Fast forward to the beginning of a Novel

Since my birthday...

Elle and Trouble at Elle's BDay party!

I saw Rat City beat TXRG, then Kansas City beat Rat City in Austin at the WFTDA Roller Derby Nationals. It was amazing.

Texacutioners Flag at Nationals.

Crispix & Elle at Nationals.

The next weekend was my best friend, Jurate's birthday party. She got drunk and made us each say something nice about her into a video camera. And as if that wasn't hard enough, half an hour later she made us say something we didn't like about her into the video camera!!

The next weekend was Crispix's birthday. We had a great time. Brought a dj to a sports bar and pretty much took over. It was also Trouble's going away party. She's moved to Cali now. We miss her already!

And finally, the piece de resistance... the Championship Bout. It was amazing. My team played great. It's like we all were clicking and understanding the directions we were sending each other with our minds. Unfortunately for us the Sirens were also in synch with each other, and knew what to do to take us down. It was a tight game, and we fought it as hard as we could. We lost, but we held our heads high because it was a good defeat. They outplayed us, and hit us a little bit harder than we could hit back. It really was an amazing game. I am so lucky to have had the chance to play with such an awesome team against such an awesome team.

Timber!!

Run, Elle, Run!!

Bosses 2007

And the Brawlers and Betties bout... wow. The Brawlers have been beat by over 60 points every game this season. But they were in training. This rookie team needed one season to catch up to the level of the rest of the league, and on Sunday they proved that they've done just that. In a nail biting hour of derby, which was neck and neck the whole time, we saw some impressive derby by both teams. It really was a close game, and honestly could have gone either way... but the Brawlers wanted it more. They would not settle for less. Catazon came into the second half with a fire, pulling out two 9 point jams to seal the win for her team.

The Betties fought hard, and played well. Beverly Kills was amazing as always, and her team was blocking as hard as they have all season. Their loss is not a sign of the team weakening... not at all... it's a sign that the entire league is improving. I can't wait to see the opening bout in March. It's going to be hot!

Now I'm retired from derby. I've hung up my skates and am trying to find my normal routine. I still want to be involved with HRD, and help where I can, but I will not be skating again. I'm not sad about it, yet. My body is still too thankful... no more getting beat up three times a week!

We went to a halloween Pirate party at the GRAB bar on Saturday... it was fun. I went shopping and overhauled my waredrobe for work... that was a lot of fun :)

Now it's Halloween day. I don't have a costume... well I can be Peg Bundy again (that's what I dressed up as on Saturday), but I do have plans. Tonight at Midnight I'm going to meet a group of people I barely know, and we are going to start writing our novels. It's http://www.nanowrimo.org/ and if you don't know, go check it out. I have successfully removed one obsession for my life, and immediately replaced it for another. Ha. I've signed up to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. That's a lot of writing. A lot. I don't know what I've gotten myself into, but I'm excited. Shit, if I can do derby I can do anything. For realz. January I'll start taking night classes (paid for by the day job, yeah!). I'll probably start taking Viola lessons in December too (Just did some research and found that it's affordable and convinient).

So... I'll be busy being a total nerd and writing my very first novel. Yes it will have derby in it. No it's not about me. It's completely make believe, but some characters will be loosely based on people I know. So be nice to me, or I'll put you in my novel, and you'll be twice as ugly as you really are. Buwahahahahahahahahaha!

Beautiful Maps

I'm a mapper. Technically I'm a GIS Analylst. I create maps, maintain the GIS system we have in place. All of our pipelines accross the nation are geographically stored in a database. I help make sure they are in the correct location, and have the correct data associated to them. Everyone else in the company uses different software to query off of our data and run reports and other boring stuff. My job is the fun stuff.


This is an aerial photo of an oasis in the Australian Desert.



This is an area just outside of Paris. The farming patterns look crazy!



This is an area in Southwest Kansas. It's intricate pattern is beautiful.




This is Hawaii. It's amazing how you can see the land under the water.

I have a few art projects in mind that involve these images, and others like them. I can't wait until I actually have time to work on them!

