Mid-September, I attended the introduction meeting for the Master Gardeners program of Santa Clara County. I've been gardening in the back yard ever since Chris Doyle tore up the concrete and I dumped 12 cubic yards of compost on the spot five years ago, and container gardening for years and years before that. Mom had a lot to do with my green thumbs, though I'm sure she takes no credit for the bitter zucchini incident.

Speaking of bitter zucchini, during my MG interview, which is part of the application process, I mentioned I heard of the MG program through the local co-op, which I contacted at Mom's suggestion when I had the bitter zucchini in the yard. One of the women interviewing turned to me and asked me when the incident happened. When I answered two summers ago, she grinned in delight, then exclaimed I was famous, everyone knew the bitter zucchini story in the office. Everyone!

Great! Not the way I really want to be famous, but I guess it's better than, say, Mrs. Smith going in and saying, yeah, she's the one who was poisoned by the bitter zucchini.

After finally processing that ginormous stack of mail, I found the envelope with the letter of acceptance into the program. I'm very excited. I'll finally learn the "right" way to plant a garden and (my trees will like this) prune a tree.

Megan asked if she needs to address me as Master now. I giggled and said no, but I get to put an "M.G." after my name when I'm done.

"I think I scorched the yams."

"Uh, what do you mean by scorched the yams? As in, burn down the house scorched the yams?"

"Maybe."

Three weeks without a good, reliable Intarweb™ connection, and I'm half bald from pulling out my hair in frustration.

Another DSL guy came out today and, unlike the last DSL guy who seemed to be a moron, this guy seemed to know what he doing. He checked the inside wiring, pulled out two dust gremlins, cleared the cooties from the broken connectors in the phone jack, climbed his ladder to check the filter fairies and finally sacrificed 10 feet of phone cabling to the Intarweb™ connection gods. He then declared (one hour and $120 later), I was good to go, try to make a connection.

Never has a steady green light looked so good.

Whee! Connected! I can finally post all of my blog posts from the last two weeks and upload all of my pictures. Yay!

Time now to go find a good girl-toupee to cover my head until my hair grows back.

For those with Yahoo/SBC DSL, when you call to make an appointment with a technician, ask for John with the operator number 6CN. He rocks.

"Do you want pumpkin or fudge pie for Thanksgiving dinner dessert?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Both?"

"Yep."

"I best start cookin' then."

Kris and I are still completely jetlagged. Not so sure we're going to try very hard to fix our sleep schedules these first few days, trying more to recover from the flight than anything.

So, rather than fight the lack of sleep, we slept until noon, then dragged ourselves to the nearest Starbucks for the most wonderful, deeeee-leee-shush, Americano coffee Kris had had in three weeks. Apparently the Aussies can't do it like the 'Mercans can, and he needed his fix.

Somehow, I convinced him that we should go on a hike. I'm not sure why I convinced Kris of this, as my head was still pounding from yesterday's headache, but, well, what have you, and off we went to the Fremont Older Open Space with the doggen.

Our usual two hour hike lasted only seventy minutes, and we managed to talk about ultimate, life, holidays, our trip,

I told Kris I'm going to give high-level ultimate one more year, which means training starts now, and not in three months, because I have a lot of injuries and head-case issues to fix before I can play at that level again. He seemed both surprised and pleased at my announcement. He may have been a bit cautious, too, knowing I couldn't exercise hard today because of yesterday's migraine. Tomorrow, well, that I could do.

Back home after the short hike, I made ham potpie for dinner. It turned out well, though I didn't start dessert until about 10PM. Mattered little, though, as we're so jetlagged we'll be up until 4AM anyway.

So, sleep, hike, cook, eat. Only thing missing now for this perfect Thanksgiving is sex.

When I was leaving for Worlds, I wasn't exactly in the calmest frame of mind, what, with the passport disappearing and all. As a result, my actual packing for the trip was a bit scattered. I packed a few too many shirts, but enough socks and underwear. I had one carryon bag (my hump, also known as my backpack) and one checked bag, my ultimate bag that wasn't completely full. I was impressed that I could pack all I needed in not-completely-full bag.

Unfortunately, the details did me in, and I packed poorly with my toiletries. I had my toothbrush, sure, and some toothpaste in a tube small enough to make it past the retarded American airport security goon squad. I had covered rubberbands for my hair.

I forgot, however, to pack a comb and any q-tips.

One swim in the Indian Ocean with wet ears afterward was bad enough, but two weeks without being able to dry my ears after a shower is just plain torture!

Two weeks of "combing" my hair with my fingers was annoying, to be sure, but the lack of q-tips was worse.

Way worse.

My shower this evening was pure bliss afterward, when I was able to dry my ears (finally!).

Kris thinks I'm weird.