Even though The Kitten stayed home sick today and I have to cover for my evening librarian tonight (which means working over twelve hours), I impressed the socks off two potential employers. My phone interview resulted in an invitation for a face-to-face interview only four hours after we hung up. Then I got the news from my headhunter that my afternoon interviewers were interested but had some additional questions. I’ve made so many career mistakes already this year that I’m getting a little leery of making another, but I’m also slightly desperate to get off a sinking ship.

Here’s the promotional material:

Although we haven’t officially made the annoucement and most likely won’t until after Bout 6, this should be a preview of the championship in September. Hopefully, the Brawlers will gel like we did in Bout 5 and give the Sirens some good competition.

Everybody else is blogging about it, albeit for many different reasons, but I might as well give a shout-out to Kinky Friedman for giving a shout-out to roller derby. Just in case you don’t want to read the article, here’s the clip:

“I don’t like basketball and I don’t like women’s basketball,” he grumbles into his cellphone. “If it was roller derby, it would be different.”

Kinky’s referring to a promo he was asked to tape for the Houston Comets 10th anniversary.  Now I must say that I totally respect the Comets, and I was even at their first three WNBA Championship games (good stuff!).  In fact, I played against Sheryl Swoopes when I was in college.  So I don’t agree with him there.  I do wonder what it would take to get him to do a promo for roller derby, though.  Hell, forget the promo!  Show up at a bout, such as the Stars Across Texas event that TXRG is hosting in September.

The scene is the next-to-last jam in the second meeting of the Burlesque Brawlers and the Bayou City Bosses. Catazon is jamming. The details are a little fuzzy so I can’t remember what actually ended the jam, but I clearly recall that neither jammer scored any points. (I pride myself in being able to see everything that is happening on the floor when I am in a jam.) I line up to jam again. I did this a lot which should explain why details are fuzzy. The Brawlers were ahead going into the next-to-last jam so once I snag lead jammer, I’m thinking I’m out for a nice 40-second stroll.

WAIT A FREAKING MINUTE!

The scoreboard says the Bosses are ahead by three! I now have 20 seconds left to score four points! Where the hell are my jet-powered skates when I need them? The crowd is starting to count it down…I pass one Boss, then another. They don’t even touch me. Where the hell is the Boss jammer? I don’t know and I don’t have time to find her, because Felanie is right in front of me and I have two seconds to pass her. Why doesn’t someone hit her? 1…I look at the refs on the other side of Felanie…I think I did it! I can’t watch…I’m going to collapse here on my knees and pray a minute. I think I must have passed their jammer, too, because it looked like Hell Bent held up four fingers. Why am I starting to cry? Did I blow or did I win it? I can’t take the pressure! I hear cheering for the Bosses. How the hell did they score points when I didn’t even see their jammer?

Now I’m definitely not crying, I’m throwing my helmet down in front of the whole ref team and screaming about how there’s no possible way the Bosses scored any points. I don’t even care that we lost, I just want them to quit having all these scoring problems. Get out of my face, Nic Ref Phobia! What, what? Oh, the score was wrong? The Brawlers won!?!?!?!? Sorry, Nic! Sorry, Ben! My team!!! No, don’t pick me up! You’ll hurt yourselves. They did it…they picked me up! What a sight that must be.

Flash forward. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. My first three fingers on my left hand were skated over after a bone-crushing hit by Scarilyn. I wish she was blocking for me on the travel team. My ankles are sore from trying to side-step Pushy all night long. She might be the best pivot in the league.

Looks like the Brawlers will be in the Championship Game!

The first “player” of this game starts with the topic “six weird habits/things about yourself” and people who get tagged need to write a blog about their six weird habits/things as well as to state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next six people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says “You’ve been tagged” in their MySpace comments and tell them to read your blog.

1. I hate the word “pork”. I’ll eat ham, bacon, etc., but nothing that is described by that exact word. I even hate to say the word and found it difficult to type.

2. I have worn the same pair of earrings for over two years without taking them out at all.

3. I don’t like to eat foods that leave something behind on your plate, such as anything on a bone, fruit, crawfish…

4. I used to make sure my house was SPOTLESS before I went on an overnight trip just in case I never made it back, and it still makes me nervous to leave something out of place, but I now have a child.

5. I get bored so easily that I find it hard to stay in one job longer than a year.

And the weirdest of them all….6. Seeing eights and threes upside down on gas station signs infuriates me. Well, I shouldn’t say infuriate, but I’ve cursed about it out loud more than once.

Nobody tagged…

I finally uploaded the video where I tear my ACL playing tackle football. If you want to watch, I’m lined up at tight end on the right side with a wing beside me that runs a pass route. I fall back to block the defensive end, then just fall. Before I fall, you can see my knee doing its Exorcist impersonation. When I get up, our two shortest coaches help me off the field. I also included my post-game commentary where I confidently proclaim I will play on it next week (HA!), and my husband telling me to hurry because my fan club is starving.

Good stuff! It’s easy to have a sense of humor about it five years later.

When I made my weekly visit to the gas station this morning, I found that someone had tried to pry open my gas tank. Some LOSER really dented and scratched it up and broke off part of the plastic inside the tank but didn’t get it open. Aww, too bad! Thanks, Hyundai, but no thanks to my employer, because I’m 99.9% positive it happened in the parking lot at work.

Then I get to work and find a message informing me to “Please leave Saturday, August 12, 2006 open from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm for a required “Employee Office Retreat”“. Unfortunately, my social calendar for the first two weeks of August has been booked for three years now. How frustrating, especially when I’ve already wasted enough time listening to annoying, “required” management drivel. Now that I’ve wasted time griping about wasting time, I need to get busy finding my fourth job this year.

In honor of our upcoming bout, I would like to demonstrate one of the strategies I use against my worthy opponents…

Taking them out before they even get on the floor.

Love ya, Jule B. Sorry, and can’t wait to party, bout, and (please forgive me) beat you AGAIN! Hope you will be ready to go on the 16th…I’ll try to keep my skate off your skate until then.

The Brawlers kicked off the holiday weekend with a pool party at Tawdry’s house.  The Kitten (Catazon’s spawn) enjoyed it for the first few hours, then I dropped her off with daddy for some bonding with my team.  That move ended up spoiling the rest of the weekend for bonding with my husband (same song, 1 millionth verse), but I didn’t let it affect the rest of my extracurricular activities.

It looked like Sunday was going to be tough with the hangover and the nagging, but I was able to put that noise behind me once we got to the farm and Jule B. Sorry and her crew showed up.  Remember…I mentioned earlier that I would be attending my first roller derby bout over the Fourth of July weekend.  I think I enjoyed the halftime band more than the bout (I added a song to my myspace page).  I don’t even want to talk about the afterparty, because that kind of fun is indescribable.  Jule and I (along with a few more HRD representers) shut the place down.

The rest of the holiday was pretty much uneventful but most definitely relaxing and a welcome change from the hellhole (a.k.a. library) in which I slave away the days.  I highly recommend a Central Texas getaway every now and then, even if I couldn’t stand to live there again.