Ten Year Reunion

My 10 year high school reunion was last weekend. Chris and I drove the 4 hours north to Kilgore, Texas and headed straight to the shin dig planned at the local burger joint, The Back Porch. Lots of people showed up, and I had not seen any of them in practically ten years (with the exception of my cousin, Renee, who happened to marry one of my classmates, Wayne.)
I sang a little karaoke, said hi to everyone, googled at everyone, and couldn't stop grinning the whole time. It was a blast from the past.
We stayed out until after 2am, going with the pack to a pool hall where Chris impressed and intimidated everyone near the pool table.
The next day we went to the reunion picnic where most of the classmates with kids brought them to play. There were a gazillion kids. From preteens to 10 weeks old. They were all adorable. Chris and I played horse shoes until they pulled out hundreds of water balloons for the kids to play with… then Chris introduced himself to the kids and they let him throw balloons at them. Somehow we both made it out dry.
We went to dinner with my cousin and her husband, and her two nieces and one nephew. Scotlyn, Brai (I actually have no idea how to spell her name… it’s pronounced ‘br-Ay’, like Pray, but with a B), and AJ. The kids were a lot of fun to hang around. So much personality in the 4 and 2 year old girls. AJ just hangs out and watches to see what the girls are going to do next mostly.
Then we went and took a nap. Because we’re getting old and could not hang. We woke up just in time to get ready and go to the big reunion party down by the lake. It was beautiful, and even more people showed up for this event than the previous two events.


(Cindy, Wendy, Jena, Amy, Cindy, Reann, and Melissa)

I got lots of pictures, which I will post on flickr, with notes, as soon as I have a free hour at the house.
Who I saw that I have really really missed since moving to Houston, and got to catch up with at the party: Terra, Jena, Cindy, Wendy, Wakie, David Hastie, Lee, Lauren, Kelly, Cindy, Amy, Reann, and April Hearn.
People who I feel like I have even more in common with now and will try to stay in contact with: Katrina and her boyfriend, Canan and his wife, Olivia and her boyfriend, Jena (I know I already mentioned her, but she falls into both categories very nicely!), and Meagan.
Who didn’t make it that I would have loved to see: Scott Miles, Emily Harrison, Johnathon Hastie, Clay Copeland, Nicole Francis, Millie Minor, Melissa Cassidy, Adam King, BenJamin Monk, Scotty McFarland, Clay, MiJoi, Caryn Crutcher, Bethany Chisler, Clay, Gina and even more that I can’t think of off the top of my head right now. Thank goodness for myspace and email. I know I can contact at least half of these people and harass them for not making it to the reunion. The other half I will have to hunt down, but I think I can find them. And probably some of these people listed didn’t come because they weren’t in my graduating class… but I still wanted to see them!! And yes, there were 3 Clays in this list. I miss them each.
My birthday is tomorrow, and I’ll probably celebrate it this weekend. The next weekend is my nephew’s birthday plus WFTDA Roller Derby Nationals in Austin. Then the busy month of September will be over, and I’ll be able to focus all my energy on training for the last and final bout. 2007 Championships. The game is on.

Flight of the Conchords

Flight of the Conchords

How have I missed this group?! They are my new favorite thing. I wonder how long it will take me to get one of their songs on my phone.

Before and After Katrina

MSNBC shows very shocking pictures of areas hit by Katrina.

I want to plain our next mini-vacation to New Orleans. The Big Easy Rollergirls have a bout Sun November 18th. Maybe that would be a good time to see some derby, and help their economy with our excess spending money. And it sure couldn't hurt to get out of Houston!

Elle the Heroine

I am very luck to have met Chris Rien (http://magnetic-eye.com/). He illustrated most of the artwork for HRD this year. I found out he was in need of a drawing table, and I had an extra drafting table just gathering dust... so I gave him the table and he drew me as a futuristic badass derby heroine. It's awesome. Thank you Chris!!



I wonder if I can make this costume in time for halloween.

I'm going to have this printed and framed. It will remind me of all the fun times, and none of the hard times. Well, maybe it'll also remind me that I got through all the hard times.

We ate really good Belgian food this weekend (thank you Ivana), and watched a few movies that have been on our list (Thank You For Smoking, and Mansfield Park). Plus I watched so much Law and Order that I started double checking all the locks in the house. I should have just watched more movies.

September is going to be a crazy busy month, so I took this weekend off. I did as little as possible and it felt great. I've usually got ten projects going at once, and I like to stay busy. I thought it would be hard to not do anything, but once I put myself in lazy mode it felt like home.

I've got a list a mile long of things that need to be done... most of them Derby things. The way I'm feeling today though, maybe those derby things aren't as important as I think they are. Maybe they don't really need to be done at all. I'm sure I'll find out... someone will be yelling for something soon enough. Blah. We should skip Mondays altogether and get straight to Tuesdays.

A McLovin kind of week

It's Thursday already. This week has flown by.

