James Pine showed me the best shirt ever a few weeks ago:

From the Player Vs. Player comic strip.

I went up to the City last night for dinner with Cal and Elina. Been meaning to spend time with them, as I had pretty much fallen off the face of their world last year, and seeing Cal at SxSW reminded me that, hey, these two are pretty neat, go spend time with them!

At some point in the evening, Elina commented that she'd pick me in a fight against Cal. Mind you, it'd have to be a drag-out, no holds barred, cheating allowed AND encouraged fight, but she'd still pick me.

Me.

ME!

Against a man who has about 5 stones on me.

Have I mentioned how much I love Elina recently? Probably not enough.

Cal immediately took the challenge, and tackled me.

Well, sorta.

So, I have these years and years and years of fighting with my older brother. I have those other years of avoiding showers at college with four guys trying to somehow, any way, get me into that shower.

I think they liked it when I resisted. Made the game much more fun.

So, here Cal is, trying to tackle me and throw me over his shoulder to claim victory. I immediately dropped into a defensive stance, backed up down the hallway, and, well, sent little love-taps to keep him at bay.

I was mildly unsuccessful in two ways. One: I received the love-taps right back. Two: the floors are hardwood and I was in socks. One good tug and I'm back in the living room, and once again, easily tackle-able.

That's a word, right? Tackle-able?

I had to resort to Annie's wet-noodle technique of going completely limp to avoid being thrown in the air. This, of course, frustrated Cal, as I wasn't exactly playing by the house rules. Which is good, because no one told me I had to play by them. When the two of them played by the rules, both of them got hurt. Me? All I had was the full embarrassment of landing on my ass when the I was flipped backwards.

Eventually all agreed that, yes, Cal was indeed stronger than I am, but I was in better shape than he was.

If we had to run five miles before we fought, well, then, I'd claim victory.

You know, sometimes you just need a picture of a cute little girl. Today, I needed one.

I'm volunteering Mirabelle for the job, as she's adorable. No one can complain: I don't have any pictures of Sophie or Alice.

We won DUI today. I didn't play very much, opting to watch instead of fighting for line space with nine other women. I'm frustrated that I was one of five players to play with Mischief the whole weekend, while the women who went to tryout with a women's team show up for the semis and finals after they were knocked out of the women's tournament, and expect full playing time with Mischief. They didn't ask if we needed women, they just assumed they could play. I'm frustrated, because I had psyched myself up to play, I had mentally prepared to play well, and then felt beat down when they showed up and rushed the lines.

On the other hand, I'm totally crushing on Andy.

Now, this would normally be a problem, but for two reasons: 1. Kris knows about it, and 2. the entire team has a crush on him, too. The women are all swooning and the men, well, the men all have man crushes on Andy.

I'm clearly one of two dozen people in this crush.

It's one thing to know of someone, to watch a video of someone playing, to see the highlight reels of some spectacular plays. It's another thing to see him in person, talk with him on the sidelines, realize that, even if for only this tournament, this legend is on my team, playing on the same line as I am, calling out to me from the sidelines, encouraging me. I played few enough points that I remember most of them, which is probably bad, but I lost count of the number of spectacular plays he had.

During the weekend, as during most ultimate weekends, each of us told stories about various highlight moments of our careers. The stories from Kris and me weren't older than about five years, which is about when we started playing for higher level teams, with our eyes looking at playing at Nationals. Andy's stories all started over ten years ago, and nearly always ended in victory. He's used to being on top, having been part of the King of the Mountain for a while, but also knows the effort involved to be there. Kris and I just arrived, and we will have very little time there. We learned only recently the effort involved in being there, and the sacrifices and commitment that comes with that effort. A very different perspective.

Admittedly, I googled for more info on Andy after I found a wireless connection. Well, I googled for information on his ultimate career, figuring the number of different Andys in google would make any non-ultimate information both difficult to find and suspect at the same time. I'm not crushing that much. It's his ultimate prowess I find so compelling.

I am, however, sorta torn. Andy has known of me longer than any of my ultimate friends, has known of me since college. I can't say I'm particularly proud of those years. I often wonder what he thinks of me, how much of that past affects his current opinion. I'm not that person, but it's often hard to know how much someone has changed when you've seen them only really twice in the intervening decade.

Ultimately (heh), I do hope he decides to play with us, in some capacity. I know he's worried about some things, but it's always exciting to see an accomplished athlete perform. And if it's with my team, even better.

Especially if I'm crushing on him.

You know, I'm really glad Kris can laugh at me about this, because it is funny.

As funny as his man crush.

During our third game, as a long point had the disc moving back and forth down the field, turnover following turnover, I sat on the away sideline, next to the Brass Boar, ne Brass Monkey, sideline. Clearly the players didn't recognize me, as they were talking quite freely, as if no Mischief players where nearby.

One player watched the game briefly, then turned to his teammate and declared, "Mischief sucks."

Now, as an up-peninsula rival, an exclamation of the opponent sucking isn't really that unreasonable. Kris in a drunken fit declared "Brass Monkey sucks!" last year at Nationals, when they failed to win their semi-finals. They thwarted us in our chance to prove that yes, we are the best Mixed team in the country. Oh, wait, we did that anyway.

Today, however, the declaration from the Monkey wasn't one of general frustration with our team, as perhaps one might think. As I sat and listened to his talking, I realized that, no, he was saying that Mischief is actually not a good team. He continued, "They have four male players that can play. When they're not on the field, the team just sucks. They can't play."

I sat there quite still, and thought about his assessment. The four men of the Mischief Apocalypse? Tyler, Mark, Kevin are clearly three of them. Who is the fourth? Kyle? Wade? Pickett?

Of course, if his assessment was true, then I'm not quite sure how Lori managed to score one third of our goals in the finals at Nationals. I'm also not quite sure how our women touched the disc in approximately 37% of the throws at Nationals. Clearly they were actually the phantom disembodiments of the Four Horsemen of the Mischief Apocalypse. How else could all but those four players suck, but still contribute to our National Championship?

Unless, of course, said Monkey player doesn't know what he's talking about, and makes himself look better by declaring other people are worse.

Good thing his voicing is clearly mistaken opinion doesn't make his observations fact.

We have the trophy to prove it.