Purple Tinted Glasses

We’re halfway through the BERG Austin trip and so far it’s been pretty interesting. We’ve all been up since appx 3am (Luna, Diamond and I) and we’re all on the verge of delirium. We’ve met the opponents, raided Target, and enjoyed some pool time. On the way to dinner at Magnolia Café, Luna dropped a text book the size of Texas on the top of her foot and busted something. We’ve named the GPS device Babs (short for Barbra) and have had a love/hate relationship with her ever since.

Now, It’s almost midnight, I’ve been up for close to 20 hours and all I want to do is tell you these things that we said:

Luna: Gross Tete? In Arkansas, they would have just called it “Fat Head”
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Bea: If I were a musical bobble head, this would be my song!
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Diamond: My first car was a 1988 Volkswagon Fox
Luna: I can see that. Bea what was your first car?
Bea: A 1990 Honda Accord. I miss it.
Luna: I can see that too!
Diamond: What was your first car?
Luna: A Chevy S-10 pickup truck
Diamond/Bea: I can see that!!! (jinx)
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Luna: HOV, like a hug, but of
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Diamond: If you’re gonna live out in the middle of nowhere, you might as well have a tennis court in your front yard.
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Diamond: Look at that developement without any homes… with a beautiful vista of the I-10 thruway.
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Diamond: That’s Business 71. Like.. that’s business time and this is the rest of the week.
Luna: Business in the front, party in the back!
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Luna: Who’s this?
Diamond: [insert artist title here]
Luna: Oh, it sucks.

My mom and I spent a good chunk of the day yesterday removing the flowery mess that was left behind on Spain Street. If there’s anything worse than flower wall paper, it’s BLUE flower wall paper.

I apologize for my harshness toward the color blue, but it is not allowed in the new house if I have anything to say about it especially if it is in the sky blue, baby blue, powder blue variety. Turquoises, shades of greenish blues and darker slate blues are more than welcome. As a teenager when given the option to paint my room baby blue or sky blue. I’m scarred for life.

Roller Derby makes national coverage this past week on ESPN’s Sport Center, only to be heckled… as always… and probably with good reason. One of our refs (soon to be skater, Flat Track Fever blogger) posted a link to the video only to have some reader get all worked up in a tizzy.

In his rambling comment he (she?) asks us to “TALK ABOUT THE DAMN SPORT. ‘What it takes to have explosive NRG for 2 minutes’, ‘Skills behind being a top ranked Lead Jammer’, ‘Plays’, ‘Team Strategies’, etc. Educate your interviewer. This piece of crap was done by…yes…another Roller Girl….”

“I am a fan of ‘Inception Style’, ‘WWF Style’, and the ‘New Grass Roots Revival Style’. What I hate is Roller Girl Names, Pillow Fights, A&E Roller Girl, and the hypocrisy of certain roller girls (’We dress sexy, but F you for gawking at us’).and that is IN YO FACE!”

There’s a lot of emotions that come to mind, the first one being “HOLY CRAP we’re on ESPN! Cool!”

I am also one of the first ones to roll my eyes at the pillow fights and staged brawls. As a member of the Big Easy Rollergirls, I can gladly say that that stuff is bull shit. We play by the latest version of the WFTDA standard rules and treat roller derby as a legitimate sport. We eliminated “play fighting” in our first season and call for immediate ejection in the case of any real fight breaking out. There are no jammer races — unless you’re talking about the race to be the first through the pack. Pillow fights… are retarded.

I wear the hot pants and fish nets and I don’t care if anyone gawks at me or throws a cat call to Beatrix sKiddo. We don’t get paid for this. Fact of the matter is that roller derby is not a professional sport. We do it for fun, for therapy, because it’s cheaper than a gym membership or whatever other reason you want to throw out there. My alter ego at this point has become a nick name.

I’ll be happy to talk about what it took to get there and how we still practice up to 4 days a week, 2 hours at a time. I throw in running for endurance cross training and during our off season, I’m getting back on the bike for longer rides in addition to park skating outdoors. I also try to schedule at least one personal strength training session per month to update routines and target problem areas like shin splints and lower back aches. Oh, and after two years of this stuff… I’m finally starting to have knee problems, but that’s not going to stop me from doing it.

This weekend was Big Easy Rollergirls’ last home bout of the season against Orange County Rollergirls’ Orange Crushers. One of our own returned home with her new team and basically showed us how it’s done… if you want to look at it that way.

