Summer Summary

It's been a good summer. A few adventures, plenty of time with my friends, a job that doesn't make me want to smack a cocktail waitress... Like I said, a good summer.

Started out with a weekend in central Illinois for a friend's wedding, and then some time in the big city before heading home.

Chicago was fun. I spent hours in the Shedd Aquarium. A good part of that watching the dolphins, who laughed at me and my opposable thumbs. I think really think they're probably smarter than humans. At least most of them truly enjoy life. And best of all was the weather - absolutely beautiful, with temps falling into the 60's at night. I might have appreciated it more during the triple digit days of July.

Then summer 7s started in earnest. The Satiated Beavers had quite the summer, with our A-side cleaning up tournaments from Texas to New England and our B-side tearing up the social life, out to play some rugby, drink beer, and break hearts. The Debutante Ball was quite the experience.

That's the UT ladies, playing as The Freemartins for the summer, along with the Beavers brave enough to don prom dresses and get scrappy. Scrum downs involved the hokey pokey and no run away tries were allowed.

I've already mentioned the Beavers winning Bloodfest and our next tournament was supposed to be Corpus Christi. The only tournament left for those of us not going to Cape Cod, which wound up being the same weekend. However, a few of us decided one tournament was not enough, resulting in a road trip to Baton Rouge for five of the Beavers. We went with an important goal in mind: It was a weekend to play rugby, drank beer, and break heats.


We made picked up some whores, played some really fun rugby on the lush bayou pitches, and made some new friends. There were also a lot of jell-o shots involved.

Corpus Christi was...Corpus. It seems that this tournament always starts with such high expectations that some angst and/or drama is inevitable. When I remember it, I remember awesomeness, but I spent a fair amount of Saturday in a pretty bad mood due to sucking it up while attempting to ref for the first time. Thinking that reffing is going to have to wait until much later in my career, though touch judging some official matches would be okay. Despite that, we were at the beach, playing rugby, which makes up for pretty much everything. Saturday started early - up before the sun for some of us. Others, particularly the Huns, not so much.




Though we got it together. And remembered the exuse for spending the weekend camping out on the beach. I have zero photos of the matches, mostly because I spent so much of the day on the pitch, either playing, reffing, or trying to watch the more experience refs and figure things out for myself. Carrey has those, along with some from the party, though.




There was also plenty of trivia played at The Flying Saucer, an outdoor showing of Labrynth, and Zilker's summer musical, Beauty and the Beast. Numerous birthday parties involving everything from Casino El Camino hamburgers to slip 'n slides. Tubing trips. A couple of weddings, which are beginning to seem more strange the older I get. All in all...a really good summer.