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.

There are times when I really hate that dog. She's developed a habit in the last month or so of whining. She whines all the time: when she wants breakfast (which is always about 2 hours before either of us are even thinking about waking up; when she's in her crate wanting food; when we're eating dinner and not feeding her. Her food obsession seems to be worse as of late, which is surprising as she eats a half dozen apples with a few pears thrown in.

Kris and I were heading over to Andy's last night, for dinner, hot tub and rat water shooting. I've been on a pie kick these last few weeks, and made four personal sized pies for dinner tonight. After packing up the food bags, and setting the pies on the dining table, I walked outside to put the first load into the car. When I walked back in, Kris was yelling at the dog. A few seconds later, I realized why.

She started eating the pie.

Uncooked.

From the table.

I hate that dog.