At the beginning of the day, we came into the tournament seated number one of sixteen teams. At the end of the day, we're still seated number one, but we managed to keep that spot in a strange point differential, head to head, power pool format way.

I tried to run pounds for taking stats in the first game. I made sure I had a new binary. I made sure I had lots of battery juice. I made sure I had the team name in and ready to go.

What I didn't do, however, is make sure the undo function was working properly. After three points and two incomplete undos, I switched away from the computer and back to the paper notebook for keeping stats. I'm a little annoyed that the program didn't work, this being the last opportunity this season to actually get it working right, but I'm also not-so-secretly relieved to have a paper trail on the actions. Of course, I'd rather have a video of all of the games, but I can't find anyone willing to give up five days to help me out with this stuff.

Maybe a clone IS the way to go.

I spent most of the day bundled up under four layers of clothing, and still cold. At one point, LT, in his jersey, shorts and sweat pouring down his face, looked over at me and asked, "How can you stand all of that? Aren't you hot?" I immediately answered back, "Actually, I have a fever. I'm pretty cold right now." I wished I had brought more clothing to the fields.

So, we lost our first game to Chewbacca Defense 13-15, having been up 8-4 at the half (my commentary from my twitter posts, which I kept up to date fairly well today):

mischief 0 v chewbacca defense 0
mis 3 chew 2
mis 5 chew 2
misch 5 chew 3
misch 7 chew 3
misch time out
misch takes half 8-4

wow, the only warm spot here is in the porta-potty

misch 8 chew 5
misch 9 chew 6
misch 9 chew 7
wind picked up a LOT misch 10 chew 8 on 4 turnovers

wind, the sport's great equalizer misch 10 chew 9 on wind aided turns

misch 11 chew 10
I hate this wind. misch 12 chew 11

misch 12 chew 12 on more wind aided turns. no, this isn't painful to watch, why do you ask?

fuck. misch 12 chew 13

andy comes in, easiest score we've had. misch 13 chew 13, chew still up the break

misch 13 chew 14
misch 13 chew 15

As Mark says, "Sometimes you take the easy road, sometimes you take the hard road. We're taking the hard one."

We then won our game 15-4 against Cougars, who were the last seed in our pool:

game against cougars

misch 4 cougars 0
misch 7 cougars 0

cougars [call time out with] no t.oouts remaining

misch 7 coug 1

wind picks up, has no effect on misch O, as Andy is in. misch takes half 8-1

da da da da da da 10 minute half, no action da da da da da da

misch 8 coug 2
misch 9 coug 3
misch 9 coug 3 on crappy foul contest
misch 10 coug 3 on nick to paul breakmark, layout grab
misch 12 coug 3 on drive that included 3 layout grabs
misch 13 coug 4
misch 14 coug 4

too much damned talk on the sidelines about point differential. misch 15 coug 4

Our last game of the day was against Barrio, who, like Chewbacca this morning, beat us in the first game of the day last year at Nationals. We needed to win this game to be in the power pools for tomorrow. We needed to win this game by more than three points to win the pool outright.

If we won the game, we would be both first in the powerpools going in tomorrow (as we could lose on point differential, but still have the head-to-head win for a record of 1-0 going in) and have redemption on the team for last year's loss.

We won 15-13, in a bitter, unpleasant game with observers who both don't know the rules and ruled against us in every call (which, could be valid, except for the "don't know the rules" part).

My twitter stream in reverse order, since I don't want to bother inverting it:

team in power pools with 1-0 record

13-12
kyle huck, mark pulls defender off, goes up too early, disc floats over both into gizmo's happy hands

bar takes too much time to pull? lose a time out

12-12
gizmo brutal catch from chucky to take it 12-11

sunya turn, gizmo block, foul called by mark, fresh with disc

11-11, game to 13, softcap on
11-10 on adam leventhal to adam brown

on a throw that she couldn't see because she was running the wrong way, she called pick after realizing her woman caught the score.
liz penny sucks

softcap horn should go on any moment
fresh to andy toe in layout for 10-10
bar guy laid out kicking chucky in head
9-10

doyle callahan for 9-9

8-9 kyle to giz from giz block
7-9 emily to paul
6-9 after half

half time la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
barrio takes half 6-8, observers called in on previous point. down by only one break

6-7
4-7

misch 4 bar 6 on a 13 turnovers point
long point 7 turns so far. bar calls last t.o. in half

3-6
zone d failed 2-6
2-5
1-5

I give. this is too painful to watch. misch 1 bar 4
misch 1 bar 3

heads up the collective butt. misch 0 bar 3
misch 0 barrio 2
misch 0 bar 1 on 6 turn over point

timeout mischief in first point

So, we're 1-0 in tomorrow's power pool play, even though we're second in our pool, having 0 on point differential (won by 2, lost by 2). Barrio is first in our pool, but goes into tomorrow's power pools with the loss to us.

