dragonlady7

I'm just doing my part to keep everyone off Tumblr today, right?

Here's another massive photo post. This time, it's roller derby photos.



( these are the last bout i ever shot and idk if they ever got published )

I managed to get to roller derby practice last night too. It was awesome, and I blogged more about it over here. I sort of feel like maybe I shouldn't blog so much about roller derby here, but we'll see: every time I've tried to break things out into a separate blog it's failed, so you know I'll be back. I just feel like I should put something up on Myspace that isn't whining, since that's all that most of the rollergirls see of me.

In other news I just got an email from my Dad and he is so adorable. It's a long email and i know it must've taken him an hour or more to write it, because he types so slowly. (It's a sign of their generation, I think, that my mother types 100 wpm but is uncomfortable learning new tasks on the computer, while Dad is largely unintimidated by new computer programs as he had to learn a lot of them for work, but was never taught to type properly. Of course girls were taught to type! But why would you teach a boy to type? Hah!)

He's bought himself a new pistol, a .22, because try as he might he's never really become that comfortable with the larger-caliber pistols that are standard in the Army, and now that he doesn't need to use them he's happier not doing so. Also, the ammunition for a .22 is tremendously cheaper than for a .45 or a 9mm, and the muzzle report is a great deal less loud, and the weapon is much lighter. In general they're just so much easier and safer to handle (not that a bullet ain't a bullet, but for example hearing protection and the amount the gun kicks are much more manageable for the smaller caliber), and he's been wanting one for a while. So Ann and Katy bought him a gift certificate to the gun shop he frequents, and so he finally went ahead and got the pistol he wanted.
I don't know if I mentioned that I bought him (with some chipping in from Fiona) a new-antique straight razor (newly made from old parts; authentically old, but never used), and while he had said he probably wouldn't use it every day, he's been using it a lot this past week and giving me updates, with great glee. So I'm glad for that.

In order to have this pistol, I had to go to the County Clerk's office to get it put on my permit; then the store could give it to me. The person who handles permits was very nice, and very efficient (a government employee!). As my permit was 31 years old, and the photo showed me in a full beard looking like a terrorist, that all had to be updated, a new photo taken, and a thumbprint! Very high-tech. All took 10 minutes (she also told me that if I die, my next-of-kin have 10 days to contact her, turn in the permit, and tell her how the guns will be disposed of! Something to think about, as anyone in NY has to have a permit to get them). So, Ann & I picked up the gun yesterday and tried it out. We both shot better with it than we had with the other ones. It's pleasant to fire, and with ammo cheaper, much more enticing to try different techniques. It will make practice more inviting, and I think will easily help improve accuracy for the beginners.
I've also been practicing, on & off with the razor. The strop & supplies for it arrived yesterday, but I haven't tried it out yet. it's interesting to use. A pistol & razor - a great Christmas!

Ed. note: I saw that pistol permit. Yes, it featured a black-and-white photograph of my father at about 30 with a neatly trimmed but very full beard, and yes, "terrorist" is the word I would've used to describe his appearance. When I went in with Ann and Katy to get the gift certificate, the gun shop clerk asked who it was for as he figured he'd probably know the guy, and we described that pistol permit and the clerk laughed and said, "Oh yes, him."

I am honestly absolutely booked solid until the new year. I sort of really don't like that feeling, but it's all things I want to do. (Except for work. I'm so disinterested in work at the moment. Which is a shame; you'd think with all the time I've had off, I'd be revitalized, but I'm really not. The only motivating factor I have is that I have to earn money to invest with my brother-in-law, which is silly and not really working very much for my motivation, but whatever.)
I didn't take a nap yesterday, but finished up with the bathroom instead, except that I hung the new shower curtain out on the back porch to air out, because they always smell so strong when you take them out of the package. And I was right-- it reeks out there, just from the new shower curtain liner. But the new curtain itself-- it's one of those posh fabric ones!! Oh my. Those are expensive! I must send Mom a photo of how nice it looks, to thank her.
But this means that I got home last night after having managed to attend roller derby practice (and showing up late didn't mean I missed anything, as the rink's previous engagement had run a little late-- ha ha!) and direly needing a shower, only to find that there was no shower curtain. Hm. I'd used up the last of my strength putting the garbage out by the curb, and could not face attempting to thread fifteen little rings through holes and onto a pole. So I took a bath instead. And that was nice and all, except that I was so sleepy by the time I got out that I could barely stumble to bed.
I am only a little sore today, although practice was brutal-- Mia was in charge and seemed to take the view that it's unlikely any of us did any working out since before Christmas, so she was going to kick our asses. So, sprints, pyramid drills, sprinting/weaving pacelines, and a whole lot of skating real fast. I am sort of proud of how not sore I am, but then, I didn't just sit on my ass all Christmas. (My family is really really into taking several-mile hikes on the hilly raviney terrain out back, in case anyone didn't know-- oh, I haven't posted photos yet-- and there's been so much rain lately that they were really more scrambles/slides than hikes in several cases.)

