Glitter everywhere

So, the league has a monthly meeting, in which they recognize a "member of the month". And at this month's meeting, it was me!

Again, getting this was a WAT moment.

I'm not good with stuff like this so I probably wasn't even paying attention when they announced it and then if I hadn't already been sitting on the ground at the meeting, I probably would have fallen off my chair. Apparently I've been improving a lot, and I have a good attitude and am willing to learn. Yay me! (Also, Bettie said that if I shit glitter and rainbows it is with a degree of cynicism. Heh.)

I do feel very humbled by the acknowledgement, though. In previous months the people who win this are people that put tons of time and effort into the league. That said, I feel like I have been learning a lot in the last few months (although knowing when to apply it can sometimes be harder since it's like I KNOW what I should do but my body doesn't know how to do it in time, or I realize like 2 seconds after the fact that I should have done something else, or something dumb like that). This blog helps--it's like I can take notes on the stuff that I am learning to help keep it in my brain.

Everything's coming up Milhouse!

A very derby weekend

So two weekends ago was very derby-eventful:

Hehe, Mouse with a mouse. I am so funny sometimes.
(Photo: Bettie Lockdown)

Thursday was the league's Trunk or Treat at the skate rink. Basically all this means is we do Halloweeny stuff and give out candy to the local kids. I can't say that this event is a great success, since there's usually a godawful low turnout of children (well, the rink is kinda far away from everything really), but I got to eat a shit load of candy bars and pixie sticks. And I revived the pikachu outfit but this time it was family friendly and I was sober (but full of sugar).

Halloween is also the anniversary of my munty hand injuries. One year later, my fingers are still slightly crooked and still require physical therapy. Good times.

Friday was a party at Pumpkin's house. Pumpkin is my Team Pie collaborator here at NRV. She is super artsy and makes awesome food. So a party at hers means a shit load of awesome food and lots of nice homemade arts and crafts things. A bunch of people from the league showed up (in costume!!) and I learned about some awesome American cultural practices like this totally INSANE game where you wear oven mitts and punch open boxes (yes, WTF!) and then we did things like drink a lot of booze and play spooky bingo.

Arrak-Kiss and I wanted to play a geography game where people would have to list the states in Australia (given that I get shit for not knowing where ANYTHING is in the US, I thought it'd be nice to reciprocate), but we had maps of Australia and Canada and I didn't even know Canada looked like how it did until someone pointed out that I was looking at a map of Canada. MEGA FAIL. :P But it was a super fun night, yay.

Okay, seriously, how the fuck was I supposed to know? :P

Then Saturday was pre-bout day! The B-team had a bout out in WV, and a few of us decided to take Beth's RV and go camping the night before. Hell, it was more like GLAMping--this RV is the fucking shit. It was super fancy and had a TV with cable and a fancy kitchen and oven and running water and everything. It was seriously good fun and an awesome team bonding experience.

FANCY SHIZ YO! (Note presence of TV)

And we got to have fire-roasted bananas and smores for breakfast the next day! How fucking fancypants is that, really!

Fucking breakfast of champions!
(Probably not really, because too much chocolate = crash)

And finally, Sunday was bout day! We had a lazy morning (complete with smores--see above), showered, played with some of the native wildlife (well, some of us wanted to throw grasshoppers in to the fire... :/), then we packed up the RV, and then headed over to the Civic Center in Charleston for some bout prep. There's an entry about it here, but this was basically the pinnacle of an awesomely derbylicious weekend. Yeah. That felt good.

Bout v Chemical Valley

(I know there was a photographer at the bout, but I haven't found any photos yet, so I haven't posted them. Plus--as you'll see--chances are that most of them involve me getting my ass kicked or my face punched in.)

So our last bout of the season was a B-team bout against Chemical Valley in Charleston, WV.

Due to some previous stupid shit, our bench was much, much shorter than we had anticipated. We played with only nine skaters, which meant that there were a lot of back-to-back jams for people. Lindy and I were primarily jammers, so we went in every second jam, with Ape occasionally coming in as a relief jammer when we got too buggered.

And hell did I get buggered. First of all, I was told to be in the first jam of the bout, and I am REALLY not good with that. I usually take a while in the bout to get my head in the right space, so being told I was not only jamming in the first jam of the bout but also doing that slow-mo demo jam before hand was seriously like a deer-in-the-headlights moment for me. I was nervous about fucking up the demo jam, hahaha. Ugh. I hate all that stupid winding-up-to-the-bout stuff that happens, with intros/national anthem/demo bout stuff. I just want to start skating dammit!

Lovely rink rash from sliding on the concrete, or is that
just from someone's velcro? I don't even know anymore.

