Roller derby and bowling

This is a post that should have been made before now because the night was so great, but wasn't written because this has been a busy week. (Jeni is co-producing a play at Workshop Theatre which is keeping her running around with her hair on fire right now, so while she's in a meeting I'll try to get this up.)

Last Saturday Jeni and I, along with Lisa, Brian, their friend Breck, Tiff and her friend Kirby, all went to the roller derby and then bowling. Back in early January I found out we had a roller derby team and instantly we knew we had to go. This is by far the best $10 we have spent in a long long time. The whole night was just way too much fun. Honestly, I think we did as much people watching as derby watching, but by the end of the night we had scoring and strategy mostly figured out.


Here we are before the night began in our semi-matching t-shirts. We were expecting more of a rock crowd and less of a punk crowd.


As an added bonus to the roller derby, there was a wedding before the bout.


All the team members had personas with fun names, like Mel Anoma, seen here coming out of the penalty box. There was a lot of penalty box time.


This was one of my favorite pictures, featuring Shiv Tyler and her "Get Some" pants, again coming out of the penalty box.


Afterward, Breck went around and got autographs and pictures with the QuadSquad rollergirls. Crystal Cutt was his favorite, and with much right because she kicked butt.


Here we are after the bout, looking even happier than before. This picture was taken by a girl who, unfortunately, did not wash her hands before leaving the bathroom. Jeni was really asking the girl beside her, who did wash her hands, to take the picture, but the other one offered faster. (We wiped the camera off real good.)


After the roller derby bout we went bowling. Don't ask me why sitting on the floor at the bowling alley seemed like a good idea. This is the group picture including Nikki, who was out with Morgan and a limo full of 13-year-olds and couldn't be here in person.


As the night went on they black lights came on at the bowling alley.


Jeni wore Tiff's QuadSquad bandana as a doo rag until someone asked her what gang she was in and Jeni decided it was best to take it off. (We were leaving at that point anyway.)

We have a whole set on Flickr of the best of our roller derby pictures, so check them out. We'll be doing it again in March, except that it'll be on a Sunday so probably less of a big night. But it was just too much fun. We really can't stop talking about it.

Happy Birthday Morgan

I can't believe Morgan turns 13 today. It's really something when the first of your friend's children officially becomes a teenager. Yikes! Where does the time go?

Home improvement projects

We have tried to do a few projects the last two weekends. Jeni has been wanting a ceiling fan in the kitchen since we moved in. I recently overcame my fear of electricity and decided to tackle this project.


This was the light before. It was a good light source, but ugly, hodge-podge, and not a fan.


This is the new fan installed. We love the fan. It puts off a great amount of wind, has a remote, and really looks nice in the kitchen. The problem is that the light is dim. It should be enough light, but I think the globe dampens the light too much for it to be functional in the kitchen. So pretty soon we'll be picking out a second fan, moving this one to another room, and installing a new one in the kitchen. Practice makes perfect, right?

Then we started to clean out the closet in the guest bedroom to make room for Tiffany to come and stay with us. This closet had become a small catch-all for winter jackets that we no longer wear, and other miscellany. So to make room for this stuff elsewhere, we had to install a new shelf in the extra storage space by the washer and dryer. So while we were putting shelves up, we also decided to take care of the office closet too (it really is just a cascade once you start a project).


This was the closet emptied out. I hesitate to call this a true "before" shot since it is empty. The office floor was covered with stuff. It is truly amazing to see how much you can fit in a closet.


This is the "after" closet with the new shelves up. Eventually Jeni wants a closet almost full of silver IKEA boxes, clean and organized. She painted the inside of the closet with some leftover paint to give it a clean look, which is so much nicer than a flat off-white closet. Of course, there is more in this closet now, but tons better than before.

No more Birds on a Wire

One of our favorite local restaurants -- Birds on a Wire -- has closed. This is very disappointing. It's where my boss took me my first day of work, and one of the standard places we go when company is in town (translation: Tiffany). It was two blocks from my work, and they had great barbecue chicken, chicken salads, and sweet potatoes. But the highlight of going to Birds was the pimento cheese raw fries, which were slightly fried potato chips with melted pimento cheese on top (if you're not from the South, this might not sound good, but trust me on this). And if it weren't for Birds, Jeni might not have been converted to a grits eater, which means no shrimp and grits -- and that would be a sad day, indeed. So goodbye, Birds on a Wire. Lunch will not be the same.

Year of the Fett

I am really enjoying the Year of the Fett, a daily photo stream on Flickr featuring pictures of Lego Boba Fett. It's a nice treat each morning when I start up the computer to see what Boba Fett did that day.

Columbia Quad Squad

The more we talk about it, the more geeked we are to be going to the roller derby. I had something else I was going to post about, but now I can't remember. It must be because I have roller derby on the mind.

Doug and Cathy should be excited -- I almost twittered a response to them today. But then I resisted the temptation to get sucked in to another time sink. Dodged that bullet. (And yes, I know, this is short enough that I could have been a twit.)

Interesting day of discoveries online

Long story -- but I found out today that Columbia has a women's roller derby team -- the Columbia Quad Squad. Spend a few minutes poking around and you'll by sure to get a smile. I love their roller derby names. It reminds me of the episode of Psych. (Speaking of, Psych starts back tomorrow!)

I also saw that the Library of Congress has pictures posted on Flickr. You'll find some really cool old pictures here.

And don't forget the Princess Unicorn doll from The Office.

It was a productive lunch break...

CBS needs to catch up

We realized that around the holidays, when our DVR was goofing up and missing a few shows, we missed two episodes of The Big Bang Theory. I went to the CBS website to see about watching them online, only to find out that there are no episodes available online. The I went to How I Met Your Mother and they had two episodes available, from last season, and not in order, either. CBS really needs to catch up with NBC and ABC here, because there really are times when you miss a show and would actually like to watch it -- not because you have nothing to do on a Monday night, but actually because there is a real quality show out there.

Camera is back

Right before Christmas, our Canon digital camera (PowerShot A720IS) started to mess up. We were getting a blue line through every picture. Fortunately, we were about four days shy of our warranty expiring. To Canon's credit, the repair was done quickly and efficiently, and the camera was returned within two weeks, no charge. We've been very happy with our two digital camera from Canon. I hated to not have our camera for Christmas and New Year's Eve, but at least it is repaired and didn't cost us a fortune. (Really, it gets to the point that if it was going to cost a lot, we'd have bought a new one.)