I have a lot of shopping I still have to do, things I was putting off until after Christmas. I also have a lot of errands to run, ditto. Then I have work tonight, rootsnradicals's party after work, work tomorrow morning, the Nietszche's seisun tomorrow afternoon which I promised Bill I'd attend, and then Z is coming home tomorrow at tennish and so all the things I told myself I'd do before he got here have to be done. Ack! What am I doing still in bed?
Oh right, drinking the cold tea that I made myself to drink in the bath last night and didn't.

We have a name for our team. We're the Nickel City Knockouts.
I am charged with finding us good socks.
I am so excited I can't really focus.

Also, I have been ordered to get a Myspace page, since everyone else has one. Boo. OK, I can no longer fight it.
Dammit, I have been avoiding Myspace for almost three years now. UGH.
I'll post to it here. Anyone else on Myspace please do feel free to explain to me how you dang kids do it. I just don't get it.

It's not that I'm a snob or anything, I'm just... not... a Myspace person. I don't... get it. *poke poke* There are all these... buttons... and things... on the page... and... what do I ... I don't know where to look! AUGH it's overloading my head! *boom*

It... never let me pick a username. That's weird. ... And an unexpected error has occurred. Thanks. Wait, no, it's working.
AUGH BLINKING ADS STOP PLEASE NO AUGH

*pant pant pant*
God I am such a Luddite drama queen!

OK, here I am on Myspace:
B-17.

So we went to open skate last night and rollerskated around, me and Z. It was fun, but we were both tired, and not many people were there, and I really, really, really am not into 80s music, so...

Two humorous moments arose. One was when a fellow Rollergirl asked Z why he was such a fast skater. He shrugged. The two other rollergirls started theorizing about male vs. female physiology and upbringing (actually, in defense of us not all being total dorks, one is a college professor and had been debating that issue earlier in the day with one of her classes, so it was germane). "Maybe it's that typical Western New York dichotomy of the boys playing hockey and the girls learning to cook," one theorizes.
"Z never played hockey," I say, looking at him.
"No," he says. "I never did."
"Oh." The other two girls are stumped.
"But my sister played softball," Z goes on. "In Shoshone Park, she played in one of the softball leagues. She was pretty serious about it-- kind of a jock. I'd go, but it was boring to watch, and I hated organized sports so I wouldn't join a team, but I was hyper and needed exercise. So I had a pair of rollerskates, and I'd skate around and around and around the park. Shoshone Park isn't very big."
"Oh," the girls say, nodding.
"Also I had one of those propeller beanies," Z goes on. "And I learned that the faster I went, the faster the propeller would spin."
"Oh Jeez," say the girls.
"Everyone knew whose brother the spaz with the propeller beanie was," Z says. "It was great."

So I asked Z if he was at all interested in being a referee for us-- since he's already a strong skater, and already has quad skates, and at least knows the names of a lot of the girls. I know we're recruiting, and I don't know how many more we need [anyone in Buffalo who likes to skate, doesn't want to get hit, and likes roller derby: we're looking for YOU for a couple of hours a week], and I don't know if we're allowing the SO's of rollergirls in but it can't hurt to ask.
"No," Z answered. "Not at all."
"Why not?" I asked, curious.
"It takes the fun out," he answered. "When I make a bad call, what do I do? Yell at myself? 'Oh come on, me! What am I thinking?'"
I laughed. "Could you throw things at yourself?"
"'God, I'm such an idiot!'" he went on. "'What am I, blind?'"

