Political blogging at the city level is not that exciting. The meetings are, to be sure, as exciting as watching paint dry.

No, scratch that. Paint is more exciting.

I arrived at the West Conference Room in the Council Chambers a few minutes early, and realized that, despite dressing business nice, the backpack on my shoulders took ten years off my age and no one here would probably notice me. Which is how I like it.

The session is a "study session" on the "General Plan of Industrial and Industrial to Residential Land Use." The "study" part of that session means someone stands in the front and gives a presentation.

I walked in, and, after confirming I was in the correct location, asked where is appropriate to sit. Unanimously, from the top council member to the city manager's assistant at the laptop, the answer was, "Not at the table." "The table is reserved for council members only." Granted, one council member explained if there were seats remaining after all the council members sat down, then I could sit at the table. The other two council members glared at him for the offer.

Early overheard conversation:

"I don't read the newspaper."

"Coward."

The meeting wasn't terribly exciting, but it was long: 7 until 9:30, and that was after the 5:30 to 7 "study meeting." One lady in the back row with Kris and me fell asleep, and started snoring. One guy was completely crazy and refused to stop talking, even to the point of yelling from the back of the auditorium. One school district representative spoke, and pretty much spun all his talk to make the school district look like the good guy, and everyone else look like the bad guy. We caught him in a couple of lies, in as much as we had direct dealings with him. I guess everyone lies, or exaggerates for effect. I just wasn't expecting it to be on public record.

I'm glad we went. Two of the city officials impressed us. The other ones seemed like completely disgusting, slimy politicians, holding the job for the personal power and recognition instead of for the public good. One council member tried to introduce legislation without any public input, while another council member stopped the proposal because of the lack of discussion or public input, even though he agreed with it. Kudos to him.

Not sure how much we'll go back to these council meetings, but I think I may go more often, working on my laptop during the topics I don't care about, and listening when I do care.

After making the door sign for work, I had a couple pieces of heavy duty, self-adhesive lamination left over. They were small pieces, maybe two or three inches in length tops.

As they were just sitting on my desk, I would regularly pick one or two of them up to play with them. I didn't remove the backs of them though, that would lose the stickiness.

Well, last night (this morning?) around 2:30 AM (you know, when I'm at my most alert and functioning self), I took the backing off one and started playing with it. As Kris came up behind me, glorious in his Axis and Allies win over the Germans, he asked what I had.

I turned, squishing my thumb on the sticky side of the laminate, and handed the laminate to him. "Here," I said, "your very own wife thumbprint to save forever."

"How's it look?" he asked, taking the square from me.

"Not so good." I replied. "It's all kinda fuzzy. Here," I continued, as I reached for the square, "how about a lip print?"

I pushed my lower lip onto the edge of the laminate and, as the sticky side touched skin, thought, "Uh oh."

What I was thinking up until that moment, what sort of brilliance was I demonstrating, I have no idea. Visions of A Christmas Story's kid with his tongue stuck to the winter flag pole danced in my head. Did I really think this heavy duty adhesive would release like wrapping tape? Was I destined to wait until my lip skin sloughed off before I could be plastic square free? Did I become an idiot when the clocks struck 2:00 AM? If so I needed to get to sleep now.

Without the adhesive square stuck to the bottom of my face.

"What are you doing?" Kris asked.

"Uh... trying to get this off?"

Apparently visions of tongues on frozen flag poles flashed through Kris's head, too, because he dissolved into guffaws of laughter.

Six layers of lip flesh gone and I was adhesive free, with vows to leave my lips to Kris' kisses.

Bella and I have taken to midnight walks lately. For her, it's a chance to, once again, pee on everything that has a smell. For me, it's a method of fear control, or rather, of facing fears so that they don't become monsters.

Invariably, on some late night when I'm programming away and Kris is either asleep on the couch or playing some game, Bella will perk up, wander over, and start pawing at me. If that fails to get my attention, and it rarely fails, sitting next to me, looking up and wagging her butt doesn't. Carefully. Carefully. Carefully! I put on my shoes, grab a poop bag and a jacket, and stand at the front door. Bella clues in and dashes out the door when I open it. We then walk around the block.

