#GangGreen for life

Fountain City Roller Derby was once called Dead Girl Derby.  I joined when it was still Dead Girl Derby.  I started in 2012.  2012 was a big year for the league.  There were SO MANY girls at recruitment.  So many!  Each person who was eligible did make it on a House Team.  I've told my whole draft experience before.  It's back in those archives somewhere.  Maybe last November-ish...

The House teams were at capacity.  So much so that they could not put every player on the roster.  They could field fourteen players and two alternates.  Also, everyone could play in the last quarter if the coach saw fit.

That is how the Zombie League came to be.

The Zombie League was were the first year skaters as well as returning skaters that needed more time on skates.  There might be a picture from my first game here. I, honestly, didn't know about this article until someone googled me and told me about it.  This was the only time I was on Black Plague.  I skipped ahead here.

The Zombie League was comprised of two teams, throwback teams to the ages of old: Gang Green and Black Plague. 

After that first game, I was always on Gang Green.

While I made the alternate spot on the house team roster, I didn't get an abundant amount of play time the first season.

The second year of Zombie League saw great changes.  This is when I coached Gang Green.  I didn't realize when I signed up to coach I would be playing with Gang Green.  A lot.

Roster requirements changed.  There were just fourteen people on a roster and those who were not in the fourteen were sent to Zombie League to skate for the month.

It was a heartbreaking year.  Month after month, I would receive a message saying I didn't make the roster.  I did make it a few times.  I didn't get a lot of play time though.  One time I might have started crying on the bench because I sat there and sat there.  Finally, I got to play because I had to serve out a penalty for a teammate the had reached her penalty max.  I played in a few jams after that.

It's embarrassing when you invite people to come to the games and they actually show up and you don't make the roster.

I worked my ass off to sit on the bench.  It was fun.

Third year, I stopped coaching.  Even though I got the better reviews from the whole of the Gang Green coaches.

I, again, played Zombie League.  A lot. 

Roster requirements didn't change.  It was still the solid fourteen.

I did make the roster a few times due to injuries or people being out of town.

I didn't play a lot.

I got frustrated with the coaches on Zombie that year.

I had a terrible time when I played in those games.

My third year was just frustrating and upsetting.

Now!  It's this year!

Roster requirements changed.

Everyone on a house team made the roster as long as attendance was met.

There was a cap on the house team numbers though.

I can't remember exactly what it was.

You were guaranteed to play in four jams.

I played more.  Actually a lot more.

We just started the coed season and that first game was definitely amazing. 

I've played in two Zombie games this year, by choice. 

The coaches are amazing and these girls are tough.

Also, I am not just playing with Zombies, there are travel team girls

and house team girls. 

We just like to skate!

Monday nights Zombie Game was truly the best.

Sometimes the game play was faster than the house teams game play and

I might have had to rest a few after one particular jam.

Gang Green won 70-50.

I will post pictures and video once it is available.

If you didn't see that game, you really missed out.

Also, me drinking a Monster after watching Sharkatraz....that's a whole other story.

I'll probably talk about it later.

I sport the original Gang Green tank.

Did you know I coached?
Photo by Mary Wano

Of the whole team, only two remain as skaters, Sailor Moon Moon and Blazin Bay Bay.
And guess what?!?  They are on my coed team!!
Photo by Mary Wano

We won!

It has been a journey to this first win. 
A hard fought journey.
Fountain City started the coed teams three years ago.
The league started out with two teams, the Public Enemies and the Untouchables.
I was drafted to the Public Enemies.
We lost every single game.
I left that team after the first season, not because we lost every single game.  I had
personal reasons for leaving.
The second season the league added a new team, The Usual Suspects.
I was on that team.
We lost every single game.
The Public Enemies won every single game.
The third season, we have added a fourth team into the rotation, the Outlaws.


Well guess what?!?
We won our first game EVER!
And it was against the Public Enemies.
Yep, that's a thing.

Photo Courtesy of KC Derby Digest
And that's me, in the center, looking at the ground.

Photo Courtesy of KC Derby Digest

Start the video around 16:15 to see the last two jams. 
Full game video is up on the FountainCity RollerDerby youtube channel.

Just another day....

I have a story.  This happened on Wednesday. 

