Rollin' Down Highway 41

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am playing winter league Ultimate in Chattanooga. Several of my friends, upon hearing about this undertaking, have looked at me like I have a swastika tattooed on my forehead and asked (in that supportive, I'm-here-for-you way that friends do when you're sportin' prominent Nazi ink) "Why are you doing THAT?"


What- do I have something in my teeth?

I guess Atlanta folks might find driving 1.5 hours out of the way to do something that they could just as easily do in Atlanta a bit odd. Except that the AFDC does not actually have a winter Ultimate league- or at least not until mid-January when women's league starts. And, while I love women's league (hey, I'll probably captain a team), I don't find it very challenging. And I sort of just love middle Tennessee, and we have a group of 6 or 7 of us who drive up together from Atlanta each weekend, and I'm playing with a bunch of new people, etc.

This past Sunday, I rode shotgun in Rick's car with Wart dozing in the back seat. Wart gets an honorable mention for providing a much needed buffer zone between the front seat and Homer dog, who rode in the way back and expressed himself periodically with various odors. These fragrant memos from the rear (of the car, yo!) quickly earned Wart the new title of "Fart Canary," and, between intervals of snoozing, he did sing quite a few times. Meanwhile, Rick did his best Dr. Phil impersonation for most of the drive up to Chattanooga, and we had the Relationships Sure Are Hard conversation. Wart woke up (without Homer's assistance) somewhere around Resaca long enough to mumble something about "poon" before passing out on my cleat bag.

Things really got interesting just south of Dalton, though, when Rick, being the natural student of psychology that he is, began profiling not only the ideal mate for me but also for several men for whom, as it turns out, I was not the ideal mate. Now, what's said in the Subaru stays in the Subaru, so I can't exactly get into specifics (other than to share that Me is one of my most favoritest Topics), but the gist of the ensuing discussion was this: I am pretty much the Perfect Package when it comes to what men want. I know! It's like I always knew I was completely flawless in the back of my mind, but I just needed to hear it out loud. Or . . . to hear something sort of similar- I can't remember the exact words that were used, but you know- gist. Perfect. Me. Right, Rick?

"Yes, KQ!" -Rick Wyatt, 2006

I ask you friends- does finding out that you embody female perfection sound like a waste of an hour and a half to you?

"No, KQ!" -Friends, just now


Watch out guys! Hottie at work!

And so the Adventures of Dr. Phil, The Perfect Package, and Fart Canary concluded with a long conversation about anime on the way back to Atlanta (as mentioned previously- my team, Shmoo, lost). Rick, having vastly superior knowledge on the subject (but, to be fair, I knew more about Me- we all have our different interests, right?), tried to explain the finer points of his dislike for harem anime. I attempted to compensate for my lack of nerd-cred in this department by saying things like "I saw Evangelion" and "I liked Spirited Away" and nodding thoughtfully. Wart eventually stirred in the back and said "ninjas" just before Homer unleashed the lion's share of his gaseous arsenal of odor, eliciting cries of anguish and a shower of curses from the afflicted.

I believe an unofficial vow was also made not to date any more Ultimate players, but then none of us could really figure out where else to meet people. I mean, where that's not also completely depressing. The world begins and ends on the line, it would appear. Thank goodness I'm such a catch!


Ignore that girl in the black hat. Don't I look sexier chugging beer at 10:00 in the morning? That strange man in the background seems to think so!

I should probably point out that the title of this post is somewhat misleading since we actually drive on I-75 and not on 41. But Dickey didn't sing about no interstate.

Holiday Tears

I'm down to the final week of holiday madness at work, and my loft looks like . . . well, it sort of looks like it usually does, only now it's to the power of 10. I have also exponentially increased my instances of both public and private crying during this most stressful of seasons, which I'm sure surprises none of you. Or- at least my brother is not exactly picking his jaw up off the floor. I can't be sure about the rest of you.

I actually still get embarrassed about crying in public, even though I established myself as huge crybaby pretty early on (I think I cried every day in 6th grade). I am not really bothered by the crying part specifically; I wear my heart on my sleeve, so people generally know how I feel about things anyway. The embarrassment stems instead from the "this is a totally inappropriate time and place to cry" feeling that pretty much always surfaces when I'm crying and other people are around. Also, public crying just really makes me feel like such a chick. Gah!

Most recently, I took the opportunity to get all weepy in front of two people, one of whom I don't know that well, when the other started talking to me about an old ex-boyfriend. Before that, I was crying on stage with the ASC in front of 500 people during our annual Christmas concert. Earlier in the week, I had the opportunity to go see Thomas Dolby and BT (which was amazing, by the way) and cried not once but twice during the show (one bout per set, of course!). Oh! And I kicked the week off by crying at the office (my parents are so proud of me right now) when an order I had promised to a partner didn't get shipped out on time.

(For the record, in the privacy of my own home, I have also cried at 3 different episodes of Alias (season 1), the episode of Buffy where Joyce dies (every time), a post on rec.sport.disc about a college kid who had a heart attack, a Christmas card I got, my cat looking at me funny one time, and that craptacular ABC Primetime thingie on "Basic Instincts" (blaaaargh!) that I didn't even mean to record where some guy dressed like a nurse verbally abused a 90 year old man in a wheelchair. Sniffle . . .)

The worst is actually yet to come, though. As it turns out, I become the emotional double of my mother- who has advanced degrees in crying- when we are together. I will go home for the holidays on Friday, and we will, no doubt, find ourselves at church, at a movie, in the car, or possibly strolling through a shopping mall together, crying. She will probably cry first- it really doesn't matter at what- and then I will try to look surprised and say "Mom? Are you OK?" and she'll try to smile, but that will just make her cry more. She'll say "I . . . just . . . [fill in stimulus] reminded me of [fill in actual reason for crying, not necessarily logically connected to stimulus] and it just . . . it just makes me sad." The word "sad" will be mostly eaten up by squeaky crying voice, at which point I will say "Well, I'm sure [who or whatever] will be fine." Nonetheless, I will then begin to cry even though I really don't have any idea for whom or what we are crying. This will last for roughly 3 minutes. 5-10 if we see the movie where Will Smith's kid has that ridiculously cute afro. Just so you know.

In less lachrymose news, I finally had a beautiful afternoon of Ultimate up in Chattanooga after spending the last two trips up there as a Thleensicle. Playing in shorts and a t-shirt was both novel and enjoyable, even though my team got somewhat spanked. I sort of tried to lay out and ended up landing on exactly the same spots that I always land on when I try to layout (left calf, right kneecap, left forearm), so all those spots hurt again. I made the offhand comment that "I really need to learn to layout properly," so when one of my more whippersnapper-y college-aged teammates had a sweet layout grab in the endzone, he turned to me boisterously and said "Hey, KQ! That's how you layout!" Smartass . . .

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the band at my church for playing a hard rock version of "Hark, The Herald Angels Sing" tonight. It rocked so hard that I had to leave the room to keep from having a Scanners moment and also in order to sit with most of my friends who had already been blasted into the back hall. And man- what a drag it was to actually be able to hear each other singing once we were outside of the room. Singing Christmas carols isn't cool unless you're rockin'! And that's why I go to church- to be cool and to ROCK WITH JESUS!


"GLOOOO-OOOOO-OOOOOO-OOOOO-RIA!!!!"