That's the true nature of sports appreciation in Buffalo.


In other news my Gram fell down the other day, and seemed unhurt but was in pain when she tried to stand or walk, so they took her to the hospital. She's 86? 87? and has problems with osteoparosis (sp?), so of course it was a big deal. Now, she's mentally very sharp, if slightly more forgetful than she was in her 70s (not much!), and only gave up her driver's license because the insurance was getting pricey. (Her last accident was the other driver's fault, another 80+-year-old driver...) But she's very old, and looks very old, and can be too polite, and so often medical professionals don't take her particularly seriously, because so often little old ladies don't really know what they're talking about.
So they X-ray her and say she's fine, and she says, But it hurts to stand up, and so they do an MRI, and say, Nope, nothing's wrong. And she says, that's nice, but I can't stand up.
So they keep her for observation and say, Nope, you're fine, and she says, But I can't walk.
Finally they say they'll do an MRI, and they don't. After a while, Mom shows up and bullies them into actually doing it. (I think maybe they were trying to kind of distract her into admitting she was fine, or maybe hoping some other symptoms would manifest so they could just diagnose her with something-- I don't know.)
So they do the MRI and say-- oh. It's a crack in your pelvis.
!!!
So I'm going to call her later, and, well... I had this coming week off, for vacation. I'm thinking that maybe instead of sitting around the house trying to catch up on housework, rewrite Barbarians_Novel, finish my Christmas shopping, and make the Christmas cookies, maybe I'll go home and spend a few days with Gram. Although now that I look at it, that was kind of a lot I was going to do here... Hey, if I take the train, I can rewrite B_N on the train! oooo. That wouldn't be bad at all, and there'd be no Internet. And also there'd be Gram, and also I can maybe see my uncle who hasn't been well and we can chill a bit.

But it means i gotta get organized pretty darn quick around here.

I'm going to do that post with addresses soon.

But first, a splosion of nifty.

1) Someone on my flist had linked do this. I've had the browser window open ever since. I forget who. It's Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, an abridged version, played entirely on Specialized bicycle parts. No really. It actually is.

2) Practice today. I actually started to do honest-to-god, for-real crossovers, which was pretty awesome, but what's more, I could actually feel what they're supposed to feel like when you do them right, so that's cool.
After practice we went to my team captain (Squeeee!!! My team!)'s house to watch bout DVDs. Sweetpea had a DVD of the Gotham Girls vs. her former team, the Mad Rollin Dolls (motto: Hurt in a Skirt), of Madison WI, at an invitational in Tucson AZ last February.
It was absolutely fascinating to watch, because now we've done enough to see what's going on.
Most astonishing thing:
The Gotham Girls.... Their style was all big hits, aggressive blocking, tons of flair, individual histrionics, and all kinds of filthy dirty dirty play. It was really popular with the crowd, and made for a great DVD-- they were hitting, they were pushing, they were shrieking, they were attitude on eight wheels.
But that kind of thing tires you out.
So there are the girls in their red shirts, showboating around the track and catapulting girls out into the stands.
And there were the sedate blue jumpers of the Mad Rollin Dolls, remaining in their pack formation, making a wall so the GG's jammer couldn't get through, whipping their own jammer through, passing the star to the pivot in a sneaky and highly-planned move-- they were good, and they hit more than they got hit. Their hits were all sly, minimal hits-- just nudging a girl out of bounds so she couldn't block the jammer, or hitting one girl so she stumbled into another. That kind of thing. And that's not to say they didn't get some good hits in-- one Gotham Girl ended up actually crashing into the announcer's table, and another caught air and landed backwards; a third ended up crotch-first in the camera. But they hit with purpose, whereas the Gotham Girls did a lot of showmanship hitting, including one jam where their jammer seemed more interested in checking people than in actually getting through the pack and scoring a point or two.

The final score was the Mad Rollin Dolls 91 to the Gotham Girls 42. The GGs had nearly 70 penalties, to the MRDs' approximately 40. One jam, there were only two GGs on the track, because every single other one of their players was in the penalty box. (Meanwhile the MRDs had a full complement of five. That jam was a blowout.)