But when that happened, shit was tough. The first two jams CVRG broke first and got lead, so we didn't get any points on the board until the third jam when I got lead jammer and put five points on. Then it was a slow crawl up the scoreboard, but at the cost of getting seriously pummelled. I don't know why but my ankles and shins were super killing me (I think it was playing on concrete and banging my toe stops on it when I was running, or something?) and as I got tired, I got stupid and sloppy. In fact, at one point I cut track, got sent to the box, came out (the other jammer got sent to the box), cut track again, got sent to the box AGAIN, then the next jam started when I had 0.16 seconds left on the box so I came out and immediately backblocked the shit out of someone, then got sent to the box AGAIN. I was sent to the box THREE times in two jams. How fucking embarrassing. UGH. I wanted to punch myself in the face.

But after all that time out I got my shit together and didn't have any more penalties for the entire game. Yay. And I didn't need to punch myself in the face because my face (and the rest of me) was suitably tenderized by CVRG. They have a pretty big team, so my face was a prime target for elbows, fists and shoulders. Surprisingly, I didn't get a bloody lip this time, but I did get elbows to the eye, and shoulder blocked so hard in the face I had someone's number on my cheeks. I got at least three people boxed for high blocks. I also stopped counting how many times I got hit in the face after about six. :P

Lovely face bruise, complete with blood pooling.

The best one was an elbow to the meaty part between my cheek (like the bottom of my eye socket) and my eyelid. Apparently the refs were going to make that an ejection but then they rescinded it. :/ But I got ice on it and after a while my field of vision got a bit obscured by puffy eye meat. Lovely. I took the first four jams of  the second period off, while I was trying to sort out my shit. But once I had had a bit of a rest, I did feel much better going in. We racked up a few more points in the second period but didn't end up winning. No biggie though.

The score differential was so much that I don't think we really cared. On the B team we don't get to do a lot of bouts, so I think most of us were just super stoked to be bouting at all. It's hard to get practical bout experience if you're not an A team or bridge skater, so being able to have our own bout (with some A teamers helping us out of course) was a very exciting experience. And there aren't really that many just B team skaters, so sometimes it doesn't feel like we get a lot of bout time, or bouting experiences. So I think we just wanted to get out there and skate, and we really did. We busted our asses out there and tried our hardest, and it showed. We were still learning, and it was still fun for us even if we got our asses handed to us on a plate. We didn't care about that.

Oh, but this was the best bit:

The mug was actually full of Kit Kats,
but we ate them on the ride home in the RV.

Seriously. I vaguely heard them announce it after the bout and I was just like, "WAT" until somebody (Psycho? Shilo?) told me to actually go up there to get my award. Haha. I'm so dumb. The cynnical part of me wants to say that it was because CVRG felt bad for punching me in the face too many times. :P But whatever it was, this was a seriously humbling experience. I totally never expected anything like this because all I wanted to do was jam (and not get pummelled too much).

But yeah, hooray. :) And that's the end of our season!

Thunder in the Valley, the prequel

Tomorrow is the Thunder in the Valley double header over in Salem!

 Star City Rollergirls are hosting, and basically the nearby leagues are coming to bout. NRV's All Star team is playing Chemical Valley in the first bout. And then the NRV B Team skaters are skating for Blackwater Rollers as guest skaters, and there will also be some other skaters from Iron Mountain to round out Blackwater's lineup.

It'll be a long day for me. I'm NSOing the first bout and then skating in the second. I'm also NSOing a position that I've not done before, and it's probably the scariest one to fuck up. I'm jam timing. I have to practice blowing my whistle. Fox40 whistles are fucking confusing, especially to get the four blasts to end the jam. I feel like I'm drooling everywhere. And because of the venue, I'll have to be extra shouty. And then of course when I'm bouting I'm going to need to be extra shouty too.

I'm particularly nervous because Jam Timing is one of those positions where if you fuck up, EVERYONE knows. So apparently tonight at the WFTDA Division 2 playoffs, the JT thought that overtime was one minute jams, and then stuffed that up. I haven't found out all the details yet, but knowing that there will be a sufficient amount of rage if I fuck up makes me a little twitchy. Hell, you have a whistle and if you sound wimpy blowing it, then you kinda suck. Now I'm not a super loud person so this will be an interesting experience on the boundaries of my comfort zone.

In fact, I think I'm going to go down to the car and lock myself in it and practice blowing my whistle. :P

In an unrelated note, the place we are bouting at tomorrow is also know as the stadium where the rodeo scene for Borat was filmed:

I hope the audience will be more friendly. :P

Post Tax Smacks

Tomorrow I'm heading up to Roanoke to skate in their Post Tax Smacks, which is kind of like the scrimmagey all-day bout that Season's Beatings was. I'm excited, although one big difference is that the teams are of mixed skill levels. So I have people like Gritz on my team, and I will be beaten up tomorrow by people who are Gritz-like on other teams. Whee.

It's also tournament-style, so it'lll be a bit more competitive than Beatings. There are four women's teams (and three co-ed) and you basically will be playing elimination-style. I'm in the first bout, and then there's a while until my second bout, so hopefully I'll learn a bit of stuff tomorrow, even if my team gets eliminated (which of course I hope it doesn't).

