author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Successful tournament participation!

Game 4, versus Bellingham's All Stars, was an authoritative win: 217 to 78. (Watch it here: Part 1, Part 2.)

It's funny how, when you're in the middle of a jam, everything is chaotic and you're not sure you're doing a good job and OH SHIT HERE COMES THE JAMMER and oh damn there goes the jammer--

And then you get back to the team bench, and you look up at the scoreboard, and somehow it's another three points for you and none for your opponents, so you must have done something right--

Honestly, the whole game was like that.

Then there was just enough time for a burger from the Expo Express before it was time to warm up again for...

Game 6, versus Treasure Valley's All Stars. TVRD took the win, but only by twenty-eight points - 151 to 123 - and only after multiple lead changes in the second half. (Watch it here.)

My assessment: Treasure Valley is the bestest game/tourney host and the most excellent of match-ups for Boulder County Roller Derby. The game was satisfyingly physical, relatively clean, and full of good vibes even in the heat of "battle." (My favorite moment: I'm bracing my wall, I get swept off my wall by some great offense, I shout, "I got O! I got ALL THE O!" The skater responsible for "all the O" appreciated this.) Lots of interleague hugs and smiles afterward. Milkshakes and tater tots and beers at the next-door bowling alley where they have their afterparties.

Good times. When do I get to go again?

Now I'm in Salt Lake City. It was a good drive from Boise this morning. Despite a very interrupted night's sleep (shoulda taken some ibuprofen; my hips were sore and it was hard to get comfortable), it was a high energy trip like Day 1 out of Boulder was. I was out of the hotel by 7:30, on the road by 8:00 with a fresh tank of gas in the car and a fresh bag of ice in the cooler, and pulling into my friend's driveway around 1:15 PM. She and her family won't be in until 4 or 5, so I'm using the time to write. NO SURPRISES THERE--

Well, yeah. The surprise is, I'm actually writing and not saying to myself "But I'm tiiiiiired, I caaaaaan't," as an excuse to play video games instead. It's that whole "tight deadlines make tight writing schedules" effect. Sometimes, my time being limited gives the writing work of the day a necessary urgency, and sometimes I can use that urgency rather than tipping over into the anxious avoidance of "There's no way I'll get it all done." The trick is not to think about getting it all done, but rather to think only about The Next Step.

This blog post was The Next Step. The Next Step after that will be compiling and uploading the Friday Fictionette originally scheduled for April 25. And if I've still got time to myself after that, it'll be Morning Pages and Writing Practice.

But if I don't get to those because my friend and her family are home and the day moves into delightfully social & joyous catch-up on old times mode, that'll be perfectly OK.

Well, guess what: I did not sleep well Thursday night. Woke up all night long. Finally gave up on sleep around 5:45, had a shower and the rest of the morning routine, and got to work on the writing dailies.

It was like pushing a boulder uphill.

So was the remaining drive to Boise, despite it only being four hours and change. Between the two consecutive nights of deeply inadequate sleep and the much warmer weather on Friday, I was struggling to remain awake and alert pretty much all afternoon.

When I finally got where I was going, I needed a nap. Well, Thank goodness for small blessings: My room at the Arcadia Hotel was ready early, and I could have that nap pretty much immediately.

The Arcadia is a self-checkin style accomodation, its rooms locked by numeric code pads, the code to which you get texted to you the day before. It's laid out like a motel, each room opening onto a second-floor walkway on either side of the parking lot. This is not a place to stay if you need accommodations for limited mobility, or if you're hoping not schlep your stuff up a flight of stairs.

The rooms are absolutely adorable! But you would not guess it from the outside. Also, they're kinda tiny. Well, mine was, anyway. Not that I needed a lot of space for my nap. Just a bed. And that bed is super comfortable.

Once I'd recovered a bit, I went out to hunt up some food (meatballs and pizza margherita at Black Moon) and then to make a visit I'd been wanting to make since my previous weekend in Boise:

Oldspeak Book Bar.

Yes, that deserved its own paragraph. It's just that fantastic. It's a bookstore that serves alcohol. Alternately, it's a bar that sells books.

Plenty of comfy chairs and table space for enjoying both types of purchase. Seems to be a popular meeting place for writing groups and book clubs. The decor includes antique typewriters, local artist exhibitions, asynchronous community discussion prompted by a question on a chalkboard ("What do you want to do before you die?"), and of course bookshelf after bookshelf stuffed with books for decoration, books for purchase, books, books, books.

