seldear | Entries tagged with hockey

Writing things, mostly rambling to myself.

( Dance Me To The End Of Love )

I have the ending in place, although there are still a few things in flux...

--

Sharp Evening Stars And Bright Morning Flame is satisfactorily plotted out. Can I write it in the next 3 weeks? I'm doubtful.

I seem to have overreached myself in due dates right now.

There's

crossovering and

marvel_poc, both of which have plotbunnies, only they're pretty decently sized ones and will probably be written right up to the deadline.

I signed up for a quilting swap for Marvel characters about a month ago, and am planning to make a polygon hulk shoulder bag. Paper piecing is harder and more intricate than it looks.

And then I signed up to pattern-test a new bag pattern which is due...you guessed it - October!

Summercomp hockey starts up in the 2nd half of October, too.

And a 'proof of concept' has been floated at work, and I got assigned to it. Only I'm the database and the main interface, and I've been working on another project for the last couple of weeks. The UI developer has more or less stepped away from the project in disgust and concern that it's not managed properly, and the project managers are all either really high up, or else in sales and more concerned with whether it's pretty enough and not whether it does anything that the proof of concept is wanting.

Plus, new tech and skills. Always harder to do than just leaping into something familiar...

So I'm a bit stressed right now.

On the plus side, the parentals come home from the US by mid-October, so I get B2 back in the house. It'll be nice to have someone at home to come home to and chat with.

Over the last five years, there've been some slow and steady changes to the club and the players in the club.

When I first joined, the club was smaller. It had a core of old friends who'd played together for a long time, and had young children still in primary school. They were the good-natured ribbing kind of friends, who'd known each other for a long time and were comfortable joking with each other. Now, those old friends are still there, but their kids are teens, in high school; they're held together with fondness, but they're separated by the lives of their children and their own careers.

Over the years, the women who've come in to play are...louder. Rowdier. The kind of women who think that pranking someone so they feel isolated and excluded is funny. The quieter, more...I'm going to say 'more honourable' players, have drifted away - mostly to motherhood, or they left after a rough year and never came back. What we have now is a core of women who don't really care about the rules so long as the system benefits them, who think nothing of calling our opponents names openly in social media, who think humiliation is 'funny'...

There's the old adage of the boiling frog. Dump a frog into boiling water and it'll jump right out. Dump a frog into cold water, and turn up the heat, and he'll sit there and boil to death.

I guess we're boiling to death, then.

Hockey grand final weekend; we lost the game but went for drinks afterwards.

( tw: possibly triggering regarding mild forms of bullying, exclusion, and gaslighting )

So, we're at the end of the hockey season, in which I coached our D-grade team - lowest team of 3.

( personality, politics, play, and potential )

Anyway, Presentation Night is this Friday. We'll see how it all goes...

--

On another note; if Division Chief emails me again today to 'see how it's all going' then I'm going to assume I'm under Serious Surveillance, and it might be time to go looking for another job.

This is mostly a memory-dump for future reference.

Torn calf muscle is healing well. I've jogged on it a little (a very little) and walked on it a lot. Going to have to start up a little running again, and probably some gym work.

I played goalie for two teams at hockey last night. First game: lost 3-0 - two to a striker who could do the switch-flick really well (every goalie's nightmare). Second game: won 1-0 after keeping out some tricky goals.

Also: it made a difference that the backs in the second team (which is Team 1 - the team I played with last year) are really solid. Actually, the whole team is solid - I do miss playing with people who know what they're doing and how to play with each other. I probably do belong in Team 2 (I'm not that good) but sometimes it's so frustrating when we hold possession too long, won't tackle the opposition, and don't move in to get the ball first.

--

It's been lovely having

andveryginger around to visit: both staying over and just generally in town to hang out with. *smooches* If you're ever in Sydney for one reason or another, peoples, I would love to meet up with you.

--

June has - as expected - been a little crazycakes on the events frontage. And that's with an injured leg that's taken me out of hockey and out of my quilting work!

Still, it's been so busy that I've had to pull out of

wipbigbang. And I think I'm not going to sign up for the usual panoply of 'summer' ficathons. Besides which Maria/Steve is no longer a rarepairing, so my primary reason for going into the rarepairing swaps is kind of defunct.

--

Work is inbetween projects, which means lots of little jobs and I don't do so well at those. So here begins the next week of 'clients with high expectations and deadlines'.

