My first morning of my first nationals. Here I am at the fields, in the crow's nest, thinking, "Wow. This is amazing." For people who have been here many times, who think this is just another tournament, who expect to come here every year, I say, "Go home. Let the rest of us, for whom this is a wonder, an experience, a moment, have a chance at this experience." It's more than just a tournament. It's the opportunity to see the sport we love at its finest.

My first thought here is that it's cold. No one told me it was going to be cold. Sure, at the end of the day I'll probably be thrilled with that gentle breeze coming through the crow's nest, the 10° cooler temperature, the shade. But right now, at 9:10 am (it's only 6:10 am at home! Crazy talk!), it's freaking cold. As I'm wont to say, "Cold, tired, hungry. Pick two."

I went to get a bagel for breakfast. Sans cream cheese, not my favorite breakfast, but I'll manage. On my way over, a woman noticed my "Official UPA staff" shirt, and asked, "Hey, do you know when they'll start the beer?"

Blink.

Blink, blink.

It's 8:45.

A.M.

I guess some people, well, have different priorities.

So far today, I've seen and said hello to Brokaw, Drea, Patrick Hard, Becky, Asako, Jane, Kate. I've met a bunch more people that I'm sure I'll never remember their names. And there are many others are here that I recognize: Billy Rodriquez, Mooney, Scottie. This is cool.

Who gets up at 6:30 am? On the East Coast? When she was on the West Coast less than 24 hours ago? Ugh.

Heading off to the fields early to help Sandie do some last minute setup (the No Parking signs needs to go up before anyone gets there and parks in the wrong place). I'm surprised at the number of people up already, though. S, the tournament TD is up ("The sun's not up yet!"). The head coordinator is up and already eating breakfast, as were a couple other players, it looks like. Crazy people.

Scobel and I talked this morning, getting a feel for each others' history. She's excited to be here, as Ben (her son) is playing at the tournament. She woke up at 3:00 am yesterday morning in an attempt to acclimate a bit to the time change (coming from Oregon). I made a face, but then she pointed out that it's the same as now anyway, and it's that early today.

Another "Ugh."

So, the advice I've heard about the tournament so far is:

• Bring a hat, with a brim. The sun'll be brutal. Kate
• Buy the VC Ultimate stuff early. Elizabeth
  Apparently that's where the good stuff is, and it sells out quickly, so no debating, just buy.

Let's see what I can get Kris from the tournament.

Hmph. It's 7:03 am. I was told to be here in the lobby at 6:54.75 am. I'm here. I was here at 6:51 (surprise! I was early!). No one yet. I wonder if I'm in the right place.

Today was a travel day for the trip to Florida to participate in the UPA Club Nationals. Participation here is defined as help with the scores, and update the website. Not quite the participation I would have liked, but, well, it'll be a good start.

Rather than have poor Kris get up at obnoxious-early-o-clock to take me to SFO to fly to Tampa, I stayed with Greg Wolff and his girlfriend Sunita (the amazing, beautiful, intelligent, compassionate, worldly, every-woman-would-love-to-be-her Sunita). They also had a 6:30 am flight, but because they were significantly closer to the airport, and going there anyway, I went with them. It worked out well. We all flew out of SFO, they on United, I on American with Elizabeth Murray (also of SFUL fame).

Cece, who is on Red Fish, Blue Fish with Greg and Sunita, was also on the flights Elizabeth and I were on. Cece cracks me up. I like her a lot. Elizabeth and I spent time waiting at various points with Cece. She's good company.

We arrived pretty much without incident. Waited at various points for flights and other persons driving cars. At the airport, I ran into Wade and Tyler (Kaos), Dea (Fury, and hence Heidi Binder, who remembered me from El Norte, and Sam, who is engaged to Mike Payne (Jam), who I worked with on the UPA site for voting and mail blast). I also met Erik, Vic and Jeff, who are a few of the players who will be observing at the tournament.

At the hotel, I ran into Kelly Johnson (of all people!). Her team missed Nationals by 2 points. She's here to cheer on Mark, as near as I can tell. Ran into Patrick Hard, who introduced me to Nate (who I've heard about on Brass Monkey, but apparently had confused with someone else). Also met up with Will, Sandy and Michael from the UPA (but of course!). I'll be rooming with Scobel Wiggins who takes some of the most amazing ultimate photography. I'm looking forward to meeting her.

Finally managed to update the site to Drupal 4.5 and install a node based permissions module that I've been waiting for since Drupal 4.1 when I started this site.

As a result, I can take this site live. Instead of having it hidden behind an unpublished (but public) URL, I can transfer the site to kitthodsden.org, where it truly belongs.

I think I'll also set up hodsden.org itself to be something similar to www.zawodny.com, where Jeremy lists sites of people who share his last name, whether he knows them or is related to them or not. There aren't that many Hodsdens, and it's not difficult to set up the DNS for them.

The trick, of course, is going to be stopping search engines or crawlers from hitting sites I don't want to be crawled, such as Sam's and Jackson's sites.

I would so suck at Fear Factor.

This evening, when changing loads of laundry, I looked into the empty washing machine bin, as I am wont to do, and noticed a small black object at the bottom of the tub. Since the light is broken in the garage (yeah, yeah, just added it to my list of things to do), I couldn't see it clearly, and reached down to pick it up. As I was reaching, my though was, "This is either a piece of wood from the garden mulch, or a bug."

It was a beetle / june bug / thingy from the garden that's really gross.

I screeched and threw it aside (to a known spot so that I could actually throw the thing away later). Kris concernedly called out, "Are you okay?!" over my screeching. Yes, yes.

I just picked up a bug with my own hands.

A very, very clean bug. Ick.