So I sat up at the bar with a rice lager and my laptop, drafting the Friday Fictionette originally scheduled for April 25th into its final form. Then I went back to my room at the Arcadia and watched all four extant episodes of MURDERBOT on the big TV. The fourth episode is AMAZING.

Anyways, now it's noon on Saturday. I'm writing the bulk of this at Roots across the street - that's an organic/natural/local/bulk grocery with a deli counter and a lot of table space. I'd walked down to the river and peeked in at a couple restaurants and coffee shops, and was disappointed to find those that were open to have lines out the door and nowhere to sit. Resigned therefore to making myself tea and sandwiches in my tiny hotel room and getting to work in there, I found Roots to be a delightful surprise.

Might have to proof, link, and upload this later, though - I gotta get ready to go to the tournament venue.

P.S. Games streaming at Good BOI Studios!

Hi! So, it's been a hot second since I blogged here last, so why don't I break the ice with business-NOT-as-usual? Today I drove from Boulder to Salt Lake City.

Pictured here: My flight of tasters at Epic Brewing, which I had not been acutely aware was in Salt Lake City. My first experience with Epic was their "Brainless on Raspberries," whose ABV is quite high, which effect was magnified by the excruciatingly spicy pasta I'd chosen to prove my capsaicin machismo with. This was at Backcountry Pizza lo these many years ago, and by the time I'd finished both food and drink I felt half out-of-body. Definitely not safe to drive. Opted to leave my car in the lot and walk the two miles home. Turns out, everything Epic brews has a quite high 8% ABV. Despite a heavy meal at La Cai Noodle House, after 16 ounces of Epic goodness I was remarkably glad I had walked, not driven, from my hotel room.

(More pictures going up into a gallery on Imgbox throughout the weekend.)

But let's back up a moment. I'm in SLC breaking the 12-hour journey to Boise, where on Saturday the Boulder County Roller Derby "Flatiron Phoenixes" will play against Bellingham's and Treasure Valley's A teams in a round-robin tournament at the Expo Idaho. This is actually my second trip here this month; our B team, the "Rockslide Bolters," played Treasure Valley's B team that first weekend in May, and I was on that roster too. Several friends were like, "Twice in a month? I woulda noped outta that, hard!" But I love a solo road trip, especially across such a gorgeous and geologically fascinating region. (Link goes to a review of a book that a teammate recommended after hearing me rhapsodize about the landscape along I-80 through Wyoming and Utah. I've snagged myself a copy of the audiobook for the drive home.) Besides, breaking my journey in Salt Lake affords an opportunity to visit with one of my oldest and dearest friends. Circumstances prevented us meeting up during both of the outbound trips, but we spend a lovely Mother's Day overnight on my way home last time. I hope Sunday sees us similarly fortunate.

In any case, a 12-hour solo road trip requires SNACKS and LISTENING MATERIAL. As far as listening material goes, I kept myself occupied last time with the audiobooks of Gregory Maguire's Another Day trilogy (which pick up directly after the events of Out of Oz). This time I meant to get into some Librivox downloads, but mostly I just spent today listening to tunes off my flip-phone and singing along for hours like a one-woman karaoke special. I think that's why I've been so high-energy all day, despite getting far too little sleep last night. Even for me, I mean. I stayed up way too late reading, and that's on top of my tendency to wake up every hour, hour and a half, every night, all night long. The app SleepScore is happy so long as I get more than a total of six hours sleep, but I think the lack of continuous sleep counts for something, and not a positive something. I tell my friends that my life now resembles a Paul Simon song, and unfortunately that song is "The Obvious Child":

Well I'm accustomed to a smooth ride
Or maybe I'm a dog that's lost its bite
I don't expect to be treated like a fool no more
I don't expect to sleep through the night

There's also the bit about thumbing through one's high school yearbook and observing that "some have died" - unfortunately, yes, though not students from my particular class, that I know of. Several of my teachers, certainly.)

