Purple Tinted Glasses

**Potter spoiler warning**

You may not want to read on if you have not finished book six yet.

Oh, page 596, how I loathe you. I had already ruined the ending of the book for myself by reading the internets in the days before seven’s release. Only today did I read the dreadful pages. Even though I knew it was coming, I hung my head, sad panda style, immediately after finishing the chapter. Without even saying a word, all those around me knew what page I was on (potter geeks). Allen, feel free to wear your spoiler shirt around me again.

It was a nice rainy day today, perfect for reading. This sent me on a mad hunt for a copy of book seven. Erica lent me her copy, but it does no good sitting up on my tv cabinet when I’m sitting at Molly’s enjoying life. Luckily, Decatur News Stand had a stray copy that only caught my eye after I had given up. Look at that, I even bought my very first Potter book today!

Imagine my disappointment: waking up this morning to find out, not only is it NOT Saturday, it isn’t even FRIDAY!!

Man it’s been a rough week. As some know, this weekend past was dedicated to derby in every way shape and form. Last week was a string of late nights, ending anywhere from 1am to 4am. Friday I crashed. I was in bed for 8:30 and didn’t wanke up until 5:30 am. I should have slept longer.

So Saturday (starting at 5:30 am), I checked some email, did the practice thing, ate… and then, DUH DUH DUHNN… it was “derby other” (a play on how I log my time at work). Call it a marathon of sorts. Let’s just say, the Saints game Saturday was a figment of my imagination, dinner sucked and I didn’t take a nap until about 5:30am. WHY? I was strapped to my laptop by my finger tips, sitting at Zotz, ignoring my white zombie (triple espresso and white chocolate over ice), laying out the BERG calendar.

Sunday appears, literally in the blink of an eye. Do I make it to practice? No. But I did make it to my team meeting where I did enjoy 3 hours with my new and old team mates, eating pizza and conquering my fear of the small blue backyard pool slides. Shortly after, I was back in front of my machine… sans power cord at this point since I absent mindedly left mine (apparently $160 worth) plugged into the outlet at Zotz.

Sunday night passes WAY to fast. Monday morning was here and I still had a few hours left on the layout. By the time 8am rolled around, I hadn’t showered since Saturday afternoon and I had given up all hope of making it to work before the afternoon.

I finally got to sleep at about 3:30pm on Monday for a two hour nap and didn’t get a good chunk of sleep until about 10pm later that night. I was described as simply, -out-.

Now, here it is, apparently only THURSDAY and I am still tired. I am fighting a silent battle in my mind as to whether sleep or finishing Harry Potter 6 is more important.

On a happy note, I got compliments on my skating tonight AND that $160 worth of power cord found it’s way back to me. Yay. Oh, and if you want one of those blood, sweat and tears calendars, go to www.bigeasyrollergirls.com while supplies last!

I often do this: laugh at myself. Today it’s because I’m listening to Queen at work via ipod and headphones. One of my favorites was playing, (I want it all, of course) and I noticed myself start to sing out loud - particularly humorous because I work in cube land.

Some of you know that I tend to compare myself singing to cats crying. I will continue to listen to my Queen via ipod and headphones at work and save the singing for when I’m driving around in my car with the windows rolled up and music blaring.

Currently hopped on a dose of caffeine as well.

Boot Camp, Derby Style One month into training for the 2007-08 season, the league decided to kick it up a notch.

Thursday kicked off the start of Boot Camp at the normal practice time. The Carolina girls were welcomed by a slew of students, professionals and mothers turned derby chicks in a matter of minutes. Practice was followed by some drinking and squat contesting at the Bridge Lounge. Yes, that’s right, derby invaded preppy for just a couple of hours. (Warning: Do not try to do a victory dance straight out of a squatting position after a minute and 30 seconds while holding a beer - you will wind up ass first on the floor.)

Friday was an odd practice time, starting at 4:30! I left work early and was late, so I had to do warm up twice. I get livid when I have to do warm ups twice, by the way. I’ve never been more than 30 seconds off the track. But late is late and I only bitch about it when I’m one of the ones stuck warming up twice.

Saturday was running in the park followed by dry land exercises and an ity bit of yoga. Skating at Airline should have followed immediately. Alas, schedule conflict and we wound up in Audubon park where we practiced strategy amidst a huge family picnic complete with BBQ, some kind of boiling seafood ad line dances. I managed to squeeze in a $10 burrito, and a couple of laps before going home to shower only to run of to something else derby that I can’t quite remember right now.

Sunday was skating (again at 8am), followed immediately by more skating across the river for another 2 hours, some running in the park, some tricep-dips, MORE squats (holy crap, Em had everybody for SIX minutes!!)

We bid our Carolina mentors good bye at Savvy Gourmet and wound up wrapping up the weekend about 6 hours early. Let’s just say I had me some good sleep and a kick ass massage on Monday evening (which revealed that, although my right side hurt the most and had the least neck movement range, my left side was indeed much tighter and much more painful - in a good way- to get rubbed out than the other).

My favorite moment: getting complimented by Leadfoot long after the fact for a PERFECT hit I landed on a newbie. Yes, I felt bad for hitting her, but I bet she’ll always look over her right shoulder from now on.

To top it all off: I suffered through banged up knees all through boot camp with neosporin and bandaids. For those of you who don’t know, you can find pieces of my knee skin probably still stick to the pavement on Decatur where I went over the handlebars of my bike and landed the perfect derby fall sans knee pads and wrist guards. The rest of that story I’ll save for another time. I’m still waiting for my left knee to scab up and GO AWAY!

Well, according to work, I’ve logged somewhere around 50 hours between yesterday and today. I seem to have been struggling to keep my mind on real work at my real job. I fixed that today though, logging 7.75 of 8 to real job work and also logging some time from the last couple of days that… well… didn’t get done until today.

Also just spent the last 3 hours workin for free for the Big Easy Rollergirls, managed to squeeze in a 10 min nap after work and ate dinner with Misty.

Now, out of the corner of my eye, I see Will reading, envious of his being 100 or fewer pages from the end of Harry Potter book 7, while I’m not even half way through Book 6. Hmmpf.