Andy IM'd me today, asking me if I had any lunch plans. I didn't have any at 11:42 when he first IM'd, though I almost had some when I realized a client's website was down. He offered, "I have a bike and want to ride it over to your house. We can go from there." He mentioned this after asking if I still had my fancy car.

Yeah, well, fancy car, eh? Sure, I still had that one S he knew about, but I also had another S, a more functional car for my life style (think, "carry crap," and "haul dogs," and "extra-large purse on wheels").

And, yes, that would be a Smith boy. Fast car? Smith boy? Yeah, lunch was about to be an adventure. What I didn't realize, however, was that he actually wanted the convertible, top down, wind through his hair. It's a beautiful, glorious, sun-filled day, and top-down was the way to spend it.

Clearly.

So, off we went, though in the purse and not the convertible. We ended up heading to Palo Alto, because Andy wanted to drive and wanted to drive fast. The extra horse power in the purse apparently made up for the lack of convertibleness, and we dashed (literally "dashed at a hundred miles an hour") up to Palo Alto for lunch.

We were all of maybe 10 minutes into our lunch conversation (conversations with Andy are always fun because he always has great stories to tell) when he casually mentioned who he had been dating before he went to SxSw, and who said ex was currently dating.

Can you hear the trumpets?

Suddenly, clouds I didn't know were overhead parted, the heavens opened up, spilling light and music and stark uncontrollably hysterical revelations upon me.

Last year at SxSW, I spent much of my time with a particular friend (go ahead, search the site, you'll figure out which friend that was), initially because he was the only person I knew at the conference, then later because it was fun to hang out with him and meet all of his friends, then later because his group was fun and inviting. That's the way of good conferences, you meet cool people, you hang out with them, sometimes those friendships continue afterward.

This year, said friend COMPLETELY dissed me. He'd talk to me, but was pretty distant, and didn't spend much time with me at all. I was puzzled, but, well, after last year, I fortunately knew other people at the conference, and everything was fine.

Turns out, that this friend is dating Andy's said ex, or near enough that spending time with me, or even inviting me to the same event as new girl would be DISASTROUS. I'm not sure why, but this Andy revelation completely explained everything, solved all of my puzzles and cleared up the lingering WTF I was having from the experience.

I could not stop laughing at lunch.

I think Andy was puzzled about my amusement. I've been trying so hard not to care about knowledge I have no right to know, trying so hard not to pry into topics that I REALLY want to know about. And here, wait a week, and the pieces I needed to complete the puzzle are handed to me, along with lunch, on a platter.

The conversation of course turned back towards various stories, including the lobby backstroke swim contest that gave Andy some serious rug burns on his arms (stupid wall, blocking his victory), and other stories of conquests. After lunch, we drove back to my house, and he hopped back on his bike to ride back to work. I watched him take off his shirt to ride, "Hey, the chicks dig it," and laughed.

As he rode off, I had to think to myself that, in a different life, I could have fallen in love with that man. There are few people I know with such a light soul and bright outlook. It's incredibly attractive and infectious. The ending would have been quite painful, but, damn, the ride would have been worth it.

Today started out so unbelievably awful, I'm surprised I made it through to lunch. The awfulness started last night when I discovered I had been blocked from accessing my bank accounts online. I had made a large payment (think, "car insurance"), and received a call from theft prevention services. When I called them back, they asked for information they not only had no right to know, they had no way of knowing if my answers were correct. Worse, they were asking these questions while I was standing at an airport (yes, my fault for, heaven forbid, returning a Panicked Call from my bank when walking through an airport). I kept thinking, wait, you're asking for my account number, full name, AND social security number, when I'm surrounded by 200 people I don't know? Are you retarded?

Now, being locked out of an account isn't much of a big deal, but spending lots of money for a fast internet connection, have it working for exactly one day after waiting 20 days for it to be up and running, then have it go down on the second day might be enough to start the trend of a frustrating day.

Following hard on the bank annoyances and internet connection outages came the realization that the conference I was attending was exactly not the level I either expected it to be, or needed it to be. When the second question out of the first presenter's mouth is "How many people are new to this?" and 95% of the audience raises its hands, and you're an intermediate to expert in the area, well, yeah, you're in the wrong place, new experience or not. I'm so used to being surrounded by Unbelievably Experienced And Intelligent People, I often forget there are mere mortals out there, people who don't have the gobs and gobs of experience.

Go fig.

So, I left the conference, dealt with the bank, switched to my slower internet connection, thankful we had it, and sure, why not, it's only $20 a month (oh, wait, that's $240 a year), and started to work. I needed to get this work done, so off I go. I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel of all of these projects I've been so overwhelmed with. YAY! So, I started the login process to the client's systems to push every thing live...

and discovered my security fob died.

