When I injured my hamstring ten days ago, my frustrations with my health rose dramatically. I want this season, the 2007 club season, to be my swan song, and for that to happen, I have to be in fantastic shape to make the team. Mischief has little sympathy for under-performers, offering practice spots for those whose athleticism has declined with age. I don't know that I'd particularly mind having a second National Championship playing Women's Masters (where the minimum age is 30), but I'd much rather have it in Mixed with Mischief.

The biggest issue in tryouts this season will be fitness. Since running has thus far been out of the question (my being unable to straighten my left leg when sitting down, my leg at 90°), I've been struggling to find other activities. I'd really like to go swimming with Megan, but we haven't quite connected on that endeavour yet. I'm still hoping, especially since Megan will most likely be able to help me become more water efficient: I can get from one side of the pool to the other, but my dogs who hate water have more water grace than I do.

Unless, of course, we're pool jump racing. Then I kick butt.

Horsing around several days ago, I pulled out the jump rope and started jumping. I managed very few jumps, maybe twenty straight, which is lame, but I managed them without harming my hamstring any further. Very excited, I jumped around sixty or so straight.

Kris watched me, then said, he'd challenge me. He then jumped hundred jumps (without breaking a sweat, actually). My turn to jump. He decided that the most he could increase the target number is by 50%, regardless of how many he jumped, but that I could over jump him as much as I could manage.

The next day, my second set of jump increases made the count all of 102. Kris easily increased it to 151 that day. It seems each time I overjumped Kris, he just outjumped me like he'd been doing it all his life. Mostly because he has: his best is 11000 jumps in a row, when he was 18. That number took him about an hour to jump.

So, 151 from Kris, 165 from me, 235 from him over the next few days.

Today, I decided I was going to jump 1000 jumps, not necessarily all at once, with secondary goals of not re-injuring my hamstring and also jumping over 235 jumps.

My 1013 jumps were in sets of 6, 53, 245, 12, 15, 74, 47, 74, 47, 18, 6, 10, 112, 9, 56, 70, 18, 77, 16, and 110 jumps.

My third set of 245 beat Kris' 235, resetting the jump count to 245, where Kris could jump a maximum of 1.5 * 245, or 367. After finishing up strong with my 110 jumps, Kris stood up and declared I inspired him with my 1000 jumps for the day.

So, he jumped 994 in a row.

I have a long way to go.

After his father called, Kris mentioned to me that we should plan on heading down to San Diego to visit with Kris' parents the weekend after we play at Kaimana. I looked at him, then jumped at the opportunity to spend an extra few days with him, away from ultimate, away from the dogs, away from work, and, oddly enough, away from the Bay Area.

Well...

Jumped if jumped also means declaring we'd take an extra day to travel so that the 9-10 hour drive to San Diego and the other 9-10 hour drive back home from San Diego don't occur within two days of each other, making 18 hours of driving for maybe 18 hours of time with his parents. The stress of driving that long, coupled with the stress of travelling so much (Boston, Philadelphia, Oahu, then San Diego within a five week block), would easily frustrate me.

The talk degenerated rapidly into a close-to-an-argument heated discussion, as Kris offered to cancel going to Kaimana because of the expense, refused to take time off from work to head down to San Diego to see his parents, and I refused to drive down if we didn't take an extra day off, and neither of us really wanted to fly. We both know that each flying trip steals a year off my life in stress (of o-m-g the loss of control when flying!) and aggravation (of o-m-g idiot TSA agents who have finally found a place of POWER in their otherwise powerless existences) and frustration (of o-m-g delays this and delays that and exactly how much did I just pay for this wilted piece of iceberg lettuce and E Coli chicken?).

I told Kris to just go by himself. I'd stay home and watch the dogs (reducing the need for a dog sitter, as well as the stress of things), and he could spend the weekend with his parents.

Kris has stopped going to my family events unless I beg and throw in the spouse card and cash in lots of previously-earned brownie points. With this trip, I've now stopped going to his family events, too.

I sorta feel like this decision is bad, in that, although it eliminates many of the stressors (Kris can travel when he wants, minimizing missed work time, we have a dog sitter, I don't have to deal with moronic TSA agents), it was made in frustration, as if I just gave up on spending time with his parents.

