Two things.
1) The sister of an online acquaintance is moving to town and asked me for the normal advice about moving to Buffalo. I gave it to her, mentioned (e:strip). Said, where are you going to be living?
The apartment complex across the street from (e:PMT)'s!
How funny is that? So maybe she can get to the bottom of whatever those weird people were doing with their windows across the street.

2) SHAMELESS PIMPING.
I appear in a pinup calendar for the Queen City Roller Girls. These calendars did not sell out at our first bout-- although our first bout did. This would not be a problem except that these calendars kind of cost us a lot of money to print, and are going to rapidly decline in value as the year goes on. So we've got to sell them to make back our money, so we can make an even hotter one next year. Etc.
So.
We put them up for sale online.

Click the banner that says "2008 Calendars!"
Or, here's the order form, wherein you also can buy tickets:

They are $11.
$1 from every purchase benefits Crisis Services.

These calendars are really fun, and a bit hot, and mostly cute. Each month features the skaters from the 2007 season who were born in that month and also wanted their picture taken. The pictures were ALL taken by a skater on the league who taught herself portrait photography for the occasion and did all the work herself. It's really a totally grass-roots thing, but looks pretty professional and slick.

I am sorry that there are not cool preview pages for each month. There should be. Low-res versions and outtakes of the photos are up on the Myspace of the derby girl who took the photos.

The cover:


An outtake that I just think is cute:

I can't believe I haven't posted this yet.
It's taken me being home sick from work and trying desperately to do yet more roller derby crap to remind me to spread this particular bit of love.

My team's the one in the navy blue with the stripes. I'm #17, with white caps on my kneepads and red fishnets on my legs.
Check me out at 0:54 getting completely stone-cold blindsided. The awesomest part is that I did not get one bruise from that fall. Actually it didn't hurt at all, it just slowed me down.


I hope that embed thing worked. We'll see.

Just wanted to share. Next one's Feb 2nd!

The Knockouts won!!!! The Knockouts won last night!!!! OMG!!!
I can't even believe it.
It was so close, so fucking close, I couldn't even tell you, we were sitting on the edge of the bench holding hands through the last jam. It was intense. We were down in the first period with penalty troubles, but we brought it up to a tie in the second and we kept getting ahead by ten, they'd get six, we'd get two, they'd get four, we'd get four, they'd get two, for forty solid minutes of gameplay. It was insane. It was brutal. I got the shit knocked out of me. A lot of the girls write their numbers on their arms in marker and I had black marker all up and down my shoulders and arms from slamming into them. I had nice cloth armbands with white numbers and they're all grungy with other girls' marker.

The final score was within ten points. But I don't have the stats yet.

That was my sixth bout, that I've skated, since February of last year. We're coming up on the first anniversary of that one. I've skated for the Sluggers, the Knockouts, and the QCRG travel team. And I've never had a victory before, never gotten to swarm the track and cry and hug people and shriek. It's been close before, it's been so close, but I've never actually <i>won</i> before. So it was a really intense experience. I want to say it's changed my life but of course it's too soon to tell. ;)

Better still, WE SOLD OUT THE VENUE. We sold every ticket!! We sold 500 tickets in presale, and there was a line across the parking lot when we opened the doors. We packed that place, it was standing-room-in-the-fire-aisles only. We sold out of beer twice. We packed that house and rocked the fuck out of it. It was a good game, a smoothly-run show, and my Knockouts finally fucking won.

I'd say I could die happy, but I've got the rest of the season still to go. The next one's Feb. 5th, the Dollies vs. the Saucies, and then my Knockouts get next crack at those Saucies on March 8th. (The Saucies went undefeated last year while the KOs went winless. Some of us felt they weren't so gracious about it. So we've got a score to settle.)

This is going to be an awesome season. I don't know if any of you made it out, but if you did, let me know what you thought-- all I really know is that it was an incredible experience to be involved in.

Also I feel like I got plowed over by a fucking Mack truck.
And yet?
I don't have a bruise on me.
No trophies! No fair.

Photos to follow-- at the moment I got nothin'. Didn't bring a camera, couldn't have taken any pictures anyway.

So today, I'm at work. Not a lot of motivation: my job seems really really meaningless lately and i can't summon enthusiasm. I don't care enough about money to love my job for it. Just like I don't care enough about the concept of being Skinny to actually bother Dieting for it, so I don't really like the concept of Money enough to make myself motivated to earn it.
Anyway.
Having a tough time here.

Was looking through a folder of info. There was a file on a topic I hadn't thought about in a while, and it looked like it had stuff I didn't know, so I opened it to read it.
The opening paragraph was kinda witty, and I was like, "Who wrote this? I like their style." The info was clearly and engagingly presented, and I read the piece with some enjoyment before I scrolled down to the bottom, looking for the signature lines at the end (it was a letter).

I wrote it.
It must have been some months ago. I have no memory of it.

I feel kinda dirty. I was totally checking myself out and had no idea.

Also I've been here too long, if this sort of thing can happen.

Hey-- it never occurred to me to ask anyone on here before this moment, but if you're interested in buying a pin-up calendar featuring the members of my roller derby league (I play a featured role in the August photo), they're $11, the extra $1 being a donation to Crisis Services.
Just thought I'd offer, seeing as they're timely at the moment.
If you want one... You can buy one at the bout on January 5th, in which I will be skating!!

JANUARY 5th 7 PM RAINBOW RINK N.T. TICKETS FOR SALE ONLINE AT QCRG.NET PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE COME I WILL CRY IF YOU DON'T.


Unless my knee doesn't improve. :( My left knee has been bothering me since mid-December, when I fell and bruised it. It hurts, sometimes quite badly, and sometimes not really; for a while I couldn't bend it, but I had convinced myself it was better until I fell again and it hurt a lot...
So I'm spending this week popping ibuprofin and icing it every hour and keeping it elevated and all that.
It doesn't seem to affect my skating.
No, I haven't seen a doctor. I'm an idiot. But I don't want them to say "It's a torn meniscus" and tell me to stay off it, when I know fine well to stay off it, and am doing all I can. I'm pretty sure it's not structurally injured, anyway. It supports me just fine, I just have to think real hard about kneeling on it. (And, usually, decide against kneeling on it.)

I have to decide by tomorrow whether it's fine or I have to tough up and tell my coach to put in one of the subs. I am so excited to have made the primary line-up, I really am, but it wouldn't be fair of me to insist on skating if my knee isn't OK-- there are six girls who have to sit out this first bout because of number constraints, and I don't want us to wind up skating short because I reinjure myself. (Once the squad of 14 is finalized there are no more substitutions.)

Sigh. Hard decision. My knee is mostly fine. But what if I land wrong?

OTHER NOT-SKATING NEWS.
I want a kick-ass garden this year.
Does anyone want to split a seed/plant order at any point?
Am in preliminary planning stages. A friend with a giant suburban yard is thinking of going in on this with me, and another friend who is a crazy subsistence gardener who this year has no yard is also thinking of helping out, so we may have a little weird mini-collective going on. I have high hopes for this year.

And I need to be doing something outside of work that isn't roller derby, so, I think gardening is it. I had a pathetic garden this year and am dying to not repeat that awful experience. (I just didn't have time.)