Why, oh, why do I continue to fly? Why not just stop travelling, or stick with driving. Ignoring the fact I'm more likely to die driving than flying, or even riding a bike to work, I can't stand flying and am tired of being stressed out by the experience.

Let's start with the lines. There are hundreds of people in these lines. Each of them doesn't want to be in this line. Each of them is trying to get through the line as fast as possible.

So, what do I do in the line? Two hours of sleep where I woke up every 15 minutes meant I was the one who held up the line. I'm the one who took three times longer than the five people behind me. I'm the one who didn't have my ID out when I needed to. I'm the one who didn't plan ahead. Not enough sleep makes me completely inefficient. To all of the people who also showed up at the airport with only five minutes before the baggage cutoff happened, yeah, yeah, it's my fault: show up to the airport earlier next time.

Next up after baggage claim? The security line. The security line where people with no power in life, having never earned the right to that power nor the respect necessary to receive that power, are in a position to dominate the people who come through the security checkpoint. If a person talks back, or, heaven forbids, asks a legitimate questions (like, who do they work for and what right do they have to ask for my identification?), they'll be detained, possibly missing their flight, all on the whim of the idiot security checkpoint personnel.

Fact, you don't have to show your identification to fly, and, even if you did, you would show it to a TSA employee and NOT a random person who asks for it. Check their badges - if it doesn't state TSA and you ask to see his identification, you will guaranteed be searched and detained and harassed. Try it some time. You can make it through to the flight without showing any identification.

Another reason to hate the security lines is because the identification check is a joke. Next time you check in online, save the ticket as a PDF or image. Then, next time you need to go to the gate, edit the ticket, putting in today's date, print, and off you go.

And the no liquids or gels over three ounces rule? Don't declare them before you go through the x-ray machine. 75% of the time, they'll make it through fine. If they don't, declare ignorance and throw them away.

Yeah, annoying, worthless actions called "security" piss me off.

So, after checking my one bag, then making it through the security line, I went to the gate counter to see if there were other seats available. Flying across the county in the middle seat, with little sleep, is not a fun thought, so it was a reasonable request. As I approached the counter, two people rushed in front of me.

Fortunately, I was tired, and didn't immediately pushed them back. They were both receiving new boarding passes, presumably to sit in first class. I waited until they were done, and explained I was in the middle seat, were there any window or aisle seats available? In full liar mode, she immediately looked down at her screen, played with her hair and, in sharp contrast to the bellowing words she used moments before with the previous customers, spoke very softly, saying there were no seats available at all, I would have to stay in the seat I was in.

I was too tired, and at this point completely angry, to answer, including the two boarding passes you JUST ripped up, did you bother to frackin' look at them?

So, I spent the five hour flight sitting in the middle seat. Fortunately, I spent the first three hours drifting in and out of sleep, and the last two buried in the slides for my talk. Turns out, after I looked up from my slides, one of the two fellow passengers asked me about them. We chatted about computers, work, websites, ultimate, exercise in general and other topics. The conversation was quite enjoyable, broken only by another pleasant conversation with the other fellow passenger sitting to my other side.

The two of them nearly, close but not quite, made up for the horrible start of the day. I managed to secure a business card from one guy. The other one, all I know about him is that he lives in Maryland and works for N.I.S.T, which we joked meant National Institute of Something Technical.

I'll be glad when this day is over, as it'll mean I'll be in Boston, will have met Emily and had an opportunity to chat with George.

Oh, and go to bed. I am so tired.

Time for bed, for two whole hours, two and a half, if I'm lucky. It's 3:30 am, my flight is at 7:20 am, and I'm tired. I've downloaded a list of flickr ultimate photos, which, if I can stay awake on the flights and be motivated, I'll stick in my talk.

Why do I always do this? Why am I always up until some ridiculous hour the night before an early flight?

More importantly, why do I schedule these early morning flights?

In four hours, I'll be off to Boston for my UCPC talk on Saturday.

No, I'm not stressed.

Okay, yes I am.

My desk at work is the first desk anyone coming into the office sees. I find this placement a bit tragic, as I'm probably the least personable person in the office.