I'm also trying a new layout with wheels (with my poisons--which are new and I will have to write a review for--and my 88A bullets). But yeah, again, I've packed enough food to feed a small village, as well as all my gear, and this time four different colored shirts (in case there are spare spots on other teams). Hopefully time there will be no bloody lip and no vomit, but we'll see. (What else is there, crying?)

MRI Arthrogram, Part 1

Last week I had to get an MRI arthrogram done on my right shoulder. There is nothing to be worried about; I have had some shoulder pain since I dislocated it about two years ago when I started doing derby. I went to physiotherapist a bit then but it isn't really working so when I was at the doctor's office last week I asked about it and she said there was probably a torn piece of cartilage in my shoulder.

The MRI was basically just to see how much damage there is. I don't think it is very bad and I have almost full mobility in the joint but it would be good to know. It just hurts sometimes to sleep on that side, I can't extend my arm fully (which is bad since I teach and point at things a lot), my whips suck, and too many shoulder checks make it feel weird. Plus I figured knowing is better than not knowing, so there's also that.

The procedure is basically described in  this video. It's gross though. I guess my description of it is also gross, so whatever: 

The comments on that youtube video did NOT make me feel good going into the hosptial.

So basically I spent the afternoon getting prodded and poked by medical machinery. First I checked in and had to wear one of those giant tent gowns again, and then I was sent to radiology. I had to do a MRI first which was SO boring. I've never had a MRI done before but I've seen the tube in TV shows and stuff. What I didn't know was that you have to lie in the MRI tube thing and you aren't allowed to move at all. The technicians put a sandbag on my arm so it would be extended properly, so I couldn't move that and it was falling asleep.

And the machine is really loud. I had earplugs in but I could hear the machine banging and clicking and stuff. So I started humming songs from TV shows and whatever, and then the MRI man came on the microphone and told me to stop moving, hahahaha.

The first MRI was about 30 minutes or something. Then after that I did the Arthrogram, which was by far the worst thing I had to do at the hospital. First I did some static X Rays, so basically you just get X rays done by a technician per usual. The problem was that shoulders are hard to X ray from top down so that required getting into weird positions leaning over the X ray table or whatever. But that wasn't so bad.

Then the fluroscopy bit came next. I had to lie on an X ray table. My shoulder was "prepped" so they sterilized my skin with this blue alcohol stuff and dressed with one of those surgery cloths they have with the little hole in the middle for operating. That seemed a bit serious, but hey, this is a serious procedure.

The X ray table I was on was relaying realtime information about my bones. There was a monitor hooked up to it so while I was lying on the table, if I moved my arm I could see my arm bones on the monitor also moving. (The doctor had to wear a lead suit while doing the procedure in case you were wondering.)

X ray table. The black thing in the back is the monitor
that the doctor used for the fluroscopy. I took this photo while
we were waiting for the doctor, but I don't know about using
phones in high magnetic and radioactive environments.

 This is the gross bit, so you can skip this paragraph if you want. So I'm on the table with the X ray thingy going and my arm prepped and then I was given an anaesthetic. It was like the same feeling as when you go to the dentist and they do the anaesthteic needle for your fillings, so it felt a bit painful and fat at the same time. But once that had taken effect, the fun bit started. The doctor put a hollow needle into the shoulder joint, using the X ray screen thing for guidance. Then he put a thinner, longer needle into the cartilage in the joint via the hollow needle (which was taped down onto my shoulder). There was a tube attached to the second needle, and and he put radioactive/magnetic dye in it and injected that into my shoulder.

Needless to say, the whole time you can see it on the X ray. It was REALLY gross watching the needle go in and I almost threw up on the table. Also it hurt a bunch because it was a needle in between my bones! The medical staff were really good though; I told them I hated needles and they were really reassuring and made me feel better about the procedure when otherwise I probably would just have shit my pants.

I saw this on a car on my way out of
the hospital and thought it was appropriate.
(I didn't actually cry though, but you get the idea.)

And then after they put the dye in there were some normal X rays and then another MRI, which felt really weird because there is magnetic stuff in the dye and when I was in the MRI machine it felt like my arm was being pulled! The second MRI was shorter, maybe 25 minutes. It was still really boring. My arm was sore though, so getting it to lay still in the MRI sucked a bit.

Obviously I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the procedure while it was happening. But that's good; the mental pictures I have of seeing random shit going into my shoulder and my shoulder joints were fucking gross. Plus there was blood coming out of the needle site. I don't even know how I managed to keep swearing at a minimum.

Also, my shoulder got dyed bright blue as a result and it didn't wash off for three days. Plus I have a bruise where the needles went in. And my arm is sore.

On the upside I had cake to make myself feel better.

Tour de campus!

Last weekend Psycho, Lindy Liu-Who and I went for a bit of a skate around campus. The weather was surprisingly good, what after that stupid random snowstorm that hit and everything.

Note leftover bits of snow. There were puddles we had to
skate around as well so we wouldn't get wet bearings.

