Death of a Cat

My barely 1 year old cat had to be put down last night after a month of poor health ended in him lying in a puddle of his own dripping urine.  What we originally had been told was a urine infection, and then maybe urine stones in his bladder was in fact his kidneys failing.  With no apparent cause, the best thing to do was to simply put him down as he would most likely relapse as soon as he returned home.  RIP Turkey Bacon aka Jerkface Kitty.

Meltdown

I am terribly broke and depressed and I think it's time for me to move back across the country so that I can get a better job because I can't even get an interview for the life of me here but I don't want to tell my SO because it will mean breaking up.  Anxiety is a powerful force in my life and right now its hitting me with full force and I can barely breathe.  I don't know what to do and I mostly just cry.  I keep thinking, I just need to get through a couple more months, this summer...  I don't know.  But I'm 30 and educated and need a job.

Wheel Review- Heartless

So after playing my first season exclusively on Radar Flat-Outs, last August I took the plunge and bought new wheels.  My rational for not changing them earlier was simply that I wasn't a skilled enough skater to take advantage of any better wheels.  Realistically, it may have been the case that they were holding me back.  So last August I ordered in some new wheels, Heartless Voodoo and Breakers.  These were the Burgundy (Voodoo, 86a) and Red (Breaker, 92a) wheels if you go by the colour coding system.  They look like this:

I put them on my skates, and tried them out during our off season, when we hold boot camps for potential new recruits.  After a couple of clumsy cross-overs, I was skating them just fine...  And I loved them.  Nice and narrow, responsive, and light!, and I was immediately more comfortable lifting my feet and moving around the track, jumping, slicing, running and spinning.

As time wore on, I got more comfortable with the idea of harder wheels, and ended up with Creepers (90a) and Vanish (96a), and I've used those pretty comfortably on some pretty slick surfaces.  I've heard people say that things like snowplows took time to relearn or remaster, but I didn't find it true for myself.

Personally, I think they are a great wheel for a mid-point price range.  You can get them here, but I'm in no way affliated with that site, I just <3 Rollergirl.ca.  I also don't necessarily agree with their assessment of what these wheels are and aren't good for.

Derby!

A more detailed write-up of this years Beast of the East, by my friend the Derby Nerd can be found here.  Unlike me, he actually remembers most of the weekend.

And it's only a week away for the Sexpos- our game against the Dutchland B-Team.  Although everyone played during the Beast weekend, and we'd love to take some time off to recover, there is no time so we are all trucking along to practice and trying to pull it together.

Beast of the East

Well, this weekend was an amazing tournament of roller derby in eastern and central Canada (and some of our closest sisters in Vermont!), the Beast of the East III.  Last year playing Beast was my first bouting experience, and I got bumped around like a rag doll most of the time.  This year was a totally different story, and while I may not have been the strongest player out there, I did pretty damn well and it didn't go unnoticed.

My team came in 2nd place out of 16, and MTLRD took 1, 2, and 3 out of the 16 teams.  We all faced off, either in the finals or the semi finals, and it was a taste of the amazing season to come.  There was absolutely some brilliant jams going on, and the come down is pretty tough.  Going from being a little bit of a "star" to dialing on the phones today was a little rough on the ego.  But the weekend is over, and there are less than two weeks left until my next game, a travel team double-header hosting Dutchland here in MTL.  I'm sure we will all be humbled by the experience again.

In the meantime, I'll probably spend a lot of time watching the action from this weekend here.

Montreal!

Well, it was 28 hours of driving time over 3 days to play for 1.5 hours in total against 2 separate leagues, make an epic trip to Target, eat at a sonic, and visit Party City.  Totally worth it.

We drove all thee way to Kalamazoo on Friday to arrive at midnight at the hotel, tired but not at all cranky.  The next day we wasted our time before playing, making a visit to Target and a nearby mall, where we all rode an indoor, two tiered carousel and went to Hot Topic where we spent a bunch of money.

But on to the good stuff.  We got ready and hit the venue for the game.   Killamazoo Derby Darlin's were very gracious hosts, and there was a ton of food and treats waiting for us when we arrived.  But we all geared up, signed waivers, and hit the track for a warm up.  To be honest, the game was a blur, and I was sent out every other jam in the first half.  We picked up an early lead but struggled to keep it through the first half, unable to consistently gain the critical lead jammer status.  At half-time, the score was something like 46-48 for us, and it was still anybody's game.  Our efforts to refocus and regain our positive mojo were only temporary, and though we scrapped it out, penalties crippled our game.

In a cluster fuck on the bench we fielded only 2 blockers on the track for a jam, and some of our greenest at that.  As our bench could only look on in horror, one of those blockers took a major, leaving a first time player skating alone on the track.  Comical now, it allowed Killamazoo a 25 point jam.  But bad luck followed for Killamazoo shortly after, as their jammer lost her wheel in an equipment malfunction and we were able to score a heap of unanswered points.  It wasn't enough, however, and at the end of the last jam, the score was 120-97 for Killamazoo.

Good times and hard lessons were had.  In a game like we played, we didn't lose because we couldn't win, we lost because we lost our shit on the bench.  We'll work on never allowing that to happen again.  We should never lose because we can't hold it together, we should only lose because we fought, held it together, and in the end the other team was just better.

Still, we implemented some of the strategies we've been practicing lately, adjusted our style on the fly, and did some great stuff.  And to start and end the game, both teams got together and skated in a friendship snake.

Oh, and I won this:

Which was overall pretty rad.  The beer did not immediately come in the glass.

The next day we woke up in varying states of hangover and drove our asses up to Grand Rapids where we participated in a half hour scrimmage against their B team.  This went a little better for us and we were able to implement our strategies pretty much unanswered by their mostly green team and skated our way to a 149-17 score.  So we ended our weekend on a high note and began the 2 day drive back to MTL, where I am very happy to be back to sleep in my own bed.

Helllllllooooo Michigan

I'll see you tomorrow!

2 games this weekend, one in Kalamazoo and one in Grand Rapids...  Wish us luck!  This will be the first time I've played with this team and a full roster, even though we borrowed players from the league...  Most are former Sexpos.

We go in style, so it's a 12 hour drive.