When the front door opens, I can turn to see who is coming in the door, and greet him as needed. It's a double edged sword: I can greet him immediately, but I'm also the one accosted with solicitors.

The REALLY loud neighbor next door recently moved out. When they did, Doyle snagged their NO SOLICITORS sign and put it outside our door. I don't know if the drop in door-to-door solicitors is because of this sign or just a natural lull in random people who love smack-downs knocking on our door.

Today, however, is an exception to the blissful break in obnoxious people forcing us to be obnoxious back when the word "No" doesn't cause them to back down.

With no knock on a door, a man in his mid-twenties came into the office today, carrying a small box and an overly enthusiastic smile. With too much on my task list today, I immediately said, "No solicitors."

His response?

"I'm not soliciting, but thanks for assuming that, ma'am."

Without missing a beat, I responded, "Okay, what's up?"

"We're taking a survey."

Because barging into my office, occupying my time, and asking for my information and knowledge without really asking me for permission isn't any more of an imposition than trying to sell me something, right?

"That's just as bad as soliciting. No, thank you."

To his credit, he did leave immediately.

I looked over at Doyle, as my gaze was returning to my monitor, a look of incredible disbelief on his face.

"I'd think if I really wanted you to take my survey, I wouldn't give you a snotty answer to a soliciting question."

Yeah. You'd think.

Kate sent me a note a couple weeks ago, a forward from an RSD post from a local student seeking a coach for a local university's women's ultimate team. She asked if I was interested in joint coaching the team.

After several fits, starts and miscommunications, we finally connected with the team, and signed up. We were to be Coach Kitt and Coach Kate. Exciting! I think it'll work out well, since one or the other of us can cover practice, what with Kate travelling for work and my heading out for my UCPC talk, or ultimate tournaments, or just plain exhaustion from too much overplanning.

Practice is from 9-11 PM, which is just painfully late for an athletic endeavour to me. I can't figure out how the university managed to secure the late night lights schedule with the surrounding town. But they did, and that's when the fields are open, and last Thursday is when I went to my first practice with the team.

There were eleven players at practice. When I showed up, the team was doing a square drill. They were running it slowly, but started running harder as, one by one, they realized "Coach" was there.

I think I did okay, for my first run at coaching. They played better than I was led to believe they could play. All of them could catch, and all of them had the basic fundamentals of throwing. If the players stick with the sport, they can become very good.

I often feel uncomfortable with telling people what to do. There's a certain state of mind I can get into where I don't mind it, and can be very good at the leader role, but it's not a typical state for me and I have to work at it.

In this case, I did okay. I tried to encourage with everything I did, learn as many names as I could and be as positive as possible. In the end, however, I was still essentially bossing them around.

The next practice is tomorrow. Kate should be there, which should be very good: having a coach who can play will be very advantageous.

Kris has started calling me "Coach Kitt." Cracks me up.

For the first time since we started working out at Velocity Sports, I went to class without Kris. Kris has been several times without me, because of illness and injuries on my part, but I hadn't gone without him yet (mostly because our routine includes his driving us home instead of my taking the train back home). Tonight was double train: an easy way to use up that 10 ride ticket.

I'm definitely not comfortable with my hamstring yet. There's a fine line between strengthening my hamstring and reinjuring it: I want to be as close to that line as possible, I'd much rather not cross it.

So, imagine my consternation upon realizing today's workout was all about legs and, in particular, hamstrings.

I had to skip the running parts, instead biking for a small part of the aerobic exercise I'd prefer to be doing.

After the workout, Derek handed me a bag of ice to put on my hamstring on the "drive" home. Instead, I stood at the front desk and spent a couple minutes shoving the bag down my pants.

I'm sure that was good for business.

I walked to the train station, with the bag in my pants. Since I arrived early, I sat to wait for the train, not quite realizing the bag was open. When the train arrived fifteen minutes later, I stood up to discover my pants were sopping wet, in the exact pattern that screamed to everyone looking at me, "Look! I peed my pants!"

A lovely ride home, that was.