you know what? i actually have a good time when i have to go to the dentist. we used to see my current dentist when he was at a different office, but then he left for some reason or another and once he left then it wasn’t very enjoyable — every time you’d go there you’d have to deal with an entirely new dentist or hygienist. then our dentist opened up his own practice. for some reason i thought i heard that he doesn’t take my insurance but i still get my bills paid off somehow (i don’t know what’s going on there exactly). but even if he doesn’t take my insurance i much rather prefer going to this dentist than one that i don’t like but who does take my insurance. i have to go back in a week so i can get a filling fixed up that seems to be decaying around the edges a little bit, so it’s good to get this taken care of now.

and now, questions from fightscrime!

1) The Greek life was something I wasn’t ever a part of, but it seems to be something that you’ve gotten a lot from. What initially made you decide to join a fraternity?

i hadn’t planned on joining one at first, but after my first year of living in the dorms and going to school at umbc i took off of school for a year so i could work and make some tuition money. when i came back to school i was commuting to and from annapolis for classes and didn’t really know that many people around since the folks who had started at the same time that i did were a year or so ahead of me by then. producer_chris and i went to high school together, and he had joined lambda chi alpha (and a few other friends of ours from our high school’s band program had previously joined). i got to talking with a few of the brothers and went out for a few events and figured that it’d be a good way for me to get to know some folks and find out what events are happening on campus now that i was commuting.

2) Which is your favorite Speed Regime uniform incarnation, and why?

ooh, tough one — i like the way the current ones look, but i didn’t have a problem with the way they looked before. i guess i could say that while i liked the previous uniform, i really like the overall look of the current uniform style.

3) What’s your biggest challenge so far, when it comes to playing for Homicide?

i think about the teams we’ll be skating against, and then i wonder how i’ll end up when i try to hold my own against these teams with more experience. it’s a little bit intimidating. actually, it’s very intimidating.

4) Did you know a lot of derby people when you first started coming to bouts? If not, what kept you coming back? If so, how did you know them?

i didn’t know anybody when i started coming to bouts — paigeyiscrazey had a message or something on her myspace page about the derby and i thought that’d be pretty crazy to see, so i started coming out to the bouts and to hang out with paige for a bit. i think i only made it out to the last two or three bouts of the season last year, but after those two or three bouts then i slowly got to know a few more people. it’s weird, i still think of myself as a derby-outsider, though, and i usually end up being surprised when folks know who i am.

5) Do you actually play the oboe, or is it merely a clever username?

i played the alto saxophone through elementary and middle school, and when i got to high school the conversation went something like “oh… you play the sax? we have a bazillion people who already play the sax. how about the oboe? look how small it is compared to the saxophone! plus, oboe players get all the girls!”. (he was totally right about oboe players getting all the girls — i’ve seriously met 5 or 6 girls just because one or both of us play the oboe). i played the oboe through high school and i rented one for one semester when i played in a symphonic band at umbc. i had been wanting to play again since then, so a few months ago i bought a used student oboe from some lady on craigslist so i could start teaching myself how to play again, but now that i have one of my own i can’t find time to get any practice on it at all.

i got the username because ocarina introduced me to livejournal and the anime “violinist of hameln”, and since she got her name from “violinist of hameln” i figured that i’d do the same. especially since the character of “oboe” is the voice of reason and advice!