I was sitting at my desk.  That's what I do a majority of the time.  I was working.  I do that a lot too.  I hear yelling.  Lots of yelling.  From the break room.  It sounded like fighting shenanigans. 

I found out though, they were watching the fun occurring out in the parking lot.

I look out the window.  Yes, the windows really are that dirty.  I see a black SUV slammed into a minivan that sandwiched a little car in between itself and a white SUV.  Really?  How in the world did this even happen? 

The lady who owns the black SUV locked her keys in the car.  Smart.  We've all done it.  No judging here.  She came inside our building and told the security guard what was up and to see if they could help.

Someone heard her.  Someone thought it would be advantageous to run outside, break the window in the SUV and steal it. 

If you steal a car, maybe you should know how to drive a car?!?

That picture shows how far she got. 

She crashed the car.  Jumped out and started to run.  Security caught her.  They had to wrestle her a little and her shirt came off and it was a whole lot of yuck.

The police finally came.  People were taking selfies with their smashed cars and the ridiculousness that surrounded it.

The women, of course, was taken off in an ambulance.  She claimed to be hurt in the accident.  Pretty sure they took her to the hospital and gave her some Ibuprofen and sent her on her way to jail. 

Do you know how hot it was outside?  I think it was around 103 out there.

Another fun day at the state building.

Throwback Thursday

Throwing it back to 2010.  Our first Destin vacation.  I love Destin so much.  It's beautiful and I can swim in the water.  It's clear right down to the bottom.

We did so many things, but it didn't feel overwhelming or jammed packed full of things.

On the drive down, we started out at night.  I rode in my moms car.  I am not a good night driver unless someone is keeping me awake or I'm entertained by a meteor shower. :)

I am an awesome day time driver and can drive for a very long time.  Long distances don't bother me.  From Kansas City to Destin, FL is a very long distance.

We managed to drive all night and had breakfast somewhere in northern Mississippi and we were in Destin by that night.

We had an amazing condo.  We've stayed in the building twice.  That's how amazing it was.  It had two pools, a restaurant and a pizza place.  There were a few other things too, but that's all we really utilized.  I mean, who goes to the gym on vacation?!

I have this really annoying habit of finding all the things that we could possibly do and I make lists and then we all decide on things together.  I'm the idea person.

On this trip, we did a dolphin cruise, we went to Henderson Beach State Park, we went to the Florida Caverns and lots of stuff on the way there. Mostly, we just did the  beach and pool and just relaxed.  It was a vacation after all.

Maybe, we can all go back next year.  That would be the best.....

To be able to play in the game on Saturday, I had to make a half an hour of practice.  Our league has a minimum of five practices and eight hours to be eligible for the game.  I'm glad I waited for the last minute because this was the best practice ever.  It was tiring.  It was exhausting.  It was so much fun.

After a day full of meetings, including a meeting with my coed team before practice, it was nice.

Jon planed games for us.  These games were not easy.  We did toe stop challenges. (I guess I'm getting better at these)  We had a stop relay race.  The second time around we were not allowed to use tomahawk stops.  Tomahawk stops are when you transition to going backwards then get on your toe stops and take off.  These are by far the easiest to do for relays like this.  A lot of people were lost when the tomahawk option was taken away.  Totally won it for our team with the powerslide. Not very often do I win anything!  But I won that!  I totally won that! 

We all pushed 15 of our league mates.  We did shopping cart relays.  We played the box game.  Lots of us had to fit in the box.  We skated a lot and had a lot of fun.  Everyone was happy after that practice. 

 

Facebook keeps popping up pictures of vacations.  Every even year I have taken vacations to the Gulf coast.  This even year is different and I am super sad about it.

I NEED A VACATION.

So next year.  Vacation.  Preferably Destin.

I love it.  It's so purdy.

Big Brother started tonight.  Gawd, I love it.  For seriously.  It is so good.

I like the twists.  They are so twisty. 

I have also made a decision.  I am going to start attending Advanced Training practices in the hopes that I will make our Nationals Team.

I am trying to decide if I want to be a trainer for recruitment this year.  I did it last year.  I was just on plain old recruitment the previous years.  Finding new skaters.  Posting on the blog.  Doing paperwork.  I still have a month to decide.

Summer...

Happy First Day of Summer! Yay for summer?

Baseball Friday.

Running around picking up and dropping off kids at all the places.

Saturday...I watched the entire new season of "Orange is the New Black".

