harry potter accounts for most of my free time in july
arguably, some might say that most of my free time is occupied by harry potter most of the year (see references to my hubby's alleged appearance to said boy-who-lived on his blog) but this month was particularly busy. we went to see the premiere of 'order of the phoenix' on opening night, it was insane - the entire theater was devoted to this one movie, with every screen playing potter. i liked this one better than the last one, which is good because the same director from this one is directing the next one.
then, last friday, mike and i waited in line at borders to buy the latest and last book, "year 7 - harry potter and the deathly hallows." i proceeded to read it just about constantly, stopping only for roller derby-related activities (see below), and finished yesterday evening. no spoilers from me, but i did like it and thought it was a pretty good way to "end" the series. on to more teen lit for me, i suppose, since those and non-fiction are the only books i seem to finish at a reasonable pace.


derby!in'-A
of course, derby took up a good chunk of my time, what with practice, open skates on off nights, helping new would be rookies getting ready for our next open try out, volunteering some time for the taste fest and the ann arbor art fair and of course, seeing my original derby sponsor miss canada off to her new home in san francisco.

last saturday, my roller derby league hosted their 2007 championships to a packed house at the masonic temple in downtown detroit. as promised, it was one of the most intense, most fun game to watch of the season. highlights: the notorious killbox winding up to "johnny crash" the also crazy good racer mcchaseher only to bounce off her chest and fly into the crowd like someone poked a stick in her spokes - shear terror deliberately pushing an opponent with full force from behind then stepping out of the rink to go to the box before any ref even told her to - my girl damsel distresser subbing for an injured dames player and kicking some serious derby butt.

the pistolwhippers, including my friend and co-worker, bruisie siouxxx beat out the devil's night dames to take home the trophy with a winning score of 96-82. congrats to her and her team!

then yesterday, my team the d-funk allstars met up at ima wrecker's house for our end-of-the-season BBQ. it was lovely, we ate some food, drank some beer, pontooned around on her dad's boat, went swimming, talked about the good times and the bad...a few of our team are opting to put their name back into the draft for next season and it was a good time to sit and talk openly about it, i'm glad that the girls can move on and know that there are no hard feelings. they'll definitely be missed! our team, as with all the rest, will be pretty different next year, so it's going to be interesting to see how it all shakes out. i'm really looking forward to the next season!

A woman went to a pet shop & immediately spotted a large, beautiful parrot..

There was a sign on the cage that said $50.00.

"Why so little," she asked the pet store owner.

The owner looked at her and said, "Look, I should tell you first that this bird used to live in a house of Prostitution and sometimes it says some pretty vulgar stuff."

The woman thought about this , but decided she had to have the bird any way.

She took it home and hung the bir d's cage up in her living room and waited for it to say something.

The bird looked around the room, then at her, and said,

"New house, new madam."

! The woman was a bit shocked at the implication, but then thought "that's really not so bad."

When her 2 teenage daughters returned from school the bird saw and said,

"New house, new madam, new girls."

The girls and the woman were a bit offended but then began to laugh about the situation considering how and where the parrot had been raised.

Moments later, the woman's husband Keith came home from work.

The bird looked at him and said,

"Hi, Keith"