And it's cold. Why does winter have to be cold?

Really need to get to bed before midnight. Even if I can't stop my body waking up at 5am, maybe I can persuade my brain not to get in on the act for a couple of hours until the alarm goes off?

Also: either really unfit or getting old. Body hurts after hockey. And this is me without any physical issues! I can't imagine being one of the women dealing with, oh, knees, and ankles, and feet and wrists and things that need binding week after week after week.

I do hope it's unfit. At least I can do something about unfit.

Have 45 minutes to midnight. The race is on...

Oh, and here, have some quilt that I made over the weekend:

Ran out of the top spool. But 2/3 done! (It looks much better when my nose isn't 4" from the fabric...) #aussietulapinkswap

That's the half-finished version, I'll post a pic of the full one up when I'm done, along with an explanation of the process. (Basically: I had an assigment for a quilt exchange, I forgot about it, and had to do a rush job over the weekend.)

Let me tell you about today.

( it was all the drama, on all the fronts )

And now I just want to climb into bed under my layers of quilts, with my cats purring up beside me, and *WIBBLE*.

(My 22 y.o. friend uses that phrase a lot. I'm not entirely certain what it means.)

So: hockey.

( politics, etc. )

Anyway, today has been draining and exhausting - not really the hockey - a bunch of other things - but it all adds up.

And I seem to be in the throes of a sugar/pastry/butter craving right now. I want to go out and buy all the sweet pastry things and eat them with large volumes of whipped cream, and equally large portions of full cream milk.

And I want to go home and crawl into bed and not drag myself out until tomorrow morning.

I spent most of the night hacking my lungs out, so I'm kind of exhausted today. I should probably make a doctor's appointment to see if there are antibiotics for what I have, or if it's a virus and I just have to wait, for "this too shall pass".

In the meantime, there are far too many things to do right now.

I have a couple of days off this week - Tuesday and Thursday, both of which are going to be dedicated to 'house things'. Just about to head out to pick up the keys from the Real Estate agent, and meet a locksmith at the house.

OUR HOUSE!

At least I don't have hockey training this week, although we have games on Sunday. And I've just realised I was going to go to a gym class at 9:30. Dang. Maybe I'll just do some hockey ball skills instead...

I'm making some decisions about how I'm going to use these journals going forward. I still like LJ better than tumblr or twitter for interaction, and frankly, I'm leery of putting too much fannish stuff up on Facebook.

But I have two journals and most of the people who were once 'internet friends' are really more 'friends who live a long way away but still have an interest in my life' now, and so there's no need for the divide. I might end up posting fannish and life things to tielan, and putting my emodumps (basically rants: family and fandom and suchlike) on seldear under lock.

So, we have an office full of expat English guys. The FIFA World Cup was never going to pass us by. NEVER.

And I suspect management felt we were at that point where we needed a bit of a celebration, so they instigated a challenge: each area on our floor was assigned a country and had to decorate their area for that country.

We are an office full of high-functioning IT people, many of us with a sliiiightly competitive streak.

Sliiiightly.

It started with the group secretary who decorated her desk and the one next to her. And then the whole office started getting into the act.

( pictures from tumblr )

So, yeah, it kind of escalated.

I think it's safe to say that we're kind of competitive at heart. High-functioning, reasonably intelligent, multi-tasking personnel who are in a job where the goal is to complete the installation to a business standard.

On the plus side, at least the office isn't white and boring anymore!

There's a lunch/opening ceremony at 1pm, and we all had to bring food from our country. My co-worker brought paella (I haven't asked if he made it, or if his wife did), and I made...um...almond cake. Not very well, I might add. But, yeah, it's what I had just before midnight while waiting to watch the Hockey World Cup.

For the record, I think the Hockeyroos deserved to win (they had possession more often than not, and more shots on goal) but damn the Americans gave them a run for their money, especially in the second half!

And those one-on-ones at the end? As a goalie, let me tell you that it was stressful watching, but I'd prefer a one-on-one to a penalty shoot-out any day!

AUSSIE! AUSSIE! AUSSIE!

So. I can stay up past midnight to watch the Hockeyroos battle it out with the US and be wrecked tomorrow.

Or... I can stay up past midnight to watch the Hockeyroos battle it out with the US and be wrecked tomorrow.

Choices, choices...

Mind you, the Kookaburras will be playing at 2am on Friday night. 2am! Although at least it's Friday night.