But yeah, most trips of this length involve at least one 10-minute nap at a rest area. Today I just never felt the need. Never stopped for a meal, either. Stopped only to fill up the car's tank and empty my own. Ate out the ice chest, mostly. I spent a couple hours yesterday turning two cups sushi rice and a package of Omni brand "plant-based meat-style luncheon" into vegan Spam musubi. HOO BOY WAS THAT A GOOD IDEA. I don't have a musubi mold, but after a night in the fridge it held its shape and it tasted PERFECT. I sauteed those suckers in a home-made teriyaki glaze and that was JUST the right amount of flavoring. Anyway, that was breakfast, along with a bunch of fresh raw veg from Friends Farm, whose first CSA share pick-up was Tuesday - carrots and radishes and turnips OH BOY.

So here I am in the downtown SureStay, still a little muzzy from my visit to Epic and a lot full from spring rolls and beef-with-basil at La Cai. I am going to sleep SO WELL tonight, at least for values of SO WELL that apply to me at my age and in my particular body.

"At my age"--I turned 49 this year. Going to have to plan a party or something for the big Five Oh next year. But this year it was a Wednesday like any other, and that meant scrimmage. Dad calls me up the next day with happy birthday wishes, says to me, "Your old body still tolerating that rough sport?" And I'm like, "Listen, you got this backwards. Roller derby is how my body tolerates getting old." It's true. I had a pretty nasty cold last week, which along with other circumstances resulted in my not going to practice for, what? fourteen days? and that resulted in every dang joint in the lower half of my body (especially my right hip! omg!) getting stiff and hella sore. Motion is lotion, as the physical therapists say, and nothing else in my life promotes healthy hip flexor motion like roller derby, I tell you what.

But this is the Actually Writing Blog. Am I actually writing? Yes and no. Natalie Goldberg talks about "the dead year" in her book Wild Mind, meaning that first year after you decide to be a writer. "It comes back to test you often in the following years, but if you get through the first year, then you know about it. It will never have the power to defeat you again." I try to have faith that this is so, as I plod along, day after day, doing morning pages and writing practice/freewriting/idea generation and trying to catch the Friday Fictionette Project up to schedule. And that's it. I haven't done much in the way of submissions to paying markets beyond the twice-yearly poem for Eternal Haunted Summer--which reminds me, I need to submit something for Summer Solstice 2025. Deadline is June 1.

Anyway, I did my "dailies" today after I got into Salt Lake City: not-in-the-morning pages at La Cai, writing practice at Epic, and, hey, look, I'm blogging tonight at my hotel! First blog post in a good long while. I've missed it. I've missed having a journaling outlet. I've lately been incorporating journaling/personal writing into my daily freewriting lately--I describe that practice in this week's Monday Muse post--and it feels good.

Since I can't check into my hotel in Boise until 4:00 PM, there's no reason to get out of Salt Lake early. So I'll be sitting at this very desk tomorrow morning, doing tomorrow's writing dailies. With any luck I'll post tomorrow night from SLC and tell you how that went.

So several things have happened between last post and this one--most excitingly, a couple roller derby bouts; most disappointingly, an abject failure to keep to my morning routine--but today I want to talk about/document/gripe about my poor flip phone.

Flip phones are rugged little things. I've had this NUU F4L for, ooh, at least since before the pandemic I'm pretty sure, I'm honestly not sure how to check. In any case, I've dropped it countless times, gotten it lightly splashed, kept it in my pocket during scrimmage, and otherwise treated it roughly. Through it all, it kept on chugging. But last night at roller derby practice it finally met its match. As I was sneaking glances at a web text in between drills, I wanted the browser to stay on and open to that page, so I left the phone open. On the floor. Next to my water bottle. Also next to the track boundary. During a drill involving extreme footwork.

Yep. Poor thing got under someone's wheels. And the interior display got borked.

Happily, it is a flip phone. It is not expensive. A new NUU F4L plus its activation fee comes to less than $150. Also, after opting for the insurance plan, my monthly bill is still going to be less than $35. We're talking a lot less headache than when John has to replace his Android. Also a lot less set-up on the new phone, since there are no apps to download. Just swap in my SIM card and the 64gb mini-SD where my tunes and playlists live, and I'll be good to go.

...except I'm not actually certain that my text messages live on that SIM card. I hope they do. I have a few conversations I want to hold onto, for sentimental purposes, but there is no option to save the whole thread or forward a collection of messages. All I can do is forward single messages to myself at my email address. And I'd rather not have to do that. Also, I spent a significant amount of today combing through text logs for people I hadn't added to my Contacts yet, and also for any photo attachments I wanted to keep (again, just in case text messages don't transfer over with the SIM card). Photo attachments to texts don't automatically save themselves anywhere useful. You have to highlight the message, long press the big central button, then choose "download attachment" from the menu. And if you're me and you're using this particular device, you do this multiple times per photo, because the phone has a bad case of button-lag such that it isn't always convinced I'm doing a long press, but thinks I'm just selecting the message instead, and then I have to hit the Back button, which, again, sometimes the phone just ignores.

