Not only will Z and I be joined by my little sister for Halloween, but also one of my teammates-- my former team captain and now coach, in fact. None other than the legendary Mia Mauler, who was teaching that class at Allentown Athletix and wanted to teach it again this year but cannot swing it. (As an aside, Bill was rather rude to her about it, which only solidified her decision that she couldn't do it.)
So, alas, I am no longer eligible for a discount there. Which is OK, I suppose I'm not a gym rat after all.

Instead, I'm a bit of an idiot. I went on Amazon and bought a bike trainer so that I could use my expensive bike, which I have not ridden in two years, indoors over the winter. It was cheaper than the cheapest exercise bike by a lot.

This was not idiotic. No, what was slightly nutty of me was my decision that I would save time and sanity by decreeing that I could only read novels while riding the bike.

What's wrong with that, you ask?

I'm totally fucking addicted to reading. I don't mean that the way people use the word, i.e. I do it all the time and can't live without it.
No. I don't.
I can go months without reading a book. I do go months without it.

• Because* I'm addicted.

If I crack open a novel, you can bet your ass that within, if not sentences, then usually within about ten pages I will be completely and utterly oblivious to the world around me, and unable to set the book down. I will take it to the bathroom, not because I like to read on the toilet (I don't) but because I can't put it down that long. I will take it everywhere I go. I will not sleep, and will read it while eating. Until I have sucked the whole thing down, usually in record time. (I read extremely fast. I don't spell words out; I see the first and last letter, and sometimes when in full swing will parse whole phrases at once. I tend to skip parts of paragraphs and never realize it, so ravenous am I to read more, more, more.
Once I have finished the book I am not satisfied. I must sit and digest it. I must revisit the parts I liked best. Sometimes I hit the last page, flip back, and start over again at the beginning without even a pause. (Sometimes I get a glass of water first.)

If it's a series, it's so much worse. And in August, a friend loaned me a trilogy. A thick-spined paperback trilogy, and said I'd love it. Well, shit-- that'll take at least three days, probably four, with a sleepless night in there somewhere. I don't have that kind of time to devote to complete blank deadness to the world. ...

And while I'm doing this, raptly devouring, there is no real world to me. Z can talk; I don't notice. The sun rises and sets, and i only notice if it's too dark to read. (I don't look up, but keep squinting as I fumble for a light. if the lamp is too complex, I will get up and walk to another room with an easier light switch, without looking up.)

I'm like this when I'm writing, too, incidentally.

At any rate. Now I'm only allowed to do this while atop my bike, assbones aching and knees creaking (it is helping my awful knees, though!) and sweat rolling down my face and back.
It's a terrible idea.
Two days in a row I've had to put in a second session on the bike. The first day I barely made it 25 minutes; the book started slow. The second day, I had gotten to the interesting part. I rode for 45 minutes, and then, three hours later, could not take the suspense and crawled down the stairs for another 15 minutes on the bike, and then a guilt-induced abs-and-weights session. (My core is sadly underpowered, and I've been having serious difficulty getting back into skating because while my thighs could go all day, and my lungs nearly that long, my body, the abs and back that keep me upright on those skates, are screaming after about twenty laps.)

Today I did an hour just before lunch, and then, after circumstances conspired to make it impossible for me to attend practice, I slunk back down and did another full hour. The story has picked up. I'm more than halfway through the book now.
There are two more books.

I am determined not to cheat. I want to know how long it takes me to read a book. I want to know that I rode the whole way through that book. And there is no way, *no way*, I could devote this kind of time to tedious exercise if I weren't totally and completely absorbed throughout. The only exercise I like is skating, but it's going to destroy my body if I don't cross-train, exercise some opposing muscles. I'm having knee problems again, revisiting just a tiny bit of the dull searing pain of last year, just enough to make me frightened.
I did order myself new skates, as well. Lighter weight, hopefully closer-fitting. (My leather boots, Reidell 122s, purchased in July of '06, have slowly stretched out until they slip and give me blisters.) Higher-quality, as well, with built-in arch support and a heel cup to prevent rolling. I may need to get better arch supports, but they're bound to be better than what I'm using now, which are made of duct tape and cut-up bits of old gel shoe inserts.

