This morning, as I was multitasking by brushing my teeth and shoving my computer into my backpack while otherwise packing up my bag, movement caught the corner of my eye near my bag, and I turned to look.

Just in time to see a large, black, furry spider scurry under the netting of the inside my backpack. Large being relative, of course.

The dogs barely turned as I screeched with my mouth closed, toothbrush hanging out, hands flailing around, computer, magazine and other backpack contents flying all over the place.

"That one? She does that all the time. Crazy one her."

Never did find the spider.

End of a long day spent on the ultimate field, and one where we ended victorious beating Brass Monkey 9-7 at hard cap (had they scored that last point, it would have been 8-8, and double game point).

I started off the day thinking I could play, but managed only the warm-up square drill before my back seized again. I played the first game against Frizbee Nation, as they were the bottom ranked team in our pool, and I figured it would be a good warm up game.

Oddly enough, R played with them. They clearly wanted to use R as we use Adam Brown, but not as well, as he had to attempt to run down a series of tragically misdirected hucks. It was strange to see him, much less see him play. I doubt he knows that he and his friends are dead to me. Can't wait to tell them.

I tried to keep playing, but even two Advil™ and one Vicodin™ didn't help. My back was still in too much pain to do much other than walk, and slowly at that.

The end of the day, I was hobbling around like a little old lady. I turned to Kris and commented,

"Either the vic wore off, or it didn't help in the first place."

"I thought you were going to take the second one."

"I was, but it's our last one, and I didn't want to waste it on something as frivolous as my pain."

blink.

blink. blink.

"I hope in five years you'll understand just how funny that statement really was."

Funny how early morning cities are so much different from "normal" cities. Very rarely am I ever up before most people. Even more rarely am I up before the sun during the summer (except for ultimate tournaments, of course). Kris is having a routine procedure done in the morning (who makes 6:30 am doctor appointments? Oh, yeah, my husband), so we were up uncomfortably early to head north.

The advantage of being the first patient is that you can eat again the soonest. At least he'll be done at 8:30.

I've dropped him off at the doctor's office, and am off to find an okay breakfast place. I'll most likely head to the nearest Peet's. As I'm walking over, though, I stop and just wait, listening to the sounds of a sleeping city on the verge of waking up. It's light out, but only a few people are out, most of them somehow connected to the hospital.

It's strange, this morning thing.

Time to go back to bed.

Arrived home from OSCON last night, only to get up early this morning to head off to BlogHer. The gender contrast between the two events could not be more different: OSCON is 95% male, Blogher is 90% female. Or, another way to put it: OSCON is 90% antisocial, Blogher is 90% social. Although I had, and continued to have, zero problem walking up to anyone at an OSCON-like event and just start talking to him, many people don't have the ability or inclination. As a result, events like OSCON can be lonely affairs.

At Blogher, the situation could not be more different. From what I observed, an event participant has to be actively sending the "f*** off and die vibes to be left alone. I personally started conversation with a half dozen women I didn't know, and I was there only half a day (yeah, that "get up early this morning" lasted as long as my trip to the toliet and back to the bed).

The part I find most interesting about events like OSCON and Blogher is that you can't prejudge people by looking at them. Prejudge is the wrong word. You can't form an opinion about anyone without talking to him/her first. The blind guy sleeping in the corner? He's probably one of the biggest contributors to the software you use daily, blind or not. The quiet shy woman across the table, unable to meet your eye? She's a damn fine writer, and a lion with her words: listen to her roar.

No, the era of opinions in the first 30 seconds are over for these events, and I love it. Meritocrity is finally winning.

So, yeah, that sleeping thing. At Blogher, I missed the opening discussion and break, but arrived for lunch (great timing me!). As I arrived, I hoped to see a familiar face, and wasn't disappointed. I sat next to Sean from LPFI (Mini will be around tomorrow), even if I couldn't remember how to spell his name correctly (yeargh). Eventually, I'd catch up with Skye, who is always absolutely wonderful to talk to. I missed her talk in the morning (boo!), but we had the same style shoes on (yay!).

I went to four workshops, three and a half of them being worthwhile for me (I was not the target audience for the two half-workshops I attended).

10 Types of Web Writing by Lisa Stone and Lynne Johnson, who discussed various types of writing, from conversational to link blogs + commentary to long form essay.

Audience Building by Elise Bauer, who discussed various ways to increase web traffic, search engine placement, etc. Lisa and Lynne couldn't speak highly enough of Elise, so I had to go to it. Both of these workshops were well organized and well presented.

During the next set of workshops, I went into the one titled "Design/Style/Customization", but it was 3 minutes of should you get a designer, if you do expect to pay and watch out for communication issues, followed by a long tutorial on basic CSS. Skye and I walked out of that one, and into the one named "Tagging, tracking & structured blogging" It was much close to my level, both in skills and interests.

The last one I went to was about monetizing your blog, by Jen Stagg, and was interesting. It was material I look forward to using, though don't need quite yet.

Yes, the energy of this conference is amazing. I'll be signing up again for next year, and bringing my mom along, too.

Hey, Heather, I added some pages that you may miss because they were backdated to when I wrote them on my computer, not when I posted them. Here they are:

Different world
Stuart Foreman
We roll twenty strong

Hope the tournament was fun. Welcome home, roomie.