Last Thursday the weather was really bad... they let us all leave work a few hours early so that we wouldn't get stuck in a flood. I got home and laid down to take a nap around 5pm. I didn't wake up until 7 the next morning to go to work. That's about 14 hours of sleep.

Friday comes and I get off work at noon. I drive up to the north side to meet with a company that wants to hire me on the side to train their employees. I'm excited about this because to me it's easy money. I have a home office which has three computers networked together, and I use it to train people sometimes. So after the meeting a small group of us drive out to the Alamo Draft House and watch Superbad. It was super rad and for a minute I thought about changing my name to Elle McLovin.

We got home pretty early and I went to bed around 11. I didn't wake up until 2pm on Saturday. That's about 15 hours of sleep. Saturday was a lot of fun. Went shopping at the ghetto mall by my house... got lots of cute things. Met up with Dementia to hit the town and go dancing all night... but couldn't find a dance club to save our lives. Everywhere we went was empty. We realized we are very out of the loop in regard to 'going out places'. Ended up at that new bar, Boondocks, then Poison Girl. PG is always a good standby. We ate at La Topatia after 2am.

Sunday was Bout 6- August Assault. We played the Brawlers. We won the game, but they made us work for it. I scanned the stats sheet before leaving and we nickel and dimed them. 4 and 5 points jams were the typical. If they hadn't been so physical and really on their blocking game we would have been able to score more than four 8 to 10 point jams. Claudia Van Damage gave me one of the most fierce blocks ever. She nailed me. I can't wait to see it on the dvd. Good clean solid block. Someone else hit me and I slid into the Brawlers team bench and knocked my head on it! I was dazed for a second, but got up and back in the game with no problem.

My Bosses played a great game. Death only went to the penalty box ONCE, and it was for a team penalty that was accidental anyway. D'Master skated her first bout... and she rocked! What a great surprise to find that our greenest skater can block her but off!! I saw her get multiple blocker take outs, and at least one jammer take out. Very proud. Blasphany fell wrong and sprained her ankle... so that was bad, but at least she didn't break or tear anything. She's going to stay off of it for a little bit then be back in plenty of time to train for the Championship game. BloXX jammed like a super star, and Death was awesome, like usual. Flame was a great high scorer for us, as she usually is. And I think Holly and I did a good job of helping our team gain points each jam. Nawty as always was the best Blocker 3 ever! Each time I went up to jam (which was a lot more than we had previously scheduled... but it's cool... I can jump in like that) I checked to see who was my B3... and when it was her I would lose my nervousness and gain a little bit of confidence.

The only thing I'm not 100% proud of, and I don't fully understand what happened, but towards the end of the game people's tempers started to flare. I don't know why, and I didn't see what caused anything... and I'm sure the audience didn't know why, and were watching skaters throw tantrums and it wasn't sportsmanlike, or professional, or respectful at all. I still love my girls, and will give them the benefit of the doubt, and will forgive them... because shit happens out there, and sometimes we flip out. I didn't do it this bout, but who's to say I won't do it the next bout. I'll try not to, of course, but when our adrenaline is pumping, and we're that fired up and aggressive sometimes we say and do things that we don't mean.

I wish I could have watched the Sirens and Betties game more. Mistilla the Killa was on fire!! I think this was the best game I've ever seen her skate. All of the Siren jammers stepped it up. Dementia was top notch, as always... but Carmen and KK both were really impressive. Honestly I was very surprised by how both of them played... getting lead jammer, scoring those points quickly and calling off the jam... over and over and over. Now I know for sure that us Boss jammers are going to have to train hard just to keep up with the Siren jammers. The Championship bout in October is going to be awesome.

The after party at the GRAB bar was awesome! Lots of great music and drinks and friends. Chris has his car window broken and his radar detector stolen though.

I took off Monday to recoup from the game. I ended up spending over 5 hours finalizing the Governors Cup flyers, posters, and website artwork. I got them all sent to the printers and to the other leagues so they can use them.

Tuesday night was Art Night at Elle's. Chris and I had a Adobe Illustrator 101 class for Dementia and Sinister Sista. The more we teach them, the better I feel about handing over the art projects to them next year.

Wednesday we had league practice. Only 5 Bosses came to practice, but we got to work with all the New Perfume, so it was cool. We worked on endurance and did the snake drill three different ways. With so many skaters constantly skating I'm sure we skated over 200 laps, easily.

And now it's already Thursday again. No team practice tonight (yeah!!)... so I have no idea what to do with my free time! I'm sure I'll think of something though...

Photo by Kerry McClain
kmcclain.zenfolio.com/p24952090/