Anyway. They don't look exactly like this but sort of do. They're factory seconds, with cosmetic blemishes on the boot somewhere. I'm thinking of painting them, or gluing decoration to them. We'll see.

Aw, crap, the "Upload" button doesn't work anymore. I know I need to upgrade Firefox, I just don't have time. I perpetually have 35-45 tabs open, just with things to read, not things I want to bookmark, my bookmarks are chaotic enough so I don't' want to save the session. It's just... too much. So I need to wait for a time that I've winnowed the open tabs down to nothing... anyway, I can't upload photos. So instead, here's a link to the photo of my new skates. Which will, if you truncate the URL, tell you where I got them, and where I recommend buying all your shit if you ever need skating supplies or clever roller-derby-related t-shirts. ("My Pivot Can Beat Up Your Pivot" is a good one, followed closely by "I just scored five times, I need a beer!")

That's all, really. I hate everything. Everything is a pain in my ass, or oppresses my soul, or whatever. Hate it hate it hate it! I hate everything.

• does a little dance*

There we go. Hey, at least I did something constructive about it-- I added a journal here!!

AGGGHGHHH.


Oh, I posted photos of the completed rollergirl embroidery:

And Fi's cat Remi.

The kielbasa thing was tasty, probably about a B on the overall scale of Things I've Made Lately. (e:zobar) theorized that it shouldn't be sweet; I wonder if that would work at all. I definitely think there should've been sauerkraut or cabbage in it somewhere because kielbasa always makes me want cabbage.

The bread pudding was more like a B+ or even A in terms of Things I've Made Lately. (e:zobar) isn't a big dessert man, and this won because it wasn't too sweet.

I'd take photos, but I know I'll never get around to getting them off my camera, plus neither dish was particularly attractive-looking.

I am going to resolve to blog with more photos in the future, but today I have been utterly useless, and will have gotten a ridiculous amount of sleep, so I wouldn't want to mess it up by being too constructive.

I am recovering from throwing a party last night. Before you all feel left out, it was a party to welcome the 2009 season rookies to the roller derby league, so I couldn't invite y'all, or I would've. It's the first party we ever threw in this house for more than, like, two other people.
(Four years ago we threw a "political party" for the presidential election. I'll let you guess whether that one wound up being a downer.)

My house is not trashed, of course. This wouldn't be right. But there are beer bottles everywhere. Full, empty, and in-between. I am planning on simply "paying it forward" with the full ones-- I'll put them in storage and bring them to the next party that happens, of course. And the empty ones will be rinsed and sorted and returned for deposit, naturally. But the half-empty ones...
It breaks my heart to pour full beers down the sink. So out of curiosity, I poured them into an empty juice bottle instead.
I filled a 32-ounce bottle with the half-empty beer bottles.

Well, hell, man. In the past, if I don't finish a beer, I'd save it to use as a hair rinse. (No lie! The natural acidity conditions the hair strand and makes it lie smoother. The odor actually rinses away.) But 32 ounces of beer! That's a lot of fucking hair rinse. It'll go moldy before I get to it.

I thought this over for a couple of hours, as I sat around totally unable to function. (I didn't drink that much, but my hangover took the form of being unable to complete a thought. I was happy and stupid as a goldfish all day today.)

Finally I lit upon a solution.
I had bought kielbasa, figuring on just chucking it in a roasting pan and eating it with some fall vegetables, as a way to get through a jar of horseradish I had to buy for a recipe that needed... 1 tablespoon. (I hate that. Horseradish doesn't last. But the recipe wouldn't really work without it.)
Kielbasa... in beer.

