Lori is staying with us tonight. I picked her up from the airport tonight. We were like this -> <- with our timing, synchronizing her exiting baggage claim with my slow down drive-by-then-stop arrival at the curb. I think she might have waited one second.

On the way home from the airport, we were talking about life, catching up with the ins and outs of life, work, and, of course, ultimate. She's visiting this weekend to visit friends, but also to par-tay at tomorrow's End of Year Extravaganza, because, well, Mischief is so cool.

At one point, I asked her if she was going to Kaimana next February. I had been invited to play with the same group of women Lori is going to play with (said group being a fantastic group of women), but wanted to stop playing ultimate for a while to heal, build strength, and develop better generic athletic skills. That, and I'm probably going to have shoulder surgery for the shoulder I jammed on that (wonderful, glorious) layout.

Lori said she was going to go, and asked if I was going to go. When I said no, she said, "Oh, yeah, you're one of the quitters."

I laughed, and said, no, I was RETIRING, expecting to drop down to lower level of play in order to keep playing, but I wasn't expecting to stop playing ultimate completely.

The conversation moved on, but her words stuck with me, maybe more than they should have. Her words weren't meant in any mean way, but they still hurt a bit.

Quitting has such negative connotations. "I'm not a quitter!" and "Winners never quit!" and other platitudes about quitting. Why would I want to quit playing ultimate, some still in the passions of the sport might ask. I've certainly been in that state where I couldn't understand why anyone would want to retire, stop playing. Those people must have been insane, I'd think.

Yet, trying to rationalize why leaving elite utlimate is a good thing is hard in some respects, yet easy in other respects. I stopped developing as a player when Mischief started doing well. I've been injured for the last three years, barely playing at Nationals went I've gone. What fun can it be to take stats for Regionals and Nationals? What fun can it be to watch and never play? It's fun for a while, but it becomes less interesting the more you realize what you used to be able to do and can no longer do.

Though, I'm clearly not completely comfortable with the thought, though, as I refer to my decision as "leaving elite ultimate" instead of "quitting elite ultimate."

Eh, maybe I'm reading too much into this. It's only December. If I can heal over the winter and develop the skills I feel I'm lacking (think: 45 yard forehands, consistent backhand and forehand breakmarks, better form on my forehands, stronger hamstrings, and quicker feet on marking), then I'll probably continue playing at higher levels.

However, it'll be on a team where I actually play. And more than just practices.

My day today is a stark contrast to Kris' day today.

Where as Kris is at his company's office's holiday party, celebrating the year, toasting the successful times, planning for a great next year, I'm closing down my company after three years.

Which is not to say the company was a failure, it wasn't. It kept three people employed well for three years. We had some good projects. We hit some rough patches. I think that we all came out the other end still friends is a testament to the company, as well as the people who worked for it.

Yet, today is the day I go into work and tell Chris we're done, that he needs to look for another job. We have projects available for him, so he won't be without income if he doesn't want to be. Mike is already at working at his new company. Looks like just me at this point.

I wonder if I'll cry when I tell Doyle.

Wow.

Four years ago today, I installed this instance of Drupal, and started figuring out this blogging thing. Having spent most of my life trying to forget what happened that day, week, month, year, I had changed my mind and decided I wanted to remember. That forgetting habit is hard to break, though, and I needed help. Voila! Brain #4, external brain #2.

Go ahead, figure that one out. Post your solution in the comments.

It's close enough to the end of the year that a retrospective wouldn't be out of place. So, here it is, my life thus far. In pie charts.

Really, I've wanted to do this since kottke.org linked to flipflopflying.com's personal pie charts "report". I didn't have any pie chart generator, and wasn't about to generate them by hand, but hadn't really looked for any generator until Google published their Chart API Well, then, the list of pie charts I've had for the last nine months could be generated. Voila!

Update: Ah, I just realized that the colors on charts with similar information aren't consistent. I'll chalk this up to a learning experience and do better next year when I add, "% life writing pie chart reports."

Mom and I spent the day making monkey bread. I say, "the day making monkey bread," because it seemed to take for-ev-ver to make.

Mom's mother used to make monkey bread for the family when Mom was younger. She made it for years for the family. Mom loved the smell of monkey bread cooking as a child; today's smell brought back memories. Seeing her smile and remember her childhood was nice.

Making the monkey bread took a long while. It had to be mixed up, left to rise, punched down, left to rise again, torn into little pieces, coated in cinnamon and sugar, left to rise yet again, and drowned in a crap load of cinnamon sugar syrup. At one point, during the torn into little pieces part, the balls looked like little poop balls in a bucket:

Dinner time, we finally started eating the monkey bread. We, of course, started with the pieced on top. You know, the ones that had been soaking in the cinnamon sugar syrup.

According to Mom, her mom stopped making monkey bread after accidently switching salt for sugar in the recipe one year, making some of the worst monkey bread ever. My grandmother was apparently horribly embarrassed and, well, once she was embarrassed, did her best to never do that same action again, to avoid further embarrassment.

How limiting must her life have become in the end... to never take chances for fear of embarrassment.

Mom and I were totally trying to cram as much into the day as we possibly could. We finished nearly all of today's errands: picking up prints, picking up the mail, stopping by warehouse store, getting bread for dinner, each lunch, buy an ice cream cone to keep our strength up. We stopped by the house earlier today, in the middle of the errands, to check on her supplies, then dashed off to the local craft store, 50% off coupons in hand.

Mom wanted to try her hand at block printing.

Karen, Eric's sister, was a printmaker. I remember, years ago, maybe 2002, giving Eric's parents a block print Christmas card I had made. This particular Christmas, we were both Moxie sitting and heading down to Eric's parents' house for Christmas. Karen was also there, and was interested in the card I had given her parents. I had no idea she was a printmaker, much less a college instructor on printmaking. Had I known, I'm sure I would have been much too intimidated to give her parents a linoleum block print card for Christmas.

She was good natured about it, so I wasn't nearly as intimidated as I probably should have been. Her print works are amazing, but I didn't know this until after I gave her one of my block prints.

So, Mom and I are working on block prints today. Mom's print is a bird that saw on a card sitting next to us when we were trying to figure out what designs to start with. I stuck with the tried and true: an oak leaf and an acorn.