Speaking of parents, Dad didn't call this weekend. I think I missed my turn to call him. I need to fix that tomorrow.

My initial plan for my UCPC talk was to practice every day from the beginning of December until the end of January. My propensity to overplan, however, has crushed that plan to hell. Kris told me to plant a stake in the ground and schedule a practice talk.

So, I did just that.

Tonight was that talk, and, yes, once again, Kris is brilliant in applying his knowledge of my personality quirks.

I have 45 minutes for my talk, plus 15 minutes for questions. I'm 100% sure I'll speak very quickly when I give the talk for real, so I'll need to practice a lot before then to keep my presentation well paced and not frantic.

Well, that, and put in a bunch of "Slow Down!" in the presentors notes.

At some point, I'm going to render my slides into a nice book format and publish it in a nice 7" x 7" book. At around $6 each, they'll be nice gifts for people I know and love.

Crap, I forgot about the website. I've been meaning to put that up at recsportdisc.com (a domain I cannot believe wasn't already taken).

The presentation went fairly well, with everyone both paying attention and providing amazing feedback.

I have the best friends ever.

Today was my first "real" Master Gardeners class. Last week was basically orientation, so I don't think it really "counts" as a class. It does, but today was the first class of content.

The subject of today's class was plant physiology: parts of plants, how they grow, how they reproduce, all the good plant stuff. The content of the class followed very closely to the content of the handbook chapter we were to read before class, so I didn't feel I learned anything particularly new. However, different people learn different ways, so I was happy for the review.

In plants, there are two parts in the stem that make up the vascular system (with a third thrown in if the two parts need to be separated): the xylem and the phloem. The xylem moves water and mineral nutrients from the roots up to the aboveground plant parts. The phloem, on the other hand, nominally moves food from the leaves to the rest of the plant. With the xylem, everything goes up. With the phloem, materials can move every-which-way.

During the class, a fellow student asked the question, "Why does the material move in any direction in the phloem, but not the xylem? Why doesn't the water move down in the xylem?"

Various answers were proposed in the class, from a college botany instructor to other fellow students. For the most part, no one could answer the question. My answer would have been the cells are constructed in such a way that materials can easily move in one direction, but not the other, but I kept my mouth shut. Not really knowing the exact processes involved, I would be giving a Boy Answer™ with the Voice of Authority (VOA), and it might not be correct.

However, such inhibitions were lacking in a fellow student, who decided the proper answer was, "Because that's the way it is."

I'm unable to properly express how much such answers enrage every cell of my being. "Because that's the way it is" is the cop-out answer used by people who don't know the answer, in an attempt to both look knowledgable and stop the questioner from finding out the real answer.

Maybe the class wasn't really interested in or have the knowledge base of plant physics or molecular biology, and that's fine. But giving me a "because that's the way it is" BS answer makes me think you're a moron and immediately think less of any further words from your mouth.

Fortunately, I kept my mouth shut in class on that opinion, too.

Doyle and I went out to P.F.Changs for lunch today. I was in the mood for something different than our usual Murphy Street fare, having surprisingly tired of the amazingly tasty food around us.

When I offered P.F.Changs, Doyle agreed, and off we went.

As at the end of any lunch in an American Chinese or American faux-Chinese lunch, we received a handful of fortune cookies from which we expected to receive millions by playing the lottery numbers on the fortune, or sue the company for providing incorrect numbers. Or at least some short, clever witticism.

I grabbed the closest one to me once I realized they were there, and opened it. My fortune:

Now, I'm not exactly sure this is a fortune, so much as a comment on, well, perhaps my personality. Ignoring the sentence-ending "in bed" that seems to work with every current fortune cookie saying these days, I started thinking about this "fortune" I'd received.

It was suggesting that I:

• hate everyone around me struggling through the tortuous years of adolescence
• be annoyed at a person the first time he fails when trying something new
• expect perfection from all my friends
• ignore any physical pain they may be having and tell them to "suck it up"
• want them to always be productive because sitting around watching television or playing computer games is clearly a waste of life, when there are problems to solve and things to build and cures to find

I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to be treating my friends as I treat myself. If I did, I'm fairly certain I would have very, very, very few friends.

Doyle commented that they probably meant the usual platitude, "Treat others as you want to be treated."

I think I'll stick with my next fortune instead:

... in bed.