Wednesday 31 October 2012

Trick or treat

Mostly tricks for me tonight. We were doing a new drill where you had to juke through a giant pack while still cutting to both the inside and outside lines. It was fine, but then there was a bit of a pileup. Chatterbox fell and took out RayWoWW, and they were both behind me and I was like "yeah I can get out of the way" and then the next minute I was flat on my back on the ground. Two things hurt like the dickens: my butt, and my right hand. I had to stop skating and that was the end of practice for me. Sadface.
Foreground: fingers taped together for sprain.
Background: bag of ice on cushioned chair.

Gritz got me some ice and I spent my time alternating between icing my hand and sitting on a giant ziploc bag of ice. I think two of my fingers are sprained or jarred or something because I fell awkwardly my hand, but I can bend them a bit, so nothing broken there, I am sure. The butt is a whole other story. I have to be really slow with sitting and getting up and putting weight on it sucks. I am sitting on a bag of ice right now. I tried to shower before and even stepping into the shower (over the lip of the tub) resulted in a load of cussing and shit. Also because my hand is munted I couldn't shampoo my hair properly. Argh.

Apparently what happened was that  Chatter fell and as she did her leg came up and took me out. I'm not sure how: either she kicked me square in the butt as she was falling, or I fell and landed square on her skate. Either way, there was butt-to-skate contact and it was hard.

Anyway, this is what my facebook status says now:
Trick: I might have broken my ass (literally) at derby.
Treat: I am getting an awesome bruise.

Trick: I can't show anyone because of its inappropriate location.
Because I am pretty sure I can't post a picture of it here either without violating Blogger's terms of service, let me describe it for you: I am starting to get a bruise on my ass, right at the base of my spine where my spine intersects with my pelvis, basically at the top of my ass crack. And then the bruise goes INTO MY ASS CRACK AND ON EITHER SIDE ON MY BUTT CHEEKS. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK.

I'm sure you all just had to think about my butt. I'm sorry. I will have it checked out but apparently there's nothing doctors can do for a broken tailbone? Also I have a conference to go to tomorrow which means sitting on a plane for the whole day, and then sitting for two days after that. Fuck. Also this post took over an hour to write because I can only use one hand. Happy Halloween.

Tuesday 30 October 2012

Time for a quick recap


I got some 187 ReCaps for my kneepads. There's nothing wrong with my current ones, except pne thing I noticed with the material on the caps is that little black bits of shit shear off them every time I do falls. But this was much more just for aesthetic purposes than anything like getting new gear because I needed new gear. Plus they were only $20, so yeah.

Everything is velcro.

Basically, the 187 derby kneepads are made up of wads of velcro and you can switch out the caps. I'm always a fan of kneepads where you can replace the caps, since your knees probably take the most beating of all your padded up joints. Also, I've known people's kneepads to crack from them just falling really smashily (yes now a real word) on them, so having a set which are replaceable (as opposed to the ones that are riveted to your kneepads) makes your pads last a bit longer since you don't need to replace the whole pad. Plus with these ones you can take the caps off to wash your pads.

They're all nice and clean and unscuffed now, and I can't wait until tomorrow when I can get some good scratches on them. Because we're on a roller rink surface for derby, you need to get some good scratches/nicks in your pads for extra stoppage. Also the other day I was talking to one of the freshies who had new pads, and she was sad that her pads were getting scuffed, but I was all like "no that means you're doing it right!" so yeah. I want to get some scratches in. I've still got my black kneepad caps, and those are fine, but I might use the yellow ones anyway. Yay.

I have a residual worry that the material for the colored caps might be worse than the black ones so the colored ones are structurally weaker, but I have no reason to actually think that. We'll see anwyay when I have a slide on them tomorrow.

So yes. This is me blinging out my derby gear. I'm such a glamor jammer, ugh. :P But yeah, they're not too expensive, and they're pretty cute. See?

This one needs an angry face to match my elbow pads.

Friday 26 October 2012

Time for some new wheels, methinks

I was looking through my blog and I realized the wheels I'm skating on (my Super-Gs, which I reviewed here) are now just over a year old. Happy birthday, wheels. They've sure taken me a lot of places. They're also completely bald. I have been thinking about regrooving them for about 6 months, now, but I am a lazy butt and can't be bothered.

So cute! But too high (and wide).
Sadface indeed.
I want to get some new wheels. Suggestions are welcome! I like the fact that my Super-Gs are pretty low, at 58mm (instead of the normal 62). That 4mm difference really makes me feel much closer to the floor, such that I'm more confident with picking up my feet and agility stuff. They're also really grippy, and at the time when I got them I was moving from a 95A so a 88A was like insta-control. But given that I am now skating on a stickier floor, I really want something that will give me more push for each stride I take. I really want to get more speed, now that I've got a bit more agility and control over my feet.

