So imagine my surprise when I came back from the Canadian Ultimate Championships last week, wondering how much weight I had lost in three days of intense physical activity, and discovered I was fifteen pounds OVER my usual weight. Not under. OVER.

Chagrin was my wingman.

So imagine my double surprise when I weighed myself this morning and discovered that the fifteen pound gain had TOTALLY vanished.

I guess the fact that I had swollen up from the heat and dehydration to German-sausage levels may have been a factor.

…

It was really stunning, like someone had injected Itchy Grossness^© into my legs until I had barely enough mobility to walk. Dudes, my legs were shiny.

…

* Itchy Grossness^© — New from Ronco!

Looking for the right blend of viscosity and lumpiness from your all-purpose goo? Then Itchy Grossness^© is for you!

Itchy Grossness^©
Goo… for the rest of you!

And that’s just wrong, because out of all the visitors to this fair site, you are my favourite.

Yes, I’m talking to you.

No, not you — you.

Alas, I am struggling — heroically, I might add — to burrow through a mound of work before I head off on Monday for the fair city of Toronto and the 2007 Canadian Ultimate Championships!

Whoo! And a Hoo! Everybody dance now!

[Everyone dances.]

So, in recompense to my abominable behaviour to you, please allow me to offer you…

… a few of my newly-patented iHugs^©!

[Pause for applause.]

They’re just like hugs, but shiny and white! And they have a touchscreen!

(Well, the touchscreen is my belly, but you can touch it if you really want to.)

Takers? Anyone?

[Expectant pause.]

I have returned.

Actually, I returned a whole two days ago, but the universe conspired to proceed without me while I was on my vastly enjoyable sojourn in Montreal, so I’ve been playing catch-up. (Thanks a lot, Universe. Couldn’t take the weekend off while I was away, could you? No. That wouldn’t have been fair at all. Frigging jerk.)

To tide you over until I have grappled the Universe into a nigh unbreakable headlock (yeah — I’m looking at you, Universe… look upon my fists and despair, ya dumbass), please allow me to present you — my feta-cheese-dappled readers — with a brief factoid:

After driving for 11 hours, the funniest things in the world are (1) fruit-flavoured cigarillos, (2) satellite radio, and (3) pink and silver unicorns named “Porny”.

It’s a fact.

Believe me, I was as surprised as you.

* Photo totally stolen from Mike.

More likely a vast amount of man sweat.

[Pause.]

Hmm.

That didn’t sound right.

Anyways…

I’ve been a wee busy little beaver this week, cleaning my plate of that tender morsel called “work”, hence that vast silence on the Space Monkey Pants front.

For the record:

No. I didn’t eat the spiders.

At least, not in vast quantities.

I can’t swear that a few didn’t make it down my shrieking maw as I cannonballed into the sea of madness that was cleaning them out of the freaking sun porch. Stupid buggers.

As for the man sweat, I’m heading off on a four-day weekend to Montreal tomorrow for an Ultimate tournament, accompanied by fan-favourite blogger Mike! Go! Click the link! He’s got a picture of me! Yay! Go me!

Two-day tournament. All guys. Loads of physical over-exertion. In Montreal. In summer.

Add it up and what do you get?

Man sweat.

So. Much. Man sweat.

[Shudder.]

So, I bid you a very fond adieu and wish you all the very best Canada Day weekend ever!

Celebrate our country! Eat a beaver for me!

[Pause.]

Wait. That really didn’t sound right…

Wow. I didn’t see this until today. This picture is every single Masters player from this year’s Canadian Ultimate Championships, which I might have mentioned before on this site.

Can you see me?

Here’s a hint: I’m in yellow.

(Mike’s there too! Hi, Mike!)

I hadn’t seen this until today. It makes me very happy. That tournament was my very favourite tournament experience ever.

It’s also really good incentive to get off my ever-widening ass and get back in shape for next year. Since CUC ended in August, I’ve basically let myself go, telling myself that I deserved a break after all my hard work.

A break I did take. And a cake. And several cookies. And many granola bars. And cheese. And…

Heck. Let’s just simplify this process:

while ($joke_still_funny) {
   echo " And " . random_food_item() . ". ";
}


Well, after a good long break and about ten pounds (at least) gained, this week I’ve started back on my interval training. The warmer than normal weather has helped. The awareness of my belly pressing against my waistband is helping more.

I’ve got to keep the fire stoked. And the cookies at bay.

I’m told (at least by Sween) that your “whore number” is the number of teams you’ve played Ultimate Frisbee on. Given the transient nature of the game, and the general spirit that allows for just about anyone to join your team at just about any time (sounds organized, no?), a person can rack up quite a reputation going from team to team, tournament to tournament, and from year to year.