I cut up two onions, put a pat of butter (and daub of bacon grease, left over from breakfast) into a cast iron skillet. Sauteed the onion while I chopped up two or three carrots. (I bought a five pound bag of organic carrots for like five cents at Wegmans, in a fit of insanity. What the fuck do two people do with five pounds of carrots?? I'm putting carrots in everything.) Threw the carrots in with the onion. Cut the kielbasa into half-inch semicircles or so. Tossed it in.
At this party, one of my teammates had found my sister's Nerf gun, and much fun had ensued with people trying to shoot apples off one another's heads, William Tell-style. (Sour Grapes, #23, is a formidable markswoman, among other things. Don't fuck with her.) This was never successful, as a Nerf dart is not heavy enough to remove an apple. But the apples fell a lot nonetheless, because none of us went to finishing school. (You know how in movies they balance books on their heads in finishing school? That.)
So I had a badly bruised apple or two. Cut that up, threw that in too.

Two or three tablespoons of brown sugar, the scrapings of a nearly-exhausted jar of Weber's mustard, some mustard seeds.

Mixed it all up in the skillet. Then I poured in beer until the skillet was nearly full and everything floating just a little.

It's in the oven and smells really awesome. I put some potatoes in there to bake; I have no idea when the sausageness is going to be done, so I'm just going by when the potatoes are soft enough to impale on a fork and cut up and eat the hell out of. I dunno how long that'll be. Maybe an hour, all told? I put the potatoes in first thing, before I started making the kielbasa thing.

Then I was confronted with a plate full of assorted baked goods left over from the party. There was a bit of yellow cake, diced and generally smashed up (no frosting). There were cornbread muffins with whole wheat and a tiny bit of bran cereal in them. I had planned on using up some honey whole wheat bread I baked this past week, but there was so much other stuff...

I crumbled up three cups' worth of baked goods, and dumped them in a lightly floured 1.5 quart casserole dish. Then I heated 2 cups of milk on the stove until a skim started to form on the surface, whereupon I dumped in 4 Tbsp of butter and let it melt. I cooled that to room temp, and meanwhile whisked together 2/3 cup sugar, 3 eggs, 2 tsp or so of cinnamon, about a tsp of nutmeg, a tsp or so of vanilla extract, and 3 Tbsp of whiskey.
I poured the scalded milk mixture into the egg mixture once it was cool enough not to cook it, and poured that over the crumbled up bread products. That's in the oven and is supposed to cook for 50 minutes or "until it sets", based on the Internet recipe I followed most closely.

I have no idea how either dish will turn out. I could have created a monster here. We'll see.

But it's a theme dinner!
1) Waste not want not
2) How many calories can you cram down your gullet?
3) Booze.
Both dishes incorporate leftovers that would have otherwise been useless, both dishes are, let's just say, nutritionally dense, and both dishes incorporate quantities of alcohol. Yay!!!

I can't think of any better way to spend a slightly-chilly autumn evening, can you?

I'm doing my part to help Paul get the site stats up or whatever he's doing.:)

I am looking forward to the party, immensely. Fi will be in town-- she may have to go back down to Cortland to work a couple more weeks at her job, since her boss was out of town so she couldn't give a month's notice and she's very concerned with not offending these people on the way out, first because it's her first real job, second because she actually liked much of what she did there, and third because maybe, just maybe, they'll keep her on as an independent consultant working remotely to do the parts of her job that she actually liked, which would considerably ease her transition to her New Life In The Big(ish) City.
But, she has promised herself that she is going to really celebrate Halloween. It is her favoritest favoritest holiday, and she has not really gotten to celebrate it for the last five or so years, because of a combination of Leech Boy not being into it, and living in such an isolated place, and not having a ton of local friends, and just general grimness of life.
Z and I already had picked costumes, but thought it might be more fun if the three of us went as parts of a theme instead-- I wasn't married to the idea of our costumes anyway, because it would be quite difficult for me to actually make my part of it comprehensible, let alone convincing. (Let's just say I don't make a convincing man.)
So Fi and Z and B (shit, man, we all rhyme!) all have related-but-not-identical costumes. Fi is sad not to be able to wear her stilettos, but pretty easily abandoned the idea.