The block isn't terribly long. 810 yards -/+, so not even a half mile. We nearly always go clockwise around the block, as a counterbalance to the normal walk direction in the morning. Bella goes without a leash around the block, walking in front of me, then behind me when I pass her as she sniffs, then back in front of me.

The walk, though short, is interesting in its sameness, yet differences.

Each time, Bella runs fast to be in front of me for the first five houses, sometimes veering into the Gulls' driveway, always (always, always) stopping at the second bush on the corner to sniff. I always pass her at that point. She runs to catch up, then stops to pee under the lilac bush. As I round the next corner, she sniffs at the wall, then runs to catch up to me. She'll trot in front of me until the next corner, where she's often confused. Do we cross here? Or turn?

The third corner is often strange. It smells of decay. It almost smells of a musty cellar, of mold and mildew, but not quite. Considering my sense of smell isn't so good these days, that odor must be fairly powerful to normal noses.

The last corner always freaks me out. This is when Bella decides she's going to act all crazy. Around the second driveway, she'll pause, turn to look up at me, then *freak!* and sprint away, as fast as her little legs will carry her. If I catch up, she'll repeat this maneuver all the way home. It really freaked me out the first time when I thought she was running away from something. Only later did I realize that something was I.

The night is a good time to think. I've been friends with the night since high school, so the tingle of fear when Bella bolts always surprises me. I look over my shoulder more than I used to. I wear light colors, too, but that's for different reasons. The night is still a pal, but not the lover the Arizona night is.

I'm always amazed how these never quite come out the way I compose them in my head. I had something about how I tried to walk Annie around the block without a leash once. It was in the rain, figuring the rain would slow her down a little bit, make her less likely to run away. We managed two corners before she, being about 10 yards in front of me, paused, looked at me, looked across the street, looked at me, looked across the street, then bolted. Imagine a crazy lady screaming at her beagle as she sprinted to catch up with the dog. The lady on the sidewalk, jumping over toys, around cars and kids, while the dog runs through the yards, under bushes and over fences. Yeah, good times that one. I walk just Bella now.

I also had some mention of the crisp air, the hint of paranoia of the night, about having a midnight water fight in Arizona the summer between college freshman and sophomore years, about lying near the canal, looking up at the stars at night, listening for the celestial music.

But the story didn't unfold that way. Not this time anyway.

"I feel so inadequate."

Turns out, TSA dropped his computer when they were inspecting his luggage. Like the TSA does anything worthwhile.

Mike and his new el-cheapo (read: least expensive) Mac.

When I was first learning to play ulitmate, my strategy was to run. Well, not a strategy so much as I knew how to do that part of ultimate, with the throwing and catching not so much. Run, I could do.

And so I did. I ran and ran and ran and ran. At one point, about three years into my ultimate career (well, one year into the part where I really cared about the game and wasn't just heading to the beach on Sunday with my coworkers), after a particularly long point at the end of the day, I walked off the field, grabbed some water, and huffed, "Man, I'm tired."

A.D. turned to me surprised. "I didn't think you got tired."

Which pretty much sums up my ultimate career. I couldn't go forever like Lisa can, and I'm not the Linda "Energizer Bunny," but I could play all day and still be running at the end of the day.

Until today. Good lord, I am out of shape. Ultimate today was really really really hard. The full size field and soft ground didn't help, but I'm glad I played for three hours.

These days, I keep thinking of an image I have of Mom's second husband Scott running around the junior high track. The track is grey limestone, and Scott is just running around the track, the image is of his running toward me as I walked clockwise around track. At that time, he was as old as I am now, plus or minus a year or two. As much as I compare my life to my Mom's (let's see, I'm behind three kids, the oldest two in junior high, the youngest nearly so, and in my fourth house - I have a lot of catching up to do), I compare myself more to Scott in terms of fitness awareness at this point in my life.

It's hard to imagine Scott playing ultimate.

About as hard as it is to imagine my not playing ultimate.

I think the fact that the rule in the house was "sports or a job" in high school (and sometimes both!) laid the foundation for being able to play sports into my thirties. Yeah, I sucked in junior high school sports, and hated high school sports with a passion (except football, being on the football team was cool), but, because I ran track then, I never stopped running. The disc came along, and now I had a focus for that running.

I think I'll keep running and playing ultimate. Even if I do get tired a little more these days.