in other, semi-tangentially related, news

I bought a serger that arrived on Tuesday and I have been playing with it.  (A serger, for those of you scoring at home, is a kind of sewing machine.  If you take a look at a seam in an item of clothing, and the thread goes right to the edge of the fabric and it's all loopy and stuff, that was serged.  A regular sewing machine would just produce a single line of thread.)    They're very good for sewing stretchy fabric, and since I am on a LET'S MAKE BOOTY SHORTS kick, I figured it would be useful.

So I made another pair, this time with a blue sparkly fabric, but since I've been using white thread in the serger to see how it looks, there's all these white lines that show when the fabric stretches.  So those are a no-go.  Oh well.

I also hope to try to make some helmet covers.  I found a pattern online but when I got it printed out at Staples (it needed to be on 11 x 17 paper), it wasn't quite to scale (the 4" test square was only 3 3/4" square) and I didn't have the math skills right then to figure out how much more to blow it up.  One of the other women on the league who's made covers before is going to send me the pattern she used.

There is a dearth of fabric stores in the area, unfortunately.  We have a few Jo-Anns and one or two independent stores, but nothing fantastic.  I found myself drooling over spandexworld.com yesterday.

ECE

So did I get a set of Radar Diamond wheels? Yes, but NONE of the vendors had the ones I really wanted, white (94a) ones (they were on backorder), so I got red (92a) ones. 

Did I get to Sonic at least once? I went twice - once on the way down and once on the way back.  There was one about three miles from our hotel but I didn't go to that one.

Did I watch so much derby my brain exploded?  Almost.  There was so much amazing derby to watch.  Gotham? Holy fuck.  Bonnie Thunders and Suzy Hotrod are, like, my new role models.  They could sprint up to the pack and STOP ON A FUCKING DIME.  It was amazing.  There was men's derby with cute boys, and the no minors games were very interesting.

Did I spend a lot of time at the pool?  Yup.  Our league is okay at synchronized swimming but we RULE at beach ball volleyball.

Did I lose my engagement ring at the pool and have it found by a chick from the league we're playing on July 9?  Um...yes.

Did I have a great time? OMGWTF yes.

so!

tonight was our first scrimmage as a new team. We were skating against the A team and we did pretty goddamn fucking well, if I do say so myself. 

so in eleven hours (hopefully less) I will be on my way to ECDX YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

travel team practice

so the first practice of our new team was last night.  It's going to take some time to get used to new teammates who didn't employ the same strategies our home team did.  Our home team was very LIVE AND DIE BY THE PARTNERSHIP THE PARTNERSHIP IS PARAMOUNT KNOW WHERE YOUR PARTNER IS AT ALL TIMES AND GET WITH HER NOW.  I tried doing that last night and was like "HEY!  PARTNER!  I'M OVER HERE!"

I also need to remember that there were two other teams, and their viewpoints are just as valid as ours.  My fellow home team members and I would listen to suggestions on why things would happen, what to do when other things happen, and we'd be like "Yeah, but this is how WE did it...."  I need to rein back on that a little.  And by a little, I probably mean a lot.

(But we were 5-0 for the season....)

I also had to clean my wheels halfway during practice because they got so much crap on them I was bump-bump-bumping again.  Grrr...

Discovered last night that the route I'm going to be taking to ECDX (I'm driving one of the car pools) will take us right past a Sonic right around lunchtime.  WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN

ECE

so a week from today, a bunch of us are going to the East Coast Derby Extravaganza. 

My mission for that weekend is three-fold:

1. To get a set of Radar Diamond wheels;
2. To get to Sonic at least once;
3. To watch so much derby my brain explodes.

The bouts I'm most interested in seeing are our travel team's bout (Sunday at, like, 5pm or something) and the "no minor penalty" test bouts.

dirty dirty girls love Benedict Cumberbatch

(today's title comes from this, which I just discovered last night and it's been going through my head non-stop since then*)

Monday was our final team practice; we met at a bar and did the official Lacing of the Trophy (our trophy involves a pair of roller skates; the winning team will lace them with laces in their team color) and individual pictures.  We'll each get the trophy for two weeks; mine isn't until the end of November, oh well.

We decided we're going to get "LEAGUE CHAMPIONS 2011" printed on the sleeve of our jackets, so I had to collect them all again and take them to the printer.

I'm going to miss playing with my team very much.  We really gelled into a force to be reckoned with.  Captainness Awesome was the best captain you could ever hope for - she was supportive, she encouraged us to work harder, she kept a smile on our faces.  I'll miss having her on my team.

But, onward and upward to bigger and better things!

-*-*-*-

We've set up a database to nominate captains for the B travel team.  Next to each person's name, they accept or decline the invite.

I looked yesterday and I'd been nominated.

I had to delete the text of my initial declination, which was "OMFG SWEET ZOMBIE JEEBUS IN HEAVEN NO".  (I eventually put "I'm honored, but I must decline.")

Seriously, this year has been a bazillion trillion quadrillion pentillion (?) sextillion (??) septillion (now I'm just guessing) fuckload (that's better) better/easier/more fun for me than last year (and not just because I haven't had any family members die**).  I could concentrate on playing, and the game, and having fun, rather than "okay, what disaster is going to happen now/what do I need to keep an eye on now/who's going to come up to me and request-a-check-hand-me-a-stack-of-cash-for-ticket-sales-and-not-label-it-or-maybe-it's-dues-money-I'm-not-sure.  I've had people come up to me and say "you seem MUCH more relaxed this season."  Gee, I wonder why?

All I have to do is file the league's 2010 tax return, and I have until August 15 to do that.  It's just a matter of dropping numbers into a form and printing it, but as I am a procrastinator by nature, I will wait a while to do it.

-*-*-*-

So when we all met on Monday, some of the A team skaters were talking with the coach about exercise log sheets.  I happened to steal a glance at a prototype; it had things like "caloric intake" and how many exercises you did with various parts of your body.

I distinctly remember thinking "thank GOD we don't have to do that."

(You know what's going to happen, right?)

There's talk on our B team message board about doing the same thing.

Here's what mine would look like:

WHAT I ATE: Coffee, half a loaf of bread, some water, half a box of Annie's Organic Cheesy Bunny Cracker Things***, whatever Roy made for dinner, the other half box of Annie's Organic Cheesy Bunny Cracker Things.

WHAT I DID FOR EXERCISE: Thought about doing some situps.
------------------
*HE'S GOT A POSH NAME AND HE'S ON THE TELEVISION SO IT'S NO BIG SURPRISE THAT ALL THE DIRTY GIRLS WANT BENEDICT

**knock on wood

***not its real name

the final score...

....was 96 to 73.  Yay us!