Oh Hi.
I haven't been around much lately

Going into my second weekend of derby-palooza.
I'm tired and elated. Dust Devil went well, way better than expected. I worked 11 games in 3 days, and was selected for the 3rd/4th place game, later I was told I was selected for that over the championship game because the two teaks playing were both Arizona teams, it was expected to be loud and a lot of pressure, and they needed officials who could handle that.
This weekend will be another non stop tournament, I'm excited but holy hell I need more sleep!

Anyway, I actually came to write a new blog and cross post something I posted on Facebook, cause I think it's valid and important, and it ties to the whole roller derby theme.
Non-derby people often ask why I do what I do, especially as an official, who doesn't get paid.
This is part of the reason:

Here is the article, I am talking about (Seriously read it, even if, no especially if you are not a woman. If you have a daughter, a sister, a mother, a girlfriend, a wife, you should read this article. Period.

Dear Daughter...



Have a great weekend everyone!
BB

Woooo the derby crazy has begun.
The weekend before last, I went to Eugene Oregon to work my first *big* tournament ever (not my first tournament) with sanctioned and regulation gameplay. I got to work with some really incredible officials who I have heard wonderful things about and who I have seen work in tournaments.
Wowza.
Overwhelming.
In a good way.
I got pushed out of my comfort zone. I met some amazing people. I spent 3 nights in a hotel room with 4 other of my home ref crew members. Our crew currently consists of 9 people, so about half of us were there. Initially I thought sharing a room with 4 people would be a nightmare, but it was a ton of fun.
Being able to go to dinner or just hang out in our room, drink a beer or a glass of wine and do a recap of how each of our days went was sooooo nice.
We rented a car, and had a Dodge Charger and having to drive 20mph on a major road/hwy in Eugene when your in a charger and used to Southern California speeds, let's just say that was the hardest part of the trip.
My first game on day one was cancelled which was disappointing but it gave me a chance to just observe.
I also got to watch an amazing game/upset with Jet City (Everett WA) vs Silicon Valley (San Jose, CA) and explain derby and meet papaT, who incidentally is kinda awesome. A little quiet, but I enjoyed meeting the guy and watching some derby, and then hanging out for a drink and a late dinner. It's always nice to meet people you've talked to on the internet for a while and find that they are as awesome or even more awesome in person as you had expected.
Saturday I worked my first sanctioned bout of the tournament, which may not mean much of anything to a lot of you but basically a sanctioned game is a game played between two charted all-star travel teams that are full-member WFTDA leagues. What that means to me as an NSO is evals. Evals, if they're good mean me getting closer to my goal of getting my Level One Certification, which means I get higher priority in being staffed at Big5 Tournaments (think playoffs and the superbowl, that's basically the Big 5 in roller derby). Back to the games. I did...okay. I definitely fucked up once, whistles coming from another track, and a tricky penalty box situation. I dont probably need to get into a long situation but there was a momentary screw up, which really upset me, but the next few times the same situation happened, I handled it and didn't screw up, which is I think part of what they look for. "How do you handle the pressure?" It's so easy as an official (and really this goes for life in general) to have a minor screw up throw you so far off and get you so flustered that you manage to fuck everything else up. Thankfully my flustered moment lasted for maybe 45 seconds or so, not the entire game.
I still wanted to crawl under a rock at the end of the game.
For a second I even thought "Damn it maybe I shouldn't even ask for an eval cause I fucked up" (Dumb huh?)
At the end of the game the Head Ref said to me "look you had a moment, the skaters get pissed cause they don't know what it's like to do your job, and because they're in the penalty box already, we don't worry about situations like that as much because we've all been there". Which was probably the most perfect thing anyone could have said to me at the time.
The rest of the weekend went really well. Worked with some amazing officials. Worked a second sanctioned game on Sunday and did a great job I also had many opportunities to work other games (mostly men's games and one junior game) with the Head NSO who will be writing my eval for the first game, which is nice cause he was able to see that I do well with other positions.
Above the game stuff, it was great to network and even more amazing to spend some time with my ref crew, who I love even more now.
Also, I LOVED Eugene. I love Oregon in general, but Eugene is a great town, I could absolutely live there.

Got home late Monday, went straight to work Tuesday. Work has been insane. We're opening Panama soon and things aren't going to slow down for a while.

My business that I've started is coming along as well. I may have even found my first retailer Currently I'm waiting on the logo and website design to get completed.

Last weekend I was given one day to get ready to Head NSO a regulation game (regulation=basically like a sanctioned game only not two chartered all star teams from two full member leagues, but you still get evals). The other league had some problems with their Head Ref/Head NSO, and they were "asked to leave". All things considered, the game went incredibly well and we were told by the team captain of the team that lost that it was one of the "most fairly and best games in regard to the officials and the calls. this league has ever seen, and quite possibly that I have ever seen in derby" which is amazing to hear from the team that lost, even more amazing from the person it came from
Plus it was great practice for what I will be doing once our home games start.

Aside from that not much else to report. Had some other interesting stuff come up but I think those things turne out to be nothing, so no real need to get into it now

I hope you're all well.

And this is off topic but one of the best commercials I have EVER seen (Enjoy!):

So I did this on Sunday.

I kind of really love her.











That is all.