Sunday was another round of volleyball.

Morning or Night person?

Are you a morning person or a night person?


I. AM. NOT. A. MORNING. PERSON.


I like to stay in bed.  I'm a morning person more than I want to be.  I get up early because I have things that need to be accomplished or I'm obligated to do things.


I get up early because my body feels the need to wake up early.


I like the night.  I like to sleep too.


I have always stayed up late.


When I was little, I would sneak into the front room (this is when we lived in a small house) and hide under the chair and watch whatever my mom was watching on tv.  I got caught a lot.


When I was a middle schooler, I would rearrange my furniture in the middle of the night.  It was fun.  I talked on the phone all night too.  Because that was the thing to do.  I also had to be sneaky about that so my sister wouldn't listen in.  I usually would go unplug her phone.  She didn't need to listen to me talk about IMPORTANT things all night long.


As an adult, I usually get stuff done.  I seem to be more productive later on in the day.  Even though I am also super productive in the mornings...
Like, this morning, I've done a lot of work.  I feel like I should be done for the day.  Still have five hours to go of work....then there will be a ton of other haz to haz.

Survey results

I had posted a survey a little while ago about genetic traits.  A few asked for the results.  Seventy-nine people took the survey.  This was great.  Thank you to everyone that did.

Here are the National Averages alongside the results of my survey.

National Averages			My results
TRAIT	FREQUENCY		TRAIT	FREQUENCY
Ability to roll tongue	70%		Ability to roll tongue	77%
Unattached earlobes	72%		Unattached earlobes	52%
Right handed	90%		Right handed	90%
Place left thumb on top with hands clasped	55%		Place left thumb on top with hands clasped	57%
Presence of Hitchhiker’s Thumb	25%		Presence of Hitchhiker’s Thumb	39%
Freckles	38%		Freckles	59%

 

Some are pretty close to the National Averages, but others are way off. 

I did a lab in addition to this that had to do with Phenotype and Genotypes. 

Having dimples is a dominant trait.  I have the recessive gene in that one.  I do not have dimples. 

The unattached earlobes are the dominant trait.  From my survey above, more people have the recessive trait.  I have the dominant trait. 

I was not able to survey this one; it was the ability to taste PTC.  Guys, PTC tastes nasty.  I can taste it and so can my daughter.  Be lucky if you have the recessive on that one. 

I have green eyes.  Green and blue eyes are recessive.  Brown eye color is dominant. 

I have immunity to poison ivy.  Dominant trait.   My straight hair though, totally recessive. 

I am right handed.  My daughter and youngest son are right handed.  My oldest son is left handed.  Both of my parents are right handed.  Both of my maternal grandparents are left handed.  

Human genetics fascinates me.  I want to know more.  I am surprised at some of the things that are considered dominant. 

Day 15: Summer Camp Memories

Last month, I went down to a childhood favorite of mine.  It was a camp I attended for three years.  The reason I went down there is because it was being decommissioned.  Girl Scouts has sold the property.  They sold it for way less than it was worth.  They sold over a mile and a half of shoreline on the Lake of the Ozarks for $1.5 million.  The developer that bought it, it's going to make a lot of money off of it.

That's not my point of this post though.

My point is to share some of my favorite camp memories.

I loved this place.  I looked at it as my escape from my cigarette smoking step dad for a couple of weeks. 

Camp Oakledge

I attended three summers there, doing a different program each summer. 

The first summer I went I did a swimming program.  We spent half the day in the pool.

It was amazing.  We did all the other amazingly fun things too.

The next year, I did camping and canoeing.

We got to canoe all over the lake!

We went into a cave on the canoe.

We were able to go get ice cream at one of the lake front restaurants.

We canoed to Mosquito Hill and spent the night.

The last year I went, I did Outpost.

It was rough.

We did not have cabins, we had tents.

We did not have bathrooms or latrines, we had a hole.

(I cheated and used the latrines, I just couldn't go in a hole)

We made all of our food except for maybe a meal or two over the campfire.

It was awesome.

So scroll down for some stories.....

Driving down the dusty, crooked road.

 

The lake.

On the dock, someone left their glasses.

Out at Elmer's Cove.  Dock seems kinda pointless on dry land?

This story doesn't really involve me.  It does involve my camp hero though. 

