yay for scrimmaging #2

We scrimmaged this past weekend, against a team that was about a quarter vets and three-quarters newbies.  We won by like 130 something to 60 something, which was nice.  We skated with only 10 people, too, so yay us. 

so

I start a lot of entries that way, don't I.

Anyway, I am now on my official leave of absence, though it's not a complete break since I have a lot of administrative/accounting work I need to do. OH JOYOUS FUN. 

oh SHEESH

one of our skaters dislocated AND broke her elbow tonight, apparently.  (she fell on someone's wheel, and then someone landed on top of that)

So with her out, and me on my leave, we're down to.......eleven.

Yipes.

so! we had a bout last night.

So last night we bouted against CNY (Central New York)'s B team, the Blue Collar Betties.  I was a bit apprehensive because a look at their roster showed us that we had played against eight of the Betties when we went to Utica to play their A team, the Utica Clubbers.  I was not looking forward to getting slaughtered again (the previous score was 161-68).

But bout day arrived, and I had my usual eight thousand heart attacks (including one where I realized I left my flash drive at work, which held the only copy of the lineups.  I called my boss frantically, going OMFG I NEED TO COME TO YOUR HOUSE TO GET THE KEY TO THE BUILDING (well, I didn't say the "OMFG" part) but then I found a printout of the lineups so that crisis was averted).  Then our bout production manager had to go to the hospital 'cause she tripped on the track and cut her eyebrow open.  Then it was eleventy billion degrees and the parking situation at the venue which is usually horrible was made even worse because the pool was open and completely packed.

So yeah, the bout.

I have kind of realized that you can pretty much tell how a bout is going to go after the first few jams.  If it's going to be a runaway train of an annihilation, it's fairly obvious early on.

This was realized after the second jam, and it was something like 17-0, US IN THE LEAD.

WAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO LAST NIGHT MY TEAM WAS AWESOME SERVED WITH A SIDE OF SUPER AWESOME SAUCE.  Skaters who had trouble with endurance in the past became walls on the track that no jammer could pass.  Our one jammer who gets so nervous in front of an audience was a lightning-fast streak who dipped and swerved and sped her way to lead jammer so many times.  We had human wrecking balls who just slammed into people and threw them off the track.

Apparently I had one move where I pulled a sheriff* on someone and they just fell completely backwards, skates in the air.  Hopefully someone got that on tape.

(My personal favorite move of the night was when our smallest skater on the league was jamming, stuck behind two blockers.  The pivot in that jam just PUSHED HER though this little tiny gap between the blockers, it was SO FUCKING AMAZING TO WATCH.)

We had communcation.  We had teamwork.  We were fucking awesome.

The final score? 147-37.  It was glorious.

(edited to add: I am looking through people's pictures of the bout and giggling over the scores that I'm seeing - 61 to 6? hee)

(edited again to add: the first time I fell, my kneepad slipped and I landed on the edge of the hard plastic part.  I have a nice bruise on my kneecap now, and my knee is all stiff and ow-wy.  Then, when we were having a post-bout meeting with the refs and the other team's captains, I realized my arm was stinging, and apparently I managed to get rink rash on my forearm.)

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*this move has different names, but this is what we call it.  It's when you're skating in front of someone and you just throw your shoulder back into their chest to knock them down.  It's perfectly legal and if you do it right, they can get a penalty for backblocking.  I love doing it.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand

as soon as I decide to take a leave of absence now because of the lull in our schedule, the opportunity to go to an away game in mid-August comes up.

Hahahahahahahahhahahahaahahaha oh life is funny sometimes.

hey, we're bouting tomorrow. whee!

it's been crazy hot and humid here the last week.  It's breaking a little today, but with our venue being hot hot hot, tomorrow will be interesting. (You'd think that a venue that houses an ice rink half the year would have the capability to be cooler, but nooooooooooooooooooooo) I bought a bunch of spray bottles to keep at the benches that hopefully will help things.  Yes, I am aware this is like fighting a forest fire with a spray bottle, but every little bit helps, right? RIGHT?

I'm taking a leave of absence.  I need to get my life back in order after everything that's gone on, and I need to take care of a few treasurer-y things (um, budget reports? filing the league tax returns? might be a good idea).  Now is kind of the downtime for our team (we don't bout again until September), so I can take four weeks and not worry about missing attendance.

