Tuesday, August 30, 2011

la la DE da

Yesterday was an off-skates strategy/workout practice.  We held it at one of the local parks.  The strategy part was kinda fun, as Coach Dude made a track of sorts out of people's shoes and we stood around in packs and talked about what we need to do when the jammers are at different points on the track.

The workout part was not as much fun.  Captainness Flashback had some friend come to our practice, who was kinda like Anton Apolo OhHELLno but with props.  Eventually it got so dark he had to turn his car headlights on and aim them at us.  Nothing like doing pushups into wet grass while eight trillion mosquitoes are going for your ankles!  Whee!


Monday, August 29, 2011

Jeezly crow, Thursday is September

Ok, let's see.  Thursday night was scrimmage, which was scrimmage-tastic.  As usual.

Saturday was the 3rd annual Mad Derby Love party.  It's held at the house of one of my leaguemates - she's got a pool, a trampoline, a fire pit, a HUGE back yard, and everyone brings food and beverages and tents to stay overnight and basically has a crazy awesome time.  This year I learned:

1. Mead is awesome;
2. Apparently you are not supposed to chug absinthe;
3. I went into a fairly lengthy diatribe/rant about the periodic table and my obsession with selenium.*

At one point I also stepped sort of badly and hurt my ankle.  I realized that if I could still feel it in my mead/absinthe/whatever haze, I'd probably screwed it up pretty badly.  Cut to Sunday morning, where my ankle had ballooned and I couldn't really walk on it.

Oops.

It's doing better today; I can walk on it and it's only a little bit owie.  Fortunately we are not skating tonight (the floor at the rink is getting re-done) and I can fake my way through an off-skates workout.
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*Junior year of high school was chemistry.  I basically sat right in front of the periodic table all year and fixated upon selenium for some reason.  It was used in traffic lights at some point.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

'allo

September is going to be a busy month, bout-wise.  I'm playing a home game on the 10th and an away game on the 24th.  Both bouts are against the same team; from what I have heard they will be our toughest opponents yet (even tougher than the team we beat in the last jam).  I am nervous.

I finally got our spare bedroom organized so I have a dedicated place to put my sewing machine and my serger (before I'd have to drag them out one at a time in the dining room), so I started working on the green-on-white helmet covers and made another pair of booty shorts.

All I have to do is turn in the elastic and hem them.


In other news, I'm on another "let's lose a lot of weight in a fairly short amount of time" kick.  Here's where I get all braggy and HEY LOOKIT WHAT I'VE MANAGED TO DO YAY ME:

  1. I'm down 16 pounds since the beginning of April;
  2. If I were to start going to Weight Watchers again, I'd be within 3 pounds of my Lifetime Weight and could go to meetings for free again.
  3. The last time I distinctly remember weighing what I do now was October 2004.  
  4. My absolute most favorite dress in the whole wide word, that I haven't worn in, like, years and years and years (even before October 2004) fits.
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

    Monday, August 22, 2011

    I'm back!

    I wasn't ignoring the blog; my sister's family was in town for the week and I was all caught up in FUN FAMILY ACTIVITIES so that I didn't have time to update.

    They're gone now (boo) so I shall update.

    The bout!  Everyone on the team except me had Derby Skinz, black with bright green trim.  I did not have bright green trim on my (homemade) booty shorts, so I had to borrow some green gaffer's tape from the referees and jerry-rig the trim.  It worked, but I'll have to fix the shorts before the next bout.

    Yeah, I crashed into the suicide seats after a hit.  It was amusing - my thought process went something like this:

    - I'm going to crash into the seats.
    - Hm, I'm going to crash into this group of people.
    - Oh crap, I'm going to crash into the guy with the cane.
    - Well, they're called "suicide seats" for a reason....
    - CRASH

    (it's at the 1:16 mark; Blogger's not letting me put in time codes)




    I got a "blocking out of bounds" penalty for that one, although the referee looked at this clip later and admitted that it was a clean hit.

    As for the bloody nose, some people say that I hit the jammer in the face (resulting in a high block penalty, which I took) and other people say she took someone else's skate wheel to the face.  The full video from the bout isn't out yet, so I'll have to check that out when it's released.

    Then there was this, at the 2:16 mark:


    Oof.   Although admittedly, it didn't hurt. Which, if you think about it, is kinda crazy.  You usually do not fling yourself onto a concrete floor in a belly flop because you think "duh, that would hurt."


    Sunday, August 14, 2011

    AND WE'RE STILL UNDEFEATED WAHOO

    longer post later, but to sum up:

    - I crashed into the suicide seats, directly into an older guy with a cane, and also took out a referee while I was at it.

    - I also believe I gave the other team's jammer a nosebleed at one point.

    Friday, August 12, 2011

    how my mind works

    Last night we had our league meeting, as we usually do the Thursday before a bout.  This month one of the topics was the fact that elections for the 2012 Board of Directors are coming up in September and nominations and platforms are due in a few weeks.  Our league president this year is moving back to Texas in a few weeks, so she won't be going for re-election.

    At one point, one of the skaters sitting in front of me turns around, looks at me and says "President?"

    I literally cackled at her.

    Then, on the way home, in my head.....

    KICKTORIA #1: President?  Gah.  NO THANK YOU.

