The tournament the college team I'm coaching was heading to this weekend moved from Stanford to Modesto, pretty much at the last minute. I had arranged to drive some of the team to Stanford on Saturday morning, but had my Friday night planned for cleaning the house before George and his family arrived tomorrow.

So much for that plan. They'll arrive to see my house is its usual disarray. Darn it.

I drove to Santa Clara and was slightly late, arriving at 8:55 instead of 8:45. I should have realized this wasn't a problem: the team was on ultimate time. We left the Frisbee house, where many of the men's team players live, around 9:20, arriving at the hotel around 10:50 at night. Now, normally arriving so late isn't an issue, afterall, we practice until 11 at night. Today, though, I was tired from the 6:00 am wakeup and 7:00 am workout.

My car, with Sarah, Julie, Mackenzie and Kaitlin, arrived to find we were in the remote room, a double smoking-permitted room. I had asked at hte front desk when we arrived if any rooms were availalbe, and was told the only room they had was a single bed smoking. Since I was going to be in a smoking room anyway, with the stench of previous smoking tennants, I figured my own bed would be preferable to the floor.

Maybe I should have just kicked one of the players out of bed.

When I went to see about that previoiusly available smoking room, I mentioned I'd prefer a non-smoking room if anyone had cancelled. Somehow, I managed to arrive five minutes after someone had cancelled. $52 dollars later, and I had a room with three extra bed spaces. I went to where I thought the men's team was staying and knocked on the door.

The door flew open, and a waggling tongue, "ahhhhHhhh!" greeted me. When the eyes on the face owning the tongue opened, the player immediately stood up, looking a little embarrassed, "Oh, sorry."

"No problem. Anyone in here want a bedspace? I'm two doors down. The only requirement is that you need to let me sleep."

Fifteen minutes later, the room was asleep.

So, I was sitting with my computer on my lap, typing away at the couch, with the television playing some popular show in the background. I was "watching" the episode, which means I was peripherally listening to the show, but mostly concentrating on my work in front of me.

Sitting on the couch is just the worst for movement: I sink into the cushions and just stop moving. Bad for burning those extra 800 calories a day with constant fidgeting, but useful for relaxing.

To my surprise, after a bit of working, I had been so still that a spider crawled up my arm during a concentration pause. When I felt the movement on my arm, and looked down to see it's little black body, I yelped, jumped up and brushed it off.

A few minutes later, Kris walked in. "Did I hear a squawk?"

"Yes! There was a spider crawling on me, and it was THIS BIG!"

He laughed, and wandered into the kitchen.

A few minutes later, the spider was back, and this time, it was crawling across my hand. It was then that I realized that no, this wasn't a spider, spiders don't walk across hands. Oh. My. Tick!

I shrieked, jumped up, slammed my computer down on the table, brushed the tick off my hand and dashed around the table. "Tick! Tick! Tick!"

Moments later, Kris rounded the corner in the kitchen, milk in one hand, pizza in the other, watching me dance at the small bug on the pillow on the couch.

"You know, you can be such a girl sometimes."

"Yes, yes, I know, kill the tick for me, will you?"

Turns out, today's tick didn't attach to Annie on her off-leash run earlier in the day. Instead. it hitched a ride, looking for redder pastures than the muscle-y dog.

Redder pastures. Like my hip, no doubt.

Two Fridays ago, Kris and I went to Seattle and visited with Ben, Lisa and Jake. Ben, at one point, showed us Jake's Michelin Man legs and arms, where his baby fat rolls jiggled and folded. At some point soon, Jake will hit his second baby growth spurt and lose all of the jiggles. Until then, however, Ben is showing it off.

On Wednesday night last week, at communal dinner, I mentioned we had journeyed north and seen Jake, and wasn't he just the most adorable butterball? Beth commented that, look, everyone has a line on his arm, just above his elbow, where his roll of baby fat made a permanent crease in the skin. No, really, look, look.

We all looked, and sure enough, we all had those lines. Sure, some were really faint, almost invisible, but still there.

So, today on the drive from the airport with Kris and Heather, we talked about this fact when Heather and I were catching up. When I said everyone has this crease, here, look, look, Kris chimed in, "No, not everyone."

Well, the man with less than 4% body fat could be right, but I wasn't going to admit it any time soon. I pulled up his shirt sleeve and tried to find his crease. "It's there," I insisted, looking.

We found Heather's really fast, and mine was findable. Kris' not so much. "Well, it's there."

"No, it's not."

"Yes, it is. You just can't see it."

"If I can't see it, doesn't that mean it's not there?"

"There's a subcutaneous crease that isn't visible from the surface. So, yes, just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there."

"Okay."

"Okay? That's it? I won the argument? I can't believe you're giving up that easily."

"You used 'subcutaneous' in an argument. How can you not win?"

Heather piped up from the back seat, "You two are such geeks."

Kris and I had to leave for the airport just as our semi-final game started. We beat the Hawaii team that had taken us out in quarters for the last three years, making that victory very sweet.

Beth filled us in on the outcome:

I don't know exact scores very well, but here's the basic story of
what happened.  We went up on the bunnies by a good margin, maybe 8-5.
 They were making unforced errors and we were playing solid and
aggresively and were able to capitalize.  They then went for a run to
bring it up to about 9-8 when we called time out to stop momentum.
There continued to be an echange of points and we were able to tie it
at 12s by playing for field position in this gusty upwind downwind
field.  Both teams were looking pretty good, though I think we were
starting to make a few more errors than before.  The game was hard
capped at 12-13, and then the bunnies managed to score, ending the
game at 14-12.  Truly, it could have gone either way.  We almost made
it to the finals baby!
    Although playing in the finals would have been cool (especially
for bragging rights) we were down to 10 playing at that point and
pretty tired, and I don't think we minded getting to sit and watch and
eat poke.