May: What in the hell happened to me?

I feel like I've just been spit out of a tornado... I spent pretty much all of May on this never ending roller coaster of travel and commitments, and it's all done now! I survived! Here's what happened:

It all started with my first trip to Asbury Park, NJ, where the Boston B Party (my team) took on the Jersey Shore All Stars. We got our butts royally handed to us, but I still had an excellent time. 

Me (left, star-spangled booty shorts) and my teammate Kitty Twister 

blocking the Jersey Shore jammer

photo from Dezdemona Lott of Jersey Shore

My souvenir from that trip? This super awesome sunburn:

Luckily it looked worse than it was, and in about a day I was back to my normal, sort of pasty self.

The following weekend I packed my gear again for a trip down to Philly, where the B Party played the Independence Dolls. Sadly, I have yet to find a single picture from that game. Oh well! Instead you'll just have to enjoy this photo of our pre-game meeting in the locker room, before we (again) got our asses royally handed to us.

My souvenir from this trip was a big welt on my butt from a nasty fall in the first period (darn you rink rash!). I'm not sharing a picture because a) it's gross and b) my butt doesn't need to be on the Internet like that.

The weekend after Philly, I hopped a plane home to Maryville, TN to celebrate my sister Claire's graduation from high school. Yay Claire! My mom hosted an open house with lots of great food, and even though I was late due to air travel (ugh, this becomes a theme, trust me), it was awesome.

I got to spend lots of time with my family, including my super awesome grandmother.

This was when revisions really kicked into gear, and I got about 2/3 of the initial pass done just on the plane ride there and back. Yes, I revise on paper, in brightly colored pens.

The weekend after Tennessee, I flew to Chicago to watch two of my favorite people get married. Unfortunately, I realized right as I got to security at Boston Logan that I forgot my driver's license! EEK! The TSA Agent was pretty nice, and just asked me to pull out everything in my wallet with my name on it. It made it easier that I had my old student ID still in my wallet, so at least I had something with a photo on it. Also, note that I had my Social Security Card, which is actually BAD BAD BAD. You should never carry your SS card around in your wallet! I didn't realize it was in there. Oops!

I made it to Chicago, where I got to enjoy a truly awesome wedding which was held at (yes, for real) Hamburger University. Well, actually it was held at the Hyatt Lodge, which is on the corporate campus for McDonald's and is also the home to Hamburger University. It was a gorgeous and totally fun wedding.

I finished my final revisions just before the ceremony, then added them into the Word document on the flight home. I sent everything in to Paper Lantern Lit on Monday, and then sort of sat still and considered the fact that I revised an entire novel during all of that.

But it wasn't over yet!

Finally, to cap off the insanity of May, I flew to Las Vegas for the annual Women's Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) Conference. It was my first time in Vegas, and to be quite honest, I kind of hope it's my last. I don't like to gamble, I'm not a huge drinker, and did you know you can smoke INDOORS THERE?!?!?!?!

I did play roulette one time, bet on black, and I won! Then I got out of there before I could get sucked in. So yeah, I guess you could say I bested the casino (suck it, Bellagio!)

The trip was a little bit insane. We boarded our flight from NY to Vegas, and then sat on the plane for SIX HOURS before we finally took off. That meant that by the time we arrived in Vegas (at 4am), we'd been on the plane for nearly 12 hours. Then on the way home we were delayed and almost missed our connecting red eye flight out of Long Beach. We were so psyched to actually make it home on time!

And now my traveling is done (at least until the last weekend in July, when I head to a derby tournament outside of Philly). I'm so glad to be home, and also to discover that summer finally arrived in Boston!

With June coming and NOTHING on my radar, I'm planning to get back to writing and working on my shiny new project. I'll give myself the rest of May (aka one day) to rest and recover before I hit the ground running. I'd love to be able to share more of it with you sometime before the end of the summer, but for now I need to keep it to myself. Still early and all that. Let me just say on thing: ROLLER DERBY YA.

And don't forget, the drawing to see who wins a copy of Sarah Dessen's What Happened to Goodbye is on June 1. All you have to do is leave a comment here and you're entered!