the day after. We all get along quite well-- there's drama but it's so incredibly minor I can't even make the new girls understand how bad it used to be, that this is nothing. It's nothing. There's a girl who's a little negative; there's another girl who sometimes annoys me. Christ almighty, that's it? Nobody's in jail, nobody's trying to kill anybody, nobody's threatening lawsuits-- I will be annoyed all day and all night like this and still be smiling. Go on! Be slightly socially awkward! I can take it! For real.
So we all get along quite well and it's been a lovely two years, but it's even nicer to be vindicated. Because when you lose by two points, everybody's full of "helpful" oh if only you'd tried this, you know-s. When you win by 20, they shut up and leave you alone and there's so much less snideness. I personally don't care that much about *me* winning, but the whole group is just so much happier-- there's so much less of a weight on our shoulders. Fine! We finally won! We're not wrong about *everything*. So it's pretty great.
Our goal for the next bout is to play our entire roster in more or less equal rotation.
Enough derby dorkage. What else?
The manager of the store near my house had a baby on Sunday. (Well, his fiancee did.) So I'm covering for him. That means I have a 5-minute commute instead of a 35-minute one. I don't mind this at all. I mind so little I even agreed to skip practice so that I could cover a late shift. I wasn't going anyway-- I'll be off-skates until my new kneepads come in, I think, which will give my knee time to heal. It's just a bit swollen and it would hurt to put kneepads on over it-- it would also hurt unimaginably to fall on it, so I won't. I have time to be a wuss, we don't skate again until March.
I like working at the other location because 1) the guys there aren't tired of me yet, so I can be a horrible person and not offend them yet, and 2) the heat works there so I have the opportunity to dress like a normal-ish person. Whee!
Not that I will, but I do appreciate not having to wear three pairs of tights. (Or a pair of stockings, a pair of tights, and a pair of leggings, with legwarmers and booty shorts overtop, plus a skirt, a tank top, a t-shirt, another t-shirt, and a sweater.) I'm at an awkward weight/shape at the moment-- I'm down below obese again, if you follow the Bullshit BMI-O-Meter-- isn't it funny? At 195 I have a BMI of 29, which is "overweight". At 200 I have a BMI of 30 which is "obese" and I can bona-fide contribute to Teh Obeesities Epidemic ONOZ! The difference? Usually muscle mass.
At the moment I'm lighter than normal, and smaller in the midsection, but larger in the thighs. So my pants WON'T STAY UP no matter WHAT. It's like they're on a mission to hit my knees. So i have to wear skirts most of the time. (It's weird, though; when my thighs get big but not jiggly, like they are, it's usually at my heavier points, so I'm heavier. I think the difference is that over Xmas I didn't have time for normal eating, so I've probably lost weight and broken my metabolism a little again. Blech, I hate doing that.)
Anyway. I want to do outfit blogging for February, but we'll have to see if I manage to have time. I set up the camera and a little backdrop in the basement. Maybe I'll get to it. I did take photos of my boutfit, but not the hair. Alas! We'll have to see.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 07:21 pm (UTC)This is the funniest thing I have read all day. :) Sorry to hear your clothes are encouraging you to become a stripper, but maybe it will get you more sales? It's gotta be worth something.
When's your bout in March?
no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 11:37 pm (UTC)No, saggy-butt pants encourage no sales, alas.