I have to say that it took a while for me to get used to outdoor skating. I never did it all that much, and paths that you walk on normally suddenly are bumpier and steeper for some reason when there are wheels on your feet. So a lot of the paths we had planned out had been tested when we were walking around on campus, but skating was totally different and we did ask what we were thinking when we came across things that we had originally thought were nice surfaces to skate on, but turned out to be all seizure-inducing from bumpiness.

Architecture roof: bumpy as fuck.

For safety reasons, I get really nervous about lips or cracks in sidewalks where you can catch your wheels and stack. I did that once or twice; once I just bellyflopped onto the ground and it hurt. Ow. :P (I also have a fear of looking like a douche in public, and that involves also noticeably falling on my face in front of a bunch of people. Luckily that did not happen in the bellyflop case.)

But we skated a bunch around the drillfield, through some quads, and down a random ramp joining two buildings several stories above street level. It got better after we had skated a while.

The ramp was long.

We also saw this sign but you could only
read it if you were close enough (and
therefore already breaking the rules).

I wasn't prepared for the fact that there were so many people on campus on the weekend. Okay, normally I'm not bad with obstacle avoidance. We didn't hit anyone, but there were people with kids and people riding their bikes and people with dogs and it was like WTF.

Also there were some very rude guys on bikes who didn't even stop when we were coming (downhill) towards them; they just looked at us and kept riding their bikes up, while we were trying not to run into them and/or get out of their way. I almost had to bail on the grass, and Lindy had to grab a thorn bush (WTF) to stop from runinng into them. Grrr. I think Psycho had a few words for them after they passed us.

And then we saw these people doing parkour! There were a LOT of them; it was like there was a litle Parkour-land or something in this one quad on campus. And none of them were wearing helmets. I have to say that I get kind of (read: really) uncomfortable when I see people flinging themselves at buildings and not wearing any protective gear at all.

Okay, maybe THIS makes me more uncomfortable: PARKOUR ON SKATES:

When we were done we went and got burritos and jewelery. It was a good day.

Anyway, if the weather keeps up there'll be more outdoor skating, and then I can get over my stupid fear of hills and public stacking. Yay!

What gives, Virginia?

So a few of us were talking about doing a Tour de Campus outdoor skate this weekend. We've actually been planning it for about a month or so but the weather was never warm or agreeable enough. It's still been kind of chilly but at least not pissing down rain or snow or something.I haven't outdoor skated since I was in San Francisco with Boudi, and that was a LONG time ago.

So I was all excited for outdoor skate. And then yesterday it started snowing again. Like, big fat ole snow that covered everything. We got something like 5.5 inches in 4 hours, which is nuts. Note that Spring Break was THREE weeks ago. It is April and after Easter. This is bullshit.

This is what the campus looked like when it started snowing:

Yay, fat wet snow.

This is what it looked like 2.5 hours later when I was walking home after the emergency broadcast system on campus cancelled all the classes:

Believe it or not there are actual paths under all that snow.

If the weather is crap we can't outdoor skate because it wrecks your bearings and whatever. I'm also skating in my antiks, and I'm sure the salt water from the melted snow isn't going to be great for the leather either. Plus, the idea of trying to roller skate over bits of ice is ridiculous. So we have to play it by ear this weekend.

But the snow is melting, so it looked like it was just a crazy dump yesterday. Today was sunny though and a lot of snow melted. This is what it looked like this afternoon:

HELLO BLUE SKY

Hopefully it all dries up before tomorrow!

It's actually quite sunny today, so hilariously I am de-stinkifying my pads by hanging them outside. Amidst the piles of snow and all, I'm sure this is effective.

My right side is borked

No, that is not a transformers mask.

I went to a sports doctor/orthapedic surgeon today. Last week, I went to my regular doctor and in passing asked her what was up with my crooked fingers (which I injured in October last year and got X rays on and it never healed) and she ordered more X rays which came out negative (so no fractures) but then referred me to an orthapedic surgeon to see what was up with that.

So I spent two hours at the orthapedic surgeon's office today. The good news is that the hand is munted officially but my fingers are not broken; they just healed funny when they were splinted (on the suspicion of being broken) last year. All the soft tissue knitted up weirdly so that is why my mobility is limited. But it's not bad enough to require anything serious; just some physical therapy should fix that over time. Phew. It's annoying though, since I'm right handed and holding pens is a bit wonky, and not being able to straighten/bend them properly means by typing has gotten really bad so I type like a drunken monkey smashing its head on a keyboard.

Knee bondage rubber fetish time.

But then I also got the doctor to look at two other things: my right knee (which has been crap since I played hockey 10 years ago) and my shoulder. My knee just gets sore a bit, and basically the ligaments holding the kneecap in place are a bit loose so it means there's less support, which means my knee bones actually end up rubbing on each other. It gets really irritated when I do knee falls in derby though, what with the extra force of the ground smashing on it and everything. Even though I am wearing kneepads there's still some kneecap jiggling going on there I guess.