With all this button-lag, this "I swear I am trying to push the button, I'm PUSHING the damn BUTTON, noooooo I only wanted to push it once" factor, it was, honestly, about time I replaced this unit. I'm just glad I didn't pull that trigger and then let the phone get crushed under someone's roller skates.

But now I am ALL BACKED UP. Text photo attachments downloaded. Photos from Downloads and Gallery moved over to my computer. Phone contact list updated and exported. Everything's ready to go.

FedEx tracking estimates the new phone will be delivered Thursday, which means realistically I'll probably get it Friday, which means that, by the weekend, I'll be able to see the corners of my screen once more, and small text on the web browser will be legible again, and maybe I'll get a few years without button-lag, which will be nice.

All the above complaints aside, I don't regret my decision to continue sticking with the flip phone. Not only is it inexpensive and rugged, not only is it of a size to fit easily in my jeans pockets, not only does its battery charge last several days to a week (depending on wi-fi and bluetooth use), but also it is not eating my soul.

Which: no shade on anyone with a smart phone who interacts with it most of their waking moments! But I just don't want that to be me. It's already kind of me, what with my constant laptop use; but the laptop introduces just enough friction that sometimes, when I'm out and about, or when the laptop's in another room, it's easier to just... not. So instead I end up knitting at the pub after practice with friends, or reading a physical book over a quick brunch at a local restaurant.

(Or, admittedly, reading something on my phone's web browser that I Saved For Offline Reading. I'm not made of stone, and Project Gutenberg is right there.)

One day, I suppose, Credo Mobile will stop offering a flip phone option--or more society infrastructure will require use of apps and QR codes such that I can no longer get by with Bluestacks, I suppose that's possible--and I'll have to upgrade to a smart phone and a real data plan. Until that day, I'll just keep toodling along in the low-tech slow lane, a loyal member of Team Flip phone, texting like molasses via KT9 and occasionally grumbling "I said H, I pressed H, why will you not---no, only one H, dang it--"

Hello! Last week kind of puttered out and took the Thursday blog post with it, but I am feeling MUCH BETTER today. Despite today starting with a physical therapy appointment and ending with leading a roller derby practice, I got a LOT of writing and writing-adjacent stuff accomplished.

But I'd mostly like to talk about that roller derby practice.

Our league experienced a high level of membership turnover during the pandemic hiatus. A lot of good people left the league. On the other hand, so did a handful of toxic people who'd had disproportionate influence on league culture. As a result, our league--the remaining members along with the brand new members--utterly reinvented itself, and very much for the better.

Here is one specific and powerful positive change that affected me personally: Where once I got the message loud and clear that my role was and always would be to shut up, listen to my betters, and do what I was told --what I was now hearing was, "You've been around a while. You've seen this league through its ups and downs. You're good at this sport, you're effective at sharing that knowledge, and you're kind about it. Why don't you join the Training Committee?"

That was 2021, when we returned to play, revamped our practices, rebranded ourselves, and reinvented our culture. But growth did not stop there--how could it? we are always learning--and so now, as we kick off the 2024 season, our Training Committee looks very different than it did three years ago.

The biggest change this year is that we've divvied up into subcommittees, one for each practice level. I've joined the subcommittee dedicated to training our beginners (cryptid-themed team name: Jackalopes; team color: Orange) and preparing them for their skills assessments.

This new organizational structure has had a remarkably positive impact on me.

Before, when we were just one big Training Committee, and the question "Who can lead Travel Team practice this Sunday" went out to all of us, I felt a like a vile little slacker for never saying, "Me." I was giving in to my imposter syndrome. I was refusing to step outside of my comfort zone. I was signing up to train the beginning skills because I had to train sometimes, and I didn't feel capable of more. I felt like I was guilty of making my insecurities into other people's problems. Like I was failing to pull my weight.

