West LAUs

(photo credit to Ashley Mefford)

This past weekend was fantastic. Getting to play with such talented, cool people was a lot of fun. Wow, I'm impressed by my TRU teammates and playing with them was fantastic. My playing was far from spectacular, but I kept up and didn't do anything too stupid. I'm happy with my performance. Everything around me made sense, I remembered to look up and see what the offense was doing. I'm learning more with every match and playing feels good. My shoulder may disagree with me and I jacked up my left ring finger, but it's worth it. So worth it. (You never realize how much you use something like a minor finger until it hurts to type. Or open a peanut butter jar or swing a kettlebell.)



TRU beat Missouri in the first match of the day, 27-22. ERRFU defeated HOA in the second. Then both of the afternoon matches ended in a draw. TRU v ERRFU tied 0-0. It was a good match, with a powerful defensive showing from both teams. There's a great write up at Your Scrumhalf Connection, with pictures, also by Shalay.

hustle and bustle

Our society is broken. Our way of life, with its constant movement and hurry and meaningless chasing after money and status, is unhealthy. There is nothing new about my feelings towards it, yet this amazing article deeply saddens me. A world class musician anonymously playing in a metro station in DC and most people don't even take notice, much less stop to listen. I'm not suprised, but it does make me wonder if I would have noticed. If on my morning commute something so beautiful as this music would have made me look up from my internal monolouge and at least wonder or smile.

Why don't we ever stop moving to just experience the incredible things around us?

just a thought

I love Austin, but it probably should not require one to four different kinds of drugs (Zyrtec, Mucinex, phenylephrine, and ibuprofen) for one's sinuses to be clear enough to feel alive in the mornings. And my eyes still itch.

I hate that my allergies get in the way of everything. I'm a morning person. In college I used to bound out of bed before 5:30 in the morning and happily study until going to my first class of the day. Not being able to breathe puts a bit of a damper on a tough rugby practice. Focusing at work through a haze of sinus pressure makes the day seem awfully long. Thank God oak season is nearly over. Frakking tree sex...

you can't make this stuff up

From today's sermon as part of a series on relationships...

"...and then she turned out to be a psycho hose beast..." -Ted Beasley, teaching pastor

Yes, my pastor quoted Wayne's World. On Sunday morning.

workout of the day

42 High knees with jump rope
7 Turkish Get Ups
7 Kettlebell snatches/side
7 In/Outs

I was four in and outs short of five full rounds.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are my favorites. Instead of eating on my lunch hour I go and work out. Thirty minutes of an all-out-no-holds-barred-how-hard-can-you-push-yourself kettlebell class at a nearby Crossfit gym. No matter how I feel when I walk in, once I leave the rest of the day goes much better. I'm usually shaking, my hands far from steady, even my legs not sure of what they're doing after pushing so hard. But my mind is clearer and I'm more alert. Today I can even breathe better, but that might be the 2nd Zyrtec in four hours that I took right before leaving work. On a bad day I'll come back to work feeling ten times better than when I left. Granted I'm smelly and gross and drenched with sweat. But I let myself cool down a bit, change clothes and get back to work, grabbing lunch when I can during incubations. And life, it is good.

note to self

Note to self: Refrain from wearing that mascara if working out mid-day. No one will tell you you look like a racoon, merely laugh at you behind your back.

overheard

"They're not cool, but it's whatever."


Co-worker's highly political description of the current relationship between a superdelegate and the candidate they're not supporting, but yet used to be friends with.

rumor mill

Another week of conventional and real time PCRs. The most interesting thing I've seen here in the three months I've been employed by the state was the Bastrop food poisoning cases (and I can actually talk about these, there was news coverage and a press release). It has also run its course and is now old news. Yes, my area, and specifically me, tested them, but they were negative for the genes I test for. As well as everything else that was tested for, including the reportedly previously detected shiga toxin. So they have been shipped to the CDC, who will hopefully figure out what may have caused the outbreak.

Much more interesting than the actual results was to see the rumor mill running tangibly. Not that the rumor mill is always running around here, usually at high gear, but that's about people. I try not to pay attention to the gossip and there's no way to validate what you hear. The local news correctly reported an outbreak in Bastrop with one child dead and another five individuals ill. No connection between the cases was apparent. Shiga toxin was detected by a local lab. By the time I heard people standing around in the halls talking about the outbreak it was six dead from eating at Whataburger in Bastrop. Remotely possible if untrue. I however, enjoy escalating things ridiculously, as does my lab mate. Truly blowing things to ridiculous proportions.

A: Have you gotten samples from the outbreak yet?
T: The one in Bastrop?
A: Yeah, it's riduculous. People here, who should know better, are saying six people died from eating at Whataburger.
T: Really? I heard I heard it was twenty four people died at Whataburger.
A: Yeah, twenty four people killed in a drive by shooting in at the Whataburger in Bastrop. With shiga toxin coated bullets!

whining

There really ought to be something I could blog about that somehow matters or is in some way at least a little bit significant. Today, however, has shaken it all out of me. Getting frustrated with this damn gel, or rather the PCR which is requiring five gels to get results. Seriously, there has GOT to be a better way to do this. And here I am at work past five o'clock just getting more and more frustrated with this damn thing because I think I'm going to have to do it over again despite all the pain and effort and ridiculousness and why did I even try doing this many samples at once and people are waiting for the results and maybe I'll just getting really drunk on green beer tonight and call in sick tomorrow.

Okay, done whining now. I think.

best sentence i've read all day

I'm thinking that all that bourbon might have had a tiny effect on the magnitude of my righteous indignation.

Okay, right. Back to work. Very important err...gels to run and samples to confirm. Yes. Very important. My GOD it's slow around here.