I got some X rays done on that too, and nothing was broken (which was expected, otherwise I don't know how I would have been walking). But since there's a lack of support in the knee, short of building up extra quad strength instantly (leg lifts with weights, leg presses etc--but not squats, because that makes my knee super crunchy) I'd need some extra support on it. It's not like my quads are weak to start with, but it just needs more support. Jumping, changing direction quickly etc. are all pretty brutal on one's joints.

So now I have a super fancy rubberized knee brace thing to wear. It feels really awkward but it does hold my kneecap in a bit which helps I guess. I'll see how well it goes with the kneepads (if at all; it feels kinda bulky) but we can try that out. Otherwise it's back to taping my knee for me. Ugh.

Finally, in passing I was just like "oh hey, my right shoulder is a little bit crunchy and it's been like that since I dislocated it two years ago" (which I talked about here: sadly I didn't seem to follow the moral that I left for myself at the end of the entry). That actually turned out to be the worst of the lot. It doesn't bother me a lot; I usually don't sleep on that side though, when I work I can't use my right arm to point at things, it gets stiff when it's cold and my whips suck as a result.

My hospital appointment form.
Details have been removed to protect the munty.

The diagnosis: a slap tear. That's what happens when you munt the cartilage in your shoulder joint. Basically you've got your scapula, and there's a ring of cartilage on that so that when your arm bone goes into the socket there it isn't grinding on bone. In my case, I've torn some of the cartilage, so when I rotate my arm the arm bone is catching on the flappy piece of cartilage, hence the crunchiness.

For a proper diagnosis, I've got to go to the hospital and get something called a MRI Arthrogram. From what I understand, you do an MRI, but they inject dye into your shoulder and if it leaks into your cartilage then that's how they can tell if there is a tear. The doctor was pretty sure that there was one, but this should confirm it.

And then there's only one way to fix it and that is with surgery. I REALLY do not like the idea of surgery. Ze Boyfriend is saying that ignoring the problem won't help, and that's true. And I guess there's a sense in which the injury limits my ability to do the things that I actually want to be able to do, like point at things and sleep on my right side and give non-wimpy whips. So I should get it fixed. But the idea of surgery (or rather, the subsequent being out of commission for up to SIX MONTHS) sounds really, really horrible.

The upside (relatively speaking) is that the surgery is elective: I only need it if the shoulder REALLY bothers me. That sounds pretty subjective. But I think I should get it done at some point. There's not a super urgency on it or something and being out of commission for 5-6 months is suboptimal; obviously that is a lot of derby time away but also in terms of having my work done, if I can't point at things (the board, students, etc.) that will also suck.

So I am a little bit sadface right now. I am going to make cupcakes, which will help, but yeah, I guess after the MRI I have to decide if I want surgery, and when. Booooooo.

Bout vs Blackwater

It's been a busy week, derbywise. We had the bout on Saturday, then practice Sunday, bout review Monday, then Tuesday and Wednesday were practice. My bruises from the weekend are coming up nicely, and we're now looking forward to the upcoming bouts.

Anyway, Blackwater. So this was the place where I popped my bouting cherry, as it were. Well, properly bouting anyway. I'll try to recount some of the things from the bout.

I remember there was a lot of stuff that had to happen before the bout actually took place. I mean, not just getting there and warmups and stuff, but then there are introductions (at which I failed very clearly), captains meetings, the singing of the national anthem, random announcements, the bout demo/slo-mo jam, and THEN the bout could start. It was weird because I was so ready to bout when I put my skates on at the beginning, then all these things had to happen before we could start and it was anticlimatic and clearly I was jittery since I did a bunch of stupid things like almost crashing into people in the high five area and getting a bloody mouth in warmups.

Once the bout was underway though, I think I stopped being that stupid. I don't even remember much about the first half. We had two lineups and we just alternated those, and rotated our jammers. I didn't think I was being super effective in the first half; a lot of it was just getting used to being on the track and working with the lineup. I did feel like I was giving up my point a bit easily at some parts because I was kind of floating and there were so many things I could do at any given moment that I couldn't decide if I should do offense or defense or what the hell.

I think this was in the second jam or something.

I think our jammers were working really well and we racked up a lot of points. We also did a fair bit of power jamming, and the strategies we had been working on (passive offence stuff) worked pretty well. I think our walls could have been stronger because Blackwater were really good at getting in between us and breaking up our walls and we weren't reforming very quickly. We also had problems with being aware of the opposing jammer; a few times she snuck through before anyone had even turned around to see. (Of course, the bench is all there screaming JAMMER!! but it doesn't necessarily mean that the pack is going to notice.)

I think it was at half time when we went back to our team area and noticed that I wasn't getting the numbers on my arms redrawn on that I figured I needed to hit people more. I felt like I was good at positional blocking, but knocking down some skaters would help the jammer score some easy points. Plus, it's fun to hit a bitch. I actually wanted to see if I could take out the biggest skater on the opposing team. Of course the likelihood of that was minimal, but it gave me something to work towards.

