Weekend Report

First order of business: Simon's first soccer game of the season on Saturday morning. Our hearts sank a bit when Andrew looked at the schedule last week and saw that our Tigers were up against a Liga Rainier team -- "Didn't those guys beat us, like, 24 to zip last year? Oh dear..." Five minutes before the game started, only two of our players had managed to find Jefferson Playfield, and nobody had brought any snacks. Oh dear... But our old pal Seppo agreed to join our team for the day, and then a few more kids arrived, and we got matching shirts on most of them -- and away we went.

I'm happy to report that the Tigers have come a long way since that demoralizing shut-out last fall. Oh, we were clobbered for sure, but we made those Liga kids work for it -- and even scored a few goals. And Simon, playing goalie for the first time but definitely not the last, stopped a ton of theirs -- it was great to see him diving, blocking, tackling the ball, and booting it back down the field with gusto.

After an interlude at home watching John work on our front porch steps (which really are becoming a work of art), we headed out to join the neighborhood Block Party / Music Festival over on Ferdinand Street. You can't see it in the picture, but there's hot dogs on the lawn to the west, a keg nestled in the trees to the north, and every five minutes kids on scooters would come flying down the hill, weaving through the dancers and the wicker chairs, and (often as not) wipe out right in front of the stage. Had a perfect moment in the sun talking to Charlie (whom we hadn't seen for a good 15 years), dancing to this funky band (that's Guy playing banjo)

while waiting for our friends the Scrawl (formerly the Scribbles) to deliver their own haunting-yet-thrashing brand of 12-year-old rock 'n' roll. Many thanks to Dan (that's him in this video adjusting the mike for Ian) for putting this party on!



From there we wandered over to a lovely party celebrating our friend Curt's half-century mark. We felt honored to be among the crowd of funny, gentle, happy people honoring this wonderful human being, and we wish him another 50 years of love, work, and joy.


At Curt's party we ran into another friend Dan, who gave us an 11th hour invitation to an Ice Cream Social at his house the next day. It was a little hard to hear over the music, but it sounded like he said that Dreyers had sent him 10 free gallons of ice cream because he wrote them a letter explaining that his neighbors would really love to eat it. And that he had forgotten to tell anyone at all until that very morning, so he was a little worried that not enough people would be there, and he'd have way too much ice cream on his hands. Well now... Do we look like the sort of people who would shy away from a neighbor in need? I don't think so.

So after a Sunday morning filled with Post-It Flip Book production & a double dump run, we dropped by Dan's. We even brought along reinforcements.


From the ice cream social it was a but a short jaunt up I-5 to our final engagement of the weekend: the Evil Angels v. the Poison Skid'les!

One of the things I love about Josie's rollerderby league is that the bouts are a full production -- they distribute posters ahead of time, and people line up outside the Lynnwood Bowl & Skate to pay their $5. There's a merchandise table with T-shirts and stickers, and a "green room" where the girls store their gear and help each other with their makeup. When it's time to start, an announcer with a booming voice introduces the teams over the loudspeaker: "Ladies and Gentlemen! Please welcome the EEEEEEEVIL ANGELS!!!" And this pack of girls comes screaming around the track, pumping their fists, and the crowd... goes.... wild! The booming voice calls out each player's name and number, eliciting more screams and applause from their adoring fans. (They do this for the wobbly 6-11 year olds too, and man are they cute. It's a lot more work than just showing up at the soccer field with your orange slices and shaking hands with the other coach, but all this hyped-up pomp creates an air of infectious excitement that's hard to resist!)

At practice last Friday Josie told me about this one girl on the other team who kept hitting her (definition: bumping her with a twitch of the hip, sending her crashing to the floor). "Every time I see her coming up next to me I get this look on my face, like, Nooooooooooooo! and then Bam! she hits me, and I go down!" As this is an entirely legitimate rollerderby move, the coach's only advice to Josie was: "Get low and try to absorb the hit. Or hit her first!"

At the bout on Sunday we got to see this wheeled assassin in action. The Alexacutor is so fast you can't even really get a picture of her:

And indeed, we saw her bring our daughter down several times. But we also saw Josie get back up every time, and get right back in there. She never did hit the Alexacutor first, but she didn't shy away from her at all, either. She stayed low, and absorbed at least some of the hits she took. She got into position and blocked the jammer several times. And we even saw her try a little hip-twitching action of her own. And even though the Evil Angels' late rally wasn't enough to carry them to victory, Josie emerged looking pretty darn triumphant to us.