I rarely sign my credit cards. Instead, I'll write "See License" or "See ID" on the back of the cards, requesting the clerk to visually compare the signature on the receipt to the signature on the identification, and the photo on the ID to the face smiling back at them. I figure, if I can duplicate someone else's signature as easily as I can, someone else can forge mine just as easily, and I want that visual identity check to happen if I'm going to be held financially responsible for a transaction.

It worked for a long while, maybe ten years. I was asked for identification for maybe 90% of the time. I had even called the various credit card companies to confirm this practice was okay. With most of them, at the time, it was.

About three or four years ago (those years are all a blur now, if only I'd be journalling then!), I went into a Best Buy to purchase something or other, and went to pay by credit card. The clerk refused to accept my credit card unless it was signed on the back. The card with "See License" on the back and my driver's license wasn't good enough, the card had to be signed. The store had recently issued the refusal policy, and all the clerks were adamantly adhering to it.

So, I asked, "If I sign the card right here in front of you, will you accept it?"

When the clerk answered, "Yes," I told her to cancel the transaction, I would never be purchasing anything from any store with such a stupid policy, cancel the transaction.

The sale wasn't small. It was around $400, maybe $500. She was shocked. Why was I cancelling the transaction?

The card was no more legitimate with my signature as it was without it, if I had stolen it, I told her. My signature which I signed right there in front of her would match the signature of the receipt I signed right there in front of her, because I was signing both at the same time. I refused to be party to such an idiotic policy that stated my signing a potentially stolen card made the card valid, when requesting you check my signature on the receipt to government issued identification wasn't valid. I then went on to tell her I would stand her, blocking her check-out lane until she cancelled that transaction, lest she run it through, charge my card, and keep the merchandise for herself.

She looked at me stunned for a few moments, then turned, and cancelled the transaction. I think my parting, "Have a nice day!" ruined the rest of her evening.

This memory came to mind today when I was heading through the security line at the Boston airport. As I approached the line, I had suddenly realized that this was the origination airport of the 9/11 flights, and this was most likely one of the terminals and security checkpoints, as I was flying out on United. The hard-fought conquer of my long-seated fear of flying suddenly felt quite temporary.

At that point, I shut down as many emotions as I could, and walked to the end of the security line. Tuesday afternoons aren't very crowded in any airports, I would guess, and today was no exception. One hop, one skip, and one shoe-removing jump later, I was on the other side of the security waiting for my bag to come through the x-ray machine.

The screener asked to put it through again, and I shrugged my shoulders, sure. Back through it went, one time, two times. "If you tell me what you're looking for, I'll open the bag up and hand it to you to look at," I offered.

They glared at me in return.

Eventually, they gave up trying to figure out what the problem item was, and asked to open bag, pulling out my Pelican travel kit, my Apple Airport Express, my United snack box from the flight out, my retainer case, and a pair of my underwear for yet another trip through the x-ray machine.

Kitt's travel tip #32: always carry a pair of clean underwear on the plane with you. If your flight is diverted, and you have to stay the night somewhere unexpected, you can wear the same socks, you can wear the same pants, you can wear the same shirt. However, wearing the same underwear is just gross - pack an extra pair.

When I packed that pair, I honestly wasn't expecting it to be contraband.

It wasn't even a lacy pair: they were plain, cotton, red, bikini-cut undies.

Fortunately, they were clean.

So back through the x-ray machine went my assortment of items, and back out they came, with the United snack box being the source of the offending item. The TSA guy pulled it out of the box, and asked what was in it. I answered, "I honestly don't know, I purchased it on the flight out, and figured if United gave it to me on the plane, it contained nothing of any security threat. Do you know what's in it? Did the x-ray show you?"

He wasn't humoured and opened the box.

Well, tried to open the box. He couldn't get the plastic seal off the box in any timely, graceful way, eventually putting it up to his mouth to plastic to initiate a tear, pulling the plastic off, pulling the box pull-tab and opening the box. He then pulled out a small bottle, and told me it couldn't go on the plane.

I looked at it in his hand, then took it from him to see what it was. At the moment I snatched the jar from his hand, I had images of another flight years ago when a TSA agent refused to let me have back what I accidently had left in a bag, and Kris' unwillingness to help me at that incident and his insistence I "not make a scene" almost ended our relationship. I refuse to allow another person make me feel as powerless as I did at that moment, one by fake power, the other by embarrassment.

The TSA agent in front of me seemed flustered that I had grabbed the jar from him, but he waited as I looked at the label, and handed it back to him. It was a two ounce jar of hummus.