I think I felt much better about blocking in the second half. We did a lot of backwards bridging, so you hit the jammer out, the scoot back so she has to reenter behind you, while the rest of your team is bridging so you can still take her out:

Imagine I'm the pink blocker who hits out the yellow jammer.

 

Then the other blockers peel off and bridge so I can still engage the jammer.
In practice it works better when I skate up to the next pink blocker so it becomes a 2-on-1.

OMG I AM HITTING SOMEONE. LOL.
(Actually, this was the hit that knocked the jammer out and we did
an awesome backwards bridge and forced her to cut, hooray.)

I hit the jammer a few times and she fell down, and then I ran backwards on my toe stops a bunch to make her reenter behind me. I really like toe stop work. Anyway, yeah so the backwards bridging I think worked quite well. Making sure you bring at least one other blocker with you also helps, so you end up with the jammer having to get past two blockers (which is harder than one).

Most times for hitting other blockers, throwing myself at them wasn't so great, so other times I think leaning people out worked better, but as they got tired, hitting became more effective. So I guess I'm also a late bloomer in that sense; I found my fire halfway through the bout. (I guess that works though, since people who had their fire early on were tiring out, so the amount of fire-ness overall in the team stays consistent?)

During one of our power jams. Ape and I were both rookies
and we were the only two blockers on the track. We managed
to send of two Blackwater blockers for destroying the pack, whee.

I also think we need to do more work in terms of actually doing something when the jammer isn't around. I felt like we would be like "oh here's the opposing jammer, let's hit her. Oh now she's gone, let's stand around until she comes back", which is actually probably quite boring to watch. Plus I'm sure fucking with the other team's walls and whatnot throughout would throw them off a bit.

Oh, and about halfway through the second half I got to jam. Before the whistle blew for my first time as jammer, there was a time out. The anticipation was horrible. I felt like I needed to pee and throw up and crap my pants all at the same time. But once the jam was underway, it was okay. I somehow got lead and then on my scoring lap I managed to make it through and call it before the opposing jammer got through. I need to pick up my feet more. Also, I did fall a bunch. That's something I need to work on: not falling when someone smacks into me. It's just so much easier to fall, but I got sucked back into the pack a few times as a result. I guess the way you get better at that is just to get pummelled a whole bunch and try to stay on your feet? I'm not sure what other drills there would be for this...

The final score was 206-347 to NRV. I learned a whole bunch, and going to the after party was also awesome! Now we get to do it all again in a month, wheeeeee.

All of the rookie fails.

Officially now I have bouted in a full (although not WTFDA sanctioned--that might be the next step) bout. Hooray! And I wasn't munted (well, severely). Hooray! The weather was awesome; a couple of us drove up to Appomattox together and it was nice to get the road tripping experience in as well.

I'll write more about the actual bout in a little while, but this is just a list of some of the things you should NOT do during your first bout.

Another thing that I should do for a bout:
Provide a picture for the program.
(But yay, I'm actually in a program!!)

I guess I didn't really have pre-bout jitters or anything; I did a bit of work earlier in the day, made myself two peanut butter and banana sandwiches, ate a stupid amount of breakfast burrito and packed my gear. We got to the skate place with plenty of time to spare, so there was no rush to get ready or gear up as we went to hit the track.

Then I went on to commit all the rookie mistakes possible in the history of roller derby.

During warmups we were doing the "three people in a wall and a jammer tries to break through the wall" drill and I got elbowed in the face and busted my lip. DURING WARMUPS. The bout hadn't even started yet and I was already bleeding. And the EMTs weren't getting there until right before the bout, so I had to stop warming up and go and wash out my mouth and mouthguard and everything, but there wasn't any ice so I just had a fat lip for the first part of the bout. Interestingly, getting elbowed in the mouth was exactly what happened in my first bout for Season's Beatings too. My prebout ritual is now eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and getting a bloody lip from a teammate. I'm 2 for 2.

Then, when the bout was about to start, I fucked up the rollout by almost plowing into our bench manager.We were doing an intro when we skated around the track in a pack, and when your name was called, you skated a lap, high fiving the other team as you went, and then rejoined the back of the pack.

What normal people did.

Gritz was announcing, and she had a little description of everyone based on their derby names. So mine was something about "cruel and unusual punishment", and then I got very excited and started skating my lap. We were right about to go into turn 3 when I started. I took the corner too fast and almost smashed straight into Smack in the high five line, but she was right in front of the Blackwater team so I could either skate into her, or into the opposing team. I think I made the right choice. :P Still, that was embarassing as fuck. I don't even know how that happened.

What I ended up doing. FML.

I also managed to projectile vomit (well only a little bit) on myself and possibly an opposing blocker in the second half of the bout. I was jamming and back blocked someone. But I backblocked them so hard and because they were taller than me their butt basically went into my stomach.