Also, Ultimate tends to bring out the best in people when it comes to naming the team. Usually plays on words (the worst having the word “ultimate” , “disc” or any ultimate lingo in them), often strange or impossible to understand. Perhaps the sport’s dope-smokey roots are showing through.

I thus challenge Sween to a duel: give us your whore number along with team names and cities, and I shall do the same. You don’t have to have played for a whole season or tournament, but at least a game would be good.

So. This is how it’s gonna be, eh?

Sigh. I could have been relaxing, drinking some coffee, eating sausages — yes, we have more sausages, you wanna make something of it?

But NOOOOoooooOOOOOooooo… Mike has decided that I am required to frantically hunt down the names of every freaking Ultimate team I have ever been on — i.e. my “whore number” — since I began back in the fall of 1998.

IT WASN’T EASY… but, after much sweat, toil, and at least three 80s-movie-style montages, I have have compiled what I believe is as close to a comprehensive list that I will be able to… or at least as comprehensive as I can make it while remaining in my pyjama bottoms.

So here you go Mike. I hope this pleases you.

Toronto Teams (Fall 1998- Summer 2000):

1. The Rat Pack
2. Discombobulated
3. Virgo
4. Margaret
5. Common Trolls
6. Scared Sheepless
7. Esperanto Freedom Force
8. Disco
9. Spunky Misunderstood Geniuses
10. Jeanette

Toronto Teams = 10

(And then we moved to Halifax…)

Halifax Teams (Winter 2000 – present day):

1. Relaxxx
2. Orca
3. Fog
4. Sour
5. Spanky
6. Slick
7. Nutrasweet
8. Sugar
9. Daredevils
10. Squid
11. Leftovers
12. Team 3 (truly, the creativity on this team was stellar)
13. Der Smeagel Returns
14. Revenge of Der Smeagel
15. Live at 5 with Steve Murphy
16. Elephant
17. Bunnies
18. Whamo!
19. Strangelove
20. Hex
21. Team 2 (rivalling the brilliance of the fabled “Team 3″ of 2004)
22. Wabi Sabi
23. Scotch
24. Drastic Yellow Plastic
25. Primitive

Halifax Teams = 24 25

Final Calculation: Toronto + Halifax = 34 35* Freaking Teams

* This number will probably keep rising, say… whenever my memory is jogged, or if my internal fantasy life decides to kick in and throw out a couple of it’s own candidates.

Wow. Whether it was for a single tournament (Jeanette, Fog, Wabi Sabi) or several seasons (The Rat Pack, Slick, Squid), these teams represent my Ultimate playing history. (And how many of these teams did I actually name? 13 of them. I’ll let you figure out which ones.)

And Mike… the challenge ball is in my court now.

So just you wait…

… just you wait…

[Throws down smoke bomb. Smoke bomb explodes. Runs away coughing in the resultant cloud.]

Day 2 of Nationals. We’re playing against Smell My Mule from Ottawa. I’m on the field and we are on defence.

I’m trailing behind the player that I’m covering as he runs towards the thrower, keeping pace but trying to to let him “appear” open.

It works. The thrower sees him coming towards him and throws the disc to him.

I take one more step and then dive alongside him, arm reaching out to knock the disc away. He also dives, trying to get to the disc before me.

I get there first, knocking the disc to the ground.

Objective achieved, I proceed to slide along the turf, underneath the other player, whose dive has sent him on a trajectory parallel to mine, but about half a foot higher.

A second passes and then I come to rest.

With the other player lying completely on top of me.

I can see the thought bubbles that appear in the air above us for the next few moments:

ME: Anything hurt?… No! I’m good!

HIM: Anything hurt?… No! I’m good!

ME: Did I foul him?… No! Yay me!

HIM: Did he foul me?… No! Crap!

[Pause.]

ME: Hmmm… why is he still lying on top of me?…

HIM: Well… I better salvage something out of this debacle…

And then, with great deliberation, he proceeds to thrust his groin against my backside one-two-three times.

[Ed. Note: Oh yeah, that's gonna get me some great Google results.]

Everyone loses it — guffaws, giggles, and belly laughs all round. I shake my head and give him his moment. He gets off me and then I stand up. The point starts back up again and we go on to score the point.

Stepping off the field, I expect to get hand-slaps and hear lots of “Great D, man!” or “Sweet layout!” or stuff like that.

Instead… I get head shakes. And pity.

And “Oh man, he violated you!”.

…

I don’t know as I really have a moral for this story.

Maybe… “Look for affirmation from within”.

Or “Some days, it just doesn’t pay to step on the field”.

Or “Don’t put out on the first date”.

Hmmm. I’ll get back to you on this one.

…

I need a cookie.

From the ages of 9-14, every summer I went to summer camp. My dad would take me to the Y, the bus would come, and off I’d go to spend 10 days at Big Cove Camp. 10 days, away from all friends and family. I loved it. It was my other world. A whole community of friends, totally separate from my everyday life. My regular life dropped away and I immersed myself in the “camp life”. I hung out with my friends, played the camp games, went on out-trips, canoed, swam, basically had an all-round blast.