One thing I’ve noticed is that every time our travel team goes up against another team, they seem to tower over us. Surprisingly, that’s never the reason or any type of intimidation or pre-game jitters I might have. We usually have “got it all together” by the time a game comes to be.

We’ve been blaming a lot of our failure on the fact that we (BERG Allstars, as we’ve been referred to) are a mixture of all the home teams and, since our home schedule is heavily based on us playing each other as home teams, we rarely get to practice and play together unless it’s in the weeks prior to an upcoming bout.

There are teams out there that have been skating together for years now. Others are newer but focus most of their energy on Interleague play. I think we’re getting there. It’s just taking us a while to get our shit together.

So anyway, at this point I probably don’t even need to say it but we lost — again. We held it together for most of the beginning of the game. At one point I remember one of the announcers saying the game was tied at 39. It definitely was not as murderous as some of the games we’ve played in the past. Here’s to next weekend against the Hot Rod Honeys… where we will probably get our asses handed to us on a silver platter.

P.S. How did you like that art work on the bout poster? The girl looks vaguely familiar.

Well, the long awaited d-word is over. (That’s the draft for you non-derby loving folks)

It’s time for Bea to say good by MAs, hello Crescent Wenches! Now, it’s not all that bad being an Antoinette. I mean… we were UNDEFEATED! And, I did JUST buy a house in the Marigny to make us official. (I’ll let you believe that, if you wish.)

Here’s to next season. For now, I’ve gotta stay focused on the next two weeks. The last home game of the season is May 24, BERG travel team vs. Orange County Rollergirls followed by BERG travel team vs. Austin’s Hot Rod Honeys the next weekend.

I can’t wait to buy my pink leg warmers!

I feel like every waking hour that I have not been at my day job, I have been doing something for everyone and anyone except myself. Call me selfish… but if I have to spend one more minute on something as thankless and hateful as it can be some times, I might just break down. It’s not all thankless and it’s not all hateful. I just hate it right now because it keeps boomeranging back to me. I just can’t seem to get rid of it. Sorry Jack, that I keep forgetting to even send you a txt msg to say Happy Birthday. This is why.

That’s one.

I am also addicted to good tasting, bad for you food. I’m tired of being heart healthy. I’m tired of not seeing results. I want a gallon of ice cream on top of a whole white pizza with Tomatoes from Slice and my ranch dressing to dip it in - on top of a gross of crunchy rolls from ShoGun and I want to wash it down with a big ol’ fat juicy rare steak - then I want to pick my teeth with pasta doused in Alfredo sauce.

That’s two.

The house, the one that I’m trying to sell… I can’t keep it clean to save my life. I get home, I dump where I’m standing, I pick up as much as I can and I can’t find places for everything else. My mom cleaned my house this weekend and then I couldn’t find anything because it wasn’t on the floor. My bathroom light hasn’t worked for over a week now and everyone who said they can try to fix it hasn’t even attempted.

That’s three.

My knee hurts a little. Enough to where walking down stairs can only be done one at a time.

That’s four… even though it could give me a break from number one.

And lastly, I’m just so freaking tired. I can’t keep my mind on work. I’m ready to move into the new house. I’m ready to be out of the old house. What sucks the most is all this complaining and I don’t really have any problems in the world and I feel guilty for feeling so pressured because of my insignificant “problems”. I have a job, I can afford to eat something every day, I have a car and friends, and most importantly… I have family that loves me and a boyfriend that tells me not to push my luck.

My biggest problem is having too many friends and too much family time that my calendar never seems to free up. Like this weekend… I thought I didn’t have anything to do. Friday night is suddenly two things (I need to pick one), Saturday is suddenly two things (in addition to the one I already do anyway). Sunday will probably turn into a disaster filled with fun and games and drinking.

So… yeah, no problems here.

I caught my favorite co-worker in th kitchen today. The conversation went from paper cutters (of the human variety) to crazy sci-fi novels. We started talking about Ray Bradbury and he told me to “go google it”. Frank… told me… to google it. So I did.

He recommended that I read October Country. So this is me officially putting it on my list. While I’m at it, I’m going to add Deception Point along with Eragon and Eldest. I think those are behind my finishing The Gunslinger and the rest of the Dark Tower series. I forget how many books are in it. I’m sure Will’ll remind me.

Oh that’s right… Frank threw out Bradbury’s name as a relief to all of these long book series I am getting myself into. I sure do listen and retain.