The drill, or the jam, or whatever.

The downside was that I was full of gatorade and breakfast burrito and bananas and water and clif bars and it was like getting punched in the stomach, and all that predigested food had to go somewhere, so as I sat in the box it came up a little. It wasn't like I was skating and barfing on the track at the same time, but it was enough that I had little chunks of undigested gatorade-clif bars-banana on my wrist guard and in my mouth guard and a bit on my pants. Go me. And I was only in the box for four seconds, so I wasn't feeling too amazing when I got out and finished the jam.

But seriously. Who the fuck does that?! At least I didn't puke on the track. It would have been worse if they had to stop the bout because I had barfed all over the track and it was ruining people's skates.

I think those were the main things that one should probably not do in their first bout. Okay, so maybe I didn't commit ALL of the rookie mistakes in history. I didn't forearms anyone, I didn't multiplayer block anyone, I didn't hit anyone with my elbows (I think). I spent a total of FOUR SECONDS in the box for the entire bout. I'm not sure if that means I wasn't working hard enough or something. Or maybe I was playing very cleanly.

I hope this means I won't be such a derp in my future bouts. I just get a bit overexcited at the prospect of actually bouting. Hopefully that is all (or mostly) out of my system. No pun intended, but you get the idea.

But it was fun, and I learned a lot from it, whee! More on the actual bout later.

Bout day is here.

There are many mountains in derby. You pass fresh meat, you get to scrimmage, you get drafted to a team, you do your first bout.

Today is bout day. It's the first time I will get to bout for a team representing my league. I will get to do a rollout. I will get to wear a team jersey with my name on it (see below) I will get to do a 2-3 hour road trip with my teammates and leaguemates to travel to the bout venue. I will get to play derby with people with whom I've trained and practiced with for the last couple of months, and we know how each other work. 

I don't know if we'll win, but that seems secondary to actually getting to bout right now. It feels like it's been a long time coming for me. But, as the Chinese saying goes, for every mountain, there is a higher mountain. So the challenges will still be coming, which is good for not stagnating.

I'll write a report up of how the bout went later today (or maybe tomorrow, depending on how tired I am), but if it was anything like the practice bouts and scrimmages I've done, things will be good. This is one mountain I've been looking to get over for a while, and I'll be happy to have conquered it.

Also, don't forget that any part of a good uniform involves sparkly yellow derbyskinz (they look better with a butt in them):

And the torch passes

Remember my Diablos? They were my very first pair of derby skates that were mentioned in the first entry for this blog all the way back here. I stoped using them after a while because they turned out to be the wrong size for me, and I learned that the hard way.

Anyway, they have a new home! One of the freshies has inherited them, but at least she has the smarts to not skate on those horrible stock Evos that come with them, and she has Poisons instead. I'm sure they feel much better than the rental skates that she has otherwise been skating on. Plus, I'm glad the Diablos are getting put to good use and not just wasting away in a closet because I was dumb and got the wrong size skate.

It's awesome when you have a pair of skates to call your own. When I first got my skates I slept with them in bed (before they were dirty and skated on) because I thought they were so fantastic. I'm not saying that everyone does that, but hey, I was excited.

Anyway, here they are on their new owner:

Note asymmetrical laces! All my footwear has asymmetrical laces.
Also note horrible looking Adventure World carpet.

Yay! Happy rolling, Sarah!

Team Pie revival!

We had the derby prom last night (which I'll write a report about soon) but one of the awesomest things to come out of it was the fact that Pumpkin told me she read this blog, and then asked if I wanted to start doing Team Pie at NRV.

I think I need this shirt.

Or maybe I should also get this shirt and then
I can use them like scrimmage shirts.

HELLS YES! I love Team Pie, but the kicker here is we're going to make our own pies (or maybe baked goods generally) and bring them to practice instead of going to McDonald's for their pies, even those pies are deep fried and like 2 for a dollar. The idea of homemade pie is making me hungry already.

YAY TEAM PIE! I am excite.

A cautionary tale

Like most people, I strongly dislike going to the dentist. I don't like the little high pitched drill things, I don't like how hygienists make you feel guilty about your teeth cleaning practices, I don't like the fact that when I leave I am thanking someone for making my teeth sore and my gums bloody. I also think that teeth are just pretty gross. So yeah, boo going to the dentist, indeed.

But you get free shit from the dentist, hooray.

Anyway, I finally braved going to the dentist today and got my teeth cleaned and whatnot, but one thing I was told was that I had like five cavities. FIVE. What the fuck. I didn't have any a year or so ago, and I don't even like candy. As far as I'm aware, my teeth don't look gross. I am usually pretty good about brushing and even flossing and burning my mouth with listerine, so really, WTF?

Okay, science time. Our teeth have microscopic grooves and pits. Sometimes food and other random stuff can get in there that you can't brush out. Cavities are caused by a bacteria in your mouth that eats all the random food particles. The bacteria is in your saliva as well, and when it eats the food and multiplies, boom, cavities.

