I went to SFO to pick up Dries after his flight into the Bay Area. He had offered to call me when he and the "other Belgian" he was flying with finished with customs. I asked him to call me before he entered customs, to give me time to drive to the airport. Well, I made the big miscalculation of assuming Dries was flying into San Jose when I offered to pick him up in the first place, and was paranoid I'd be late, making him wait. So, I had driven to SFO earlier than expected to compensate.

I arrived at airport just as Dries exited the airplane and called. This was fortunate, as he was missing one of my phone number's digits and needed to call work to see where I was. I was able to wait for Dries in the waiting area, which was also fortunate, as I was unsure if I would recognize him as he exited the customs area.

When he and his Belgian companion walked out of the door, I stopped worrying and started laughing. They were both well over 6' tall. I haven't felt so short in a long time. After saying hello to his companion, I asked Dries, "Is there a rule that you must be over six feet tall to commit to Drupal's core?"

He looked at me confused. "No. I don't think so."

"Who wrote this crap? Who in his right mind would ask a woman to give up everything she is, everything she loves, the very essence of her being, for him? I mean, how could you even ask that of someone?"

"Well, you start out with, 'Hey, bee-yotch!'"

...

"Wait a second. You mean, if I asked, you'd give up baseball?"

"Baseball?"

"Yeah, baseball. Like, never talk about it. Never watch another game. Never read another book about baseball. Never draft another fantasy baseball team. You'd do it?"

"Well, if you started with, 'Hey, bee-yotch!'..."

Mike: "That was easy," referring to my heading out of the office to pick up lunch for the three of us.

Me: "Of course it was easy! You just sat on your ass the whole time!"

Nothing like a dose of reality on the little comments.

I've been using ecto to compose my blog posts since just before SxSW. It works well in that it enables me to write easily offline, but not necessarily any better than I would write if I were using, say, emacs, my favorite editor. The problem with emacs, though, is the over developed, and often overused, left pinky, from which not only can I do one armed pull-ups, but I can also thwart the most deadly ninja assassin with a pinky flick from my left hand.

Yes, emacs is that good of a pinky trainer.

The problem with using ecto, however, is that to me, I've blogged. I wrote what I needed to write, I've managed to get the words out of my system, and I'm done. Nothing like vomiting words onto a screen and thinking, whoo, that sounds good.

I'm not sure I'll stick with ecto, as a result. I'll need to get some process down to make this easier. I know I want the automatic upload of all of my pictures to a server, which doesn't need to be Flickr, though might be. No reason why I can't add in various easy-posting features ala Vox, while I'm at it.

In that copious, illusory, fleeting and mercurial, mythical entity called "free time."

After avoiding the subject for about two months, I finally went to the physical therapist for help with my hamstring. I've been playing on it since Kaimana, but not at top speed, and not without pain and a lot of worry. I knew vaguely what I needed to do for rehab for a normal muscle pull, sure. But the pop I felt/heard when I pulled it the last time, coupled with the seemingly long recovery time, gave me pause.

Apparently for good reason.

Instead of pulling or straining the hamstring muscle, I also pulled it off the bone. Similar to a shin splint, where the muscle's connective tissue to the bone becomes inflamed or begins to separate from the bone, the pop I heard was, according to the diagnosis I received, the disconnection of my hamstring from my pelvis at the insertion point.

This is bad.

Depending on the severity, the injury can take two months to six or more months to heal. The worst possible movement for this type of injury just happens to be explosive moves, say, sprinting and quick acceleration.

Greaaaaaaaat.

I'm supposed to stretch my hamstring ten times a day for the next six weeks as a good start. And work on abductors and adductors, as well as some gentle hamstring strengthening, during that time, too. Fortunately, I've been doing most of what I'm supposed to do for the hamstring to heal (minus that sprinting thing, and, oh, say, playing ultimate), I just need to do more of it (minus that sprinting thing, and, oh, say, playing ultimate).

Starting out a season with an injury has to be as bad as ending a season early because of an injury. Well, maybe. Since this is the first time I've had this happen, we'll see if that's valid. That, and if the 80 grams of protein I've been trying to eat a day will do more than just go to my middle.