In Girl Scouts, Counselor do not go by their real name.  They have "camp" names.

One counselor, her name was Buzz, she had a twin sister name Bowie. 

She became my camp hero on a hike out to Elmer's Cove.  It was about 3/4 of a mile jaunt from the main camp.

She came upon a copperhead and it was a nasty little fella.  She killed it and became my hero.

Poisonous snakes are scary. 

At the decommissioning she was there.  I was tempted to go tell her she was my hero for killing a copperhead, but I didn't.  Because that would have been awkward.

  

For my first two years, I stayed in Lichen Hill. 

They just separated the programs and they all had their own units.

This is the hill we had to climb to get to the main camp.  The picture doesn't do it justice.

It's steep.

We got fans in the dining hall! 

This was the original flagpole area.  There used to be rocks that looked like steps.  It was one of my favorite places in camp.
I thought it was magical.

The hike up to Look Out Point brings me to another story.

During my Outpost session, we were required to do a survival night. 

Each Scout was by themselves.  We each packed our own bags and were only allowed to take certain items. We were allowed to bring a sleeping bag, change of clothes, bug spray and sunscreen.

We were provided a tarp, rope and matches and our food for the evening.

I could not get my fire started.  I tried for an hour.  It would go and then die; repeatedly.  I was getting hungry.  I already had the rest of my “camp” set up.  I had created a mini shelter with my tarp and set my sleeping bag on it.

I got this brilliant idea.  Bug spray is flammable.  I have bug spray.  I can get my fire started with bug spray.

So I got a little flame going and doused it with bug spray.  Sprayed the wood with bug spray.  I had an awesome fire going.

I made my food on it.  It was one of those foil dinner type things.  Hamburger meat and veggies.  Nothing exciting.  But it was food.

I took a bite of it and spat it back out.

It tasted like bug spray.

My advice: NEVER START A FIRE WITH BUG SPRAY!!

Rappelling was one of the adventure programs the camp offered.  I had done it before but never off of a cliff.  As a teen, I was not afraid of heights or falling.  The picture below shows the platform.  The picture below that shows what it looks like when you are rappelling.  It looks like you are going directly into the lake.  You aren't though, there is another cliff below.

Back then, we didn’t have to wear helmets.  We had our harnesses, which we tied ourselves.  Much more independent back then. 

I went down a few times and raced back up to go again. 

They always warn you to keep your hair up and out of the way of the figure 8.  They warned you if you got your hair caught, the only way you could get it out was to cut it off.  I proved them wrong.

The third time I went down that day, the wind caught my hair and it got stuck in the figure 8.  My hair was longish. (This was way after the disastrous short hair cut my stepdad had made me get).  I feared they would have to cut off my hair; I pulled as much as I could to get as much of my hair out that I could.  I did not want short hair again.

But they just told that story because they didn’t want your hair to get caught.  One of the rappel masters came and saved me.  They did some fancy trickery with the ropes and it slide right out.  I was so embarrassed.  Dang wind. But, I went again.

Another one from Look Out Point

Last Campfire at Oakledge.

I know you are asking why I am showing you pictures of a bunch of trees.  This is actually where the best story took place.  Please let me have a few drinks and I will tell it to you in person.

I’ll tell you right now too, but I’m not saying it will be as funny.

The last day of Outpost, we had to break down camp and put all the gear away.  This meant that we were sleeping down at the main camp in the field.

They treated us with an ice cream party.  With all the toppings.  Including butterscotch.

I kept shoving those little butterscotch morsels in my mouth because they were the best thing ever.  Even better than the ice cream.  I ate so much butterscotch.

I wake up in the middle of the night, not feeling well.  I knew I was going to throw up.  I tried to get out of my sleeping bag as fast as I could.  I was able to get out, just not very far away from it.  I puked about five feet away from the front of my sleeping bag.  Nobody else woke up, nobody else moved a muscle.  Nobody knew I had vomited all over the place.

I crawled back in my sleeping bag and passed out.

I woke up a little later and looked up.

There was a raccoon.  Eating my puke. 

It was terrifying.  Absolutely terrifying.  I pulled my sleeping bag over my head and hoped it would go away.  I feel asleep again.

I woke up the next morning, no puke to be found.  Thanks raccoon.

This totem will be moved to Prairie Schooner (which is where my daughter is right now)