So far, what I've seen of Corvallis is nice. Seems to be a small(ish) town with lots of space not crammed full of buildings and houses and such. Not that I could tell much, though, as the windows were frosted so thick that I ended up driving straight through a red light (not a yellow light, not an orange light, a full on red light), much to my horror upon the realization.

My plan was, and always had been to use POUNDS for taking stats today, but the chaos of last night meant I wasn't able to finish the last input details. After dropping my carload of teammates off at the fields, I dashed back out to the nearest Safeway for paper, as I had tragically had forgotten not only my notebook, but all of my paper, and notecards and everything.

We were scheduled to play four games today. If we won our pool, we'd play semis in the last round, against Shazam if they also held seed.

As expected, the fields were pretty wonderful, but good lord so cold. I spent the whole bundled up in three or four layers, including DanO's wind jacket. Gillian was able to warm up somehow, a talent I wish I had.

The first game was against Night Train, whom we see every tournament practically, and certainly every Sectionals and most Regionals. Recognizing that we have a problem with morning games, the start of the first game in particular, the team came out on FIRE, going up 3-0 before Night Train woke up. We took the first half 8-2 and stupidly relaxed in the second half, barely winning the second half 7-6, for a final score of 15-8.

The second game was against Bozos, which has historically played better than their seeding. Realizing we had problems finishing the last game, we focused on finishing the second half in this game, taking the first half 8-1 and the second half 7-3. Better, but still not as good as we wanted. If we can play 8-1 in the first half, why not 7-1 in the second?

The third game was against Hunzinger Proxy, the first seed out of Oregon. The team is made up of Carleton Alums, and had crushed their opponents in their Sectionals. However, as Kris often says, just because you crush your opponents, doesn't mean you're any good ouside your section. Indeed. We took half 8-3 and won 15-5. On to semis.

Shazam, who are actually "Shazam Remains," had also held seed, so we were in Semis against them, with the other semis being D'oh and Mental Toss Flycoons, from Big Sky. The first part of the game was an uncomfortable frantic game, with no settling, as the one of Shazam's women kept hucking to another of Shazam's women who kept skying our women. Shazam took half 6-8 then scored the first point after half to take the score 6-9.

And then "the incident" happened. Close to the endzone we were defending, Steffi caught the disc, turned up field and threw to Chucky, who was fairly uncovered. A pick call had happened before Steffi's catch (but as the disc was in the air), and a couple people (in particular, the defender on Will), stopped playing. Steffi didn't hear the call, hence didn't acknowledge the call, so threw the disc to Chucky, who caught it. As in 11th edition rules, the disc stays with Chucky, as he wasn't involved in the pick.

Now, Will's defender began arguing the disc went back to Steffi. Everyone explained the rules to the guy, but he wanted nothing of it, the disc should go back he insisted. As near as we could tell, he had stopped playing, allowing a gap on Will, and he wanted to recover that gap. No, the disc stayed with Chucky, and when it was tapped in, Will turned to sprint deep.

Will's defender, a handler, which in this case meant "slower than Will, with less ups, but better throws," stepped into Will's path to stop his cut, a clearly illegal move, as well as unsportsmanlike, highly discouraged and dishonorable on the field. Will lost a step and was unable to catch the huck from Chucky.

On the turn, Will's opponent, picked up the disc, then turfed it. Chucky returned the favor by throwing away the disc, but the same opponent of Will's threw the disc away again, after calling a contested foul on Will. Chucky picked up the disc again, and threw a quick throw to Will for the score, as Will burned his opponent again.

Will, in his excitement, threw the disc at the ground, and missed. Instead of hitting the ground, he hit a Shazam woman standing 15 yards away. He immediately ran to apologize, but the whole endzone exploded into chaos. Someone asked if we were about to have a fist fight, a first for Mixed ultimate, but cooler heads prevailed, and both teams split to their sidelines.

We asked if Shazam wanted observers, but they declined. The pace of the game slowed, and we ended up outscoring them 9-4, and winning 15-12 on a throw from Kyle to Andy.

The win guaranteed our bid, and we're on our way to Nationals as the 1st, 2nd or 3rd seed from the Northwest.

Okay, Body, tell me, why have you forsaken me?

Because, I'm completely convinced you have. You must have, because EVERY time I go to a tournament, you do the same freaking thing to me. I mean, COME ON, every time? Really? Why?

It's not like I don't feed you, you're doing pretty well on the scale, not too much, not too little. You and I, we exercise regularly, and play a sport we love. Heck, we even combine that exercise and sports thing with lots of socialization, that's good for the heart, head and soul, you know.

