After a struggle to wake in the morning, I finally made it to the airport for my fifth quickest trip turn around, heading out to Portland today for OSCON 2006. I had managed to sleep fairly well, if shortened hours, waking only to hear Kris yell, "Stop her!" at me, referring to Bella, who was eating the remains of Heather's underwear she had just thrown up. I'm not sure which was more amazing: that I managed to miss the first 6" round pile of vomit on my way around the bed to Bella, or that the vomit covered elastic band was actually tasty enough to her to re-eat. I had the distinct displeasure of pulling half of it from out of her throat by grabbing the other end and pulling.

Yeah. Good times.

At the airport, before my flight, I used the restroom, following my standard modus-operandus for air travel. As I sat on the toliet (having wiped it off, of course), I started smelling cigarette smoke. It took a moment to register, as it's not a smell I associate with airports any longer.

I left the stall, and washed my hands, trying to decide if I should do anything about the smoker. Who smokes in an airport? In the bathroom? Yesterday's sandball altercation made me slightly shy about progressing along my personal development of standing up for myself, doing the right thing, and confronting fears, so the moments at the sink washing my hands were crucial moments.

I turned to the stalls, and my best Voice Of Authority, ordered, "The person smoking in these stalls should stop immediately." To my surprise, my heart didn't race, I didn't get the sick feeling after confronting someone. I did very little, but I at least expressed my displeasure of inhaling the smoke from the inconsiderate smoker.

As I left the bathroom, in a very small voice, I heard the reply to my order:

"ok."

At dinner tonight, Mark started telling one of his college stories (his story to tell, but the summary is: he and his friends killed a rabbit with a BB gun from the dorm balcony, cooked it at a barbeque (tastes like chicken!), was tattled on by the women downstairs, ordered to volunteer at the local Humane Society, tried to do said volunteering at the local Humane Society but were refused because of the reason why they had to volunteer, and ended up volunteering with the campus gardener, who offered them $1 for every rabbit they killed). At one point, Kris leaded over to Megan and asked, "Have you heard this story a million times before?" She laughed, then said yes, but it was okay, because she listened for differences in the stories, to see how they grow over time.

She asked me if I did the same with the stories from Kris that I hear over and over again. I laughed, and said, "No, I just pull out my phone and try to keep up with him while typing it in." I then asked, "Want to hear one?"

I figure Kris isn't going to blog his stories, but some of them are just so so funny. The best part is, of course, the fact that Kris just laughs when he tells the story, so, yes, a lot of it is in the delivery. If he starts typing up his own stories, I'll stop. Until then, I'll keep transcribing.

Megan said, yes, she'd like to hear the story, so, in his words, Kris' story of Stuart Foreman:

Stuart Foreman was the name of our catcher in high school.

We had a rule that a runner heading to home had to slide if there was going to be a play at home. They had no choice, they were rwquired to slide.

my junior year, we were playing our arch rival, James Wood H.S., In one play, the runner starts coming into home. Our catcher caught the ball, and turned to meet the runner. The runner was this 6" 200 (220 in one version of the story) pound guy. Our catcher was like 5'7", 170 (180 in a different telling) pounds, stocky and built like Eric Newman.

So this runner comes in, and our catcher is holding the ball (out in front of himself, both hands around the ball) when the runner keeps charging.

So our catcher goes HUNH! picks up the runner, body slams him to the ground, touches him with the ball, spikes the ball,and walks back to the dugout.

The guy immediately stands up, like he wants to fight. The whole bench is waiting at the end of the dugout, just waiting to rush the field, while the umpire is throwing warnings around.

Immediately warned both dugouts to stay in their dugouts.

Someone asked, What were you doing?

Me? Oh, I was laughing hysterically.

After the second day of GRUB, Beth suggested we all head over to the river for a quick dip. She had hoped we would quick dip yesterday instead of, say, showering at the cabin and using up the water at the cabins. We had a few starts and stops, but ended up at the creek just downstream of the 6th St. Bridge. Not the cleanest of spots, but definitely convenient.

When we arrived, a small group of drunken college boys were flirting with a small group of college girls. And when I say flirting, I mean taunting, catcalling, insulting, and throwing flip flops and dirt clods at them. What passes for flirting these days would most likely have been called assault and battery when I was in college.

Kris and I arrived, and wandered past the mating ritual, down the path to the creek edge. We stood at the stop of the rocks, watching our teammates enter the waterm laughing at the frigid water.

As we stood there, a ball of wet sand came flying at our heads, hitting Kris in the hat, and landing on my shoulders with a wet splat. I turned in anger, as Kris asked, "What the hell?" I knew who threw the ball of sand, having seen the guy throwing earlier, and hollered at the top of my lungs, "You can cut that shit out. Right. Now." They looked a little sheepish, but made no acknowledgement of my yell.

