HELLO...Hello...hello... o hell (random rant)

I am sorry if it seems as if I have fallen off the face of the earth lately, but sometimes I just feel like a huge hole has opened up at my feet. No I did not jump into it, I was pushed. And the worst part is a lot of people around me are being pushed or have proceeded me into this seemingly bottomless pit.

I envy those of you who have thus far only witnessed this recent rash of job losses from a distance. At first I was one of you. I had 2 friends who lost their jobs over a year ago and still haven't been able to find new ones. Then Chrysler started cutting shifts and laying off people, 2 more friends and their husbands went under the ax. Then it was my turn. But I didn't lose my job to a foreign land, I didn't lose my job because my company was loosing money, I lost my job because my company was greedy. They basically wanted to start over where they could pay new people 5 to 8 dollars less than the employees they were paying up here. (You know those annual nickel raises add up over the years.)

Then with in the last three weeks three more of my friends have been blindfolded and pushed over the edge. One friend was graciously given 3 days notice.

My question for the people in charge is, Who is actually going to do the work for you once you have gotten rid of all your employees? Do you honestly think you are safe? With your six figure income, how warm and dry are you in your house on the hill?

Life of a contusion part 2

This picture was taken Sunday night, about 10 hours after the day 3 picture in the blog post below. You can already see the bruise starting to green up.





Now take a look at Monday, more
green.




Now it is Tuesday and the bruise is only purple on the outer ring. Everyone at practice was impressed with it.

Today is Wednesday, and this will be the final picture I post on my bruise, as it will more than likely be the last day it will show up half way decent on camera. So there you have it folks, one week in the life of a derby bruise.

The life of a contusion

One badge of honor most derby girls look forward to is their first real bruise. Oh, sure we get little ones here and there, but for me if it didn't show up well on camera it really didn't count. So today I would like to share with you my first note worthy derby bruise. (Almost breaking my elbow in Sept 2007 doesn't count because I did that with only the help of gravity)

Thursday 4/9/09 we had a pretty good practice. We did a few drills before spending most of the evening scrimmaging. I was jamming against Redneck I had made lead jammer and Red was still stuck in the pack. I remember coming around to re-enter the pack for my first scoring pass, we were just about to the jammer start line when someone hit me, sending me into the inside of the track, causing me to fall. Now normally I would have called the jam off right then, but Red had not made it through yet so I had plenty of time to try and score. I jumped up and finished the jam. I didn't feel anything but the usual twinge in my knee. Later, after practice I told a few of my team mates my right thigh really hurt, and was tender. When we got home I was rewarded with discoloration, but it didn't show up well on camera.

This is a picture from Friday morning, less than 15 hours after the knock down.




By Friday evening the color was really starting to show. This next picture was bout 24 hours. In both of these two pictures I used an ink pen to give you something to compare the size.




Here is the most recent Picture which I think really brings out the color, but we haven't yet started to go green.
As the bruise starts to heal I will document the life and we will see just how long it takes for it to disappear from camera view.

Happy Birthday

Well, this past Thursday was Jacob's birthday, I won't go into numbers but he is a year older now. After our league meeting for the Divas a few of us went out to try and push posters and tickets at local bars. The first bar we went into was dead. I think there were maybe 8 people in it. So we talked to a few of the people, handed out a few fliers and made sure our poster was displayed. No one in our party had eaten since early afternoon, so we called up our usual place for Thursday night after practice cool down. Luckily they still had their fryer on and we were able to head over for food. When we got there and told Abby that it was Jake's birthday she checked his i.d. and then he drank tap beer for free all night and got to keep the huge glass mug.

We stayed there till about 11:30ish before we headed out. We decided to hit our old home location, now under new management and put up posters. That was fun, they had Karaoke and we sang our little hearts out. There was really no one else at the place so no one saw our debacle. All I will say is DD stands for many things.

Friday we spent the evening with friends playing board games, This had become a regular Friday night event a few months ago, but do to holidays, derby, elections, and work we haven't been able to play as often. Well our hosts for the evening have a 5 year old girl, who upon hearing it was Jake's birthday set off to make party hats for everyone. Jake was the first to get his hat, before she got distracted and forgot about everyone else.

Happy Birthday, Jake.

And yes that is his normal facial expression when there is a camera pointed at him.

Week one

Well, this is Wednesday of my first week of unemployment. All I can say is I really hope I get a job soon. I find I can not stay awake past ten or eleven at night and I am up by nine in the morning. This is very unlike me as I am used to getting to bed after midnight because of my work and practice schedules. Of course I was always up by 8:45 in the morning anyway, so the waking up part is not really a change.

Jacob's birthday is tomorrow, and seeing as how this was his short week at work he took Wed and Thurs off. What this means is that he got off work at 6 am Monday morning and does not have to be to work until 6 pm the following Monday night. So not only do I have a week of constant job hunting and pre-bout frenzy to cope with, add in a husband with pretty much nothing to do.

On the job hunting side things are kind of at a stand still. I am putting in applications everyday through the internet. I have updated my resume on Monster as well as with one of the local hospitals. On the Illinois skills match website (the site all unemployed persons must register with) I continue to match with no jobs.

The only bright side is that I interviewed on March 10th with a company (that found me on Monster) for a security position, another co-worker also interviewed with the same company about a week and a half after I did. Shortly after her interview she received a 'thanks, but no thanks' letter. I have not received any letter, I called the company and received the answer that they are still interviewing for the up coming class and that I will be notified when an decision has been made. So that means I am still int he running. Please keep your fingers crossed for me as this job will help to get rid of a great deal of worries that I currently carry.