A note in the October 2006 issue of Health magazine, on page 70, reads:

Sweet news about a sugar substitute

Aspartame, the sugar-free sweetener in hundreds of soft drinks and diet products, doesn't cause cancer, according to a National Cancer Institute (NCI) study of nearly 500,000 older Americans. Previous research in rats linked aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet) to lymphoma, leukemia, and brain tumors. But the NCI found that drinking even as many as three (or more) diet sodas a day seems to be safe.

I read this, and cringed. Sure, aspartame may not cause cancer, but it can still kill you.

Aspartame has been linked to migraine headaches as a cause. I know of no person who suffers migraines on a regular basis who couldn't reduce the frequency by cutting aspartame from his diet.

Aside from the loss of functionality, blinding pain and lost productivity that comes with a migraine headache, more research shows a strong link between migraines and stroke, with migraines sometimes considered the equivalent of a mini-stroke. Each of those migraines can mean more brain damage. Even if this damage is slight, the accumulation of years of migraines and mini-strokes can be devastating over the long term.

So, telling people that aspartame is okay to drink because it doesn't cause cancer is a bit like saying, it's okay to play with the gun loaded with rubber bullets: the rubber bullets won't kill you if you're standing far away (doesn't cause cancer), but they sure as hell can if you're standing close and get the bullet in the eye (migraines as mini-strokes).

Is it really worth the 10 calories in a stick of aspartame-laced gum to risk a migraine and the long term consequences?

Not and never for me.

If I choose to drink a soda (I've had six this year), it'll be full sugar.

I'll take the stairs to burn those extra calories, instead, thank you very much.

Well, maybe not the worst flight ever (qualified with a "that I've ever been on," of course), because that flight happened like eight years ago. That worst flight was a Southwest flight from San Jose to Burbank where the turbulence was so bad the flight attendants were puking, and we had to land in Ontario because there was a dog on the runway in Burbank, back when you could travel with hockey sticks in the cabin, as I was doing. Today's flight, however, one ranks up there with the sucky suck flights I've taken.

When I boarded the plan, after spending half of my 10 minute layover dashing to the next gate (the other half seizing an opportunity), my seat was occupied by the person who should be in the middle seat. Rather than getting up and moving to his seat when I hovered over the row, fishing for my boarding pass to confirm that yes, I was in the aisle row, he sat there staring up at me.

Perhaps he was thinking if he ignored me long enough, I would go away. Or sit in the middle seat for him. Or maybe sit on his lap.

That he didn't move, but started talking louder on his cell phone, should have clued me in that this was going to be a bad flight.

After finally finding the right paper for this flight, and conifming, yes, I had the aisle seat, the glorious I-can-go-pee-any-time-I-need-to-go-pee seat, the guy finally moved to the middle seat.

Mostly.

Instead of sitting in his seat, he sat in his seat and part of my seat. He hadn't dropped the arm rest between us, which meant if he sat casually, he could occupy both his seat and about six inches of my seat. That would be one quarter of my seat.

I haven't been that skinny enough to sit tandem in a seat since high school. I mean, what the heck? I looked over to the seat next to him, the window seat, and realized that part of the reason middle-seat guy was in my seat was because the man in the window seat was spilling over into the middle.

Great. Just great.

So, I had to wonder. How aggressive should I be about this whole seat thing? Should I be passive-aggressive about my space? This middle-seat guy was sitting like he had balls the size of bowling balls: legs spread wide, his feet practically in the aisle. This whole, societally-imposed concept of "don't cause waves" I think grossly contributes to women being unable to deal with conflct in a constructive way.

Middle-seat guy also spread out with his arms, taking up, I later noticed, not only the entire arm rest on my side, which I dropped fairly quickly since I really, really, really wanted my personal space (which is normally 24" around me, not 24 mm) back. He was also taking up the enire armrest on the other side. I'm sure he was thinking during his attempt to be the most annoying person ever, "Curse you for getting the coveted aisle seat, I'm goint to annoy you the whole flight anyway."

I'm sure he didn't realize before the flight that, you know what, my legs bounce the entire flight. Flights make me nervous and I have a lot of sugar to burn. I assure you, quite unconsciously annoy you more than you annoy me. Which might has contributed to his becoming more annoying, though.

So, this annoying flight didn't have the annoying screaming baby that the last flight had. I was reading various magazines on the first flight so I didn't notice the screaming baby two flights in front of me until I ran out of words. When I did run out of words, the cacophany of screams hit me full force. I couldn't help but start singing the "Nobody cares!" song that Mark and Megan taught me to sing to Mirabelle when she's screaming uncontrollably for no reason you can tell or fix. "Momma doesn't care. Poppa doesn't care. Kitt doesn't care."

I just wish the mother had employed Mark's startle technique of screaming, "Baby! Shut Up!" to the screaming kid. Works like a charm.

Ah, well.

At least that flight had some ultimate players on it. I suspect they weren't too happy with sitting next to me: I sat there with a huge grin on my face the whole flight. Hey. I'm a National Champion.

