Llamas and minis! Oh my!

Today was move Flippy the Llama and Starkey the miniature horse day! They're going to an awesome new barn, which is a lot closer to where I live.
I should have taken some pictures of the new place. There is a HUGE indoor riding arena, and lots and lots of pasture. Big giant box stalls.. the place is really nice. They do a lot of rescue work. Retired race horses and such. This is Paco, and he has absolutely stolen my heart. He whuffled on me. (blew air and made a snuffling noise on my hair... I melted).



Horribly thin right now. But once he gets some weight on him he'll look amazing!

And now... Starkey and Flippy!

A face only a mom can love:




Hanging out:




I really though flippy would be freaked out by the big horses, since he's only been around minis. In reality, they were freaked out by him!





I'll try and get some better pics tomorrow when I go back to the barn. We picked up a nice little surrey cart for Starkey and some of the ponies that pass through. Should be interesting!

The tattoos!

This pic was taken after the Derby City bout in Louisville (which we won, more on that later).
As you can see, the tattoo is PINK! And you can take a look at Dill's chicken!

I'm branded!

This way, if I ever get lost and wander over to another derby league, they know where to send me back!


Donnie at Metamorphosis did the ink! It's hard to tell, but it's this awesome bright pink color! I love it!

He also tricked Dill into redoing his chicken finger. I say tricked, because Dill was just there to watch me get done. Then Donnie said he wanted to touch up a couple spots on the chicken. It took a bit to get Dill in the chair, since a tattoo on the side of your finger HURTS! Once he got Dill in for it, he went ahead and redid the entire thing! Poor Dill. He would be cracking a joke, stop for a minute when Donnie hit a tender spot, then start up again.

Speaking of hurting, my tattoo is on the side of my hip. I thought that would be a nice, easy place to get tattooed. I have a pretty high pain tolerance for ink. My arm was fine, except when it got close to the armpit. That was tender. Shoulder was nothing. Neck wouldn't have been too bad, it was just sitting in the chair for over four hours with my head dropped forward that hurt. My foot... okay. That one I will totally admit hurt pretty darn bad! But my hip... I figured nice fleshy area, I kept away from my hipbone.. shouldn't be a big deal right? Yea... it hurt. Apparently that is a nice and sensitive spot! It wasn't the worst ever, but it caught me off guard!
Hip checks at practice the next day were pretty fun too ;)

What I learned...

I truly believe that you are never to old to learn something new! For instance, yesterday, I learned that you should not try to make a hard boiled egg in the microwave!
Since it's close to a bout, my diet consists of lots of protein, no sugar, and I try to avoid white flour. So I eat lots and lots of veggie patties, fruit, and... eggs!
I was having a crazy craving for hard boiled eggs yesterday at lunch. I decided that I should try and MICROWAVE ONE! Yea, not my shining moment here! So I stuck an egg in a bowl, put in the microwave, hit 5 minutes (I know! I know!) and walked back into the office to work on the schedule. Dill was at his desk behind me, and all of a sudden we both heard "BAM! CRASH! CLANG" and saw a measuring cup go flying onto the floor of the kitchen! WTF???
Right. So what I learned.
If you try to make a hard boiled egg in the microwave, and it cooks for too long, the door to the microwave will fly open, the egg will explode everywhere, and anything that was in the path of the door will go flying onto the floor. Also, you will be cleaning up egg for at least an hour.
I need one of these: https://www.buyegggenie.com/Default.aspx?MID=535494

I could totally be in the infomercial too! You know how they give someone a task to do the "old" way. Like opening a ziploc bag! "Why struggle to open those hard to open ziploc bags! Introducing the bag genie! For 3 easy payments of $19.95 you can end the struggle of trying to pull and pry your food out of the bag"!
I would make the perfect idiot sighing and blowing my hair out of my face as I cleaned exploded egg off the wall!

Beaver Pelts

Ever feel like some days, no one gets your sense of humor? See my coffee shop is not the uptight corporate coffee kind of place. We all get along, and while we work really, really hard, we all have a good sense of humor and goof off a lot too.
One of my employees, stuck a little sign right above the visa/mastercard sign that says,

Now, Dill and I thought this was pretty damn funny. For the most part, other people, if they even notice it, think it's pretty funny. But then I've had the odd ones...
A couple months ago, this woman came in, and I swear, the second sentence out of her mouth was, "I'm from San Fransisco". Which wouldn't sound odd, except it was in response to, "What can I get for you today"?
While I'm making her drink, she spies the beaver pelt sign. Then the conversation turns into something like this:

Customer:"What the heck? You guys used to accept beaver pelt"?
Me: "What? Oh, no, that's a joke"
Customer: "That's FUR"!!!!
Me: "Yea, I know. It's just a joke"
Customer: "Man, I knew I was in backwoods Indiana, but this is crazy".
Me: "No, not that backwoods. It's just a joke. One of our employees put it up there as a joke. Like, instead of we don't accept out of state checks. We don't accept beaver pelt".
Customer: "How long ago did you stop doing it"?
Me: "Is this like, a hidden camera show"?
Customer: "What"?
Me: "Here's you drink, have a great day"!