So yes. Being the home team of a big media market means you get sponsorships and money, but it doesn't mean you're any good.

Then we watched a DVD of ourselves!! I hadn't realized-- I mean, I knew that on Thursday Hazel had brought her camera, but I hadn't realized she'd actually gotten any footage. It was absolutely hilarious in places, because she'd been participating in the jams when we started scrimmaging, so the camera was left on a stationary pedestal. Which means it could see us as we came around the first bend of the track, but not the other.
So two major collisions/falls/pileups occurred off-camera.
The first one was pretty funny-- the pack goes by, Mia Mauler as a jammer skating hard up behind them. Then, off-camera, Hazel is the back blocker for the opposing team and tries to hit her. Mia shrugs her off like she's nothing, and Hazel becomes airborne and lands outside of the track. [This is how Mia operates. Afterward she asked, "Did I hit somebody?" in complete sincerity. Yes, this is my team captain.] So as far as the camera can tell: Pack goes by, jammer following, and then, THUD. "Ooh!" Mia comes back into view, then the pack comes into view, then Hazel, limping, comes into view. Later in the same jam as they pass the camera, Mia comes up on Hazel again, and Hazel gathers herself as if to hit her, then makes much of mis-judging the range and passing behind her instead. For which none of us can blame her.

The second one was absolutely paralyzingly funny: Mexicali Bruise was skating as a jammer, and as they rounded the corner out of the camera's view, her skate caught one of the cones delimiting the edge of the track, and she lost control and hit the wall hard, full-speed, face-first.
So, on the DVD, the pack goes by, the jammers following closely. There's a moment of just rollerskate noises, then a scuffle, then a loud WHAM!, a brief shocked silence, and a babble of voices going "Oooh!". Then there's another moment of silence, and a feeble voice comes in: "I'm-- okay!"
Then the pack comes back into view, skating a little slower, and then Mexicali comes into view skating like hell after them.

I want to post the video on our website, but really only the WHAM! ... "I'm okay!" part. It was SO funny, we rewound five times to watch it again.
Mexicali was there, on the couch next to me. "You sounded kinda feeble with that okay," Hazel says.
"I was laughing too hard," Mexi answers.
Which, in itself, neatly sums up a certain something about roller derby, but I couldn't tell you what, not in words.

I am eating oatmeal. Mm. Oatmeal.
I have a terrible headache. And last night I managed to fall pretty hard a bunch of times (I'm sort of glad I went to practice, honest) while attempting to skate as the jammer, so I am feeling fairly fragile today.
We pretty much bouted all practice, which was awesome, and I think I started understanding how it's supposed to work, and it wound up being a lot of fun, but I sort of got run into a lot.
( on video )

I am feeling sort of sorely bereft without Andreas here now. It was awesome to have him here, although I probably should have done more exciting things with him. Now I should clean the house, as I've no more excuse not to. I did do one big load of dishes and I'm doing yet more laundry (how do I have so much laundry, of late? I don't know, but it's kind of crazy), but I am just so tired and fragile and sore and headachey today, you'd never know that I'd just had a mini-vacation. Roller derby will apparently do that to you. Roller derby in combination with a sudden, drastic change of weather, from 65 and sunny to 35 and gusting with pissy ice-rain. Eurgh!


The team captains and co-captains are picking teams for roller derby tonight, I forgot to mention. Tonight.

Gah! I have run out of time. I had intended to fully clean the house including things like cleaning the bathroom a second time, but my schedule for the upcoming two days is this:

today:
8:50 am: leave house for work.
4:00 pm: return home from work.
4:30pm: depart house for Nietzche's.
5:00pm-2am: Nietzche's for seisun, then Z's Battle of the Bands finals, then cleanup afterward.
tomorrow:
7:45 am: leave house for rollergirls practice
8:15-10:30 pm: WFTDA's Skills Assessment for me and two other girls at roller derby practice
11:00 am: breakfast
11:30-4:00 do everything I meant to do over the last week
4:00 pm leave for Corning, NY
6:30 meet Fiona, Ann, and Andreas in Corning
stay overnight? or return immediately?

Anyway that's it; I'll pick up my guest there, and then I'm bringing him straight back with me.

