Speechless

I know someone who works on Celebrity Fit Club. She and I were talking one time, and I mentioned that I loveloveLOVE their drill sergeant, Harvey Walden IV. Because he's almost as loud as I am.

I received the below photo today:






















I'm speechless!


Except I do wonder why I was drawn with a sweet little smile on my face!

Off to Jackson

SO busy, yet it seems like I'm not getting anything done.

And with that in mind, I'm leaving for the weekend for the annual SNIFF party in Jackson, CA.


Here's the shirt front I did for this year. Different font, same dog:




















On Monday there's gonna be an insane press junket for the Whip It! movie at the Doll Factory. I guess I should be enthused, but it's difficult with work pressures and skating priorities weighing me down. And hey, I don't really have anything at stake with the flick, so maybe that's really why I don't give a flip. I bet that's verboten to say, but I don't care about that, either.

Anyway, this weekend will hopefully be a good opportunity to clear the mind and enjoy myself. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Blargh

Sick again.

This sucks.

Annnnd, my back is partially thrown out of whack.

THIS IS NOT MY WEEK.

But hey, the driveway is paved and pretty!

Too bad I'm too sick to take the murdersickle out.


LOOK! Artwork! That I did! For the last game I'll be skating in this season! Be there or get a broken face!

In My Next Life

...I want to be reincarnated as a beautiful woman.

This being loud-and-ugly thing is so...uh...YAWWWWWWWWWWNNNNN.

LADD photographer Stalkerazzi caught this:














The usual Tara-being-a-loudmouthed-asshole shot. Yeah, yeah, big open mouth. Quel surprise.



I'm SO GLAD other LADD photographer Charlie Chu caught this moment:















Yes, I'm slapping PITA's face right as she's about to go up for the first jam of the game. I swear, that adrenaline rush from a face-slap is FANTASTIC for aggressive skating! It seemed to work for her, at any rate, as she skated very well!


I have no idea what was going on in the game when Charlie caught this expression:
















But it's both kinda cool and rather horrifying at the same time.

SRSLY. Next life, I wanna be pretty.

This Saturday

I am not skating.

I am managing the Sirens, however.

Which you should come see in person.

Especially when the afterparty flier basically says you'd BETTER show up or else my pimp hand will get an exceptional workout:

















P.S: we has a webcast, too!

Suburban Wildlife

Today was a quiet day...to a point.

I was busy working on freelance, minding my own business. The Dear Husband comes in and says, Kitty brought another present. You need to see this.

I turn off the dvd and wander to the backyard, where Kitty was happily skittering around the patio. I look down and see...a critter. By the way, I'm officially Critter Patrol when it comes to Kitty bringing "gifts" to us. The DH usually doesn't want to go near whatever has been broughted into our territory. So I go and investigate.

I don't know what kind of critter it is.

I then get down on hands and knees to further peer at the critter. It's small, gray, fuzzy, and most importantly...not dead. I pet it. It moves. It's a baby...something. I pick it up. It squirms a little, but isn't repulsed by my handling it. I see that he is remarkably in one piece, except for one tooth mark in his little armpit.

The DH looks at the little guy and guesses rat. I point to his tail, which is distinctly not rat-like. I also point out his little hands. Hmmmm. Raccoon? Uh...

















Look at that cute little fucker. His eyes were still closed tight. While we're examining the little munchkin, Kitty disappears.


We promptly wrap the little guy up in a bandanna and take him to the local vet. They immediately identify him as a squirrel. They also have a deal where they give little boogers like this guy to a local wildlife rehabilitation center so that they stand a chance of surviving. There's some worry about his armpit though, as cat bites are very very bad for squirrels.

They didn't even charge us for dropping off the squirrel. How cool is that?!


On the way home the DH and I discuss where baby squirrels would possibly be stashed away and that we should go looking for them, because we wouldn't want Kitty to get the other ones, right?

We get home, I go straight to the backyard and take a cursory look around the back wilderness area to see if there's any sign of squirrels. None are found, so I go meandering back to the patio.

Where I find another goddam baby squirrel sprawled on the cement, with Kitty happily lurking nearby.

I immediately grab the bandanna and place the second squirrel in it. This time, we pet Kitty and sing his praises. More importantly, we give him food.

















Close-up of Squirrel Baby #2:

















Photo of Proud Hunter:















After securing the second squirrel, we decide to wait awhile to see if Kitty brings any more to us before traipsing back to the vet. So I went back to work with the second baby wrapped up and sleeping next to me in the office. After about 45 minutes I made another patio inspection with no new babies to deal with, so we went back to the vet to drop off the second baby.

All's well that ends well, I guess!


In non-sequitur news:

We're getting our driveway repaved:






































It's been driving me crazy to not be able to get the murdersickle out of the garage. BUT, our driveway is gonna look amazing when it's done. Which will hopefully be by early next week.

Hopehopehope...

Some Pix from Last Saturday

Fight Crew lost by 10 points last Saturday.

It's not our proudest team moment.

However, after watching the game footage from the webcast, I can say that I played one of my personal best games EVAR.

I think it was the face-slapping that did it.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa...?! you may be asking yourself...

See, the San Diego Derby Dolls have a pre-game ritual where the team lines up and the team manager swiftly slaps the face of each skater down the line juuuuust before the game starts. It's an instant adrenaline rush and gets one's head in the game. I had our bench manager for the game, PITA from the Sirens, slap the living bejeezus out of me before my first jam. HOLY CRAP it worked! I still made mistakes, but I also blocked a lot harder and a lot smarter than in previous games.

FC captains are trying to figure out how to approach our last game of the season, which will be against the Sirens in October. I suggest a lot of face-slapping.


Anyway, here are some fun fotos from the game.

A two-fer...I had just hit Long Island Lolita, taking both her and myself down. FC co-captain Haught Wheels got caught in my cross-fire by falling over me:


























I remember when I saw Lolita go down with her face so close to the kickrail, I thought, OH SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but she was uninjured.


Tough Soles and I in the penalty box:














I wasn't ejected from this game. Nor have I been ejected from any game this season. I came close, though. Especially at the end, where the refs gave me a penalty in a jam that I wasn't even skating in. That penalty that someone else committed would've gotten me kicked out of the last jam had it not been noticed that I wasn't in the jam that the refs were talking about.



Behind the Varsity Brawlers in the foreground is me flying over Vulvarine, who fell in front of me while going full speed. I landed sprawled in such a way that I hit my chin on the track(THANK GAWD we wear mouthguards...my parents would've been pissed beyond belief if I messed up my teeth!), and my ribs and hips got bruised. The ribs especially got hit HARD when I landed. Owch.

















Aaaaaaaaand a team photo with Fight Crew superfan Little Kenny(though I hear he's thinking of switching loyalties to VB...if that's true, I have something to say about that!), who has always been super-supportive of not only Fight Crew, but the Derby Dolls in general. He gave copious amounts of cash to the Ri-Ettes to help them go to Battle on the Bank in Austin in June, and he also helped out the Jr. Derby Dolls with their camp in July:














And here's a rare little treat. ARTWORK! That I did! This is the new logo that the flat track league in town, the Angel City Derby Girls, are using for their all-star team, the Scarlets. They have a "Pegasus of Power" theme going on...I don't know where it came from, but it gave me an excuse to build a goofy-looking logo in Illustrator:

Last Saturday

If you missed the Fight Crew/Varsity Brawlers game last Saturday, you missed seeing this AMAZING game intro. Flagellate yourselves appropriately: