I'm a mountain girl. I'm not a water girl. Give me a hike in the mountains, through the forest, and around the lake over a swim in the ocean or a day lying around at the beach any day.

There are exceptions to my general mountain over ocean preferences: an ultimate game on the beach is preferable to a death march hike through the Grand Canyon, for example. For the most part, though, mountain over ocean.

For some reason I'm not quite clear on, I keep ending up at the ocean at these ultimate tournaments. Nationals was in Sarasota, Florida (a gulf more than an ocean, but a large body of water nonetheless), Worlds is in Perth, Western Australia.

So, in Perth, we're staying (ick! mixing verb tenses!) at a beach apartment complex, across the street from the beach, so all of maybe 50 yards from the waterfront. We wandered across the street to the beach,

"It's cold. I don't want do it, but I want to have done it." I smiled and said, "Well, the only way to have done it is to do it. Let's go."

The water was cold, close but not quite unbearably so, so we rushed out into the water, letting the waves crash higher and higher up our bodies. Eventually Kris went under, and a few waves later, I followed. I didn't go completely under, so chose to ride the next wave back towards shore.

I pushed off poorly on the next wave, but started swimming as fast as I could toward shore. Unfortunately, I also started after the wave started crashing. Instead of getting an easy ride to shore, I was dumped under the water, with the wave crashing over my head.

As I went under and couldn't find my feet under me, I kept thinking of my scuba diving qualification dive at Zuma Beach, and felt the brief tickle of panic that accompanies that memory when I'm in the water. Before it could become panic, my feet struck sand, and I surged forward, running to the shore.

I can now say, I have swum in the Indian Ocean. Kris can say the same.

I suspect I'll be heading back in the next few days, though. Once doesn't seem quite enough.

Come on, people, I don't freakin' know. I don't know. How many times do I have to say it, I don't know?

I'm not your mother. I'm not your guardian. I'm not even your team captain. I'm not the team organizer. I'm not the housing coordinator. I'm not the ride arranger.

I'm not responsible for your well-being. I'm not responsible for your ticket. I'm not responsible for your food. You know what? I'm not responsible for Kris, either. He is his own person, and he makes his own choices. He can even act and thinking independently of me. Shocking, eh?

You know what else? You are not my responsibility, either.

Start thinking for yourself. Figure it out. Look around. See what's there. Find the solution by solving it yourself.

Stop asking me. Stop depending on me. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it!

Because, damn it, I don't fucking know.

And I'm tired of the hundred questions.

Update: Kris commented to me in passing when I complained to him about everyone asking me questions, that, hey, you know what, I'm listed as the team captain on the tournament records. I submitted the bid, so, I'm the captain.

Great. Abdicating responsibility. I suck.

Time to embrace. Come on, world, ask me anything. My new answer is going to be, "Doesn't matter."

Clearly, I'm not supposed to travel out of the country.

In a Truman Show-esque catastrophe, everything seems to go wrong when I do, or at least attempt to, travel out of the country. Take Italy with Mom and BJ: My luggage was lost, then delayed by a strike in France that affected only my luggage, and not my mother's or my brother's. My mother wondered who replaced her daughter with a changeling, when I didn't scream and have a fit, but accepted the loss calmly.

I ended up wearing my mother's underwear.

Our honeymoon beginning and end were so traumatic that I've been unable to transfer my written journal entries here without singing "My Humps" off-key at the top of my lungs to avoid the memories, which have thus far always caused convulsions and uncontrollable drooling. Even the travel agent commented that trip seemed cursed after I told her about the birds pooping on my head.

Yeah.

So, imagine my uncontrollable frustration this weekend when, after about fifty hours of sorting, clearing, cleaning, arranging, looking and shuffling, I am unable to find my passport.

I had it two weeks ago. I took it to Vegas Baby Vegas with me, because I hate using my driver's license for travelling. I see no reason why I should show a complete stranger my name and address and, hey, look, I'm heading out of town! See here? Here's my flight information! Call your buddies, rob my house!

A passport doesn't have an address on it, so, even though you know I'm going out of town, you don't immediately know where I live. Not that figuring out where I live is that difficult. I just like to make it harder than looking at a card that I handed you with detailed directions on how to get there.