And--wow. What a disservice to our newer skaters, to view training them as the job for people who aren't good enough for anything else! And I never really looked at it that way, not truly. It was more like--OK, in avoiding the training spots I was uncomfortable with and gravitating toward the ones where I was more confident, I felt like I was guilty of eating dessert while dinner got cold on my plate. Like, by never taking a turn leading more advanced practices, I was shirking a responsibility.

But now that script has flipped. The call that went out was, "Who wants to be on the Orange Team subcommittee," and I said, "Me!" not because it's the only work I'm fit for but because it's work that I'm good at. It's a strength. And it's work that I love. I love this sport, and I love making this sport accessible to others. (It's why I head up the Recruiting Committee, too.) I didn't wind up training the "newbies" by process of elimination. I jumped at the chance to make it my specialty.

So tonight I had the joy of welcoming seven new members to our league and teaching them their very first roller skating skills. I got to watch them light up as they made their first strides. I got to bask in their great big smiles as we ended practice on a team cheer. I felt like I was exactly where I belonged, and it made me so happy, I can't begin to tell you.

So. What's the lesson here? Something like: Don't beat yourself up for what you perceive as your weaknesses. Work to improve where you need improvement, sure, but never forget to value your strengths. Do the things you love. They are valid contributions to this world.

Hello! Happy New Year! Happy new blog post! [Insert ritual self-deprecating quip about not having posted in seventh months, assume appropriate New Year's resolution as read.]

Things I did in 2023:

• Had two new poems published in Eternal Haunted Summer: "Fiat Nox" and "The Curious Incident of the Black Dog of the Night"
• Had a previously published poem designated a Rhysling Award Finalist (but not, ultimately, winner)
• Skated a hell of a lot of roller derby with the BCRD's "Flatirons Phoenixes" (A team) and "Boulder Bolters" (B team)
• Also skated in a mix-up bout in Salt Lake City and was awarded MVP Blocker
• Learned how to cook biryani
• Completed two solo LibriVox audiobooks: Lud-in-the-Mist (Hope Mirrlees), What Dreams May Come (Gertrude Atherton)
• Uploaded a whole bunch of Friday Fictionettes (but not, alas, as many as I should - I'm still behind schedule)

Things I would like to do in 2024:

• All of the above, only moreso; where applicable, on time
• Attend my 30-year high school reunion
• Attend WorldCon in Glasgow
• Blog! Here! Regularly!
• (Maybe make this blog look more attractive? Ye Gods, this post looks like ass)

To those ends, I will:

• Renew my intention to get up on time, that being 7:00, every weekday (thanks, Focusmate!)
• Renew my intention to write every day (and not just my daily freewriting and fictionette work either)
• Renew my passport

That's it. That's the blog post.

There should be another tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Hello and happy 4th of July! No big plans at our household, just eating good food, being lazy, spoiling the bunny, and trying to tune out the random party noises from next door. Also the random explosions (fireworks) that, oddly enough, don't seem to bother the aforementioned bunny. Let's start off with a picture of Mister Captain Holland Fuzzy Bunderpants, why don't we, so you can see for yourself just how unflappable that guy is.

It's a day off from roller derby, and I'm taking advantage of the extra evening writing time to do a blog post. For once! When did I last post here--May? Seriously? OK then. Here's the round-up of Stuff What I Been Up To Since May.

When last we left off with the blog's intrepid hero, she was about to drive off to Salt Lake City for a couple of roller derby bouts. (Two, not three; one of our opponents had to withdraw at the last minute because of a COVID outbreak within their league. It's still out there, y'all. Mask up and be safe.) Well, we won the sanctioned game by a decent amount and we lost the regulation game by not much at all, doing our rankings no harm thereby.

The games were fun, and so were the team's various excursions around the city. Team dinner was at The Bayou, where I had something they called "alligator cheesecake." It was more like a souffle, except with a graham cracker crust, and I will have to take their word that there was actual alligator sausage in there. Tasty, in any case. There was also a smaller lunch outing to Mark of the Beastro, address 666 S. State Street. A+, would dine on vegan omelets with Satan again.

But dearest to me was the morning after everything was over, after I had checked out of the hotel, when I met one of my oldest and closest friends for a walk around the park before hitting the highway for home. There we are in the photo gallery, all big smiles with tulips in the background. Love you bunches, Cat--let's try not to take so long about seeing each other again! Give your doggos lots of love from me, and all the best to your family.

