A few months ago, I was talking to Mike about religion. One of my arguments about not being a particular religious person in the Christian sense is the fact that ultimate provides many of the core aspects what traditional religions provide: community, social outlets, a sense of right and wrong, friends anywhere you go. Community being the biggest of that list.

Last night, I was reminded of this fact, once again.

I was the first to arrive in Sarasota, flying into the Sarasota airport directly to avoid needing to travel the extra hour by car or even deal with the red-eye everyone seemed too fond of. Kris can sleep on a plane, at any point. I can stay awake on a plane, at any point. Direct opposites when it comes to flying.

On the flight from San Jose to Atlanta, I saw two Fury players on my flight sitting a few rows forward of me. On the second leg, from Atlanta to Sarasota, I decided I was going to ask them if they were in Siesta Keys and if so, could give me a ride to my villa housing.

A bit later, the flight attendant was handing out drinks, I turned around when I heard the person behind me mumble something about deciding between some drink and another. I smiled when I turned around, because I recognized JD Lobue (Jr.) sitting in the row behind me. He smiled back and asked me what I thought he should get. I immediately said, the second one, which prompted the flight attendant to ask, "Do you know each other?"

I laughed and said I knew of him, but I've only ever seen him on television. She freaked out a little, and JD visibly blushed, which isn't easy to do in a darkened airplane.

We talked about ultimate the entire rest of the flight. We talked about how the mixed division has canibalized the women's division, but the power teams in the women's division are victims of their own success (by becoming so dominant, other women's teams are less likely to form and get crushed by the dominant teams, so the women will be more likely to play mixed).

As the flight was landing, I asked him for a ride to the villas, and he said yes.

To be able to meet someone on a plane, spend the whole flight talking to him, be instant friends and catch a ride with him, knowing every time I see him at a tournament, he'll say hello and we'll chat, is why ultimate is so totally the best.

When I worked at a bookstore in college, I was indirectly responsible for another employee embezzling money from the company. I can't say I am particularly proud of this fact, but I can say the other employee was an idiot and did a very poor job of following my near-perfect salary enhancing scheme.

Having watched the various buying habits of people in the area, as well as the inventory techniques of the store, I discussed a return-refund technique to the assistant manager of the store. The technique worked something like this: a customer would purchase a fairly expensive book, or a small number of relatively expensive books, say hardback books, in cash. The transaction could be anywhere from $20 to $100 in books, the key was the customer paid in cash.

The very next transaction would be a refund for one of the books sold on the previous purchase or a cancel of the entire purchase if the purchase was for one expensive book. The situation would actually happen regularly enough that it wasn't unusual for a return immediately following a transaction: often the customer wouldn't have enough money, so it was easier to ring the transaction as cash and refund one of the books on the next transaction or cancel the purchase completely on the next transaction.

The cancel or refund would happen on the next transaction, but only after the customer had already left the store. The refund or cancelled transaction amount could then be pocketed. This technique would work well on a slow day, when the customer would have left the store and not see the transaction, or possibly on a busy day if the clerk was quick enough to cancel the transaction between customers in line.

The amount pocketed would never be much: $20 or $40 at a time, and the situation had be correct: a cash transaction followed by an immediate cancel of the transaction. The cash could be removed from the register at the end of the evening when the drawer was counted out.

Since the store didn't have any surveillance cameras, there wouldn't be any direct evidence of theft. The trick would be to avoid any patterns in the transaction cancellations, and not doing it more than once or twice a month at most for small amounts, lunch money for a couple days at most.

So, yeah, the technique was fairly foolproof. I just wasn't counting on a real fool.

I arrived into work one day, to find out the assistant manager had been fired and the whole store was being both inventoried and audited. A few weeks later, my manager would be fired and charged with embezzlement for having "borrowed" hundreds of books without returning them. The store had a borrow policy that employees could borrow any book as long as it was returned in sellable condition. Books were signed out on the sign-out sheet; the manager would sign them back in if they were over a week overdue. He rarely returned his books.

The assistant manager, however, was the trigger for this mass audit of the store. It turns out, he attempted my return-refund technique, but not in its proposed form.

Instead of cancelling cash transactions, he would cancel charged transactions, and pocket the money he refunded. The problem with his version of the technique was not only was the customer not charged for the transaction (since his card was refunded), but the drawer was short by the amount of money the assistant manager stole. The trail of theft was ridiculously easy to follow (nice paper trail), made easier by the frequency of thefts.

When I heard of the disaster, I was immediately mortified. He was doing what I had suggested, admittedly suggested in passing and not seriously, but my idea none-the-less.

Because of this experience, I'm more observant to when cashiers hand me merchandise and put aside the cash I pay them. Like today, at the fast food place in the Atlanta airport. After struggling to understand the woman wasn't asking me if I wanted a drink with my pizza, but rather was saying my total was $5.22, I handed her $11 as a single and a ten. I expected a five dollar bill plus change back. Instead, the cashier eyed my remaining four singles. She asked for them, handing me back my $10 bill. I fished for a quarter in my backpack as she handed me my pizza.

Now, it's entirely possible she needed singles and twenty two cents was a small cost to pay for the five singles I had. But I doubt it. I'd be very surprised if under the register is the correct place to put the five dollars destined for the register.