Back to the most annoying flight ever, which continued in the bathrooms.

In both of the bathrooms on the plane, the back ones, which are the ones I find most convenient, someone, perhaps two someones, thought it was okay to pee on the floor. The smell of the realization of what the liquid on the floor was made me also realize that, yes, my sense of smell that I lost then partially regained in the sense it works wtih only crap, also works with urine.

Joy.

In one of the bathrooms, the "lavoratory", why can't we figure out just what this little room with toliets are supposed to be called, anyway? It's a little poop room. That's the best term for it. In one of the poop rooms, the floor was all sticky. So, great, someone pissed on the floor, and someone else came along and spilled their drink on the the floor. After I washed my hands, I had to wash my shoes, too, and then wash my hands again. Oh, joy, oh, joy.

Did I mention the second screaming baby?

So, there's take-up-space-guy, sticky bathroom floors, and screaming toddler torture. Wow, this flight sucks.

After the flight landed, and people were choosing to wash their hair and dry it because that would be quicker than actually getting off the plane at the pace they were moving, the window guy said in a loud voice, "I think they should just get rid of the overhead bins. If you can't fit it under the seat, you can't bring it on the plane."

It took ever fiber in my being to resist my retort: "Well, I think there should be a 180 pound weight limit: I can bring on up to 180 pounds of crap including myself. If you weigh more, you need to buy another ticket. You know, like for that second seat you went ahead and occupied during this flight anyway."

Well, this moment is really surreal.

We are now the 2006 Ultimate Players' Association Mixed Division Club Champions. It's the culmination of who knows how many throws, sprints, squats, lunges, stretches, fakes, cuts, jumps, bruises and sprains.

Last year, we came into the tournament 15th, and finished 13th.

This year, we came into the tournament 2nd.

And finished first.

Feels strange. I played so little in the tournament because of previous injuries, but the team has been working to this for so long. So few people accomplish this goal that actually doing so hasn't sunk in yet.

National Champions.

The best in the nation.

Wow.

Holy shit.

The game was close, with no team up by more than one point. When we scored upwind, they answered scoring upwind the next point. If the first four points hadn't taken 35 minutes to complete, with a score of 2-2 at the end of those 35 minutes, the game looked like it would go to 17-16 with the team who took the wind off the flip.

Everything was on pull up until half, with Gendors taking half 8-7, and our tying it back at 8-8. The game was intense with hard marks, strong defense, close calls and unrelenting pressure from both sides. Both sides often disagreed with calls the other made, and so the observers were well used by both teams.

Soon after the second half started, maybe a point or two into the half, a travel call was made on the field by a Mischief teammate. The call went to the observers, and was overruled by the observer on the far side of the field. Since the observer was standing on the far sideline, Adam approached the observer on our sideline who may have had a better view, and suggested that, if he had a better view, he should say something.

An older man who had been walking along our sidelines for the entire game, immediately went up to Adam and bumped him. Adam describes the bump as an attempt to chest bump him, but the old man's camera was in the way. The man was about six feet tall and about twice as heavy as Adam, so bump could knock him over.

After bumping Adam, the old man stood close, looking down at him and said, "You know, going to the observers makes you look weak."

So, here was a guy who no one knows, who was not a player, by all rights shouldn't be standing within 2 yards of the field, much less standing over one of our players attempting to intimidate him.

Wade heard the exchange as he was walking past, and turned on the man. "Are you with Gendors?" he asked in a loud voice. I didn't see the man's reaction (Megan said he answered yes, though), but I definitely heard Wade's. The man attempted to defend himself, but received a barrage of yells in return. "Your team is cheating! They're double teaming and travelling!" "Oh, sure, let's get the parent's involved." "Because the Gendors are perfect, right? And Black Tide has the best spirit." he continued sarcastically. "I didn't know Black Tide was here!" Towards the end, Wade yelled he should watch out, or he'll die of a heart attack.

The old man slinked off to the far side of the shade tents we had on the sidelines as Wade was more and more fired up.

We scored three of the next four points, and went on to outscore the Gendors 7-4 in the second half. Wade was on fire, bringing the rest of the team up in intensity, and we won the game 15-13.

Weak, indeed. It's hard to be weak when the other side is cheating.

Calling the other team cheaters in a sport where mutual respect is a key element of the game may seem disrepectful but consider this: the Gendors would zone by having a marker on the thrower and two players within four feet of the thrower for more than half the time they were on defense. When Wade was unable to punt a disc because a women defender, who was not is marker, was able to touch him during his throw (incidental contact, so no foul, but a double team because Wade is not ten feet long), Kris told the observers they needed to take action. They agreed and told Gendors to step back on their zone cup pointmen. They did, and lost their ability to stop us.

Funny how, when the cheating stops, the better team wins.

"There! Done with that blog post."

"It's just like pooing, eh, Kitt? Sometimes you just need to get it out."

"Yeah, just like that."