Wednesday, May 28, 2008

My voice may be gone, but the quilting goes on!

I have laryngitis. Boo! This makes it very hard to teach, especially when my final projects happen to be fairly complicated and require a lot of explaining... this makes me sad. It's too bad that my "cries of anguish" are limited to making little fart noises with my mouth. Pthbbbbt on my lack of a voice. PTHBBBBT.

One thing is cheering me up like crazy, though. I've just started getting emails from some Kansas City Roller Warriors who are donating to the quilt. Yay for contributions from afar! I'm beyond excited to get quilty-goodness from skaters I've never met. My fantasy is to have this quilt be filled with squares from skaters and refs from across the country. Hopefully this will become a reality soon.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Thank you viaderby.com

I just cleaned my bearings for the first time using this demo as a reference. This made MUCH more sense than any of the written ones, even the pamphlet that came with my Bones Speed Cream. Thanks Viaderby!

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Thursday, May 22, 2008

I <3 refs.

Let me just say that every skater should spend time helping the refs and/or reffing themselves every once in a while. Holy crap, what a hard job. A nearby league had its first scrimmage tonight and they were short on refs, so I got to help out. I think I was as nervous as the skaters! I'm sure I totally stumbled my way through it... I know I missed about a million "blocking out of bounds," "forearms," "back blocking," and "elbows" minors and one major that I still can't quite explain or understand. However, I learned SO MUCH tonight that my head is swimming.

After tonight, I don't think I can ever get pissed about a call, no matter how "obvious" I think it is. I don't think I've ever done anything that complicated in my entire life. My hat is so off to you refs out there. How do you keep track of it all?

I had an absolute blast, though. :D

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

I suppose we do skate backwards sometimes...



I've heard tell of these things, but this is the first time I've seen footage. I love their short educational videos! I don't necessarily see myself using a power slide or backwards blocking any time soon (I would totally fall on my ass), this helps me understand the mechanics.