So tomorrow early afternoon is where I have to pin all my hopes. I think I'd better prioritize. At least I can do all the shopping with Andreas here. But so much for good intentions... At least I got all my clothes sorted and washed yesterday (except for one load of whites remaining, which I saved for tomorrow to get all my work clothes in it).

I have to go and get dressed now to leave for work. Aargh!

OK. Calmer now. Trying to recreate. That post was no work of art anyway.

1. I had told a humorous anecdote about Brian Boru. See, we went to Shannon Pub for dinner last night, Z and I. The waitress was wearing a promotional t-shirt for Boru vodka, and Z didn't know who that was. (The short version of Brian Boru, as explained by my father when I was little, was that he kicked the Vikings out of Ireland. This isn't really true, but it's a good way of explaining the first High King to a small child.) So I explained. Z misheard me.
"He kicked the penguins out of Ireland," Z said. "What, like, with a broom? There he is, all, 'Shoo! Shoo!' and they're all, 'Awk! Awk!' And that's why there aren't any penguins in Ireland."
"That," I said, "is exactly what happened."
It's better that way. I need a Brian Boru Penguins icon.

2. I did the Six Odd Things meme, although nobody tagged me. It proved to be exceedingly difficult, as I blather constantly about everything odd about myself on here, so there's pretty much nothing y'all don't know. ( this has no punchline )

3. Practice. I was blogging rollergirls practice, and then I paused to go and search Google Images for pictures of a roller skate so I could make myself a rollerskate icon. I am not going to pause again because when the computer kernel-panicked it lost all my tabs (there are comments I was going to leave on posts: i've lost them: I'm sorry, if we were having a conversation and I just don't answer, it's because I lost the tab in that crash just now) and I don't want to search again just yet. Also I want to post this before LJ decides to be useless. (I see it has Autosaved a draft just now. But I had also seen that it had Autosaved a draft just before the computer went down and now we all know what a Fucking Useless Waste Of Time that turned out to be.)

Practice today ruled. My ass hurts something fierce, a constant dull ache in my tailbone, but it's not debilitating (except for one brief moment when Hazel kept clipping my wheels and tripping me [by accident of course-- Hazel Mayhem is, despite the name, a perfectly sweet girl] and I discovered that if I am bent over and flailing it hurts like the dickens) and it didn't stop me from skating at all. And my chest is still a bit gooey but if I can avoid a coughing fit I can actually breathe well enough to exert myself pretty much fully.

I had several people comment on how good my form looked and how fast I was moving today, and especially how well I was falling, so that felt pretty nice. I'm doing better on the crossovers-- instead of just skateboard-pushing with one foot, I'm at least making a token effort to make that weird pulling gesture with the left foot before crossing over with the right, which makes it a true crossover. This is probably very boring to anyone who doesn't rollerskate, but it's fascinating to me--I am so bad at anything requiring bodily coordination that the very concept of pulling with one foot whilst pushing with the other blows my fuckin mind.
But one thing I've become quite good at is throwing myself at the ground. Honestly, it doesn't hurt. So when you're doing a drill where you have to fall, it hurts less if you build up speed and don't slow down or hesitate, but just commit to the fall. The faster you hit the ground, the more of your momentum is still continuing sideways rather than downward. So during the Suicides relay (get up, skate halfway, fall down, turn around, skate back, fall: repeat at [pre-marked] intervals until you've gone all the way across the rink and back, then tag the next girl to do the same) I was making up for the fact that i have no accelleration by not slowing down before falling. This was dramatic because it meant that when I hit the ground I'd slide quite a distance and turn around while sliding. I'm mastering that technique, but it probably won't help me in bouts.
But. What was so cool today: WE ACTUALLY BOUTED! We divided into teams, and half of us put on white t-shirts and half put on black, and then we formed a pack-- Pivot, Inside blocker, Outside blocker, Back blocker, Jammer, two of each (one for each team)-- and then we actually skated and the jammers tried to get to the front. it was so exciting! It was so much fun! It meant that the forty pages of WFTDA rules suddenly MADE SENSE. We had a blast. But when I was inside blocker for the white team and Hazel was for the black, she suddenly discovered that her skating has an odd lateral motion that winds up with her wheels clipping the person to her left when in a tight pack, which was me, and that hurt a lot. I fell on my knee, though, so it had no ill effects (as that's where the pads are) and I caught right back up to the pack. But my ass is killing me now. Not bad enough that I'm doping myself up, but...
I have developed an informal policy, by the way, that I'm not going to take pain killers before practice. if I am hurt, I should be feeling it, so that I know when to stop. I don't want to damage myself and not notice until afterward-- there's too much likelihood of that already, what with the adrenaline.