Yeah. We're number one! Uh, sorta.

One shopping list.

Two shoppers.

Three carts.

Four hours.

Five villas.

Six nights.

Thirty people.

$900 later, we should be set for the week.

I firmly believe that I have done as well as I have in life because of the ultimate community I've been a part of for the last 15 years. Most of my friends have come from that community, with many of the friendships enduring beyond the original bond of ultimate.

Given that belief, it should come as exactly no surprise that travelling with a group of ultimate friends should be not only a good time, but also an adventure.

Taking Andy's advice (gee, I wish I could get him to set up his domain), four of us journeyed out to Florida today, in anticipation of the 2008 Ultimate Players Association Club Championships in Sarasota. Andy suggested people fly on Tuesday, as any delay flying on Wednesday means that you potentially arrive on Thursday and in poor shape for playing. We listened to him, and out we flew.

With me were Paul, Warren, Andy and Tyler, who really can't get enough Mischief even though he's left the team. I honestly can't say I blame him in his inability to leave Mischief. Look at me. Though, I typically don't say "Sure!" to playing poker with Paul then losing $120 on a six hour journey across country either.

When we arrived in Sarasota, Paul turned to me and said, "Hey, look. My bag has this whistle on it." He blew into it and generated the sixth most pathetic whiffing noise I'd heard from a whistle. "Hey! I wonder if my bag has one of those, too." I responded, mostly joking.

Turns out, my bag does indeed have one of those whistles, and, hey, what do you know, my whistle works. When I tweeted it, both Paul and I ended up with ear hemorrhages from the sound. Yeah, not very wise to do INSIDE the security section of an airport.

After tooting my own whistle and wandering to the car rental agency, the five of us discovered that my organizational skills do, indeed, have a weak point, and that weak point is located in the Tampa Bay car rental desk area. I couldn't find my rental confirmation number, and no one had a reservation under Hodsden. I am completely positive I had booked a car, and completely unable to find the reservation.

Fortunately, both Tyler and Paul had corporate discounts, so we were able to rent a car at a reasonable rate and head out. The car we rented had a trunk whose volume was exactly equal to the volume of luggage the five of us were willing to put into the trunk, a fact we discovered by using the Tetris skills of the four engineers standing around waiting while the fifth ran back to the terminal to pee.

The best part of the whole car adventure was, of course, having Tyler ride bitch in the back.

Mark, Megan, Mirabelle and Meter came over today for dinner. Well, make that with dinner, as Megan brought over all the fixings for a tasty mushroom pie, then made the pie for Megan, Mark and me.

Mirabelle hadn't had an afternoon nap when she arrived, so the typed "baby" and "mirabelle" on my computer, then went off to the guest room for a nap. I'm glad we have the happy yellow room for naps and guests, and that we can get our small house to sleep seven if it has to sleep seven, though, I guess the floor would actually allow us to sleep even more if less comfortably.

So, while Mirabelle was sleeping (more or less, with "less" being more accurate), and Meter was crawling around playing with electronic devices and power plugs and batteries (mmmmmmm, tasty batteries), Megan baked a pie, Mark came over and eventually Kris came home, too.

We celebrated Mark's birthday by melting pink candles in his birthday pie.

Yeah, I can honestly say I didn't realize that the candles would melt in the pie when I shoved them into the pie. Megan pulled them out a few minutes later to light them, and managed to pull out only the wicks. She pointed it out to me, and, well, I was pretty much mortified that I had just added wax to Megan's labor of love.

We ate around the wax. The pie was awesome.

Happy birthday, Mark!

Just when I thought I had Chipotle figured out. Andy pointed out to me that Chipolte serves humanely raised meat, making it a restaurant where he could eat meat, his meat diet being restricted to humanely raised animals only. I, too, adopted the humanely raised only meat diet before I switched to a pesci-vegetarian diet.

So, Chipolte is a favored restaurant.

Used to be, when I ordered my vegetarian hardshell tacos, I'd order three, instead of the four that came in the normal vegetarian order. The people behind the counter kept telling me they'd have to charge me for the four tacos. I was I was fine with their charging me for four, both because purchasing 3 individual tacos was five cents more, and because I would just throw out the four taco, so why bother wasting it?

Well, Chipotle recently changed from four hardshell tacos in an order to three slightly larger tacos. Which is unfortunate, as I can no longer finish the three tacos, but two aren't enough to fill me up. So, now, instead of just decreasing my order and eating less, I'll need to waste a sixth of the food I've ordered.

Good thing my dogs are vegetarian, too.