As anyone who knows me would predict, I asked him, "It's a two ounce jar. Why can't I take it on the plane?"

His answer was less than satisfactory. "Because you can't."

"Why can't I?"

"Because you can't."

"It's two ounces. It's less than the three ounces all of the regulations state are allowed. Why not?"

Now, I'm standing there with all of the rest of my stuff. In one bag I have, undeclared, a 4 ounce container of apple sauce that went through not only this security screening, but TWO of them went through the San Jose security screening four days ago. In the other bag, I have, once again undeclared, two packets of energy GEL (you know, of the liquid and gel prohibition), twelve containers full of saline solution, a container of lip balm gel, and two ounces of sunscreen. All of this is undeclared. All of this is packed deep in my backpack or on top of my computer bag. All of this the first TSA agent has seen and RECOGNIZED, as he paused when he took the items out of my bag, and looked at them intently.

He didn't pull out any of these items. He didn't confiscate any of these items. But the two ounce jar? The TWO ounce jar of humus? It can't go on the flight.

"Uh... you can't... He'll explain it," he answered, and walked over to the shift leader. "Explain why she can't take this one the plane," he requested, handing the shift leader the two ounce jar of hummus.

The shift leader looked at it, looked up, and automatically said, "You can't take this on the plane."

"Now wait a second, here's what happened." I explained the box, and stopped him from interupting me several times until my story was done, and finished, "It's a two ounce jar of hummus, why can't it go on the plane when it's clearly less than the three ounces stated?"

"Was it in a plastic bag?"

"No."

"It can't go on because you didn't declare it."

"Because I didn't declare it by putting it in a plastic bag?"

"Right. If you don't declare it, we don't trust you, and you can't take it on the plane."

"You're serious?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"So, if I put it in a plastic bag...."

"You have a plastic bag?"

"Yes, I have a plastic bag," thinking, duh, what kind of an idiot do you think I am? I have five plastic bags because other people will be caught in the evil TSA frackin' RETARDED WEB OF STUPID POWER TRIPS TO ANNOY ALL OF US rules and need the bags for help. Oh wait, you think I'm of the TSA idiot kind. "If I put the jar in a plastic bag right now, and walked out that way, and came back in through the x-ray machine right now, you'd let me take it on the plane."

"Yes, ma'am."

Exasperated, "Really?"

"Yes, ma'am."

I was stunned.

I turned around and walked away, calling cheerfully over my shoulder, "Enjoy the hummus!"

Today was my last day in Boston before I head home to Kris, the doggen, work, and coaching. My last day of being a Bostonian tourist. I had a number of items left on my list to da, which included seeing Faneuial Hall, parts of the Freedom Trail, the general downtown architecture, and the Harbour. I had planned to see at least one of these yesterday, but spent the day in the Museum of Science instead.

Shock! Me? Science?

Not.

George had told me last night that he wasn't going to let me take the train into town today and drag my suitcase and all the other crap I had with me around on my siteseeing adventures. Instead, he would be able to drive me into town for a short tour, being my tourguide.

Whoo!

Because I slept in so late, we ended up on a fantastic whirlwind tour of downtown. George showed me the various styles of brick architecture, different eras and styles in different parts of town, then parked the car under the Boston Commons, in an underground parking structure with the park on top.

California needs to clue into more efficient use of space like this. Way needs to. Take the earthquakes in stride and start building down.

We then walked through the park, found the Freedom Trail, toured a itsy bitsy cemetary, walked past the Fanueial Hall, through the Quincy Market behind it, over the Big Digg to the North End, which ends at the Harbour. I then had my very own Boston Tea Party (with real English tea from George's wife, Ruth). I was laughing so hard I'm not sure any of the photos did the moment justice.

George then led us further along the Freedom Trail, a red line that runs through the city, along many (16?) historic markers and buildings. We went through Little Italy (or the Boston equivalent, if that's not the correct name), and stopped at the North End Church, where Paul Revere put up his two "one if by land, two if by sea" lanterns before racing the ten miles on horse to Lexington.

The most interesting part of the church, other than it's historical reference, was the high walls between the pews. Basically, every pew had a little cubby hole where people could pray and no one else could see you there. Hell, you could have sex during mass and no one would know.

We wandered back along the trail to the Daily Catch for lunch, and then hoofed it back to the car in time for George to drive me to the airport and me to check in my bag in time.

Once again, I had a retarded journey through the security line, with amazingly stupid TSA workers manning the lines. I swear, I need to get a job at one of these places, just so that I can start yelling at my fellow employees, "STOP BEING MORONS!"