Will this day never end?

Answer? Yes.

I managed to borrow another fob from the client (with a note to get Doyle's fob back), dropped off my fob, talked to Jessica (though, really, that wasn't such a great conversation, with some health issues with Gab that needs be taken care of. Turns out, that little speed demon can be made faster, we have the technology to create the world's first bionic Gaby! Oh wait, no, not that, something else, but it was still a bummer of a call), managed to complete a crapload of client tasks, checking off my cards one by one, and decided to go for a run. A run. A nice long(ish) run, instead of my recent sprint workouts.

I started off really strong, a nice good paced jog, maybe a run, standing straight, leaning from the hips, running to the (volume set low!) tunes in my ears. I began to ponder what an always-connected life would be like. Sure, I was just going out for a run, but I wouldn't mind a snapshot every moment or so of where I was running, maybe leaving a camera here and there to snap a cool photo of the flowers I passed. Those thoughts kept me entertained for a mile or so. Until I started thinking of Scott.

I think of him a lot when I run. I'm a bit older than he was when he in our lives. How very different our lives have been, yet, how very much influenced by his presence. He showed me a lot of what the world could be, even if it never was for him.

He emailed me a couple years back. I never emailed him back, though. Mostly out of loyalty to Mom. Why would I contact him, if he had hurt my Mom so much? He found me through this site (though, back when it was on hodsden.org, and not here - here I'm a heck of a lot easier to find). I don't know, I wish I had emailed him back, talked to him (or at least email him). See what he's up to, see if he moved beyond the demons that have haunted him for so long. CC Kelly saw him a few times over the years, I think through his jobs at the National Guard, flying helicopters. I find it interesting that those damned helicopters were so much a part of him.

How different would our lives have been if he played ultimate? Or some other sport that we could have played with him, that he could have taught us about? Sure, I was the football manager in junior high and high school (my first varsity letter was in football), and he enabled that with introductions (I mean, come on, how freaking weird in retrospect is that? The schools football manager? Some dopey, dorky, quiet, wisp of a girl lugging around these tackling dummies and pads? WTF? Also in retrospect, it was very, very cool. Seriously, how many of your female friends lettered in football? At least one.).

Eventually, I tired on my run. I feel I'm perpetually out of shape when I run. I think I'd probably feel that way even if I were in shape, since running never gets any easier, the times just get faster.

The "tired" as of late have been more "drained" than tired. Drained of energy, like I use up all I have and simply am. No more running, just being. Sometimes it's okay, but other times, like yesterday, it's frustrating. Eventually, though, my tired became pain, as my right knee starting having sharp, piercing pains on every step. Happily, I quickly discovered a fix to the pain.

Run faster.

If I run lifting my knees higher, hence running faster and not merely jogging, then they didn't run. So, faster home I ran. Double benefit!

I spent the first 10 minutes home pulling weeds from the front yard. I've been very poor at stretching as of late, so while I was warm, I bent over into a hamstring stretch, extended my arms, and started pulling weeds from the front yard. I'm planning on planting a whole slew of yellow poppies in the front, so up came all the annoying weeds to make room.

That run was a turning point for the day. I managed to run, stretch, pull weeds and, to my surprise, catch a call from Ben. If only Kris had a job he could do anywhere. We'd be in Seattle faster than you can blink. Hello, Ben! Hello, Lisa! Hello, Jake!

Instead, we're here. Dog walk, sushi, three hours of client work, one site up, one greasemonkey script and one blog post later, and the day that started out so sucky suck, is now over. Time for bed.

Went to pickup today. It was Mischief-sponsored pickup, so I certainly expected it to be high level. The wind, the gusty, blustery wind, that greeted me when I stepped out of the car was initially disappointing. The disappointment faded rapidly once I started throwing with Pickett: my throws were initially crazy, but smoothed out quickly. My throws, despite the wind, were no longer a concern.

Fitness and health quickly became a concern.

My sprints and other general activities have not kept me ultimate fit. Way not. The only way to truly be ultimate fit is to play ultimate, which I haven't been doing lately. Much at all, not even at the SCU practices. I've been trying to make sure the focus is on the individuals on the team, which means staying off the field so that I can watch. I do wish I could be playing with them.

I played for about an hour, then decided I was done. I played just fine, I think. I made a couple mistakes (sure, unsurprisingly), but I played much more aggressively than normally (where normal is last season, the season before, any time I'm in my head and not just playing). My first throw was a crap throw into the wind, but the rest of them were good enough. All of them were upfield. Even one I was fouled on was upfield and completed (perhaps I should pivot more? Yes, I should).