After Salt Lake, our next engagement was a home bout (sanctioned) against No Coast Roller Derby on June 24. The visiting team won that one, but a number of them assured me that we did not make it easy. It was a very hard fought game. As for the afterparty, I honestly couldn't say who won that one. Both teams showed up in strength and numbers and with great appetite. There was an after afterparty down the street at a sandwich shop and bar for those still hungry after the first location's kitchen closed, but I was tired and did not go. Whoever won the afterparty, it was not me. I am at peace with that.

Next up, this Saturday will find us hosting a double header, two mix-up bouts featuring first the Boulder County Devils (our junior league) and the BCRD adults second. After that, the league will take a well-deserved four-week break!

In writing news, I have a brand new poem out in Eternal Haunted Summer, in their Summer Solstice 2023 issue. It's called Fiat Nox, and it's a sort of Miltonian call-out, I guess. Big thanks to the editor for picking a lovely illustration to pair with the poem!

Big thanks also to my teammate and that night's carpool partner who responded to my whining ("argh, tonight's the deadline, I wanted to send in a poem but I don't have one yet and I'm going to be tired after tonight's scrimmage") with the exhortation to GO! WRITE IT! IT'S NOT TOO LATE YET! YOU CAN DO IT! The fact that the poem got written at all, let alone submitted in time for the editor to consider it, is something like 90% her doing.

Meanwhile, I can attest that the whole Rhysling Finalist thing actually happened, because while I may have imagined many things, I am certain I didn't hallucinate the proof copy of the 2023 Rhysling Anthology that was sent my way. You can order this attractive volume for yourself at that link. Whether in print or PDF, I guarantee it's chock full of excellent poetry.

Oh and hey! Fibercraft news. I'm knitting a new pair of socks! They're all rainbow and they're not nearly tall enough yet.

All for now - more soon, I hope. I really do intend to do this once a week thing. Will I manage it? ONLY NEXT WEEK KNOWS.

Well, hi. So it turns out I have this blog. Let's brush the rust off the controls and do a round-up post of Stuff What I Been Up To Since January.

In roller derby news, which I'll start with because that's always a thing, my league, Boulder County Roller Derby (nee Boulder County Bombers), is thoroughly renamed and rebranded. We have jerseys with our new logo on the way and everything is very exciting. Meanwhile, our travel team program is up and running and so are WFTDA rankings. Sanctioned games are a thing again, and we have now played three of them: one against the Denver Standbys here at home, and two in the Taos-based Rumble on the Rio tournament a couple weekends ago. We won all three.

This weekend we're going to Salt Lake City to participate in Wasatch Roller Derby's Galactic Brawl tournmant. We'll be playing three games, two of which will be sanctioned. If there is live streaming of those games--and I don't know that there will be, but if there is--you'll hear about it via the host league's Facebook page (see the "Galactic Brawl" link).

In mundane life news, we lost a car and gained a car. The black 2013 Chevy Volt got totaled thanks to Some Dude rear-ending John, thereby causing a five-car pile-up on eastbound Arapahoe Road approaching 95th Street. Happy to report that there were no injuries! But, like I said, the Volt didn't make it. There followed a couple of weeks during which we were in far closer and more frequent contact with our insurance company than we generally like to be, meanwhile gaining a certain category of life experience we'd have been just fine never having to experience, thanks awfully.

And then we went looking for another used plug-in hybrid to replace the Volt with, and, wouldn't you know it, Boulder Hybrids had a red 2013 Chevy Volt with a price tag of not unreasonably much more than the settlement pay-out on the totaled Volt. Indeed, what with the replacement Volt being a Premium rather than an LT and having 10K fewer miles on its odometer, it was a damn good deal. And we drove that sucker to Taos for the aforementioned Rumble on the Rio tournament. And the 10-years-out-of-date onboard navigation system was entirely adequate to get us there (freeing up John's smartphone for very important business by which of course we mean VIDEO GAMES). So that all worked out.

In writing news: My poem, "On the Limitations of Photographic Evidence in Fairyland", published in the Summer Solstice 2022 edition of Eternal Haunted Summer, made the Rhysling Award long list. The Rhysling Award is given each year by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, whose members each get to nominate one work in each of the poetry categories, long and short. There were slightly more than 100 preliminary nominees in the short poem category, which is quite a lot, but I got to be one of them, and that's pretty darn spiffy!

