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Life and Roller Derby

I'm finding the comic course mostly interesting. The current assignment involves looking at what the communist scares of the early 1950s had to do with comics. The thing is that it's all U.S. based and I'm in Canada. I don't know if Canada was worried about communism in those days. I don't remember covering that in history in high school. I skipped the last assignment entirely. It was asking why Jewish people are prevalent in the comics industry. I took the course to learn about comics, but not really to dissect the history of the industry. The first assignment on character origins was fantastic. Most of the others have disappointed me because they don't align with my goals of knowing more about characters and comic series. I'm just going to start reading comics online.

I had an MRI on Friday evening, which I had shown up twelve hours early for in the morning. My neck still hurts from the days I did roller derby, so they're looking at it to see if there's damage. I hope I never have one again. It was loud. The noise reminded me at times of an air raid siren and at other times of crashing cars in Pole Position for the Commodore 64. I kept my eyes closed because I'm slightly claustrophobic.

It's the weekend of the 2015 WFTDA International Championships in Irving, Texas. Well, it's not the only weekend. Because this level of roller derby is international, there are a lot of teams and multiple tournaments are necessary to fit everyone in. This weekend, the Ottawa team from Rideau Valley Roller Girls is playing. It's their first time at Division 1 Championships. Last year they had their debut at Division 2 and they've worked hard all year and made it to Division 1. Division 1 is where the top 40 or so teams in the world compete. The competition is fierce and there are a lot of new European and Australian teams that play a different style of roller derby strategy. I'm sure the girls will have lots of new tools at their disposal for the 2016 season.

On writing... I felt like I needed to start working on my roller derby vampire story, The Blood Waitress Club. The first draft is pretty much written, so I'm working on the second draft. Yes, that means I'm a little crazy and am jumping into editing another manuscript, but I think it would be great to have a second novel to pitch when I pitch The Page & The Magician in October. I'm getting so excited about all of this. I've also seen some early concepts for my book cover and I'm getting excited for that too.

I gave my fishy friend Winchester the Amazing a ping pong ball. He gets curious about it, but hasn't tried to move it around himself. I'm not sure if I can train him to do so. He definitely knows what his food container looks like. I'm not sure he sees all that great as I often need to point out the first piece of food to him despite how excited he is to be fed. Then he has no trouble with the others though. He likes hanging out by the filter for some reason. If he's right in front of it, he's practically invisible to me. Ninja fish. Who can't see great.

He's been fed this morning, but I haven't. Time to go and do that as I have an essay to finish, writing to do, Iaido, errands, and more roller derby to watch. I wonder if I can fit in some guitar too before I lose my calluses...

Ciao,
R~

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