But that's the subject of another post. For now, my Boston adventure is over. George, Ruth and Frances are some of the most wonderful hosts I've ever had (and wonderful people I've ever met). Unfortunately, they introduced me to the most amazing hot fudge sauce. I may have to order them more as a bigger thank you note for hosting me for my first Boston adventure...

What the hell is it with my body and ultimate? I swear, my breasts grow the size of cooking pumpkins just before every important ultimate tournament. They've done this for the last four years and it's getting very annoying. There's only so many times you can allow your left breast to have an amazing block of your own throw before it becomes quite annoying.

At this point, though I would have to argue that the super-sonic breast enlargement trick is not just for ultimate tournaments any more. They grew huge for my UCPC talk, too. I'm walking around with two ten pound weights on my chest thinking, "Does this make me look fat?"

Stupid breasts.

Hi, Mom!

So, other than being a bit nervous for my to-be-given-twice talk, I found today to be absolutely fantastic. In terms of a conference I wanted to attend, this one fit the bill, as it had more sessions that I wanted to attend than timeslots that allowed me to attend. Fortunately, several sessions were taped, and material is available for download, so I can still feel like I heard Jim Parinella talk (I didn't, darnit, nor did I introduce myself to him, as I wanted to), and learn more about mental toughness from Tiina (I hadn't, but only because the thought of learning marking techniques from Ben Wiggins overwhelmed all thoughts of mental toughnesses).

I started out the conference (not the day, as that started with a valiant but ultimately futile attempt to wake up early, shower, dress and dash out of the room without waking up Gwen and Miranda) wondering if the Keynote by Dr. Allan Goldberg was going to be as good as his book, Sports Slumpbusting.

It was better.

The keynote was, of course, a short distillation of his book: you can't put days, weeks, months of training into an hour talk to a general audience. However, with the foundation of the book, or any other type of mental toughness book, the talk was enjoyable, entertaining and informative. I took away both the opening anecdote's quote ("Training is 95% physical and 5% mental. Competing it's the opposite: 95% mental and 5% training."), as well as the thought, "Losing focus won't hurt you in competition. Not refocusing will."

Dr. Goldberg is a very dynamic speaker, able to capture and hold the audience's attention well, which made the talk fun. He had several demonstrations on focus, about how it can be difficult and how focusing on the wrong thing can have disastrous effects on one's performance quality. He hinted at mental chatter, but not extensively, and talked about how the thinking part of the brain (the fore-brain) is good for analyzing during practice, but needs to stfu and let the unconscious part of the brain (the hind-brain) just do its job during competition.

After Dr. Goldberg was done, I moved to the front of the auditorium for Ben Wiggin's talk on Marking Strategies. Ben arrived, as near as I could tell, moments before his talk was scheduled to begin, but started in as if nothing was amiss and he hadn't just spent the last 18 hours trying to make a simple cross country trip that should have taken all of 5 hours tops.

Ben had many good points, and encouraged everyone to ask questions during his talk, so that, in his words, he could feel comfortable like he's talking to his team and not uncomfortable like he's lecturing to us. Sound advice. His slides were full of pictures his mother had taken, which humoured me, as my presentation also had slides by his mother, but his were "used with permission." Detail there.

Ben talked about "back blocking" initially. I took this to be stepping, or moving the outstretched hand on the thrower's release side backwards (6"? 12"? he didn't say), instead of straight out. Doing so gives you more reaction time and reduces the chance of a foul.

Another interesting point Ben made is a staggered stance, not straddling over the marker's position, but with the marker's non-force side foot slightly back, and the force side foot slightly forward. This allows the marker to both move more quickly (presumably because of balance, though I'll have to follow up on that), and avoid thrower-drawn fouls. Ben aslo talkd about the transistion from defensive pursuit to marking, which, admittedly, is one of my least thought about transitions (and one ripe for improvement).

The second part of his talk was about different team defensive strategies, most of which were brilliant for the personnel on the respective teams who played them, but weren't necessarily applicable for any team I'm (currently) on.

The next session time slot was my first talk, so I, well, talked. This presentation went not so well, as my voice cracked, and I missed a lot of my examples. I blame my lack of presentation notes because of system issues (where system issues = bad user input = bah!). After this session, I wandered over for lunch, which I found tasty, and the Ultimate Expo. CMU had a table, so I purchased a Mr. Yuk disc for Kris so that he'll have one to throw, instead of hoarding his last one from college.

