Mike and Kate invited us up to their house to watch today's NFL game, in particular, to watch the New England Patriots' game. Mike had left his car at my house when he picked up the truck earlier this week, so I agreed to drive his car up this morning at his request. Kris followed me up in his car, enabling me to drive up quickly, as I'm wont to do on the fun drive to Mike's house.

On the way to Saratoga, I managed to avoid being behind any vehicle for any length of time in my quest to drive my desired speed, without pressure of cars behind me to go faster and without frustration of a slower car in front of me. Just as I was about to leave downtown Saratoga, I found myself behind a family van, the two of us on the way out of town.

I followed the van for less than a half mile when it pulled over to let me pass. I was excited about this, driving quickly, allowing each turn to start a rumble in the back seat as the stuff in Mike's car launched from side to side in the car through the curves.

My joy was short-lived, however, as I quickly caught up to the next car. The car in front of me was following yet another car, that car driving slowly through the turns. I quickly scanned for a turnout, hoping the cars would move over, when the front car moved over to turn left off the road. The car in front of me sped up, driving a reasonable speed, until the next turnout when it pulled over, allowing me to pass.

Yippee!

I zoomed along for all of a half mile or so in front of the car I just passed, before I realized there was a bright red Ferrari behind me. No way was I going to be rude to the car behind me. If you want and can drive faster than I, then I am going to move over for you. Way over.

I pulled off the road before the turnoff, in order to allow the Ferrari to pass. I tried to find a good spot to move over, but chose relatively poorly. The car was able to pass me, but oncoming traffic was annoyed at me, as the Ferrari passed me when the oncoming car passed me going the other way. Eh, there was room on the road.

I continued up the hill, quickly losing sight of the Ferrari as it zoomed away in front of me. I drove along happily for a mile or so, zipping along in Mike's car, zoom zoom zoom, inch by inch catching back up to the Ferrari who had escaped me just a mile before.

And got stuck behind another car.

Another two cars.

The lead car was driving about 25 miles per hour along the road where I was driving previously driving 45-50, and the Ferrari doing 50-60. The car braked too quickly, accelerated too slowly, and generally ignored all road courtesy rules by both driving too slowly, not pulling over despite numerous spots available, and ignoring the growing number of cars lined up behind it.

A minute after I had to slow down, four motorcycles slowed down behind me. Once again, I pulled over to the right to allow the motorcycles to pass me, this time still driving along, the motorcycles lane-splitting next to me. The Ferrari did the same, allowing the motorcycles to lane-split pass him. The two cars in front of me didn't have to do anything, as we all approached a turnout and the motorcycles and Ferrari had room to pass both cars and drive away.

Not so lucky me. The turnout was far too short, and I ended up continuing my excrutiatingly slow drive up the mountain. The van I had passed at the bottom of the mountain caught up to me.

I managed to continue up the mountain behind these two cars for another mile or so before I became completely frustrated at the number of turnouts the front car could have taken, BUT CHOSE NOT TO TAKE. How freakin' slow can you drive and NOT SEE the line of cars behind you?

Mike's car may have started blaring its horn uncontrollably at some point along this last mile to the top of the hill.

When the four cars arrived at the top of the hill, the really slow car, the car in front of me, me in Mike's car, and the van behind me, the car in front of me turned right and took off. The car in front of me, the slow car that caused the last three or four miles of frustration, turned on its left turn signal at the stop sign, and sat there.

My only thought was something like "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

I looked right. No cars at the stop sign. I looked across Skyline. No cars across the way. I looked left. A truck approaching the stop sign would have to stop.

I pulled out left and around the car. The one STILL sitting there with its left turn signal on, not moving. I made the left turn, accelerating away, relief and adrenaline flooding my system.

I was just to the top of the next rise before the car even started turning left.

I'm sure I would have had clumps of hair missing, had I not make that preemptive left turn.

The game has to be less stressful that that drive.

So, as a kid, you know when your parents told you to do something that you didn't want to do? You really, really, really didn't want to do it?

At some point during your attempts to negotiate not doing that which you really really really didn't want to do, you somehow realized that, if you did it, and did it poorly, your parents (most likely your mother) would probably never ask you to do it again.

The trick was to do it so poorly that there would be no hope ever of your learning how to do that which you really, really, really didn't want to do.

Unless you had parents who took such a poor performance as a educational challenge, you were set, once you did it poorly the first time.

That's what I was thinking about when I fed the dogs today.