And then, 10 days later, I’d pack up my backpack, get on the bus, and we’d drive back to Halifax. My Dad would pick me up at the Y and drive me home.

And then I’d cry.

It’s been a over a week now since Nationals ended. I spent most of 2006 working as the Communications Director and training for the Masters team. Meeting every week, practices twice a week, training runs three days a week. My Lovely Wife and I went to Newfoundland for a wedding at the beginning of the month and returned 3 days before the tournaments was set to begin. We landed back in Halifax and I hit the ground running. 7am directors’ meetings, meetings with vendors, assembling team packs, setting up registration, loading vans, unloading vans, last minutes practices, laundry, a few short bouts of sleep, and the tournament began.

The days started at 5am for me, having to go to the fields first thing in the morning, to either head out with the shuttle buses or help the never-ending Tetris game of loading and unloading the fleet of cargo vans, filled with bananas, water, bagels, barricades, cones, Vector bars, peanut butter, and too many other contents to remember.

And then it was off the play with the Masters team (go Scotch!). 9 games in three days, both ankles taped every day, one hamstring cramp, every protruding joint scrapped and scabbed, approximately 16-20 liters of Gatorade drank, jersey soaked with sweat, snot, sunscreen, and grass stains, 4 wins and 4 loses in our double round-robin (we lost to every team in our division, but also beat every team in our division), to finally play for third place… which we lost. Sigh.

(Sidenote: Watching everyone walk around wearing t-shirts, hats, sweatshirts, jackets, playing with discs, all adorned with the logo that I designed was little on the surreal side. I held back from running around screaming, “Fools! You’re all fools! I’m not a designer! Fooooooolsssss!”)

Then came the party at Citadel Hill. That’s pretty much a blur. Ordering your beer two at a time can do that to you. Good times though. The dance floor being filled entirely with shirtless dancers is a standout though.

And then it was home, shortest sleep yet, then back to the fields to disassemble the main fields and set up the finals at Huskies Stadium. Set-up done, it was time for the finals for the Open, Mixed, and Women’s divisions, which I found myself actually falling asleep while watching — not that the games were boring, just that I was completely wiped.

And then the finals were over. And we got to disassemble everything one more time.

And then, we got the word that it was done.

I drove home myself. I had a shower. Threw some stinky clothes in the wash. Had some food. Went to bed.

I didn’t cry.

But I felt like I just got back from camp.

It’s taking me a little time to get myself into the swing of life without Nationals filling my days. I’m trying to catch up at work. I have chores to do around the house. My Lovely Wife is pleased as punch that it’s all over, but even she’s not used to having me around this much.

I’m trying to catch up on blogs I haven’t been able to read… but some of you write so freaking much. It’s daunting. So, I promise to try and catch up. But it might take me a little while.

You see, I just got back from camp.

Whew. After much driving, much playing of Ultimate, much walking around Montreal looking for what seemed for the longest time to be a mythical Vietnamese restaurant, much Gatorade, much sunshine, MUCH wind, much more driving, and much too much fun, My Lovely Wife and I have returned from Montreal.

No time to get into the full-on rundown of the weekend, but let’s just say that we did not get our asses handed to us. We actually came out of the weekend with a winning record (4 wins vs. 3 losses) and improved our ranking from 20th (out of 21) to end the weekend tied for 11th place. Woo-hoo! Go team! Halifax Masters rocked the house! Final scores for Halifax Masters (i.e., “Scotch”):

Saturday

Pool Play:

• Scotch 7, Sherbrooke 10
• Scotch 11, Montreal Grand Masters 3
• Scotch 7, Teenage Cavemen 11
• Scotch 11, SMUT 6

Cross-Over:

• Scotch 12, Opus 10

Sunday

Consolation Quarter-Finals:

• Scotch 13, Not So Old SAG 9

Consolation Semi-Finals:

• Scotch 7, Big Science 15

Final Ranking: Tied for 11th

To tide you over until I can present you with the complete saga, allow me to present you with a few crucial tidbits of knowledge that I gleaned over the past four days:

• My Lovely Wife drives faster on the highway than I do. Much faster. Frighteningly faster.
• Contrary to what I (wrongly) assumed for years, the Open division is just as spirited as co-ed Ultimate.
• It’s really easy to get angry at fast-food servers. It’s just as easy to apologise to fast-food servers. Guess what? The apology is more appreciated.
• Broken noses bleed a lot.
• Mark Beasy can suck beer out of a disc face-first while imitating a bird very quickly.

And the final, hard-won piece of info that I gathered that I must shout from the rooftops to prevent further horrors…

• Don’t ever, ever microwave hard-boiled eggs. Just… don’t.