I know, that's just one oddball right? Except for the past two weeks it keeps happening! Not that extreme, but a lot of, "I don't get it", and "what's pelt"?

Maybe it's good that we all work together, since we're the only ones that find each other funny!

Five on Five

I'm in the new issue of FiveonFive magazine!
There is a quick Q&A and I whipped up a beginner wristband knitting pattern!



If you get a copy of the mag and look close, you can see my orange mac with the robot sticker in the background! (Well, it was supposed to be my mac. Yet somehow, I find myself typing away on a $400 Gateway laptop with a flickering screen while Dill plays with Garage Band...)
The pattern is painfully easy. Being a knitter is like being a drug dealer. You give the first one away, and make it fun. Then they come back for more. Pretty soon you have them sucked into fair isle, and hand spun, and soon, and $20 skeins of sock yarn! Bwahahaha! Hey, if my house is overflowing with yarn, it's a problem. If EVERYONE has a house full of yarn, it's trendy!

The Nuvo Cultural Vision Awards and the Amazing $13 Dress!

Last Friday (my birthday!!!!) Naptown Roller Girls were going to be honored with a Cultural Vision Award from Nuvo. Which meant I would get to wear a fancy dress. Which meant I had to FIND a fancy dress.
All well and good, but, that week I had been working open to close every single night, due to two of my employees being on vacation and one employee driving a dog to Florida so it would not be a homeless dog. Add in derby practice, and it leaves little time for shopping!
So Thursday night, I had a plan. We got out of work at 8:30, headed to the mall, which closes at 9:00. At 8:50, I went running into a store, hoping against hope that I could find the perfect dress in 10 minutes flat! A quick scan showed me nothing with promise, until I spied a rack on the back wall. There it was. Linen, sleeveless, cut to be flattering to a derby girl, (ie, looked good for a gal with a smaller waist and big thighs and ass), it was PERFECT!
And it was almost $50. Whatever, I had 3 minutes left to buy it. Ran to the counter, salesgirl flips it over and we realized the zipper was broken! NOOOO! She offered the dress to me for $13 since it had the broken zipper.
Okay, I am crafty. I can knit, I can crochet, I can wet felt, dye yarn, make pillows... but can I fix a zipper? No. I can't. I took the dress anyway, keeping my fingers crossed that I could find a way to make it work.
When I got home, and showed Dill the dress, he calmly sat down on the couch, dress in his lap, grabbed some pliers and Voila! Perfect dress, perfect zipper, and all for $13! Whoohoo!

The dress!

Honestly, I did not know what to expect from this awards thing. Okay, brutal honesty... I thought it would be kind of hokey! I just didn't "get" it I guess. Until I went, and I sat through the videos, and the speeches, and... wow. I was tearing up at the fact that we were being recognized with all of these incredible people. People that really strive to make a difference in their community, who want to make Indiana a great place to live! Yes, I know that we belong in those ranks. I know that that NRG donates hours and hours to charity, that we are a group of women who started from skating in a church parking lot, to skating in front of thousands. I might be aware of what we do, but to stand up and be recognized by all these other great people... it was an incredible feeling. I left feeling slightly breathless, and in awe of what this truly represented for us, with a much greater respect for some of the things that happen in Indy around me.

We trotted over to a pub after wards, to celebrate with beer and cake. (It was my birthday, I get cake on my birthday)! Dill also celebrated with Scotch eggs, thanks to Katya Lookin. They are his new favorite food. If you've never heard of them, they are eggs, hard boiled, wrapped in sausage, then deep fried. I believe you receive a free pace maker with every dozen. It was nice to hang out with my girls, hear some crazy single after party hook up stories ( I will not divulge who, but I will say one of the girls needs to stay single, so we can live vicariously through her dating shenanigans), and just HANG OUT! No sweaty pads, no quick conversations in between Russian Twists, no trying to send each other into a concrete wall, just some nice hang out time, celebrating with my favorite group of girls on the planet.

Pics! You all know the drill about clicking on the images by now right???

SJ on screen for our award.



A group of us after the awards!




Dill eats a scotch egg.




Hanging out at the pub.