I was hoping that, by feeding the dogs the "wrong" way, Kris would decide that he, and only he, would be allowed to feed the dogs.

I didn't succeed, but I did have two very happy doggies:

Kris, Andy, Blue, Shadow, Annie, Bella and I went to a local school today for some exercise. Kris mostly walked around, arms stuck at his side, unable to lift them because of last Friday's workout. Andy and I ran around, played on the playground/jungle gym/obstacle course, trying to climb various poles, conquer different bars, shimmy up different structures. Kris, he watched.

As we were walking back to the cars, a process which always takes about ten times as long as you think it should, what with all the smells to smell and trees to claw, discs to chase and dogs to run over. Somehow, I was in front of Andy, and Kris, and Annie, and Shadow, and Blue. Bella was in front of me, keeping her distance from Blue, who, early in the walk, had run her over chasing a disc.

She's the smart one.

So, I turned back to say something to Kris, as Andy released a disc for Blue to catch. The throw was a beautiful low throw, a perfect throw for an easy catch, actually. As I noticed the throw, my thoughts were something like, "That's a nice throw." "Hey, I could catch that throw." "Oh, a dog."

Then bam! No, more like BAM!, only bigger.

Blue ran right through my knees on his way to the disc. Sure, he was still accelerating. Sure, he wasn't at top speed. Sure, my pivot point is about hip level.

We discovered this when I did, indeed, pivot at hip level to horizontal, then, as in a Road Runner cartoon, dropped straight down.

I landed on my shoulder, hip and knees, searing pain shooting up my shoulder, which has been semi-injured since late October of last year, and only started healing earlier this month when I started taking mega (MEGA) doses of ibubrofen at my doctor's orders.

I landed with a THUMP. I started crying.

Now, crying in pain is an okay response. It happens. When pain is sudden and severe, hey, crying is a natural response.

Except that from a distance, crying sounds a lot like laughing. Which is what Andy and Kris were doing.

Eventually, they wandered over to me and asked if I was okay. I said my shoulder hurt a lot. When Kris asked how much, I realized that I couldn't answer, because it didn't hurt much on Kris' pain scale (where he'll be moaning in pain at the top of his lungs, but when asked where it is on a scale from 1-10, he'll say 4), so I stopped moaning and got up.

Kris looked at me when I stood up and said, "You know, it's been a long time since you've had some bizarre accident," referring to the time a random dog ran out into an ultimate field and just clobbered me, or the time I caught a boomerang in the shoulder, or the time I caught a disc in the face and my braces broke through my lips (it was brillant cut!), or the time I broke my shoulder from some ultimate player crashing into me, or the time I had a concussion wrestling with Kris, or the time, yeah, well, it's been a while since I had one of those.

Although I'm annoyed my shoulder hurts again, I think the worst part was the fact I cried in front of Andy. I'm so mad at myself. Pain on a physical scale? 2. Pain on an embarrassment scale? 10. Argh.

My follow up to day 10's organizational effort.

before

after

Most everything was already in place, and in reach. I threw out the old dog medicines and the nutritional supplements I won't use. I moved the bowls we use most regularly down to the bottom shelf. I also moved the small plates we use more frequently than the big plates closer to the middle. The glasses we use most frequently, the glass ones as I don't use the plastic one very much since I learned the plastics leech environmental estrogens, are in the next shelf up. The big white chili bowls are off to the side, as are the other cups we use only rarely.

At some point, I'll need to clean out that top shelf, getting rid of all of the cups we never use. Maybe during some 20 minute fit of organization.

The fundamental idea of this suggestion is "make sure you know what you have," but also the golden rule from William Morris, "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

The specific suggestion here is to label your power chargers, though what nitwit would use masking tape to label their power supplies? Ugh, hello, nitwit-who-suggested-this, masking tape glue yellows and turns brittle with age. And that's after it gets all gooey from the heat of the powersupply.

No, don't use masking tape (retard who suggested that one, and I don't believe it was Erica - she gave the general suggestion, not the moronic specific).

Instead, use a silver sharpie!

It's permanent. It's visible on the black power supplies. It's perfect.

More importantly, no goo.

If you want, of course, you can use the black sharpie.

But, HEY! You can use the pink sharpie if you're adventurous!

Or, the blue one. Yeah, that one works, too, for the right power supply, like an Apple computer brick.

Who knew that getting organized could be so entertaining?

P.S. Thanks, Kyle and Emily, for inspiring me! I'm still cracking me up.