Back in 1986, January 28th to be exact, I came home from school upset. We had watched the Challenger tradgedy on a television a teacher had brought into a classroom, and we watched it over and over and over again. I wanted to talk about the accident, and so sought out my mom when she arrived home from work.

In particular, I wanted to talk about Judith Resnick. She was everything I wanted to be. She had a 1600 on her SATs (I was young, this was very important to me), was an engineer (biomedical, before that was a real major), and had a PhD. She was beautiful. She was musical (a classic pianist) and athletic (a runner). And she was pioneer: an astronaut in a male dominated field.

Everything I aspired to be (minus the astronaut part).

Mom's first words about Resnick were, "What a waste."

I immediately responded, "No, it wasn't a waste. It was a loss. She was doing what she loved to do, how could that be a waste?"

Mom looked at me, surprised, then agreed, yes, it was a loss, but not a waste.

On my way out the door today, I thought about that moment, about how I insisted that dying doing what you loved wasn't a waste. And I can't help but wonder, will I die doing what I love? Will I die playing ultimate? Or hiking? Or reading? Or gardening? Or programming? Or designing?

Will dying doing what I love make the loss any less painful?

Because as near as I can tell, the dying part of the equation? That's the part that sucks.

After the amazing weekend I had with Kris just these past two days, I'm loathe to return to the "real world" and embark on the stressors that have made the last few months not particularly plesant.

Let's see how this day has stressed so far.

There's the moron in Rental Car Bus line at the airport who kept yelling at me, "The end of the line is back there!" When I said, "Right, the rental car line starts back there, I'm looking for the Long Term Parking Bus," his response was to yell louder, "Yes! THE END OF THE LINE IS BACK THERE!" I stiffled my desire to ask, "Is this the blithering idiot line? Because if it is, you need to go to the front."

Then there's Sprint, the phone company that thinks putting someone on hold or through a maze of phone questions is good customer service. The only thing worse was the clueless salesman who, when asked, "Do you know what it is?" (it being a Franklin USB EV-DO modem, which he just told me, "Uh, yeah, um, right, we, uh, haven't, uh, received those in yet, uh, we're, uh, supposed to get those next month, yeah, next month."), he tried to continue his B.S. answers and replied, "Uh, yeah, it's a USB adapter for our ED-VO cards."

BZZZZT! Wrong answer. Thanks for playing.

Not.

I'm determined not to become annoyed at all of these little things (the server dying, the disks filling up, the unintellible waitress taking our order, the clueless drivers nearly hitting my car, the doggen howling to wake the dead) overwhelm me, but sometimes, certainly today so far, flying back to Vegas Baby sounds like a good, good time.

You know, sometimes you don't want to hear the words. You don't want to know the opinions of people from your life 15 years ago, not because their opinions hurt, but because they're good opinions, and you wonder how different your life might have been if you had known their opinion.

At Fru's wedding tonight, I knew a relatively small number of people attending the event: Fru has a lot of friends who love him and I'm one of the truly blessed people who have Dan in my life. I am a better person for knowing him. Of the people at the wedding who I do know, nearly all of them are Techers. Most of them all recognized me. Some didn't.

One conversation went something like, "Do I know you?"

"Yes, we went to Tech together."

"You went to Tech?"

"Yes."

"Oh my god, are you? Are you Kitt?"

"Yes, I am."

"Oh my god, it's great to see you!"

Big hug for both of us.

We chatted for a bit, with another Techer overhearing us and interjecting, "Yes, this is Kitt, the freshman everyone had a crush on."

I looked over shocked at the person who made this comment. He continued talking to the person next to him. "No, everyone had a crush on her. I had a crush on her. I just couldn't go up to talk to her." "Dude, did you know she just walked up to me and asked me out?" "She did?" The conversation continued, with my standing next to the two of them, my jaw on the floor. Aside from the fact that I had no idea this guy had had a crush on me, much less "everyone," he was also one of the really good-looking guys at Tech when I was there.

The moment hung there. He said it as an off-hand, matter-of-fact comment, one that was a statement of fact from events that happened over a decade ago, but the comment stopped me. I wanted him to talk about it. I wanted to know what he meant. I wanted to rage about the unfairness of the statement, that had I known how different would my life had been? My god, would I have just made the same mistakes with this man that I had made with the other men I dated at the time? Or would I have learned the lessons in love I needed to learn much earlier? Would things have been different? Or the same? My god, tell me, would my life have turned out better?

I continued talking with the group when our picture was taken, a group of Techers in a mini-reunion at a friend's wedding so many years later. All the lives that had continued since those times in school, so many lives with different directions, so many choices made. The comment riding shotgun in my head as I chatted and laughed with these people.

We walked back into the banquet hall after the quiet of the balcony where we had our picture taken, the noise in the hall matching the noise in my head. The music loud in the back of the hall, people talking animatedly in the front.

And suddenly I stopped, the chaos and confusion of the moment gone.

I saw Kris.

He was sitting next to Fiona, the two of them laughing at something Kris had said. The rest of the evening mattered little, the questions I had about my classmate's comment no longer needing to be answered.

I made mistakes in college. I was unobservant and clueless and self-conscious and awkward and needy. I learned my lessons late, the lessons in love the hardest to learn.

But, I learned them.

And this man is the result of those hard-learned lessons. I couldn't ask for a better partner, friend, husband, lover.