I don't recall having my passport when I went to Florida.

I did have it on the one day between Vegas Baby Vegas and Florida. I remember dumping all of my bag contents on the floor and having it spill out on the floor. I even remember thinking, "Huh, that's not in the approved location."

I haven't seen it since.

I have an appointment with the Passport Agency on Tuesday morning. I've heard it takes two days to get a new passport, so I'm going to head up tomorrow morning to see if I can get in today, to receive the passport today or tomorrow at the latest.

I keep thinking, oh, it'll show up, just one more box to go through and I'll find it. At some point, I'll have to give up and accept it's gone.

Writing about leaving town is always an internal struggle. On one hand, I'm heading out of town, it's what's happening to me at the moment, I want to talk about it. On the other hand, it's an announcement, "Hey, look everyone, my house is going to be empty for a few days!" I hate that. This time, however, we have house guests staying at the house, feeding the doggies, maybe even petting them if Bella decides to STFU already (though, I'd be surprised at that).

"What? You don't read Kitt's blog? Why not? It's like having a conversation with Kitt every day. You just don't get to see her."

Megan Smith, in Florida at Nationals.

Maybe I should have titled this post, "Megan is the bestest."

Back when I worked at PDI, my group was in constant battle with the production engineering team. There were never more than four of us in the lighting TD group, and at least five in the PE group. It seemed we were always butting heads with half the group.

The fundamental difference between the two groups was that my group was trying to get work done, while the PE group was trying to build an infrastructure "the right way." The Right Way™ often meant "don't do anything until we build it and say it's okay to use," which inevitably took two weeks longer than my group had time. We were in production and production had schedules and we didn't have time to wait. If the tools weren't coming, we built the tools. If the problems weren't being solved, we solved them. Seems simple on paper.

Despite the near constant head-butting, I, thankfully, became good friends with Kevin Cureton who worked in that group. I miss Kevin a lot. I miss talking to him. I miss solving problems with him. I miss his stories and adventures and expertise and laughter. He has moved on from PDI to EA and I think from there, too. I don't know exactly where, as I've lost touch with him. I'm deeply saddened by this fact.

Kevin often went to bat for me when there was some conflict, and defending me when I was doing something totally bizarre but effective.

Thinking of the group, of the five people in it who I recall, I butted heads with 3 of them. One was a dick, one was an idiot and one was just clueless. Of the other two, one was Kevin, and therefore awesome, the other was Mitch Amino, who I liked very much, even though he was quiet and I think sometimes thought of me as near insane.

During one particular incident, I had wandered up to the PE group's area and told them I had implemented some feature that I no longer recall what it was. One of the PE group's people whose name I don't recall, waited until I left, then exploded about how dare I do this or that or something, that I didn't know what I was doing, what the frack did I think I would accomplish?

Kevin listened to his coworker rant. After he had calmed down, Kevin politely pointed out that I and my group keep about forty lighters from asking the five of them question after question after inane and clueless question. If the four of us weren't there, the five of them would have to provide support for the forty lighters that sat downstairs and have considerably less knowledge than I or my group did. Kevin then asked, did his coworker want to support forty lighters, because he sure as heck didn't want to.

The ranting coworker shut up.

And was pleasant to me after that.

I noticed the change and asked Kevin about it. He told me what happened, and I was grateful that I went from head-butting 60% of the group to head-butting 40% of the group. Very grateful. As grateful as Kevin's coworker was, because I was saving this guy many, many hours of work.

I think of this story as I sit on the other side. I know I should be grateful when I look at the modules being written in Drupal and see the modules that I have on my to-do list already written, just there for me to download. The modules that have been on my to-do list for over a year, sometimes more. I should be glad that someone else has put forth the effort so that I no longer have to.

And eventually I'm sure I will be happy and grateful for the modules and the completed work. But right now, I'm a little bitter that I wasn't able to actually write them. That my to-do list is a mile long and never seems to get shorter. And when I realize I finally have the time to these projects, I don't have the motivation.

Vicious cycle, this.