First hockey game of the season. Well, first game on the field (instead of in goals).

I'm gonna hate myself tomorrow...

Both our hockey teams (B Division, D Division) won in the last seconds of the game today - quite literally in the case of D-Division - they scored with ten seconds to go!

My grade (B-Division) won in 'short corner time'. The actual timer had run out, but what's called a 'short corner' (basically a scenario that advantages the attacking team) had been called, and that has to be played out before the game ends - it either ends with the ball going out of play, or a goal being scored.

In this case, a goal was scored.

And it was awesome. :)

I've discovered that our last game of the season (not counting semi-finals) is being played the day I head off to the US. As in, my game is at 9am, my flight leaves at 3pm. I figure there's just enough time to play, go home, get a wash, be driven to the airport, and make my flight... :D

After I got kicked off a project - not literally and not strictly figuratively, although I imagine that the guy who replaced me (he has the knowledge we need) probably wasn't particularly behindhand about suggesting he work regularly at somewhere nice and close to home for him - they've found me another project. 100% utilisation until Gabriel's Trumpet blows.

Apparently they've promised the sun, the moon, and the stars for a mere hill of beans. And not even magical ones at that.

So my 'doh' is on two levels.

1. No more time to 'do stuff'. I've been rather enjoying the last six months of writing and quilting and going to the cafe and stuff. I shall miss it.
2. Probable project of stressful DOOM.

On the plus side, my work utilisation will be up!

--

House inspection this weekend. By parentals, but still.

B2 has never lived out of home - not in a rental place where she was really answerable to someone for keeping the household clean and tidy, neat and organised.
I'm not sure she quite comprehends that a house inspection is pretty much the dealie for 'doing all those things that we're not in the habit of doing in spite of having a list of tasks that each should be done at least once a month'.

--

I do not understand why people at work have really awful selfies as their profile picture in Microsoft Outlook. DO NOT UNDERSTAND. (Yes, young lady who sends out company-wide memos, I'm looking at you and the overexposed, cheek-focused, glowing-teeth-while-hyena-laughing photo that you've got up. You don't look like this normally, I don't get why you would allow the perpetration of this horror professionally?)

--

Knee is better. I HAVE PLAYED HOCKEY ON IT AND IT STILL WORKS! A little weirdly twingey from time to time, but still good. Actually, I played Sunday in the Opens game (both - one as goalie) and Monday in the Masters Division (over-35s). And everything seems to be working.

Physio visit this afternoon where she will DESTROY ALL MY MUSCLES. (That's what it feels like, I swear.)

--

This update of my life was brought to you by the number 20025, which is the current wordcount on the epic of DOOM, and the ENTIRE ALPHABET IN ALLCAPS.

Dear 'concerned person',

We are a local sports club, with very specific interests and very specific contacts.

We have not asked for your assistance in search optimisation, indeed, if you had noticed, we are not looking to appear in the top searches of Google, Bing, or Yahoo at all.

And though you may protest that "this is not spamming", as a matter of fact, yes, it is.

Just because you don't think of yourself as an asshole doesn't mean you aren't one.

Go away and stop mailing us, please.

Have a nice day!
Me.

1. My knee. (Ouch.) Getting better, but still achey and prone to twinges when bent too far. Constantly strapped.

2. I wrote over 50K of words in June. o.O Obviously not all of them are viable - some were story notes, by and large the majority were discards from scenes (where I wrote several thousand words that just weren't the right ones for that scene) - but I did finish 7 stories (nearly 8)!

3. Hockey. See #1 - Knee.

4. Joined "Camp NanoWrimo" - basically 50K of words in July. We'll see how that goes. *looks dubious* I'm going to try to add those words to Avengers Epic Of Doom. But the first scene between Maria and Steve is giving me heartburn. Too many iterations by now, so frustrating! Action? No problem! Relating? Ugh.

5. Worked really irregular weeks. A few days here, a few days there. A weekend or two. *grumbles*

6. Getting back into quilting - current project beneath the cut.

( 1, 2, 3, GO MOMO! )

7. Had 3 quilts I worked on displayed at the Sydney Quilt Show 2013! (No prizes, though!)

( eternity, santorini, and the rainbow connection )

July will be the last month where I have large blocks of time free, so I'm going to have to split it out between my quilting and my writing. August will be full-time work again, and September will be travelling to the US and Italy! I'll put up a post for cities I'll be in if there's anyone who'd like to meet up!

things what I have to do in July

a) quilts, quilts, quilts - for the people I've stayed with and am staying with this trip! (got a colour or style pref? let me know!)
b) get as much of The Right Hand Knows Not (Avengers epic) written as possible before August.
c) lose 5kgs (~10 lbs) - enough so my clothes aren't all tight around the waist.

