Footprints on the Moon

Just in case the Wordless Wednesday post was too subtle… Recently, I did this:

Somewhere there is a picture of me holding that ponytail up in the air like one of those sport trophies, but I can’t find it right now. In any case, the hair had reached a point where I just couldn’t stand it anymore. It was getting caught in things all the time, was a pain every time I wanted to roll over in bed, not to mention how long it took me to comb the tangles out and blow dry it every day!

So I busted out the measuring tape, determined it was long enough to donate to Locks of Love and the rest is history. The only time I ever regret chopping it off is times like right now… I woke up really late this morning, so it looks scary. And it’s static-y but I have no way to pull it back! But I get a lot of compliments so it all works out

Like video killed the radio star? Get it? Haha? Oh well. In any case, I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that Facebook killed my blog.

It’s too easy to click over to myFacebook page*, write a couple sentences and receive nearly instant feedback… compared with trying to think of something interesting to say that’s long enough to fill out a blog post. Maybe share some pictures. It sounds sad, but sometimes, just that much takes too much effort. Life is busy and stressful, and the effort it takes to write out something thoughtful that anyone would care about is just more than I want to deal with.

Did I mention the instant feedback on Facebook? I like instant feedback. You really don’t have to feel like you’re missing anything though… mostly I’ve just been complaining about a lack of sleep and how sore I am from roller derby. Fun times!

*Not my Facebook page. What? You thought I was going to link you there directly? Sorry, you’ll have to do your own stalking!

When I was busy ignoring my blog, I neglected to tell you all that this happened:

That might be hard to see (at least it is on this computer), but that’s my Stella. Broken. This happened waaay back on January 20th… the roads were snow covered, and my damn anti-stop brakes activated and slid me straight through a stop sign, where a car (traveling way too fast) in the other direction hit me.

I’ve got her back now, but she’s still not completely fixed. I feel like I need to handcuff myself to one of those steel buildings and demanding her full restoration! Also? will not be using that body shop in the future.

They day they said my car would be done, they called me in the morning and asked if I had another key. They had LOST my only key and remote to the car. So they said they’d either find it or buy me a new one. When I went to pick up the car, they handed me the new key, no remote. I’m still waiting on the remote– it’s been 2 weeks since I picked up my car.

They also pointed out the interior panel on the driver’s side door is cracked, they are still waiting on that part to come in, but they’ll be able to swap it out while I wait. Still waiting. In the meantime, the locking mechanism on the driver’s side door was not properly reinstalled and now doesn’t work at all. Which means that in order to lock/unlock my car without a remote, I have to walk around and crawl through the passenger side door. NOT HAPPY.

Add to all of this, my driver’s seat ROCKS. You know how when you get an off balance chair at a restaurant and you can rock the whole thing back and forth with your foot? Yeah… I can do that with my driver’s side seat. I can feel it shift every time I brake or accelerate. NOT HAPPY.

In the end, I’m sure they’ll get the problems taken care of. Uh, I hope. But if there ever is a next time, I think I’ll suck it up and pay the extra tow fee to drop the car off at the dealership, where I can be assured it will be done right, the first time.

Photo by Jason King, King Photography.

My poor blog. It is so neglected. I made the decision back in November to keep paying for the domain name and hosting though, so I really should get around to writing on it a little more!

True to form though, when things get stressful in my life, I quit talking. For the past week or so, the doings in my life have been things I don’t necessarily want to put out there for the whole world to see. So I don’t write anything at all. It’s not like I don’t have the time… my job is basically to monitor wireless cctv cameras all day, so suffice it to say, there is plenty of down time.

There’s plenty I could be saying too… that picture up above, for example. That might be my favorite derby picture ever. It was taken a couple weeks ago, at our league’s first tournament. For a good portion of this game, I felt like I was struggling, or stuck in the back of the pack as the other team’s “goat”. In this picture however, I’m in front of them and appear to be hitting someone! We ended up losing that particular game (we won one, lost one in the tournament), but it was an absolute blast! After our bout was over, we headed back to the hotel and had a group pool party before some girls packed up and headed for home and the rest of us went in search of dinner and the after party. It was a super long and tiring weekend, but I don’t think any of us would have traded it for anything!

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!