I turned to walk back to the bridge, as Kris did. He continued to the car, as I stopped to tell various teammates who were just arriving what had happened. Dan O cajoled the punks, "Not cool, guys, not cool."

I followed Kris to the car, made sure he was okay, then pulled out my cell phone. I was sufficiently annoyed that a call to the police was in order. 411 worked just fine, and I was connected to the Boulder policy in under a minute. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of walking around as I made the call, and one of the hoodlums saw me talking on the phone while looking at them. They scattered out of the water. Even more tragically, they scattered onto the shore between the cars and the water. Rather than leaving, they hovered, never quite leaving us alone.

After about 10 minutes of trying to relax, I gave up, and walked back to the car. Kris had the trunk open and was arranging things, but I thought he was sleeping in the car and had forgotten to close the trunk. Kris suggested ice cream, so off we went to the Haagen Dazs on Pearl St. My months and months of travelling to Boulder were not for naught!

We arrived back at ye ole watering hole just as everyone was driving away to go to dinner. At dinner, I found out that not only had the hoodlums returned to the water, but had taken up throwing sand clods at our group. One hit Roshan in the head. Another tried "cock fighting puffery" as Mark said, to start a fight. Mark's thought was, "Dude, I'm holding a baby!" Mirabelle would have kicked their collective ass, of course.

Doyle's response was my favorite: "Uh, you know, we roll twenty strong."

Having heard the hoodlums came back to make trouble for my friends because of my actions (ultimately because of their own actions, but pushed along by mine), I was a little sad. I don't want to cause trouble for my friends, especially during these moments of starting to live without fear stopping me. All actions have consequences, I just need to make sure I think of them before I take a stand.

The bummer of the whole situation was, however, realizing I lost $20 when taking out my cell phone to call the police. I had a bill tucked in the phone case. It fell out when I made the call. Sigh.

I'm a big fan of young adult books. The world is still (mostly) innocent. The good guys (nearly) always win. Closure happens in less than 200 pages. The commitment level is low, usually only one or two hours at most (though, some of the Harry Potter books are tomes, and other Dark Materials move slowly).

A young adult (juvi fiction?) book on my shelf for a long while now has been The Game of Sunken Places, by M.T. Anderson. In a moment of desperate need of light reading, I picked it from the middle of the to-read stack and started reading.

The story is about two unlikely friends: one clueless, athletic, and outgoing, the other intelligent, thoughtful, quiet. The two are invited out to a distant uncle's house, where they encounter strange people, unusual beings, a mystery that needs solving and a game that needs playing.

Setting the scene proves difficult, as the first few chapters are slow and a bit tedious, containing slight misdirections which are explained later in the book.

By the middle of the book, however, the boys are in full-game mode, and the action is non-stop. Most of the seemingly random events are tied into the mystery of the house and the uncle, though some are, admittedly, absurd in presentation.

The ending implies this book is of a series of books from the same author. While I believe this book was mildly entertaining, I wasn't pulled into the world strongly enough to seek other books in the series (and thus, can't confirm the book as part of a series).

Mike has been telling me that Maeryn can speak, that she has a vocabulary of seven words. Having never hear an coherent word spoken from her lips, I didn't believe him. Sure, I've heard cooing and screeches that Mike can distinguish as "thank you" and "bye bye," but any normal human would be hopeless trying to communicate with Maeryn.

Today he needed help taking asphalt that had been ripped up from his back yard, to the dump. I'm not sure what it was with the previous owners of houses along this street, but paving over the back yard seemed to be a common theme.

Since Maeryn was still in town (Liza being at camp, and Kate being at the UPA's Board of Directors annual strategic planning meeting), Mike needed a babysitter during his dump run. He brought her over, we chatted, then he left. As he was stepping away, I had approximately nine seconds to distract her enough that she didn't realize the last person in her family had left, and although he was coming back, she had only my shoulders to cling to.

So, distract I did!

Realizing we had no toys for her to munch on, I tossed her into the air a few times (she's heavy - that kid is dense!), then wandered over to her house to find toys to distract her. We spent much of the time in the play room with various toys and books. She was willing to be distracted, being a Baby Klingon only momentarily.

At one point, she was playing with a My Little Pony, and dropped it. It landed between my leg and the arm of the futon we were sitting on. Maeryn reached down, grabbed it, and pulled up. The pony didn't budge, so she looked up at me and said, "It's stuck," sounding like, "Ist studt," in an unbelievably adorable little girl's voice.

I looked at her, and realized I was dumbstruck that not only had she spoken her first words to me, but it was in the form of a complete sentence. I screached in enjoyment and praised her. When Mike arrived home, it was his turn not to believe me when I told him the story.

Of course, the true test would be for something else she wants to become stuck, and have her announce that, too, is stuck. Haven't tried the experiment yet. Having too much fun tossing her into the air and listening to her giggle. I have to do that a lot now, before she becomes too heavy for me to lift.