Your temperament's wrong for the priesthood
And teaching would suit you still less.

You might be asking what this has to do with anything derbyish. Well, because in derby you use mouthguards and they are often covered in spit and other random disgusting shit (e.g. sweat, floor crud, whatever), they harbor bacteria as well, especially if you eat before/during practice and don't clean your teeth/mouthguard (seriously, who has time for that). Then when you don't clean your mouthguard, the bacteria grows on it, and then when you put your mouthguard back into your mouth you're basically shoving a bajillion bacteria into your mouth. Then they get at all those easy to eat food-covered random spots, and have a giant bacteria party.

EWWWWWW.

Okay, gross! Now how do you prevent it? My dentist said something pretty obvious: "you should be cleaning your mouthguard every time you use it." Yes, I felt dumb. I normally brush it with a toothbrush every other week or so, but you can also listerine it (although I did that with mine once and it dyed it green) and you should replace your mouthguard every 6 or so months. I've had mine for over a year. Yeah, so that is some pretty nasty shit.

So because I didn't clean or replace my mouthguard often enough, I have cavities, and I have to go back in and get a shit load of fillings done. Sadface. I hate those stupid drills.

MORAL OF THE STORY: If you don't clean your mouthguard out, this could be you:

SERIOUSLY. VOMIT.
(Not my mouth, to be clear)

This stinks.

Deodorizing stinky derby pads has just reached a new low at Casa de Mouse.

Normally after practice I air out my pads immediately on a clothes airer, and when it's sunny outside I put the clothes airer outside for the day so the sun can burn off whatever stink molecules are hanging out on my gear. But it hasn't been sunny lately, and because it's also been cold the windows at my house have also been closed a lot. So what this means is now my house smells like sweaty derby pads and breakfast burritos a lot.

This is what I've now resorted to:

Yep, that's one of those air freshener/deodorizer febreze candle things. To be fair, I am using my old old wristguards, since my fingers are still a bit munted and it's hard to slide my new wristguards on (given that the splits bend the opposite way that my fingers currently do), so these have some residual stank on them. They work fine, but they just smell pretty bad.

The idea is that hot air rises, so hopefully hot, deodorizing air will rise and destink the pads. I'm not confident this will work. The worst that can happen is that I go to practice smelling like sweaty hibiscus and pineapple (since the candle I got was some tropical flavored one, I think it had a stupid name like "Hawaiian Aloha" or something dumb).

But still... ew. It may be time to do a pad wash.

This shit is bananas.

Okay, so the NRV all-stars are having their opening bout tomorrow for the season. I'm on the bout production committee, and my job (at least for this bout) is to make some snack baskets for the teams and the refs. We have baskets; all I have to do is fill them for about $30.

Also now all the food has been on the ground next to my
stinky gear. At least everything is prepackaged. I call this
a food handling win.

I feel a little bit like a waterboy doing this. Also, I have an idea of how much a derby girl or boy eats (a LOT), and feeding that many people for virtually under $1 a person is pretty tough. Plus, you want the things to be nutritious to some extent, and/or be good sources of energy. And THEN presumably they've got to be relatively easy to eat; something prepackageed and edible with hands (with stinky wrist guards on, ew) would be the goal.

So off I went to the store. Shopping on a budget is hard; shopping on a budget with nutritional restrictions is even harder. I had to get lots of things that were on sale or were cheaper if you had a membership card from the grocery store. I actually ended up spending something like $38 but got a fair bit, and there are leftovers for next time as well. So this is waht the baskets look like:

The baskets don't look super terrible when they're filled.

This is what they have in them:

• Bananas (obviously)
• Chocolate chip cookies
• Peanut butter cookies
• Peanut butter cracker things
• Cheese cracker sandwich things
• Berry trail mix
• Random assorted mini candy bars
• Gummi bears
• Potato chips (you could get an assorted box of snack size ones for $10)

I assume I don't have to get each person one of everything; presumably these are supposed to supplement food that they already have with them. But yeah, I managed to cram them all into the baskets, and then also have some left to make a snack/thankyou box for the announcer (who is driving from Charlotte) and also possibly feed the NSOs.

Oh, and I also got a free box of cake mix from the store with some random store coupon, so tomorrow I'll make cupcakes for the NSOs; it's like they are always neglected in these cases and they work pretty damn hard. And that way I'm feeding pretty much everyone who has anything to do with the bout for under $40 because I am a champ. :D

FREE CAKE. YOU CAN KEEP YOUR NASTY HEALTHY FOOD.

 I just hope it's enough food for everyone... it's not like I'm Jesus or anything and can do magic food division.

SASHIMI AND BREADCRUMBS FOR EVERYONE!

Random reminder that I am in the South: when I went to load up my cart with bananas, the guy who was stocking them was looking and said "are you making banana puddin' or something?" and I said no and explained why I needed like 20 bananas, and then I was like "damn I really want banana pudding now, because that shit is tasty." I love southern food.