I was going to ask, if stilettos are right out for the new floors, what about roller skates???!! Those are my standby costume accessory of late, and since we skate on a lovingly hand-finished hardwood floor every day, my skates are pretty well-maintained.
But it turns out skates aren't part of my costume this year (OMG! I know.) so it doesn't matter. I will probably be wearing boots instead.

While Fi was up this weekend, moving almost the last of her belongings, we visited with some of Leech Boy's friends, who live in Buffalo. Fi and LB were in their wedding, but they were friends of LB first.
I was worried things might be a little awkward, but they were mostly annoyed and baffled by LB's behavior. They admitted they'd wanted to invite him to visit, because they were sort of worried about him, but they knew that if they did he'd as a matter of course bring along his 22-year-old New Girlfriend, and they had absolutely no interest in meeting her.

We've theorized that LB may be going through some sort of odd phase? But a lot of his reactions and things have made it very clear: He expected Fi to stick around after he'd dumped her, and expected her to continue to let him live in her apartment (let's be real, he never paid any of the rent, so it was hers), let him eat her food, and seems to even have expected her to continue to support him financially as he finished his program at school. He seems to have simply expected this as a matter of course, and is completely flabberghasted that she so quickly decided to move on in her life.
He must not have realized how miserable she was. She was sitting at my dining room table last night, as we ate dinner, and counted up how long she'd lived there. "That apartment was just a temporary stop," she said. "I never planned on staying at my job this long. Four years. We lived there four years as of next week. I hated it there, I was never happy, and all along, we were planning to go somewhere else."
She thought that over for a little while, and then said, "I'm never doing that again. If something's going to be temporary, it's going to be fucking temporary. I'm not hanging around like that, not for a man."

She didn't bring her portable hard drive this time so I couldn't steal the Skateboard Fail videos off it, sadly. So bummed.

Anyway. The only other thing really going on in my life is that I've decided to make my own embroidery patterns and learn to embroider. I'm astonishingly much better at it than I ever would have thought. I've had to re-learn how to draw, though-- I used to be super good at it, but had a really assholey teacher in high school who dissuaded me, so I gave it up and haven't really touched a drafting pencil in ten years or so.
But it comes back to you. I'll take some decent pictures and post them up in this piece, as I make more progress on the thing. It's time-consuming, because I'm being so particular about the stitches, but I'm really having a blast. I'm doing embroideries of roller derby illustrations taken from photos of my leaguemates-- the only embroidery pattern I found commercially mentioning roller derby is from Sublime Stitching, whose idea of derby is (understandably, but inaccurately) a chick with feathered hair and hot pants delivering a flying elbow -- which is cute, but for those of us who actually play, she's pretty clearly banked-track, as a flying elbow will get you tossed out of a modern flat-track meet. So I figured, I'd do up my own.

So far the best part has been my discovery that there is an existing embroidery stitch that gives the precise appearance of fishnet. It's called trellis stitch, though the Internet isn't backing me up on this. Maybe the little booklet I have is wrong! I guess I'll just claim that I invented it and call it Fishnet Stitch. Basically you take long stitches to make a grid, then you go back and tack down the junctions everywhere the grid intersects with either one tiny slanted stitch, or a cross stitch. It looks precisely like fence-net stockings. Maybe I'll call it Fence-Net Stitch instead...
Most of the fun of roller derby to me (OK not really, but a lot) is the Awesome Socks. Many of my leaguemates feel the same. There's always at least a handful of people at any given practice wearing tights, leggings, or socks that are worthy of comment. Last night our team captain showed up in a long fuschia empire-line spagetti-strap top, yellow booty shorts, and silver lam`e leggings. When we complimented her on her rather startling appearance, she looked down and said, "Oh my, I hadn't realized. This is just what was clean."

Anyway, so the Awesome Socks are the icing on the cupcake of every one of the embroideries I have planned.
This first one has sparkly gold fencenet stockings, because I have a spool of gold embroidery thread.
Yes. It is entirely made of win.