Hockey training last Tuesday night: one of my team-mates tackled me, I tried to jump over her stick, her stick caught my foot, I went down.

My knee has been painfully bruised since then, with swelling, bruising, and all the fun. There was initially pain when I tried to bend it, but it has since settled to a somewhat uncanny sensation of something pushing under the skin that probably shouldn't be pushing.

I'm seeing a physio tomorrow afternoon. (Earliest appointment I could get.) I probably should have called and gotten an appointment last week, but I was hoping it would just heal up/go away after a couple of days.

I can walk, I just can't play hockey, which means I didn't play this weekend (when both teams won their games), and won't be able to play tonight (when we'll probably end up being down players). Training is probably out tomorrow night, and I don't know how I'll be for next week's games.

*sigh* Oh body, why must you fail me this year?

So, the hockey game on Sunday.

1. bounced the back of my head against the ground
2. got whacked in the foot with the ball during the game
3. had the ball bounce off my forehead while going in for a low tackle
4. skidded off the field to land on my back in the water ditch and strained a shoulder muscle

On the upside, we drew 2-2 after a fairly gruelling game. We needed to work on short passes, not long hits (which they kept picking up), and passing into the gap and running onto the ball.

...I have the feeling that this year's hockey may end up being my physical downfall...

So I'm off the bench next week for a 10-day job. Fixed price, so they need it done on time and to spec.

There's a brief meeting on Wednesday morning - 2 hours in the morning, out near a big fabric/craft store... *whistles innocently*

It will be nice to have work again, although now I feel like I've just wasted the two weeks I've had. (I probably haven't: I've written quite a lot and plotted quite a lot, and sewn quite a lot. I just always feel like it's not enough. Ever. I suspect that if I wrote a novel in a week, I'd still feel guilty for not having written two...)

Anyway this (last) week of freedom will be the week of Doing Things.

I have at least one quilt top to get quilted at the local quilting store. I have time booked in with the local quilt shop - we'll see if I can do two in the three or so hours I have before the store closes!

The plotting for Crazy Epic Avengers Fic is...not going well. It got all tangled up when the bad guy changed, and now I have to unwind all the plot threads and reconnect them properly.

The Brisbane job hasn't fully materialised yet - the office is still negotiating the contract for our work, but if it does, it's probably going to be after the 10 days (which are here in Sydney - thankfully). And it's going to suck because hockey starts up over easter.

Speaking of hockey, we had massive dropouts this year. ( for those who can't take the sporting talk )

...you know I'm a little worried that, around here, people seem to think I'm some kind of technical guru...

They actually come and ask me questions about how to solve the problem they're working on! o_O

(Mostly? I just Google the answers...)

( work woes )

--

The Downside Of Liberty: I hold this truth to be self-evident; we are all shamelessly selfish.

--

4,000 words to the Avengers' Girls' Night Out fic. I estimate at least another 1,500 to complete, hopefully this weekend. There's an epic behind it, assuming I don't lose faith in my ability to write it...

--

My weekend presently consists of hockey on Saturday during the day, assisting at a church-run disco for people with intellectual disabilities until 10pm on Saturday night, 4th Grade hockey goalieing at 10:30am Sunday, and playing in the field for 3rd Grade at 6pm, with our 1st Grade team at 7:30 (game after ours). Unless the 1st Grade is utterly and completely desperate for players, I think I'll opt out of any requests for me to sub.

And my boss just came by to ask if I was going to finish any work this weekend.

Uh, no. Sorry, no. Just, no.

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Writing In Twilight

Where Nobody Reads

Entries tagged with hockey

holy cow my life

boiling the hockey frog

so I guess we are that club and those people

a year of hockey coaching

all the other things that aren't fannish

so tired

and so, today

the struggle is real

no rest for the sick

When the office goes World Cup mad...

AUSSIE! AUSSIE! AUSSIE!

this is gonna hurt

the day when our wins were last-minute

and we're out of time

spam by any other name...

things what I have done lately

state of the knee

and I think my head is caving in

last week of freeeedoooommm

my life