I had one more talk to go to, one in the third session. My personal choices were between Jim Parinella's decision making in ultimate talk and Dan Cogandrew and Bryan Doo's Ultimate fitness talk. Peter, whom I met last night at the train station, as George took Emily and me from the airport to the hotel via the train station to pick up Peter, suggested the training session, as he heard the handouts from Parinella's talk would cover much of the presentation topic. Since I'm always a big fan of training, that was all the nudge I needed.

I chose well with that nudge.

Bryan went over, with demonstrations, some stance adjustments in a marking stance that help with both power and quickness (hint: put weight on the balls of your feet), as well as some remarkably timely hamstring exercises (yes, the swiss ball curls I do are the best).

Bryan also had some incredibly impressive foot work drills that he demonstrated on stage. He placed two flat circles on the stage, spaced a handwidth apart. He then moved, balanced, sideways, putting his leading foot into the far hoop, his trailing foot into the close hoop, then his leading foot past the two hoops, his trailing foot following. Bryan then reversed the direction and went back in the same pattern. After amazing us with his ability to move sideways at lightning speeds, he then described how to perform this move correctly (as in balanced).

After watching his demonstration, I realized how much I miss Gino as a trainer. Gino didn't play ultimate, but he understood better than any of my current trainers about balance and quickness and agility. Well, perhaps he doesn't understand it better, more so he emphasized it more, and taught it specifically, which helped me become a better athlete. I miss that. So, I did the next best thing.

I risked being late to the next session, you know, the one where I gave my second talk, and went to the UCPC expo to purchase Dan and Bryan's DVD. If only for the scene of Bryan traversing those hoops, the DVD will be worth it. I can't wait to show it to Kris.

The Future of Ultimate panel was next, lead by Kyle Weisbrod. I'm always happy to see Kyle, but our schedules didn't match up, so I wasn't able to say much more than, "Hi!" I'm glad he's on the board of the UPA. The board really, really, really needed a staff member's (or in Kyle's case, ex-staff member's) perspective to understand where to move, and I'm glad that such a move worked out well for Kyle.

Many of the presenters went out to Ted Munter's place for dinner. Ted was the Team USA coach two years ago. Based on some of the stories I heard about his behaviour as coach of Team USA, I couldn't in clear conscious partake of his hospitality, and so declined an invitation to join the group of speakers. Many of the group knew each other very well, had a good history together, which also contributed a bit to my decision not to go, as I'm not part of that history, and feel awkward standing outside that group looking in.

The decision turned out great, because it meant that Peter and I were able to head out to dinner and talk about the conference, about ultimate, about how strangely rude people in Boston were, and his research. All very interesting topics. As Gwen and Miranda didn't stumble into the room until 4:30 am, a migraine-inducing time for me, I was quite happy again with my choice to have dinner locally.

A grand day. Well planned. Well executed. And well worth the stress of putting together my presentation. I'm honored that I was selected to present, that 45 people came to listen to me, and that I was able to, in some small way perhaps, help their games.

I'd like to thank my husband for his support during the last two trying months as I prepared for the talk. And George and Tiina for organizing the conference and selecting me to speak in the first place. And I want to thank my fans, I never would have made it here without you. Okay, end of my acceptance speech.

I am now done with my talks here at the UCPC. The second one went much, much better than the last one. Not only did I have the previous presentation under my belt, with the squeaky voice and all, but I also had my presentation notes, as the display was working properly. User error, I'm afraid. I had the "Mirror Displays" option checked in my system prefs. Sigh. One of those moments (happily fixed on the second talk).

I'm actually surprised at how much better the second talk went. The first talk had a lot of questions. My talk took 45 minutes the first time, and about 47 minutes the second time. The first talk had a lot of questions, the second talk had significantly fewer. So, either I integrated the questions and their answers in the second talk, or the participants cared less, or they simply didn't have any questions.

I'll be posting my talk on my latest ultimate-related project, recsportdisc.com. Who knows, based on my past record with these projects, just how well this site is going to grow, but I've wanted to build the site to be a rec.sport.disc newsgroup portal, article posting, blog syndication, and other entertaining ultimate related information. We'll see how it goes.

Right now, I'm unbelievably relieved at being done with the talk. I'm not 100% sure how my talks were received. I had three people walk out of the second talk, though none in the first. After both talks, however, I had someone come up to me and thank me for the talk, very enthusiastically thank me. Those two people made all the stress and all the time and effort I put into my talk well worth it.

The next two days, I'm a tourist. I'm excited about this. Heaven forbid, a moment of relaxation.