So I met with our attorney yesterday, and he brought in one of his partners, too.  WE'RE SO IMPORTANT WE REQUIRE MULTIPLE ATTORNEYS!  The other attorney looked at the list of questions the IRS provided us, looked at my list of (hastily-thrown together) answers, talked to me for a while, and said "Okay, I'll draft our response and send it to you for review." I was like "what?  You mean you'll do it for us?  I don't have to do it? OMFG I LOVE YOU YOU ARE THE MOST WONDERFUL MAN IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE UNIVERSE THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU." 

They're doing the mid-season assessments in two weeks.  I would have been on the list if not for my leave of absence, but like I said before, I wouldn't have done it anyway.

so the first six months of this year fucking SUCKED

and now it's July and hopefully the back half of 2010 will be better and no more of the women in my family will FUCKING DIE.  Sheesh.

So I'm surviving, more or less.  Denial helps.  We've got a bout on the 10th that we're gearing up for.  Our team is dwindling as more people get injured or lose their health insurance.  We're just barely getting a full 14 skater roster.  I was voted MVP of our away about, yay for that, and Coach Dude asked me in passing on Monday's practice if I would be able to attend Tuesday (read: travel team) practices, because the season mid-point is coming up and they might be switching people around.

Even if I was picked for the travel team this time around, I wouldn't do it.  A, their schedule is super mega hella ultra crazy, B, I'm the captain of the team and it's not fair to be all "HEY GREENER PASTURES BYE GUYS YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN WHOOOOOOOOSH", and 3, the whole "big fish/little pond" thing which I have come to enjoy.

(and yes I know I did the A,B,3 thing.  IT'S HUMOR. Or something like that.)

Our 501(c)(3) application came back from the IRS with a bunch of additional information they need.  Wheeeeee!  "Why do you want to be a 501(c)(3) corporation?" BECAUSE IT WILL MAKE MY LIFE EASIER.  ISN'T THAT REASON ENOUGH?  Sigh.  They need all this stuff back by the 20th or something, and I've been dealing with it by putting it on my desk with all the other swirling piles of papers and ignoring it.

So have I hit full on babble mode yet?  I think so.  Wheeeeee!

I haven't been skating outside as much as I'd like. Mostly because when Roy cleaned my car (he does that every once in a while), he took out my skates and pads and put them in the basement AND I AM TOO LAZY TO GO DOWN TO THE BASEMENT AND PUT THEM BACK IN MY CAR. (Why do I keep them in my car? So I don't have to clomp down to the basement to get them.  THERE IS A METHOD TO MY MADNESS.)

So we've got a bout on the 10th and then a scrimmage on the 18th and then a big stretch of desert where we don't have anything scheduled until a bout on September 11.  We have a few mini-vacationy type things in there as well (visiting my sister in CT, going to Pittsburgh to see a Mets game because Maverick is a big ol' Mets fan ['cause Roy is a Yankees fan, methinks]).  The Steel City Derby Demons have a bout while we're going to be there but Roy doesn't want to go, sigh argh bleh.  Still trying to convince him that I will just go by myself and he can pick me up or somesuch.

So there was that whole brou-ha-ha about Cincinnati and the wire fraud chick.  Everyone's like: OMFG HOW COULD THEY NOT KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON?  Well, when travel is as expensive as it is for a roller derby league (and I would know, 'cause I'm the treasurer and I get to write all the checks) if someone says (as I imagined the wire fraud chick said) "Hey, I can get you discounted tickets through my job, all you'd need to do is pay me back", you'd say "OMFG SIGN ME UP!" and not think about the legality of it all. (Which made me frantically contact our league person who gets us hotel discounts through her job and say "Um, you're not committing wire fraud, are you?" and she laughed and said she wasn't.)

So....this turned out to be a wall of text.

More random bitlets about the away bout: I looooooooooooooooved the floor.  If I weren't already married I would have married this floor.  It was polished concrete and it was fast but not OH NOOOOOO I CAN'T CONTROL MY WHEELS I AM GOING TO DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.  Loved, loved, loved the floor.

The afterparty was completely awesome-flavored.  Walking distance from the hotel, $1.00 jello shots and a great DJ? WIN WIN WIN.  Our home bout afterparties so far have been all "sit in a thoroughly overcrowded bar watching other people play pool and you had to park three blocks away." I NEED DANCYPANTS AFTER A BOUT.