There are a couple of wheels I'm looking at, like the new Atom Snap (and it comes in yellow!) but that is a 62mm and I don't know if I'd want to go back to that. Plus the wheel is quite wide (44mm) which means more push, but at the cost of more likely to get clipped/less agility. I was also thinking about Jukes, but they only come in 93A, and I think that might be a bit too hard. Because I don't have much weight, I need something in a lower number for some grip and control. But I don't want something with too much grip because I also don't have much strength for pushing.

Maybe I should just get the Super-Gs in the 91A red core, WHICH WAS WHAT I WAS GOING TO DO A YEAR AGO ANYWAY.

Tuesday 23 October 2012

NSO...K

NSOing wasn't so bad. Specifically, penalty tracking wasn't so bad, and I didn't lose my shit or fuck it up or anything.
My whistle is still not bout-tested. Sadface.

We had to get to the skate centre at 4:30 to set up and be briefed, and then doors opened at 5:30 for the 6pm bout. We didn't have our NSO briefing until about 5:15 or 5:30 so it was pretty stressful because until the bout started I didn't have any idea what the fuck I was doing. Plus it turned out that the other penalty tracker wasn't there, so there was a moment when there was a possibility I'd be penalty tracking for both teams and I almost shit my pants. I was worried about doing it for one team, but two? WTFF?! I almost had a hernia. Luckily, we got someone to pen track for the other team, so we were each only doing one. And the penalty wrangler had experience with pen tracking and explained it to us, so it wasn't that bad.

The first couple of jams were fucking confusing. You have to do all the following at the same time:
  • Mark on the sheet when a skater has a penalty the following things: what penalty, major/minor, which jam it was.
  • Check these with the inside whiteboard person.
  • Check with the outside whiteboard people for extra penalties.
  • Check all of this with the penalty wrangler.
  • Let the penalty wrangler know when someone is on 3 minors or 6 majors.
  • Tell your jam ref how many minors your current jammer has.
  • Try not to get run over by skaters/refs.
Also, you should mark off the number of the jam on the bottom of the tracking sheet to keep yourself up to date with which jam it is, mark off penalties when you get 4 minors/7 majors and then run after the refs and tell them to send people off, which can be hard because everyone is shouty all the time.

The bout layout was also something I wasn't used to. It looked something like this:

In this picture, the big green thing on the left is the scoreboard, the green circles are outside whiteboard, the little green thing in the middle of the track is the inside whiteboard, and the purple thing is the bin. The pink and blue things are the team benches, so they had 10 chairs (5 a side, back to back) and that's how they did their lineups. The yellow spot is pretty much where all the audience was. I guess that way you have audience on three sides of the track, which gives more people more trackside viewing.

But that also meant that the inside of the track had two teams, their coaches, the jammer refs, the pack refs and 4 NSOs all clusterfucking in one pretty small area. Luckily, our penalty wrangler was really good and could relay us info without us having to wander too far, but I really wish that the coach for the other team sometimes would STFU. Like, we couldn't hear the ref calls because he was busy swearing at the refs, or yelling unhelpful stuff like "Go [team name]" or something like that. Anyway, there was a bit of douchiness but whatever. It just made my job harder though, so bleh.

Anyway, I did feel better when the bout was over, although I barely got to pay attention to anything that actually happened in it since I had to keep looking at bits of paper and whiteboards. But it was good experience and not as traumatic as I thought.
The one picture I took at the afterparty was during the first
time they played Gangnam Style. Of course.

Also NRV won the bout 182-173, and the afterparty was fun because I ate half a plate of chili cheese fries, introduced people here to a shot that doesn't exist in the US, took photos, got lots of beers and danced to Gangnam Style. It was good, and that made me happy. Also I got to drink on a Sunday night. Yeah.

Saturday 20 October 2012

Hahahaha what

Okay, so apparently I'm not jam timing, so I got a whistle for nothing.

I got put on penalty tracking/wrangling.

Okay, what the fuck. I have no idea what that is. Is this both jobs I'm doing? I read the manual for it and understood about 50% of it, and then it was seriously like, I don't even understand what this is. The list of responsibilities is ridiculously huge. I saw the example diagrams they had in the tracker/wrangler manual and my brain shut down already. It makes me want to cry because I'm seriously like what the fuck, I don't get this at all and tomorrow night I have to be doing this in front of hundreds of people and hoping that I don't fuck up, lest I incur the wrath of everyone. Ugh.

I can't do math to save my life, I don't even have any real familiarity with the codes used by WFTDA to track penalties and this is an actual WFTDA sanctioned all-star bout and they want to put in someone who has minimal NSO experience to do arguably one of the most complicated jobs that there is out there?


