Kris and I had to leave for the airport just as our semi-final game started. We beat the Hawaii team that had taken us out in quarters for the last three years, making that victory very sweet.

Beth filled us in on the outcome:

I don't know exact scores very well, but here's the basic story of
what happened.  We went up on the bunnies by a good margin, maybe 8-5.
 They were making unforced errors and we were playing solid and
aggresively and were able to capitalize.  They then went for a run to
bring it up to about 9-8 when we called time out to stop momentum.
There continued to be an echange of points and we were able to tie it
at 12s by playing for field position in this gusty upwind downwind
field.  Both teams were looking pretty good, though I think we were
starting to make a few more errors than before.  The game was hard
capped at 12-13, and then the bunnies managed to score, ending the
game at 14-12.  Truly, it could have gone either way.  We almost made
it to the finals baby!
    Although playing in the finals would have been cool (especially
for bragging rights) we were down to 10 playing at that point and
pretty tired, and I don't think we minded getting to sit and watch and
eat poke.

So, sitting under the tent today, waiting for my teammates to gather for our team shout-outs, I grabbed Linda's nail polish bottle. Becky loves shout-outs, and I'm, admittedly, becoming a fan also. Basically, a shout-out is a vocalization of a highlight moment of another teammate, in front of the whole team. Each shout-out is typically accompanied with a hearty swig of an alcoholic beverage that's being passed around in the group, and followed with the person receiving the shout-out giving the next shout-out.

To my surprise today, I received five shout-outs. I usually manage two, but this time managed five, one actually for a spectacular play (a thunk catch about 6" off the ground, for which, according to Kris and Brynne, I'm famous). Two of the shout-outs were from teammates who I was going to shout-out for the exact same event, just the opposite way. At one point, I actually received a standing ovation from the whole team. I nearly cried.

Before all of this, however, I sat waiting for the team. Waiting next to Linda's nail polish, and bored with nothing in particular to do. So, I did what most any other person would do: I started painting my nails.

This painting took a little more effort than normal, as the brush didn't stay attached to the lid when I unscrewed the top. As Linda says, "Cheap crap." She's allowed to say that, it was her polish.

I managed to paint one nail, the thumb nail of my left hand, before the team showed up. When they started filtering into the tent, I stopped painting, in order to help organize all of us around the table. I didn't think much of the polish after that, except when Linda also had trouble with the bottle's brush and top.

Later in the evening, after dinner and the dancing and the ice luge drinking by Kris and Alice, I drove to the Honolulu airport to drop a very drunk Lori off for her midnight flight home. She managed half the drive awake and talking a million miles an hour about life and love and drinking and ultimate. The other half was spent in silence, as she dozed, in and out of consciousness with the starts, stops and turns of my driving.

On my drive, I was annoyed with my fingers, and kept picking at them with an surprisingly uncharacteristic intensity. I thought I had finally broken myself of the habit of picking at my nails and the skin around them, certainly within the last six months.

It wasn't until the drive home, under some street light at a stop sign, when I looked down at my fingers, that I realized the nail polish on my thumb nail was the cause of my finger focus. The feeling of polish on my nails is so foreign, that I managed to pick off half the polish on the way to the airport.

Good thing it was the cheap stuff.

Why is it that Microsoft Word produces HTML that when emailed to someone who uses Microsoft Outlook to read the HTML email, that person sees only a blank page?

What is it with Microsoft that their products don't flippin' interact? Is it that they're clueless, or do they just not talk to each other?

A client had an email newsletter to mail out this week. It was supposed to mail out last week, but wait, wait, they're not sure it's quite done.

So then it was supposed to go out on Monday. Then Tuesday. Oh, wait, it has to go out to everyone with an account last year, as well as this year.

And the server was having issues.

And I'm in Hawaii.

And the email displays as a blank page in Outlook.

It reads fine in Hotmail and Gmail and Yahoo. It reads fine in my mail reader. It reads find in Yahoo email beta. I can't figure out why it doesn't render in Outlook, but it doesn't, and it's due, and the server is barfing, and won't send more than 300 emails out at a time, and I'm frustrated.

But, well, I am in Hawaii. It's sunny. And tropical. And the tournament starts tomorrow.

How bad could it be?

Two Fridays ago, Kris and I went to Seattle and visited with Ben, Lisa and Jake. Ben, at one point, showed us Jake's Michelin Man legs and arms, where his baby fat rolls jiggled and folded. At some point soon, Jake will hit his second baby growth spurt and lose all of the jiggles. Until then, however, Ben is showing it off.

On Wednesday night last week, at communal dinner, I mentioned we had journeyed north and seen Jake, and wasn't he just the most adorable butterball? Beth commented that, look, everyone has a line on his arm, just above his elbow, where his roll of baby fat made a permanent crease in the skin. No, really, look, look.

We all looked, and sure enough, we all had those lines. Sure, some were really faint, almost invisible, but still there.

So, today on the drive from the airport with Kris and Heather, we talked about this fact when Heather and I were catching up. When I said everyone has this crease, here, look, look, Kris chimed in, "No, not
everyone."

Well, the man with less than 4% body fat could be right, but I wasn't going to admit it any time soon. I pulled up his shirt sleeve and tried to find his crease. "It's there," I insisted, looking.

We found Heather's really fast, and mine was findable. Kris' not so much. "Well, it's there."

"No, it's not."

"Yes, it is. You just can't see it."

"If I can't see it, doesn't that mean it's not there?"

"There's a subcutaneous crease that isn't visible from the surface. So, yes, just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there."

"Okay."

"Okay? That's it? I won the argument? I can't believe you're giving up that easily."

"You used 'subcutaneous' in an argument. How can you not win?"

Heather piped up from the back seat, "You two are such geeks."