Footprints on the Moon

Well, it’s not a Self Portrait, but it is Sunday! And since I haven’t posted at all in a while, I don’t feel you are in a position to be picky!

This picture is from Thursday night, when we put on our very first public exhibition bout. The amazing Jedediah Johnson came and took our pictures and we are all in LOVE with them! Once the glamor shots were over though, we got down to playing some roller derby!

We crammed about 800 people into the skating rink, and rumor has it, turned another hundred people away at the door. There’s not really words for the experience. It was an awesome bout, it was great to have the support of our community! So fun to watch something we have worked so hard for come to fruition.

My wallet is crying this morning… I don’t need any mma gear, but I do have some derby gear that is in need of replacing. Not because it’s falling apart necessarily… more because it’s falling off! I do have smaller elbow pads and knee pads already, but I need to get some smaller knee gaskets. Mine are just big enough on my legs now that they slide and I feel like I’m needing to tug my knee pads back into place often. I also have some bruising in spots that should be protected so I can only assume that ill-fitting pads are part of that problem.

I’ll be starting with new gaskets and probably replacing my wrist guards that are getting worn. I’d also like to replace my helmet and buy a new set of crash pads because mine are big enough now that I have trouble keeping them up. That would add an extra $100 or so to the bill though, so I’m thinking those will have to wait. And I won’t even talk about the socks and tights!

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had more than enough snow! You are more than welcome to my share. I meant to blog this weekend, but then I couldn’t be bothered with the uploading of photos… I took Self Portrait Sunday pics that are still languishing on my camera. 4 days later, I haven’t even downloaded the memory card. Oops. Darn that blogging inertia.

Anyways, the picture above is from Saturday afternoon. My car is the snow covered one on the right. It was definitely one of those days that if what you wanted wasn’t already in your medicine cabinets at home, you probably weren’t getting it!

I know it’s hard to tell in pictures, but that’s about two feet of snow there. It was the highest single day snowfall on record! I don’t recall hearing a final total, but I know that between midnight Saturday and 7pm, there were 25.4″ of snow at the airport. And that was adding on to the snow we’d been getting since Thursday.

I went out and dug out my car when the snow had mostly stopped, and couldn’t even get out of my parking space. I was stuck in until my mom came over with a shovel to dig snow out from behind my tires.

It wasn’t a very productive weekend, but it sure was a relaxing one! Since I couldn’t go anywhere, I hung out on the couch snuggling with the cats, playing games on the internet and clearing out some of my Netflix Instant Queue!

I’m sorry, I can’t blog right now, I’m reading. I’m probably about halfway through Catching Fire, the second book of the Hunger Games trilogy. Oh my goodness, these books are good! They demand your full attention and will not be denied. I have not gotten a full night’s sleep since I started them! I’ve found myself opening to read for “just a minute” and then suddenly it’s half an hour later. I was almost late for practice tonight because I was so absorbed! I LOVE when books are like that! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more reading to do…

Well apparently, this is going to be a good year for roller derby! (Not that I didn’t already know it was going to be…) After yesterday’s pretty awesome practice that still has me smiling, they also released the roster for our very first public exhibition bout! So I will not be wearing polo boots on January 27th– I’ll be suiting up and skating with the “Pretty Young Things”! We haven’t drafted teams yet, so this is just a bout between our scrimmage teams. Rather than just being black and white teams, we are going to be the Smooth Criminals vs. Pretty Young Things.

Yes, there is a bit of a Michael Jackson theme there… originally, we were going to have someone who does the Billie Jean dance on skates for the halftime show, which is where the team names came in. Of course now, he decided he doesn’t really want to do the dance and is going to be jamskating instead, so our team names seem a little weird. Oh well, they’re single-use names

Anyway, so I’m super excited, but also nervous! I think my stomach did about 13 somersaults when I heard that the roster was out! We have a small audience for our scrimmage practices these days, but they are kind of out of sight, out of mind. The bout audience will not only be a lot more people, but a lot harder to ignore! It will also include several people I know… one week I had a friend over in the audience at practice, and I discovered it does make a difference in the nerve factor!

First Self Portrait Sunday of the new year! And only looking a bit like I need some md clear You can tell from the braids that it’s a derby day! Post-practice picture, actually.

Practice this morning was awesome! Sunday practices tend to be my favorites. They are half an hour longer than Tuesday/Thursday practices, and there are usually less people that show up. It feels like we get to work harder and push ourselves harder. Especially when it comes to scrimmaging. Because there was such a small group, we only swapped out 1-2 people in each jam so we not only got to play a lot, but we got to work together a lot and really pull it together. I felt like I played well this morning. There was one time that I was holding back the other team’s jammer and two of their blockers all by myself until one of my teammates made it out front to help me. Another time, I was chasing down the other team’s jammer, and I actually almost caught her! I don’t usually chase because I can never get there in time, but I pushed it and almost got there this time. At the last second, my own jammer used me for a hip whip… the whole thing was just amazing.

And of course, I can’t post this without saying Happy Birthday to my mama!

I hope the very first day of 2011 is treating you well. Since I did almost nothing that could be considered productive, I had a great day! I spent a good portion of it curled on the couch with Pudge watching movies, I took a nap, I curled up in bed with a book. It was fantastic. A nice and restful day that was very much needed after the stress and busyness of the last couple weeks.

I can’t say I didn’t do anything productive either… the dishes got washed, and all the Christmas stuff got packed up and put back in the storage unit. Just not as much stuff as I probably should have done, looking around at the state of my apartment

So 2011 is off to an excellent start, and I can only hope it will continue that way! No resolutions to speak of… I don’t like making them. Basically, I want to keep on keepin’ on, refocus on some things that I’ve already been working on: Get the Weight Watchers back on track now that the holidays are over. Get my budget back on track and the credit cards moving in the right direction. Continue on with derby and keep working hard to improve. Be happy on the first day of 2012.