This is really stressing me out, and given what's happening in my non-derby world and the amount of stuf I need to do there, I am at that point where I'd rather not go to the bout and NSO than have to penalty track. But that sounds wrong, doesn't it? :/


Friday 19 October 2012

Whistle if you want to see my instrument

NRV are doing their final home bout of the year this weekend. I'm not on the roster (and it's an all-stars bout anyway), but I'm going to be there as a NSO.

Specifically, I think I'm jam timing, or that's what I put my hand up for. This is hilarious, because I've never jam timed in my life, and this is going to be a proper, official, WFTDA bout thingy. Argh. From what I undetstand, all I need to do is be able to blow a whistle and work a stopwatch. If someone gave me a stopwatch and told me how to press the buttons, I think I'd be okay.

But, here's a bit of an admission. I didn't even know how to work a whistle properly until about two days ago. I figured I should own a whistle anyway for derby purposes, so I got a nice one from Fox 40 off the interwebs. It's yellow. :) I've been practicing doing four tweets and stuff, but I keep spitting everywhere. Ha.

Wednesday 17 October 2012

I am registered to do my first bout.


So Richmond (in Northern Virginia, for those of you--like me--still not familiar with US geography) has a league that holds an annual holiday bouting thingy called Season's Beatings. It basically is just like a whole bunch of bouts for different levels. I've never bouted before, and I know some of the NRV ladies are heading up there, and for some reason I thought I might be interested in doing that.


I don't know what possessed me to to think that; I still find US derby intimidating, and I don't know if I want my first bout to be in some random tournament when I'm not really representing a league that I'm a member of. But I can't bout with NRV until sometime next year, so River City it is. And they even have categories for people who are >1 year experience, Intermediate, Advanced (i.e. on all-star teams), etc. And there are co-ed bouts. I told Ze Boyfriend and he was like "uh, you are going to get crushed and killed." Little does he know that most of the hits on me will probably not be in a legal target zone on me because I plan to just cannonball the whole time, bahahaha. But yeah, they are also for people who are Advanced, so not me. Anyway, sometimes I doubt my abilites to do these things because what if I am super crap and munt myself or faceplant in front of everyone and whatnot?

It took me about two whole days to decide whether or not to even register. :P With the encouragement of my wife, I have now registered for a whole bunch of festive bouts at the end of the year. Seriously. I put myself in >1 year (since, technically "intermediate" requires that you have had some bouting experience) and I've spoken to the organizers and they said that if >1 is too easy for me then I can get moved up during the day, which will be nice. :) I don't want to be completely fucked up out there getting my ass kicked, but I don't want to be completely unchallenged. But yay! I hope I meet lots of fun people there and stuff. I also want to go to my first afterparty.

Monday 8 October 2012

WFTDA posts Championship bracket

BAD made it into the championships so they're on their way to Atlanta! Well, not right away, since the championships are in early November. A bunch of people from NRV are driving down from here, but stupidly I have a conference on that weekend. But no socializing for me since I'll probably be watching DNN the whole time.

Here's the bracket:

Click to enlarge

It's a tough bracket, but at least BAD wouldn't have to meet up with Oly until after Philly and TXRG. Anyway, these are all freaking amazeball teams, so it will definitely be one to watch. I'll have to break out my BAD shirts for the whole weekend while everyone else is wearing fancy suits and whatnot at this conference.

If you want to help BAD make it to Atlanta, click here.

Friday 5 October 2012

Blog updates

Hello, little red book.
The blog name has changed to reflect my new derby name. Don't worry, you can still call me Mouse. Also, the URL is the same; it's just the actual title of the blog that's been changed.

To be honest, I'm actually surprised at the number of people who think the name change suits me--I don't know if this is suggestive of my dictator-like qualities, or the fact that I'm going to execute a lot of intellectuals, or whatever.

Don't worry, the content is still the same random crap that I've been writing about stuff I'm learning and what it's like to be moonlighting as a skater.

Tonight I've got drinks with the league, yay! Also it's down the street from here, so within good staggering distance. Having a new derby family is a bit weird to start with, but we'll see how that works out.

Thursday 4 October 2012

Jammer Candy

We've been working on scrum starts, and one thing that we looked at was the fact that we didn't all have to be in a line right on the jammer line. In fact, your jammer can do a lot of work in directing where the opposing pack goes and how they work.