The really really really cool thing about roller derby, though, is what a woman it makes everyone be-- and by that I mean, in the sense they mean it when they say "be a man"-- like separating the men from the boys, only, not males, and we're not separating anybody, we're just making people live to their potential. I mean it makes you be everything you can. You wind up giving so much of yourself, and then more, because it's so exciting that you want to, because you don't want to stop and you don't want to lose, you want to do the best you can because you want to do it. It feels so good to skate, to fall and get up, to get past the other girls, to help your jammer pass theirs-- it just feels so good and is so much damn fun that it makes you overcome pain or fear or selfconsciousness or lack of confidence that you didn't know you could overcome.
The downside is, of course, all the overuse injuries we're seeing in our injured bench-- girls who just skated too hard, harder than their bodies could handle. Most of us are over thirty. Most of us aren't athletes. (Well. Weren't.) None of us, however, have seriously, permanently damaged ourselves, I might mention.
But the upside: the upside is that nearly three dozen of us have become better at something than we ever thought we could be, and have done things we didn't realize we could do. And have spent hours doing something we never realized we'd enjoy so much.


I'm a lot less of a wuss than I thought I was.

So today I managed to sustain another roller derby injury: this time, I fell flat on my ass. Have you ever hit the ground so hard that it's like you were given an electric shock? That's what it felt like. I couldn't move, and struggled to roll myself off the track. It was some time before I was able to stand up, and in pure physical shock at the force of the landing I cried a little bit, but that was more due, I think, to the fact that I had just come down with a terrible chest cold and was feeling extremely achy and fragile and hormonal anyway.
I was horribly embarrassed that everyone came over and fussed over me, and once I could move I slunk off to the outside of the rink. I wanted to get back in and skate again but I was too worried that I'd cry again, as we were playing Blood and Thunder and so of course I'd fall again, as that's part of the game unless your heart's in it to win. Which mine wasn't. But a lot of other people had dropped out and stopped playing by then, so I just couldn't make myself go back in.

I was in rather a lot of pain by midafternoon, but then I took six ibuprofin and have felt better for a few hours. It hurts to bend over, which has made it hard to do much today. I did manage to get plastic on the windows, but Z did most of that.
I also caught up with Mom and with Katy on the phone. Katy quit her teaching job mostly because the school was so very poorly-run. She mentioned that she didn't miss the Army, really, but even with the worst boss she ever had there, things still got done, her role was clear, and she always managed to get everything she needed to do to get her job done. Which she hasn't found, thusfar, in civilian life, and it's very frustrating.
So she's applying for other teaching jobs, and is considering other options. At the moment she doesn't mind being unemployed for the holidays, as she's hosting Thanksgiving for the in-laws, and is traveling for Christmas. But she is a bit disappointed and out of sorts, naturally.
She was glad I called because her husband's been out of town for a week on training for his job, and will be out of town next week as well, so she's in the midst of a long span of alone time. But the antics of her pets were, at least while I spoke to her, keeping her spirits up-- Scout is very gentle with Crawfish, the cat, but Lizzie likes to play rough, and at one point during the phone conversation, she had Crawfish's entire head in her mouth. (He retaliated by assuming the five-of-his-six-ends-are-pointy-when-he-lies-like-that position so she couldn't do it again.)
(Scout and Lizzie are the identical Springer Spaniel sisters, although Lizzie, despite identical diet and exercise, remains about ten pounds heavier than Scout although she's no taller or longer. Both sisters will be coming north for Christmas.)

I was going to blog something else but I don't remember. Z is the best. I am a bit loopy. (I wouldn't think ibuprofin four hours ago would do that, but who knows.) I spent most of this evening absorbed in Wikipedia articles about human evolution. I am fascinated by Neanderthals. But I am more fascinated by the Chalcolithic period. I couldn't tell you why.