After playing for a while, I stopped to watch the games. Unsurprising to everyone, I started watching Andy play.

Also surprising to none, he played well. As cliche as it sounds, watching him play is a joy. He claims he's in shape but out of practice. I couldn't tell about the out-of-practice part. All of the throws I saw were well placed, well timed, well executed. Might of been I wasn't watching long enough, but he seemed to be playing very well.

Watching him reminded me of a conversation we had had recently. I had commented something to the effect that, well, I thought I would have done something great by now. Instead, I'm just me. I haven't done the Spectacular Feats I, as a child, teen, young adult and no-longer-young adult, thought I would do. Somehow, I felt more of a waste than a success or failure.

He said that many of us feel this way. We have double standards for ourselves, and expect Great Things from ourselves, while granting others a normal, average, completely ordinary life. Or, at least both of us do. I don't know, looking back on his ultimate career, hearing all the stories his teammates tell about him, spending time with him, I have to say he's done Great Things in ultimate. Might not be in science and technology where we went to school, but it's something.

Not that he said that. He said, sure, many of us have the expectation of greatness, but, "I'm not sure it's a reasonable one."

He went on. "It's important to be able to accept the world and yourself the way it is. Of course, that's a fine line because you also need to expect great things out of yourself before you can achieve them."

The word "expectations" has always seemed to be a stress inducing word to me. Others have expectations of you. You have expectations of yourself. Expectations of behavior. Expectations of this and expectations of that.

Somehow, Andy turned it around. I'm not sure how, but that last line of his seems to sum up my perception of him. He expects great things out of himself.

I like that idea. I like it very much.

How is it that I have no luck burning CDs from a computer? I swear, I've burned maybe two CDs my entire life, and one of those was by accident.

And it's not for lack of trying.

When CD burners first came out for consumer use, I bought one. All of the instructions were written in broken English, but sufficient for me to try my hand at installing the hardware, then trying to get the software to work. This was back when I was actually still using the Windows platform, programming map editors as my first big project, so you can see just how far back this desire to burn CDs goes.

On that map editing project, we had a CD burner at work that I used to burn navigation CDs. Back then, I knew the difference among the red book, orange book and green book formats. I knew which one you wanted to use your music CD player as a data retrieval device, and could actually create multiple CDs that worked for music or data. Of course, that was with a stand alone CD burner that was the size of most stereo equipment, and was $2500 to purchase. Given the cost to burn one CD was $950 at the time, $2500 was a complete bargin.

So, my first attempt at CD burning: complete and utter failure, as well as a waste of $400 plus time.

Fine.

Years later, I tried again with some other CD burners installed on my various desktop systems. I tried with Windows (shudder) boxes, and with Linux boxes. Eventually, upon my conversion to the Holy Church of Mac, I tried on my OSX box.

And then I managed to burn my first music CD.

That was 4 years ago.

Four. Years. Ago.

That was after I messed up I don't know how many blank CDs to get there.

Now, all I want to do is backup my iTunes library to something other than the three external harddrives I have. Is that really so difficult to do? I mean, hello, I've seen Mike use these DVD-R blank media disks in his computer, which is really close to the same as mine. I tried inserting it colored side up, colored side down, blank CDs, blank DVD-R media, all of which my computer not only can write to (according to the system profiler), but is what the computer is requesting. I've bought (and tried the expensive media, and the cheap stuff).

Nothing.

All of it fails. All of it.

What the heck is it with me and burning disks? I swear I have a radiation field around me that ruins all blank media.

I just wish that weren't my super power.

A friend of mine is starting a consulting business. He happened to move to an area where the cost of living is significantly lower than what it is around here, so his rates are significantly lower than the rates around here. When he asked if I knew of any projects or companies looking to hire, I asked if I could interest him in one of my projects. He said sure, so I wrote up the first one I wanted done. It's an easy project, very specific to an interest of mine. The website itself, once launched, won't have more than a couple thousand users, if that many.

After hemming and hawing and not quite finishing the spec, I finally sent it to him last night. It's not complete by any means, quite incomplete actually.

He wrote back to me today.

I haven't opened the email.

I'm too nervous. Is he going to say, "what a stupid idea!" ? (Never quite sure how to double punctuate a sentence, since you're not supposed to do so.) Is he going to say, "wow, maybe you could have given me more details?" Maybe, "That's a lot of fluff. What am I supposed to do?"

I guess I could just open the email. It's not like he's an unsupportive, mean, bully of a friend. Quite the opposite.

Okay, clicking on the email now...