Suppose (for the sake of simplicity) we have a 4:4:1 situation, so let's say it's a powerjam for red. The green blockers are going to move whereever the red jammer is, and so the red jammer can lure them etc. to whereever she wants. Plus, if her blockers don't just line up in a giant line in front of the green blockers, it gives them more room to set up this play:


 After the jammer is released, the wall of green blockers will move with her. This is where a quick jammer can act as a lure for the green blockers. So, suppose she goes to the outside, and the blockers follow her:

This then gives her team an opportunity to swoop in on those blockers and pin them against the outside line. If your jammer is fast enough, while the opposing blockers are pinned on the outside, she can sweep behind on the (now open) inside line:

So that's the jammer candy: using your jammer as a lure to get the other blockers to go where you want them to so you can trap them there and make it easier for your jammer to get through the pack. Whee. Of course, when you have two jammers, it's hard (but possible) to get this to work both ways.

(I have to admit that I stole the title of this post from this. But it is totally true.)

Tuesday 2 October 2012

Some days, I want to pack it all in.

Ugh, it is that time of year when job stuff comes around again. Basically, I'm in a role that gets renewed annually, so it's not like a perament position or anything. And that's really shit because of the lack of job security etc.; I could actually be on the other side of the world this time next year doing more or less the same thing but at a different university. After a while, the moving gets old. Also, I felt like I just went through the job merry go round shit and I'm not ready to do it again, I think.

I also often have dreams when I am participating
in competitive eating and being a super viking
at it, but that seems more a product of gluttony
than actually wanting to be a competitive eater.
Last night I was really stressed out about jobs and I had this awesome dream that I just decided not to do my real life job for a year and spend that year basically on my skates the whole time, and improving as a skater. It was amazing. The idea of being able to spend so much time working on something I really like was really exciting. I had training 3x a week, and the rest of the time I skated everywhere and got over my fear of outdoor skating on hills and stuff, and I would go to rinks and work on things and everything. And in my dream I got super good at derby over the year and could do backwards crossovers (on both sides) and pegassists and I understood derby strategy and was lead jammer ALL THE FUCKING TIME and nobody could touch me and nobody got munted.

Then I was like, "boo, that's not going to pay the bills," and I woke up. I do this a lot--I will be having an awesome dream and then my stupid pragmatic cynnical self will come and shit all over it and I will actually wake up because I realize that my dream isn't real. And now I am like, FUCK YOU, BRAIN.

But the idea has been planted in my mind. There aren't any professional derby leagues (thankfully I think), but how awesome would it be if you could just do derby all year and not have to worry about stuff like work and whatever else gets in the way?

Monday 1 October 2012

Naming is hard, derby numbering is even harder

I have to change my derby number. Ugh.

Normally, it's <3)~ (as in the emoticon mouse). However, because of WFTDA rules, you can't use symbols in a derby number, so it's usually just 3. But NRV already has a 03, 3 and 3X on their team, so FUCK. But also hooray that they are even considering this, which suggests that I might get to bout soon and have someone yell out something other than "3"--of course, there's no guarantee that I'll remember and respond to the new number; I might accidentally go off to the bin when whoever actually IS #3 gets majored because my brain is stupid. Blargh.


But yeah, new number. Poo. I really like the mouse. I'm the only person that has that of the 65,000+ names on 2E, and it's obviously suited to the name. It's also an emoticon thingy, which is super geeky, and I like that too. But it'll have to go, and that means I'll need to replace it with something else, even if it's just while I'm skating with NRV.

For the record, Facebook didn't like my derby number either when I tried to change my name about a year ago.
Anyway, so I need a new number. Gritz suggested 131, because it kind of looks like the mouse now, but that's a mouse with a squashed face. Also because the font on my scrim tank makes it look like that.

Others have suggested more 3s, like 33 or 333 or 3333. (Haha, at VDL we had a 33, 333, 13 and 303, and once we were ALL on the track at the same time, and that was just fucking confusing and hilarious.)

For practical reasons, I'm also considering 7777, because that would be the longest possible thing to say for a ref, and so it would give me more time on the track before I got binned while they were trying to read out the entire number and what I was getting binned for.

My favorite so far is 100. I'm fucking Chairman Mouse, and Mao has a famous speech where he say:
"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land."
Or, when poorly translated into English, "let 1000 flowers bloom"--how the fuck do you fuck up numbers so badly in translation? (Oh but maybe 1000 is also an option for a number because if they read out the individual numbers that would give me an extra zero). Of course, this was during the Great Leap Forward, and the 100 flowers campaign was used to tell dissidents that they could speak against their government, and then they were subsequently arrested and probably executed. So I don't know if I'd want to be going down that path.

Other suggestions welcome!

Here's what 1000 flowers blossoming looks like, assholes.
UPDATE: I considered 40,000,000 (as the number of people that died under Mao's regime) but I think that's inappropriate. Also it won't fit on my arm. But imagine if the refs had to read out all the individual zeroes!