Katherine and Addison

Katherine and Addison
Originally uploaded by lostrocket

I suppose pictures of babies are much less exciting than pictures of derby! I just love this photo. The baby is not mine, she belongs to Jay's cousin (so you get to give her back, the best part!).

It was still a busy derby weekend. On Saturday we had Interleague practice from 1-3, it was rather sparsely attended (especially the 2-3 hour, as we'd hoped some other skaters would come to bout us) but we did some great drills. After that I had to run a few errands, then rushed home to get ready for the Minnesota bout.

Which I thought was awesome.

Sadly, it seems 99% if not 100% of my league does not/would not agree! Okay, the Bombshells-Garda Belts match was brutal - and not in a legal sense! Tons of fighting, but I thought it was great and exciting and also, hilarious (like when Ann E. Briated hooked elbows with and pulled down Marilyn Monrogue..and thought she would just skate away from that. Marilyn quickly corrected her by throwing her arms around Ann's neck and dragging her back down for a tussle..which got Ann, not Marilyn, ejected! Hah!). Surprising, too - it seemed like the Garda Belts were the ones starting all the fights! Plenty of dirty play on both sides, too.

The Dagger Dolls-Rockits match was less fun. It's just not exciting to watch a team be completely outclassed. The Dagger Dolls have a lot of work if they want a better showing (much less any chance of winning) in the finals. The only thing that's going to beat the Rockits is a really strong pack and solid pack strategy. They both have rock star jammers (although Jawbreaker outclasses pretty much every other skater in the country, nevermind just the league), and what it comes down to is whether or not you can strategize your pack to get your jammers out around Jawbreaker.

Sadly, we'll miss the championship. I am a little surprised but also happy that I can say "we", I told Jay he didn't have to come with - but any way, that weekend is our first Interleague bout and we'll be down in Lincoln, NE.

Speaking of interleague, we did have "Cool Kids" at last night's practice so we scrimmaged. Basically, we're all going to die - our pack is ridiculously fast and brutal. A pile-up in every jam, a few called off for light injuries (Kayzilla came off holding her face/nose, thankfully no bleeding; I think Pogue got hit in the eye/eye area).

But to finish the weekend, on Saturday we drove up to visit with Jay's family in Alexandria. We went to the buffet in a bowling alley and over to his grandparents'. I got to spend lots of time with that little bundle of joy, and visit with his aunts, grandparents, and assorted other family members, as well.

Kiss Me, I'm Not Irish

Well, our parade was not nearly so sunny and dry! This is a picture from last year's parade in St. Paul. It was still a lot of fun, but as parades go maybe a little small and lame. Oops! But it was fun! It would have been more fun to skate, and a few people did, but my skates were a Christmas present and I am not mucking them up in slush.

The after party wasn't as fun, I went with Pippi, Jowanna, and Dom to Pizza Lucé instead. Even with that, I was home around 10:30 PM. So, taking the morning off work was probably unnecessary. I really had wanted to make today a day off. I had a few too many things dumped on me to make that happen, but maybe next Monday or something. I really need some time to make my place presentable again.

ETA: MR. FATCAT'S VIDEO!

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At least it finally stopped snowing! It's been snowing all morning...kind of depressing, with the ST. PATRICK's DAY PARADE tonight. I'm definitely not SKATING in it now, but I'll still be walking! And cold or not, wearing fishnets, because that's just how we roll. I might cheat and wear old figure skating tights underneath...they will be too big, might look like crap, and are made to go over skate boots so they might feel weird on my feet BUT I will be warm.

I was totally pissed at practice yesterday morning. I scrimmaged three times in the past week: a team practice, an interleague team practice, and a full league practice. Suddenly Sunday morning, wearing yellow means you can't participate in the scrimmaging? All I got to do was hold the stop watch and time the jams. LAME. And then, no one brought the interleague shirts. So I was damn grumpy, but I chatted with some people afterward and that cheered me up. However, NO MORE YELLOW! No matter how I feel, I am NOT wearing yellow on Wednesday. We only have THREE practices before the bout - I am already very concerned my endurance has suffered, not having jammed in over a week. Instead of cooling down during the last five minutes yesterday, I skated my heart out, to make up for not scrimmaging.

My arm is almost up to it. Sleeping on Hit Man's bed was not good for it, like sleeping on a rock, but just one night in my soft mushy bed helped. Mostly, it doesn't hurt. Moving it certain ways still does, but I think I can scrimmage on Wednesday with a reasonably small risk of murdering myself. I will probably contort an ace bandage around my shoulder/arm, I don't think it will help but it will make me feel "safer".

Tonight - come see the NSRG in the Minneapolis St. Patty's Parade!
Saturday - Go see the MNRG bout!
Sunday - Easter. Brunch in Alexandria.
NEXT SATURDAY - COME WATCH THE NSRG BOUT!

Pain pills.