    KICKTORIA #2: It *was* pretty cool that she thought of you for it.

    KICKTORIA #1: True.  But no.

    KICKTORIA #2: Well, no. Not President.  But how about a general board position?  The "WFTDA Liaison" position sounds interesting...

    KICKTORIA #1: NO.

    KICKTORIA #2: Are you suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure?  It probably wouldn't be *too* time consuming...

    KICKTORIA #1: SHUT UP RIGHT NOW.

    KICKTORIA #2: You could find out what's going on with everything before everyone else...

    KICKTORIA #1: I AM NOT LISTENING TO YOU.

    KICKTORIA #2: You didn't do anything leadership-wise with the league this year....

    KICKTORIA #1: THAT'S BECAUSE I SPENT THE FIRST TWO YEARS DOING EVERYTHING FOR THE LEAGUE.  I HAVE EARNED THIS, DAMMIT.  I'M TURNING ON SPOTIFY RIGHT NOW.

    KICKTORIA #2: You've got two weeks until platforms are due.  Think about it.

    KICKTORIA #1: I KNOW YOU, LITTLE LIBERTINE....I KNOW YOU'RE A CANNONBALL

    KICKTORIA #2: I'll be baaaaaaaack.....

    Thursday, August 11, 2011

    oh, yeah

    I used my new Supar Thin Mouthguard on Monday, and it was amazing.  I could breathe!  I could drink water!  I could shriek loudly and clearly!  There's one spot on it that hardened into a weird point, but I'm afraid to try and heat it up again.

    Tuesday, August 9, 2011

    Q: What week is it? A: IT'S BOUT WEEK WAHOO!

    So at about 8:50 last night we were getting ready to do another drill and I asked "do we have time to do this?" and then I was reminded that our Monday practices are 7-10, not 7-9. Whoops!

    Yar, yar, yar.  The callus on my foot was screaming with pain by the end of last night's practice.  At one point we were kind of scrimmaging, and the skater in front of me closest to the inside of the track fell, which caused a chain reaction of sorts where EVERYONE ACROSS THE ENTIRE TRACK FELL.  I went "okay, I need to swerve to the right...okay, I need to swerve more to the right....AND MORE TO THE RIGHT GEEZ LOUISE I HOPE EVERYONE'S OKAY."  I felt like Steven Bradbury. 


    Friday, August 5, 2011

    I could have scrimmaged all night, I could have scrimmaged all night, and still have begged for more

    highlight of the evening: the second half of scrimmage night is Experiment Time.  This is how I ended up jamming.

    I get a good jump off the line and hit the pack first.  One of last year's A team blockers (she got injured in March and is going through her tryouts now) gets in front of me, but I'm patient.  I wait.

    And then I see it - a glorious open path, right on the inside of the track.  NO one, not even my team, is in the way.

    I hustle my butt up there and get called lead jammer. Yay!

     I think I ended up scoring, like, one or two points before I called it off.  Whee!

    Thursday, August 4, 2011

    my headshot for the travel season

    You can't really see it, but the 45 I have on my crown is "That Was Then, This is Now/Theme From the Monkees" from 1987.

    Tuesday, August 2, 2011

    to keep you all updated on the minutae of my life

    THE TAX RETURNS ARE DONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE I JUST HAVE TO GET THE LEAGUE PRESIDENT TO SIGN OFF ON THE NYS THING AND SHE'S DOING THAT THIS EVENING AND THEN I'M DONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

    I didn't go to practice on Sunday because (a) I spent the day before at my brother-in-law's housewarming party, drinking and trying to smash lawn gnomes with jarts (the gnomes were down in a 30' valley from where we were standing) and (b) I told myself that if I finished the tax returns on Sunday (which I did, WAHOOOOOOOOOOOO) I wouldn't have to go.

    I went to practice last night, but sat out 95% of it because (a) my knee was crazy sore and stiff and (b) I'd had gastro-intestinal distress earlier in the evening and hadn't quite recovered from it.  I'm okay for attendance, though.

    There was a blogged review of our last bout online.  I kinda love it when my name gets mentioned in the "aren't these names cool?" part of stuff like this.  (Did I ever mention how I decided upon my name?  I had all sorts of awesome ideas* that were already in the database. Then I had other ideas which I only kinda liked.**  Then, on one website I frequent, someone was looking for ideas for *her* derby name, and in giving an example about how the names have to be unique, said "You can have 'Victoria Deck'em', but you can't have 'Kicktoria Deck'em'"  and I thought "I like Kicktoria.  Let's expand upon that."***.)

    I finally bit the bullet and ordered a new mouthguard.  I really despise the one I have now, even though my dentist made it for me.  It's big and bulky and occasionally when I get short of breath it keeps popping out.  I went with white because in photos it'll sort of look like normal teeth.

    I also discovered this, which is totally and completely made of awesome, except for the part where someone in Australia swiped a graphic designed by Coach Dude and put it on fabric.  (That particular fabric is not for sale yet, but I'm still annoyed by it.) 

    ---
    *I STILL love "Helena Handbasket".
    ** "Nom de Guerre", for example.
    ***During our last bout of last season, where the proceeds went towards breast cancer research and everyone adopted breast-related names, I became "Kicktoria's Secret".