I’m taking my second roller derby assessment on Monday.  I hope I pass. I think I’ll do alright. I really want to be able to scrimmage with the rest of the league, so I’ve been working hard these last few practices to get my skills up to scratch. We’re being tested on a couple more skating/stopping skills, as well as contact blocking and assists. I know the thing I need to work on the most is the contact stuff. I can keep my balance pretty well and take a pretty hard hit (I’ve go the bruises to show for it), but my timing and contact when I’m trying to hit is still pretty off… and weak. I have to be able to use my legs more, because that’s where the power comes from. I know all this in theory. It’s just getting my body to do what my brain is telling it to do, when my body is clearly sending signals that it’s too damn tired to move and my brain is all, “get up, you pansy, and hit someone!!!” Yeah, a bit of a conflict. But I’m working on it. I just hope I can do well enough to pass the test and move up to scrimmagable. Then I get to claim my name.

I’ve also been working on my resume, doing job research, writing cover letters, all that stuff. It’s a bit strange to have these two activities going on simultaneously. I hope it doesn’t trigger some sort of identity crisis. I’m trying to be professional and advance my career, while also being a part of this bad-ass sport. The other librarians at both my jobs are really excited for me, so when I have my first bout, there’s probably going to be a contingent from MIT as well as Radcliffe, which will be hopefully be more awesome than weird. It’s really fun that they’re so supportive, though. Except the other day at Radcliffe, I totally broke part of the photocopier: I was standing there, waiting for the copier to spit out the news clippings I was copying, when my knee began to get kind of crampy. I picked up my foot, stretched out my quad and knee, but my foot slipped out of my hand, and I accidentally kicked the paper bypass tray. I knocked it to the floor, and the little clippy hinge things that keep it attached to the coper totally broke off into tiny pieces. I exclaimed something not-so-professional, and people came in to see what was the matter. I’m just standing there with the tray in my hand, saying something really lame, like “DUDE!” and “MAN!! I’m so sorry!” That I couldn’t come up with something better to exclaim is bad enough, but the fact that I broke the copier because I was stretching was really, really embarrassing. The consensus was, “Geez, only a month of roller derby, and she’s already tearing the place apart!”

I can see it now: I’m probably going to end up like some Hulk librarian. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry! Ooh! Or, like Conan the Librarian: “Don’t you know the Dewey Decimal System???” *super-sword-action-of-DOOM!*