Open scrimmage tonight and I am missing out, damnit. I haven't been able to fall asleep all week without Advil, because my shoulder is still bothering me. It is like so close to being all better that most of the time I forget it's not (which usually ends up in pain, like last night when I slammed the car door - too much force on my shoulder, ow!), but if it bothers me enough to keep me awake I probably should not go get knocked around. I don't know if any MNRG girls would show up tonight - they have a pretty intense bout schedule right now, only two weeks between the March bouts, and I think three before the championship - but let me tell you if I went to skate and got knocked by Jawbreaker? Bye bye healing shoulder! Dayum. So awesome. So sad to be missing it.

Instead, Jay is going to paint a window frame while I buy groceries, then we will get drunk.

Well, that sounds like a pretty good night, too.

MNRG and Sugar

GREAT MNRG bout last night. So far two NSRG girls have told me they thought the Dagger Dolls/Bombshells periods weren't very interesting, I completely don't understand it! It was a very close game the whole night, and the teams were evenly matched. I admit it adds to the excitement for me since the Dagger Dolls are my favorite team, and while I think the Bombshells skate dirty it is entertaining to watch (they are my secret second favorite). Plus, Jay has a derby crush on Marilyn Monrogue, so it's fun for me to razz him all night long about how his girlfriend can't keep herself out of the penalty box! She did a couple jams last night as a blocker, not a pivot, and that's for sure where she needs to be. When she's on her game, her ass is a POWERFUL blocking tool, but she does not seem to have a good enough handle on pack-control to be a pivot.

Garda Belts/Rockits was a lot of fun, too - the Garda Belts started out SO damn strong, and held a 7-1 lead over the Rockits for much of the first period. Unfortunately by the end of the first period they'd lost that lead, came within 3 points of the Rockits in the second half, but ended up losing in the lowest-scoring game I have ever seen: Rockits 24, Gardas 14. The Garda Belts lack of good pack strategy was definitely the deciding factor. With their strong start you could really see they would have had a chance to beat the Rockits. Unfortunately their jammers were ALWAYS getting caught up front behind Jawbreaker, and at least one other Rockit blocker - and that is the moment when their pack should have been pulling back until the Rockits were too far away from the pack to legally block. Never saw it happen, and it cost the Gardas the game, for sure (it also wouldn't have hurt to mix up their line-up, too many times Angelfire was jamming against Jawbreaker, when they should have been throwing their best, i.e. Suzie Smashbox, out there to stand a chance). Still, I think it is impressive for anyone to score with Jawbreaker blocking, so putting points on the board at all is phenomenal! And obviously with such a low-scoring game, the defense on both sides was rocking.

Today I skipped practice, for a variety of reasons: I wanted to sleep in after MNRG (although we were home really damn early from that); while my shoulder is mostly better after being sandwiched, it is not up to being hit - and half of Sunday practices are spent scrimmaging; and with fucking Daylight Savings Time I lost an hour of sleep and had NO desire to be getting up at 7:30 AM while my body still thought it was 6:30! So we did sleep in and lazed around some more - can't wait until summer, when weekend days involve more than laying on a couch. Lawnmowing (yes, I will enjoy it for at least a couple weeks), being able to skate or rollerblade on the paths by Jay's, hanging around outside. SUNSHINE.

Anyway, we had an interleague meeting/get-to-know thing this afternoon, it was pretty fun. But people always bring cookies to stuff like this, and I wish they wouldn't - rollergirls should eat healthy but I am absolutely powerless around sugar. Cookies...sooo many cookies...and nothing but sitting on my ass all damn day! Well, back to the grindstone of practice and eating well tomorrow - with a 3-hour practice tomorrow night to really jumpstart things. Or, maybe - that third hour is scrimmaging, and I should not do that full-bore just yet. No jamming, and blocking from the outside only (so I am only hitting with my left). I think this week is another open scrimmage - plus a team practice on Saturday - so I hope my arm is LOTS better by Friday.

Tomorrow I have to finish a poster for our Saint Patty's Day events - it needs to get around NOW, but I didn't get to it at all yet. NSRG IN THE MINNEAPOLIS SAINT PATRICK'S DAY PARADE ON MONDAY! There, that was productive.

Brr and Ow

Well, I left this in the dust for a little bit. (The picture should show up, but you might have to right-click+show image.)

The Polar Bear Plunge was definitely awesome. I don't actually remember thinking it was too cold, except that my feet were FREEZING. The hot tubs were farther away than the changing room and that was too far to walk, so I just got in my warm clothes and got out! But it was a really fun experience, which might sound surprising. I pigged out on Old County Buffet for breakfast because I was told your body needs lots of calories to warm itself up. Whatever, soft serve at 8 AM is never a bad thing!

Then last Wednesday at practice I got absolutely crunched in a Kilmore sandwich. I would have kept skating that jam but thankfully I got lead so I called it off and didn't skate the rest of the night. My shoulder just got nicely fucked up. It seemed to be better yesterday but it's been bothering me a lot today, probably too much laying around and not enough ice.

Oh well, I won't be laying around tonight - MNRG derby! Which, in fact, I really need to get a move on getting ready for.