That was announced back in February. Fast forward to just now, when I went Googling about to see when the finalists would be announced, so I could mention that date here. Surprise, surprise--turns out, the finalists have been announced. While I'm still not seeing anything in SFPA's official communications, I found several blogs and poetry publications congratulating the finalists. For instance, here's File770.

There are 50 finalists in the short poem category, and my poem appears to be one of them. Eep!

An anthology of the finalists will be put together and mailed out soon, and the SFPA membership will begin voting in July to determine the eventual 2023 award recipients..

So... yeah. That's my news for the year so far. Happy Beltane!

Next step in returning to Normal Life: Roller derby practice! gasp - hack - cough

No, it wasn't quite that bad--I didn't actually have an EIA coughing fit or anything. But, yeah, it turns out my cardio is garbage right now. That could be a covid-recovery thing, but it's more likely to be a two-weeks-off-skates thing. (In general, I really haven't experienced any extra post-covid fatigue or weakness that couldn't be explained by something very normal, like, not exercising for two weeks, or driving all the hell over Boulder County, or not getting enough sleep the night before.)

But I got a lot out of practice nonetheless. It was Scrimmage Thursday. We had scrimmage-shaped drills, where we discussed strategies relevant to particular mid-game scenarios and then ran those scenarios. Between the discussion time and the need to swap out skaters on the track, there were lots of natural opportunities for a skater still rebuilding her endurance to take a break for breathing and hydration.

Our Social Media Maven took lots of photos and video at tonight's practice. Some of those photos are up already on Facebook and Instagram. (To those of y'all coming in from the Facebook rebroadcast of this blog post, I am aware that it's kind of silly to take you from Facebook over to this blog and then back to Facebook for the roller derby photos. But there are worse things in life than Silly.) Check back later for video footage.

...and that's all. (Look, a short post for once!)

(But only a semblance, mind you. Life has been Full of Things, as we shall see here.)

Hello! Hi! Is this thing on? *tap tap tap* It would appear I am blogging again. Yay!

So anyway, what all has happened since June? Well.

I had some technical issues. There was a long, drawn-out oopsie with this website, where suddenly, starting in mid-April, I couldn't log into any private directories, and after lots of frustrating back-and-forth with my domain host's support--I mean, lots, like, MONTHS during which they tried to sell me SSL certificates, they lost track of the issue among all the different support technicians involved in the email chain and had to have it explained again, and failed to even investigate the problem as I reported it--but eventually someone finally did investigate--and it was revealed that my .htaccess files were pointing in the wrong direction. The pathway that was JUST FINE up until that point in mid-April suddenly became invalid. And why was that? Well, it couldn't possibly be because some process or other had deleted the relevant .htpasswd file from where it had lived for decades, could it? No, of course not!

All of which is to say that I'm low-key in search of a new domain host. I'd love it to be a small, woman-owned business, but I know that lightning like DrakNet can't be expected to strike twice. (My current host, a small orange, is the company to which the owner of DrakNet sold the business when she was ready to retire from it.) I'm having trouble even finding alternate webhosts at all--I mean, where webhosts means "the people who store your files on a server so that domain registration can point to it, and give you access to databases and scripting and certain out-of-the-box software you can use if you wish" rather than "someone who'll design your website for you and/or give you a limited template content management system because you don't actually know HTML or CSS, let alone PHP or mySQl."

And then searching for "woman-owned webhosts" on Google was even more fraught. That's how I stumbled upon an intriguing forum thread from 2007 in which answers to same question ranged from "Silly feminist, why do you care about the business owner's gender?" to "Women won't own webhosting companies until webhosting is made simple enough for their ladybrains to understand." In the 21st century, y'all. I guess this is the techbro version of "women don't write hard science fiction because they can't hack the science, lol."

Anyway. Anyone know anything about Earth Girl LLC?

I went to WorldCon! Incidentally, this involved taking my very first train trip since 2020. Amtrak has long since stopped requiring masks on board, more's the pity, but I traveled in sleeper so I could close the door on my own private roommette, and I had my meals brought to me in my roommette, and I wore a mask every time I left my roommette, so I felt pretty well protected.

WorldCon was in Chicago, where the sister of an online acquaintance of mine has a condo up the north end of the Magnificent Mile, and so the two of us stayed there without charge, which was really nice. It did mean a commute of a little under a mile between our lodgings and the convention, but whatever, that's why I brought my skates. I did a lot of skating in Chicago, not only to and from the Hyatt Regency but also up and down the Lakefront and the Riverwalk. It was great!