I treat you right, you treat me right. I've stopped eating meat (well, for the BLTA night, when I had to have the bacon, but you'll forgive me, right?) for you, started taking lots of vitamins (but not too many), going to bed at a reasonable time, waking up at the same time every morning. I've started helping out with relaxation techniques, mostly because I had to in order to deal with the stress of tenants who STILL haven't paid rent this month. I've had one migraine in the last five months, which is a hell of a lot better than the 4 a week I was getting once a month at the beginning of the year (so, clearly, there's still SOME love from you).

But really? I mean, really really?

Did you have to start with that TODAY? The DAY I LEAVE for an ultimate (frisbee) tournament without Kris? I mean, who is going to buffer my team from my crankiness at having to change a tampon in a port-a-john without being able to WASH MY HANDS FIRST?

I mean, really? Did you really have to do that to me? I'M NOT EVEN PLAYING THIS WEEKEND.

Stupid body.

Breanne commented to Kris this morning that, hey, you've been to all three workouts this week. That hasn't happened in... And then she turned to look at me, eyes BIG. "YOU, TOO!" she called out, after realizing that I hadn't been to all three in months, like many months, like maybe five or six of them.

Yeah. Well, injuries. Other than the wart and a slight tweak in my right quad, I'm injury free. And intend to stay that way with lots of warmups and stretching. And more warmups.

I was careful with my warmups this morning, mostly because of the quad. I ran the 50% and 75% runs at the speed of the other two women in my warmup group of three. I ran the 100% at the pace of one of the other two women in my group, who had a nice stride. She has fabulous arms and good running form. I suspect she was an athlete in high school or college, before Life Happened, and athletics were no longer so important in her life.

That last 100% I ran at my 100%. I may be the slowest on my ultimate team now, but I don't intend on staying there. If I can warm up well, and stay injury-free, next March should be a good tryout season. Even Kris mentioned that he'd consider coming out of retirement to play club ultimate (frisbee) again. I think that pick-up ultimate is killing him with it's lack of structure. And defense. Lack of defense.

After the brutal Monday workout, and the easier, but still, Wednesday workout, this morning's workout was a breeze.

Four rounds of body weight sets of:

20 pull ups
30 push ups
40 sit ups
50 squats

I remember when Kris and I used to do three sets of 140 squats twice a week. I remembered those, and managed to do the 50 squats in one set. The situps I also managed to do without stopping, though with considerable effort.

The pushups and pullups? No chance. No chance at all.

Those were done in sets of 10. Well, maybe 5 on a couple.

Kris and I went to Norway and Scotland for our honeymoon. Although spending two weeks with Kris was absolutely wonderful, there were some incidents that were definitely NOT absolutely wonderful. Those include the two days and three missed flights of travel just to get to Norway. Yeah.

And the bird poop landing on my head. Now THAT sucked.

When looking for my internet tablet for installing POUNDS on, to track statistics for this weekend's ultimate (frisbee) tournament (Regionals, baby, Regionals), I found one of my travel hard drives. I plugged it in and poked around, hoping for some of my pictures of Rome that are missing.

Instead, I found some of our honeymoon pictures. I like this one:

The honeymoon at Doyle's work is definitely over. Last week, Doyle let me know that he had brought lunch in. He was also stressed enough with what he was working on that he wasn't able/willing to go to get lunch with me. He did offer to loan me his car, which I declined in favor of walking to the local corporate cafe. Doyle has, however, been feeding me, too, bringing extra lunches for me, too.

Now that I've been there a couple months, and I have a certain level of comfort, I've started noticing the company and the people. There is definitely the full gamut of society at the company.

Take, for instance, the woman with an office just outside the lavatory hallway. She has a window that looks out into the hallway. Not that she actually looks out into the hallway through that window. She has it covered with all sorts of posters, with one little section where she can probably see movement as people whiz by her door, but not enough to actually recognize the persons.

This woman keeps her office door locked when she's not in the office. Compulsively. She locks the door when she goes to the lavatory, doesn't just shut her door, she locks it. She locks it when she walks to the kitchen. She locks it when she steps out for a moment. The office is locked 99% of the time she isn't in it. I suspect she might be the main HR person, and have sooper seekrit paperwork in her office.

Her office is locked only 99% of the time, right? Yeah. When the janitor cleans out the office, he not only leaves the door wide open when he cleans, but also wide open and unlocked when he steps away to dump the trash bin. I suspect the office resident would be upset to know about the Unlocked Door.

And there's this other website developer. She's the only other female developer in the company, as far as I can tell, which isn't saying much, as I work on only one of two floors, and there might be another woman programmer SOMEWHERE in the company, but I've seen just the two of us. Now, this other female developer, she wears this REALLY loud shoes. Well, boots. You can hear the woman walking from the other side of the building, they're so loud.

I love them. I want a pair.

I realized today that the shoes aren't the only thing this other female developer does loud(ly - though "loud" sounds better than "loudly").

She also pees loudly.

VERY loudly.

Nothing like three women in adjacent stalls trying to outpee each other to inspire a post.