Freeing the Grapes and Other Adventures of Rugby

I find humor in the search terms via Google and Yahoo (and those few users that use Ask Jeeves) that direct readers to my rugby blog. Here are my top 5 not so related to rugby favorites (not in any order) that have led people to my site:

5. Collegiate Quidditch Tshirts
4. Free the Grapes
3. Girls Muddy Rugby Action (please tell me this is for wholesome good video watching right?)
2. Is Matt Fry of the BBC Gay?
1. Rugby Messups (Ok, this is related to rugby, but this is one of the most popular terms that leads to my site)

Anyways, just thought that was interesting, plenty of people find my blog normally…and I have nothing compared to some of the search terms Against the Head experiences, but they are some weird search entries that direct people to my site. But whatever mighty search engines, I will take what I can get! Note: We broke 150,000 last week too! Thanks for reading!

The last month has been a flurry of activity and I apologize that I have not updated personally on the blog. Winding down rugby usually means that my schedule has more time and is not as stressful, but this does not seem to be the case lately. Early in November, The Girl and I decided that we were going to move in (yea!) together and take that next big step.

In preparation we began re-modeling my room (which will be the guest room) and our new room that we will co-habitat in. We ripped out the flooring, baseboards etc and put in beautiful hardwood floors (thanks to The Girl’s Dad and my bro for the extra help!). We painted each of the rooms and just this weekend we put together our new Ikea dresser and bed…and that only took us four hours I might add. Sure, you can hire us out to put your non-assembled items together too!

While we still have a bit more to do, well not really me…The Girl wants to put up curtains and pictures, the project is almost complete!

I really enjoyed the painting and as a result of deciding to do stripes and not just slap paint on the walls, I had a lot of time to think. I made sure to bring a pad of paper into the room so I could make sure to record any brilliant thoughts I had. During that time I thought up the Submit Your Scores and Submit Your Tournament tools using Google Docs. While I love the functionality and ease of Submit Your Scores and Submit Your Tournament, I am still working on the format etc.

While the Submit Your Scores has remained mostly unused, the Submit Your Tournament has really taken off. Make sure to check it out, last time I counted we had over 15 Tournaments listed for Spring 2009! I think the Submit Your Scores is a bit time-consuming and isn’t very easy to fill out, so I will be working on making that easier and faster before rugby kicks back in for everyone.

Also in November we raffled off a pair of CSS Rugby Shoulder Pads and this was our biggest raffle yet! Over 45 people entered and I wish I had more than one pair to give away. This was a 150% increase over the first few raffles and I hope they get bigger and better each time! I am working with quite a few exciting vendors and will continue to have a raffle once a month beginning on the 1st of the month. This month the raffle is a Xtreme Rugby Jersey (size L and #13 on the back). Bidding has closed, and the winner should be announced tomorrow or the next day.

On the 22nd of November I was honored to be chosen for a Women’s National Team event in Ft. Lauderdale, FL (teams announced here and results are here). The event was short and sweet and was amazing as always.

We arrived Friday night and had training early Saturday morning. We ran the dreaded 300m and 40yard dash. I was pleased with my numbers as I was right with the other scrumhalves and close to the majority in both drills. I had never ran this version of the 300m and understand now why it is so dreaded!

After that we had a long leisurely lunch where Team White strategized and cultivated our game plan. After that we were set to play at 4pm, but since the U19 National All-Star Championships wer
e running a bit behind, we got to watch a few more games than we expected. Finally we kicked off around 5:30pm and the game was highly contested. I don’t feel that I played my best and fear that nerves played a bigger role than they normally do. However, I got some great feedback from the coaches and am looking forward to training and getting back to where I was before I had knee surgery. Yes, surgery was almost a year ago and I was released in June but anyone that has had major ACL or any other major surgery knows that real recovery time is almost a year (January 6th will be a year). Overall the experience was great and I hope to be invited to more and more venues.

For more photos of the Red vs. White game, make sure to check out Ramey M.’s photos on Picasa here.

For Thanksgiving, The Girl and I headed to North Carolina to visit my family. The 2nd Grandchild was recently born and so we were all dying to meet her! We spent 5 lovely days with the family and of course Turkey day was wonderful as well. We had all of our favorite foods and were surrounded by good energy and love…good times!

This picture is my four brothers and I (from left and oldest to youngest): Mike, Jeff, Me, Doug & Greg!

All in all November has been quite busy, but quite kind to me. Everyone in Austin has been sick with the flu and random colds and I have managed to avoid all the sickness! Since the Red vs White game I have taken a break from the gym so that my Plantar Fasciitis (horribly, horribly painful foot problem) can possibly heal before the Spring season begins. Fat chance of that actually happening since overuse is the most common reason this happens, but I will keep stretching and possibly look into some physical therapy. If anyone has any hints there, send them my way, it is one of the most persistent and painful things I have had to endure!

This week I plan to get back in the gym (slowly…) and begin preparing for the Spring season. I was voted into Match Secretary again for the Austin Valkyries so if you want to visit Austin or want to host us, shoot me an email!