And it appears that, after all this time, I've finally reached that point in my con-going where I cobble together my schedule based less on what panels I want to see and more on the people I'd like to hang out with. Oh, I went to panels, sure, and a poetry workshop, and a craft circle too. And I did throw my name in the lottery for Table Talks with Big Names in the Industry. But more often I signed up for a Table Talk because "Hey, I know that person from Codex or Viable Paradise or from Cat Rambo's online community. It would be nice to spend some time chatting with them." And that was lovely.

This was my first time attending WorldCon since 2011, when it was in Reno. Turns out I still very much enjoy the experience and hope to do it again in two years when WorldCon goes to Glasgow. I also very much still enjoy taking the train--and I'll be doing that again Very Soon Now, because...

I'm going to World Fantasy in New Orleans! Got my attending membership some months ago. Finally got my hotel room yesterday. Today I had a chat with Dad about logistics for family-and-friends visiting before the con, and later today or maybe tomorrow I'll wrangle my Amtrak dates.

The idea behind visiting Dad and them before the con is so that I don't expose any high-risk loved ones to whatever I might have chanced to pick up during the con. World Fantasy has posted the same COVID-19 policy as WorldCon did--which is to say, must be vaccinated to attend, must wear masks properly at all times--but risk remains, so might as well be smart about this.

I'm very much looking forward to a convention in New Orleans. I'm looking forward to Halloween costumes and people-watching and good food. I'm looking forward to skating around the French Quarter! I'm looking forward to visiting the Royal Street Rouses to equip myself with snacks and beer. I'm looking forward to wandering between convention programming items with a bottle of Abita in my hand, because it's Louisiana, suckers. Although I suppose with public masking required I may have to plan my beers with somewhat more precision than I did during World Horror 2013.

Anyways, that's coming up, and I'm stoked.

I skated a whole heck of a lot of roller derby! We had our season closing event on September 17, pretty much right after I got back from WorldCon. We set up the venue Friday night and on Saturday there were three (3) bouts, two of which I personally skated in. I was sooooooore afterward, but very happy.

In the intraleague mixer, my team won by three points. That's a seriously close game! There was a point midway through the second half where it was tied at 150, and I had to bite my tongue because most of my teammates would prefer not to know the score actually, and I prefer to respect my teammates' needs for preserving their Game Mentality. (This is a subtweet.) But I did sidle over to one teammate I knew did like to know the score, to whisper "Eeeeeee it's tied it's tied it's tied!!!!" and she went "Eeeeeee!" back.

Eeeeeeee!

The last game of the night was us versus Denver's C team, who beat us authoritatively but told us at the afterparty that we'd made them work hard for it. We were pretty proud of the score we put up against them.

So. Turns out, that was my last roller derby experience to date, because right after that event...

I caught COVID. Alas! My two-and-a-half year record for avoiding the plague came to an end when I tested positive on September 22. I'm fairly certain of the how, when, and from whom of contracting the virus, but all I'll say here is that it was most likely not directly from skating on the 17th, but rather from a social outing later that weekend.

Obviously I hold no grudge whatsoever against the person I got it from. They didn't know they had it until two days after they passed it on to me, and I didn't know I had it until I'd had plenty of time to pass it on to John. Once I knew, I tried to isolate, but that was probably a futile endeavor from the start. He tested positive a couple days after I did.

We'd both just gotten the new booster, like, less than a week before we got the virus. So aside from not having the benefit of a full two weeks post-shot, we were fairly well protected. That's probably why our symptoms were no worse than those consistent with a really obnoxious cold. But I had that dreaded rebound--return of symptoms plus new positive test--that turned my Day 7 into a new Day Zero, so I'm only on the exit ramp now.

But I am on it. I will say that with certainty. It's Day 7 again, I've gone three days with no symptoms at all, and I tested negative yesterday. Hoping for another negative test tomorrow morning, and feeling pretty confident I'll be able to leave the house and go among the nice people again Real Soon Now. With a mask on, of course.

(Maybe then the dreams about "What am I doing out among people when I'm contagious? And why aren't I wearing a mask?!" will taper off. Because yeah, I got those. Multiple times. Thanks, brain.)

And those are the highlights. There's probably more, but this is a long enough post already, and I might as well save some for tomorrow. Because I am going to try to blog again tomorrow. And the day after that. So do please stand by.