So that's what goes on in her head

Anyone who wants to listen right now to the Ohio Roller Girls, our coaches and some of our players are up in Cleveland doing an online sports radio show.

Here's the link I couldn't get it to work in Firefox, but it works in IE and seems to require RealPlayer.

Dan Abrams is giving Anderson Cooper a run for his money in the "Who wants to be pixiecrinkle's journalist fantasy boyfriend" race:

I was stunned how many people wrote in saying I'm not blaming the victim, but what was she doing out that late or I'm not blaming the victim, but why is a single woman out drinking so much? Well I hate to break the news to you but you are blaming the victim. You're only asking the question to suggest she could have, maybe should have prevented her own murder.

That's despicable...

Read the rest of it

yerpretty would have loved this story

I feel bad for the poor kid whose bike got destroyed.

I had the weirdest dream last night. I was at some sort of camp or school or something. I'm not quite sure what it was, but it was definitely supposed to be educational and there were lots of kids about, including the son of a work friend of mine, who is about 5 years old. I was sitting in the classroom with the kids and the guy in charge was showing us a band that was in a room behind a glass window and they were about to play and needed a guitarist. My friend's son volunteered, went up to play and was quite good. I had just gotten up to go into the glass room (studio?) with him when a blonde man came in. It was Kurt Cobain. Seriously.

The head teacher guy was trying to get him to leave, and Kurt Cobain was kind of passively arguing to stay. I asked why he had to leave and the head guy said he was just there to make trouble, and that is "always happens like this." That's when I realized that not everyone knew he was there. I asked for a show of hands as to who thought we were arguing with a blonde man, and only one or two people raised their hands. None of the kids could see him. So I convinced the head guy to let him come in the glass room and watch the kids jam. This made him pretty happy (as happy as Kurt Cobain would get, I guess.)

The kids played a song, and then the apparent ghost of Kurt Cobain thanked me and left.

Really, really, weird.

This was arguably better than the two dreams I had last week about either working with or competing with Daniel V. from Project Runway. What's up with my subconscious and the cult of celebrity??

Obsession with Project Runway + better understanding of pattern construction since I've been knitting so much + need for short skirts for roller derby and not being able to find them in stores = me itching to sew in a big way, more than I have in years.

My sewing machine is at the house. Wonder if I can get to my fabrics/patterns/notion in the storage unit?? I may have to go check tonight. I feel confident that I could figure out how to draft a pattern for a cute mini-skirt without too much trouble. Right??

Practice kicked my ass tonight. But in a good way. I am "contact legal" now, so I got to skate in my first scrimmage jam. I screwed it up massively at least once, but I did manage to knock at least one person down without falling myself. This is progress. I also managed to get checked by other people and not fall over.

I really need to adjust my skates. I took them to get stretched at this awesome shoe repair shop (Jesse's Instant Shoe Repair in Grandview, on 5th behind the Penn Station restaurant) so they feel a lot better, and I can lace them tighter on my ankles without cramping my feet up. But they are still hard for me to control on turns, especially when we're doing drills where we skate on one leg. I took my wrenches with me, but sadly, neither of them fit the bolts that hold the trucks onto my skates. (The truck is like the axle -- look at me learning vocab words!)

I really need to study up on the rules. I am still confused as to where I should be in the pack. It'll come with time and practice, but I asked one question tonight that's been bugging me (can the blockers pass the pivots?) and was totally wrong on my answer (I thought they couldn't, but they can, so long as the pack stays within 20 feet.)

Only bad thing is, my carpal tunnel is acting up in my right wrist when I put weight on it. I need to get back into yoga for that. Downward dog helped me tons with that before. Then it'll be ok. Gotta remember to bring my braces home from work tomorrow so I can sleep in them too when I need to. I know I woke up last night with them bent funny. That's bad!

Wearing the mouthguard in practice seems to make me grind up the bite plate I wear at night much less though. That's good!

Gotta make a derby icon too. I plan to spend some time this weekend working on a logo with my name for the back of my helmet, so that should fall right into place.

Wooo! Off to the shower....

So, spandita was in Puerto Rico this weekend, and currently, he is stranded in the airport in Newark, awaiting a flight into Dayton. He flew out of Columbus, so I'm going to go get him after work.

He just called to tell me that Daniel Franco, of Project Runway seasons 1 & 2 ran over his foot with his wheelie suitcase. Ha!

If only it had been Daniel Vosovic. Swoon.

Sometimes I worry that if all my hobbies/friends/whatever converge, the world might just explode.

With that, I bring you something I just stumbled across randomly (I'm looking for calls for entries for pattern submissions, I swear!)

Yarn, inspired by roller derby, in a shade called "Rink Burn"

Too weird.

I like my cell phone. I sprung the extra cash for a Smartphone (Audiovox SMT-5600) when I last upgraded, and I'm glad I did. It has enough PDA features that I use that it's been worth it. I like it when I get a little beep reminding me I have an appt in an hour, and it's cool to be able to keep all my lists (grocery, target, tasks, etc.) on hand with me at all times. Plus, I discovered last week that both google Local and gmail have mobile versions, and I've used them both when out and about now. Cool!

What I don't like, is that for some reason, the alarm clock is stuck on the "ring once and forevermore hold your peace" setting. Doesn't matter what I do, it chimes pleasantly once, then shuts off. So this morning, as I was alternately freezing and burning up and having weird dreams and not wanting to get out of bed, not only did I get up so late that I was going to be just on time to work, but I'd not gotten the extra reminder to take my car in for its 45,000 mile service either. So I was even more late.

Then, I walked out and realized that it was trash day. I know we forgot to take our container out last week (for having 3 adults in the house, we generate surprisingly little trash) so I went to grab it. Good thing too, because that's when I noticed my skates were at the side door. I was all disappointed last night, because I got a small priority mail envelope containing my skate wrench, but alas, no skates. Seems they were there all along, shipped separately. Sheesh.

So, I was so late by that point that I just took the box inside and went on to the car dealer. I have to wait until this evening to break them out and try them on before practice. I really hope they fit, because I'm not having fun in the rental skates -- the wheels are way too hard to do anything cool. And the new ones are groovy.

I am so hooked on derby. Oh! And my official derby name is Alli Catraz. Now I just need to find a number that fits in with that.