Trip to the Big Island

Connie and I got back from our trip to Hawaii last Thursday. I can say we successfully attempted to explore every part of the island. (Hint Hint Kyler they have cows and horse ranches) This is the Waipio Valley in which supposedly full of wild horses and waterfalls. We tried to hike down a 25% grade hill to get to it. If we had a four wheel drive vehicle we could have driven down. Let's just say we didn't make it. Connie did an amazing job planning. I think we both got to do everything we wanted. She climbed every volcano and I drank many a Mai Tai.

Composition in blue

Success. I can now send pictures from my phone straight to the blog.
This is me drinking a Miller Light out of a plastic bottle at a Phillies game.

Work party. Mobile Upload

Trying to figure out how to blog from my phone once again.
This was a Philly themed work event that we had last week.
Yes those are pretzels and Phillies bobbleheads

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Trailer is up!

Go Here!

AOBA Fashion Show - Odelia by Design

Hi all,
Just got back from the AOBA National Show and boy it was a busy place. I entered the Fashion Show again. But this year they moved the show from the Fiber 2 Fashion conference to the National Conference which gave us much better exposure. We had about 1500 in attendance. I've put a little clip on Youtube of my outfit. You can see it on my facebook page too.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=17aFUEoEb5s

The outfit got picked as one of three that will be featured in Alpaca Magazine. Look for it later to come!

A very Derby month of May...

Last month was a bit insane, roller derby wise. I had three weekends with games, and one of those weekends was a two day tournament.

On May 9th, the Ri-ettes skated a combination team of Kansas City/Duke City (Albuquerque). For a lot of the KC/DC skaters, it was their first time on a banked track (both teams are flat track). The final score of 167-73 was a bit more lopsided than they had probably hoped, but it was great to get a new team to come out to LA and play on our track.

Photo by Stalkerazzi

The next weekend we sent a flat track version of the Ri-ettes to the second annual The Big One, a flat track tournament comprising of teams from all over California. We were ranked seventh out of eight, and not really expected to do well. We lost two of our three games in our bracket, but somehow managed to fail our way into the next day of games. We lost our semi-final game, but won the third place trophy! It was kind of a big deal for us, conquering at least a few teams on the flat track...

Finally, on May 30 the Tough Cookies faced a rematch against the Sirens in regular league play. After eeking out a win against them in the Championship game last November, we knew they were out to make up for that loss. But we were also determined to show that our Champs win wasn't a fluke. It turned out it wasn't - we won by almost 30 points! The Cookies are now 2-0 heading into the second half of our season. Next game is October 3rd against the Varsity Brawlers.

Both photos by Rinkrat

I have one more tournament left before I can take a break - the Ri-ettes are traveling to Austin June 21-22 to defend our title at the Battle of the Bank 2. This year eight teams will play for the trophy. I am really excited to finally travel for a game and to get to play TXRD!

The league is paying for our way - if anyone feels like kindly making a donation you can here:

http://www.travelersjoy.com/members/laderbydolls/

Hopefully we will bring the trophy back to LA!

In case you were wondering...

My softball team still sucks.

The Man at ASU

Well, Ken spent 7 hours at Sun Devil Stadium yesterday waiting for and listening to Obama. He was not disappointed. I'm sure you can here his speech on many websites. It was a very good one - especially since the main point of it revolved around the honorary degree controversy. I hope you get a chance to listen to it. Ken was extremely moved, as was I just listening to it on the TV.

Here is a picture of BO with the six Obama scholars that were selected to sit on the stage and then meet him. I think ASU came through with flying (although hot) colors yesterday.

Obama at ASU (the Daily Show)

Hey, everyone!
Tonight's the big night, but did you see the Daily Show with John Stewart last night? Aw, it makes our students look sooooo bright!

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=227327&title=arizona-state-snubs-obama

Closet Renovation

Before

After

Well I got in a little over my head with this project but in the end it turned out great and I learned how to drywall, run electrical line, and install cedar and closet systems. I have a lot more photos on my cell phone and a video I took with my new flip camera but the FLICKR PHOTOS set pretty shows you everything.