March!

Working on Saturday after a long ass week, with a hangover. I need to start living a life of 366 angles and not 1 angle - staring at this computer screen. Anyway, I get to go home and have fun in a few hours, with my new record player. I ended up buying the Audio-Technica from amazon.com for $199, with free shipping. I ordered it on Thursday, it got here Friday. Sweet free one day shipping. I've got three albums to play around with, but from searching online I found a few cool record sites, the best being Aural Exploits and InSound. I picked up the Juno soundtrack on vinyl, but that was mostly for the cover art, and I'm thinking about picking up the entire Iron and Wine catalog. Two really cool things about buying vinyl: a) you get a free download of the entire album online, and b) there are usually a bunch of extra tracks you cant hear other than on the LP. Sufjan Stevens, Iron and Wine, and a few others all have bonus tracks that are vinyl only. The one other LP I'm definitely going to pick up is Sufjan's Seven Swans, one of my favorite albums ever.

So the record player hasn't taken up my entire life, but it is probably the most interesting. I went to the Caps game last Sunday, and got the box for tonight, with a similar crowd of characters: Glenn, the Rog, Scott, the dynamic team of Scooter and Kev, plus a few Maryland guys and Feeney and his woman. Also got the box for tonight, which is a pretty sweet deal. I still need to pick up a jersey, but I'm not sure I'm going to have time today.

A lot from the Madison rugby front too. I'll take most of what I wrote to the alums and repost it, but there is some great news about the scholarship and the current team. The Luis de Souza Pinto Scholarship endowment was created December 20th, and in a little over 2 months we have raised $19,070 towards the required $25,000 to begin to award the scholarship. I received a note from the JMU planned giving office saying they were getting gifts nearly everyday, which provides the current team great exposure (in a positive light this time), and shows how dedicated the alumni are to the school and the current team. The scholarship is also highlighted on the USA Rugby website, under college scholarships. Crazy. The team was also awarded a kit from the National Guard, which, according to USA rugby, is "valued at thousands of dollars". The kit includes jerseys, shorts, headgear, balls, goal post pads, and a ton of training equipment.

The highlight of my week was hanging out with Coach Holmes, who gave me the news that the team is off to a 2-0 start this spring season, with wins over Longwood and VCU 73-17 and 55-17. He said the schedule gets tougher, but the team is showing depth and seems to have their act together. He also let me know that the Madison Rugby website has been updated and has listed all practices, games and tournaments. The team is even filming games and putting them on YouTube, complete with instant replays. I put links to the two current games below - there is film of a few great hits. One really funny thing Holmes pointed out - Slutty Matt only made one kick, and they just kept using the same footage after every try. When the team switched sides, they just flipped the image, so it looks like he is kicking left footed. Idiots.

Links to Game Videos:
Longwood, pt. 1
Longwood, pt. 2
Longwood, pt. 3

VCU, pt. 1
VCU, pt. 2
VCU, pt. 3
VCU, pt. 4