There are nice ways to ask for help. And there are sucky ways to ask for help. This weekend, I have to say, I'm far less likely to want to help those who ask for help by first insulting me or the people I'm working with, before asking for something from me.

The thing is, most of us here at this event are here because we love the sport of ultimate. I didn't have to help keep the servers up and running. I didn't have to stay up until 2:30 am, risking a migraine and an awful day the next day, to fix the damn scroll bars so that you could visit the scores page on your iphone without calling the site a hater. I didn't have to tweet score updates. I didn't have to put the rosters under the videos, or add the pretty pictures.

I chose to do all those things. And I did all of this because it was what I wanted, and I was willing to give my time and put forth some effort to make it happen. Maybe it'll happen again next year by someone else, maybe it won't. But calling the site a hater, and that you'll go check out the site to find more problems and report them back, doesn't really inspire me to help you out there as volunteer work.

Yeah, you get more flies with honey. Though I have to admit, I'm not particularly interested in gathering more flies, I have to say the honey part is right on.

Next time you want help from me, don't ask me if I fail whale much. If you do, I'll just block you from viewing my updates. Don't state the server wasn't ready because your computer is broken, I will call you out on it.

It's easy to understand: be rude to me, stop receiving the fruits of my efforts.

me: "I need help."

him: "With what?"

"I'm lost. I no longer believe tomorrow is going to be better than today."

*pause*

"But isn't the day just what you make of it?"

*blink*

*blink* *blink*

(I think I started crying right about here.)

Thanks, Kris. You are the best.

I'm good about wearing sunscreen. Sure, I hadn't always been good about it, say, back in high school when no one my age was good about it. However, sunburns suck. I may like the delicious feeling of ache after a hard workout, but I despise the touch-sensitive heat of a sunburn, and wore sunscreen to avoid it.

So, when DanO commented at some tournament in Davis about the amount of sunscreen I put on and how I always have sunscreen available, and I stated something along the lines that, well, not only am I not going to burn, I'm not going to get skin cancer either, the irony was not lost on me.

I often wondered about those words, how prophetic they seemed after the diagnosis. A reader would call that foreshadowing in a novel. The superstitious would call tempting fate. The religious would call it taunting their gods. I wonder if maybe it was just a numbers game: growing up in Arizona, spending a lot of time at the pool means a lot of sun and a lot of skin damage, especially for someone with the pale skin of the Hodsdens.

A couple days ago, when Andy tweeted about ultimate, and included the teams still practicing since they were going to Nationals, I had to look twice and confirm: Zeitgeist, a local women's team that isn't Fury, was going to Nationals.

And it made me think about those famous last words, and how I had another set.

Early in the season, Mischief was recruiting a strong female player. She has a history of going to Nationals, having played on a team that's gone for the last who knows how many years. Five? Six? Eight? I don't know. She played for a top women's team in a regional that could send only 4 teams, but any of the top five or six would finish in the top half at Nationals, so only the artificial restrictions of the series prevented her team from going every year.

One of the arguments that other teams were making against Mischief was that the team didn't throw to its women. The statement incredibly annoyed me, so I wrote a long email to the team about how teams don't have even throwing distributions, no team does. Based on player roles and skills, there's a distribution of throws, some players throw a lot, some don't. To blanketly state Mischief doesn't throw to its women without also stating Fury doesn't throw to its worst players is a screwed up, "Let's not show we're good, let's just badmouth them" campaigning strategy.

Not that it was Fury who did that. It was Zeitgeist.

Having been the person who took the stats, I could show that not only did Mischief throw to its women, but its women were evenly distributed in the distribution. Sure, our top thrower was male, but he was also the center of the offensive zone handlers, and touched the disc twice for every time the side handlers touched it once, much less the cutters' touches.

To my surprise, I didn't post the whole email here.

Probably because at the end of the email, I made the comment, "You can tell her if she wants to have the most touches on the team, sure, she should go play with Zeitgeist, but she's not going to Nationals."

And we know how that turned out.

I can help but think, "Famous last words, Kitt. Nice foreshadowing." I'm totally full of 'em.

You know, if you take enough pictures, one of them will turn out.

Consider it the scattershot approach.

My new favorite picture of Meter:

Seems like only last year we were having a wedding shower for Martha. Oh, hey, wait, it was only last year! Boy, they sure didn't wait long, did they? Today, Katie hosted a baby shower for Martha. This shower, however, we let the boys come, too, for a brunch baby shower. We had crepes and scones and cinnamon rolls and cupcakes and fruit and, oh boy, lots of other food.

For the record, if you ever want to make crepes, you need to beg, borrow or steal Katie's family recipe for crepe batter. The one I brought from the Joy of Cooking totally PALES in comparison to her family recipe. Wow. Pales. Not even eggs from Andy's chickens could overcome that recipe deficit, and those eggs are AMAZING.

I have to say, once again, I find myself incredibly luckly to have the amazing friends I have. Martha, for one, was incredibly good natured about both the "Mother to Be" sash we insisted she wear and the readings of the how-crude-can-you-be mad-libs we filled in. Well, some of us filled in. Pickett "filled in" five sheets, while five of us socialized (to be read as "five people filled in the mad-libs and added Pickett's name to the top of the page). Katie announced the game was to be as crude as possible, so we all had the challenge of out-smutting Keith. We failed, mostly because Keith managed to merge smut with crude with appropriate humour. It's the humour that gets you every time.

Shirley and Doyle also revealed to us that they are house hunting. I threw my suggestion they buy the house down the street from us that's for sale. It's the same exact layout as our house, facing east instead of west. It's relatively inexpensive (not really, but within their price range). It's horribly far away from work for Doyle, but really close for Shirley. Best of all, built in neighborhood friends!

And that suggestion opened up all sorts of opportunities for fun. Why don't we move up to Redwood City instead (find two houses on one block and we'd consider it, I countered, and poof, Doyle did, countering my counter)? Why don't I just go knocking from door to door, trying to meet my current neighbors (because most of them are older than 65 and none of them play ultimate?)?

We also talked about why you shouldn't buy a house for the mature apple tree in the backyard - because you can change anything about your house except for the location, mature apple trees can be planted in your yard for about $500, but you can't change the location.

Mark's advice there is sound, which is why my bribing Doyle and Shirley with apples and pomegranates and lemons and walnuts and pumpkins and future year avocados to move into the house down the street totally failed.

Right. That's the only reason, too.