I smashed my left middle finger today and broke it.

Not a clean break like my ribs, but squished like my collar bone back in 1998, a few months before Kris and I started dating. Kris and I were cleaning the front yard, as we have been doing every spare minute for the last, what, five years? I moved from the blueberry patch to the front rocks, ripping weeds out and avoiding the one or two flowers that somehow survived.

Why I thought I could move a twenty pound rock, pull the weeds out, and put it back without difficulty, is beyond me. Yet, strangely enough, a belief not really foreign to my mind.

I dropped the rock the last centimeter, the point of the rock landing straight across the top of the second joint on my left middle finger, crushing it. Of course, like all truly great crushings, it didn't hurt until I couldn't get my hand out from under the rock.

And then it hurt like hell.

I managed to melt two ice cubes icing the joint before I could move my finger again.

The smooshing made me think about the other bones I've broken: four ribs two years ago, another rib back in '94, another rib broken sneezing back in '90, my collar bone in '98 and maybe a toe when I was in the sixth grade.

At least it was my left hand, and I can still throw.

Today was the second day of the Steven, James, Dries, Earl and his wife (who I hope doesn't hate me because I can't recall her name), and happily Kris joined Mike, Doyle and me. All of us but the {Ch|K}rises and Earl's wife went out after dinner to buy alcohol and descend on Dries' room for a mini-geek fest afterward.

Surprisingly, no one other than I likes whiskey. Not even the Johnnie Walker Blue good stuff.

Today, I arrived a little late to the second day of the OSCMS Summit, so I snuck into the back of the classroom and sat down in a chair Boris offered me. The session was on installation profiles, which I've been interested in to ease the setup of new sites.

As I was sitting in the back, I was close to the refreshments, coffee and juices. Next to me was a bucket of ice with a few bottles of soda in the bottom. Since the juices were sitting on the counter, they were warm. I grabbed one of the cranberry juices and tucked it into the ice to chill, figuring I'd wait until the end of the session before digging it out.

Just as I finished half-burying the bottle in the ice, the guy sitting next to the ice bucket looked over intently at the bottle I just set in the ice. He then reached in, grabbed it, opened the bottle and started drinking it.

I sat there glaring, thinking, "Dude! What the f--k?"

This is the guy.

One of these days, I'm going to write about a conference I went to where, when I write, I detail the talks I heard, instead of the people I met or the things I did. When that day comes, I might have even taken notes. Until then, though, it's all about who I met and what I heard (in the hallways, that is).

Today was the first day of the 2007 OSCMS Summit, hosted by Yahoo. My original plan with the schedule was to listen to Rasmus, who never disappoints, then James, who is also entertaining to listen to. I was also planning on going to the theming session, Earl's node_access session, too. I wasn't sure about the last session, so went to the internationalization one, since Mike was in that one.

The day was fabulous. Except for the theming session, which wasn't directed at our level, the sessions were informative and well presented. Chris and I could have taught the theming session, a realization which is always disappointing (in the sense we've just wasted our time, not in the sense, hey, hot damn, we know it all!).

At lunch, I met up with a few people I've been really really really wanting to meet for just the longest time. I met Robert Douglass, the first person to publish a drupal book. Entertainingly enough, he knew who I was and immediately complimented me on my tutorials and documentation. Of course, I was flattered. He also remembered I was working on the Flickr API project, another one of many projects I've started and not finished. Boo.

I also met Steven Peck, whom I've communicated with over the last couple years but never met. His first words to me where, "Oh my! She does exist!"

I also met Josh Koenig, who frustratingly knew who I was, but I don't recall meeting him. And, dammit, I wanted to talk to him more than the introductions, but I was stupidly nervous. After I left our conversation, I could NOT figure out why the heck I was tongue-tied. Stupid tongue. Stupid knots.

There was a gathering after the event that I just didn't want to go to. My stamina for these things is too short. I don't know why. Something about getting up at six in the morning and needing to go to bed at ten at night seems to limit what I can and can't do these days.

Stupid adult sleeping schedule.

Every time I look in the mirror, I think, ugh, I'm looking old. I see every spot, every mark, every crease, every blemish. I see every grey hair and think, crap, I need to color my hair.

Yet, for every time I do that, there seems to be someone who misses my age by a lot. This time, it was by near a decade. How do people misjudge my age by so much? Sure, there are people who will pad a few years so as not to insult me, a woman, but off by so many?

Confuses the heck out of me.

Tonight, I made some comment to a fellow Master Gardener about some experience I had, I don't recall the details. She looked at me surprised, then asked how old I was. When I told her, she was completely shocked, and commented, "Really? I thought you were around 25!"

Though, I guess that's better than not figuring out how to spell my last name. Or my first name. Or my gender.

It must be the shoes.