All in all, today was a good day. Yes, I’m tired, but it’s a good sort of exhaustion — the kind you can only get by running back and forth completing things and fixing things and installing things et al.

I did receive two bits of bad news today, though:

1. Because the new job’s health insurance won’t kick in for another week, I can’t go to rugby practice for another week, dammit. However, both J* and I are pretty well committed to starting a gay club, probably some time next winter or early spring, and almost certainly in collaboration with the Chicago Dragons.
2. Uh, I got a parking ticket… didn’t see the “by permit only sign”. d’oh. Need to find a new place tomorrow. (I can’t register for a parking pass or a Metro pass until I’m completely entered in the HR system, so in the meantime I’m trying to be all sly about where I park.)

Spent much of the past work-week buried in documentation. As it turns out, there are a lot of routine-to-me tasks that my co-workers haven’t performed in a long time, if ever. I’ll probably be spending my last week at the old job madly scribbling notes on how things should work.

Surprisingly, there has been no official internal announcement of my departure. (Granted, it’s budget season, so my boss has been busy haranguing people about allocating enough money for I.T.) Instead, the rumor mill has fired up. So far the rumors aren’t very far-fetched (dammit), but they do lack lots of important details like when I’m leaving and where I’m going to be working instead.

Allegedly, there’s a happy hour or something in the works. Yeah, fine. I can never argue free beer at the Tap Room, especially this time of year, but the whole “happy hour” thing might be a bit much. Honestly, lots of my users dislike me because I don’t allow them to e-mail that cute 17MB video of the babies in costume to all 400 of their closest friends. (I know, only an insensitive asshole wants to keep the network infrastructure available for actual work.) Also, I’m not a big fan of cheesy schwag, and I probably won’t have a place to put all of it at the new job.

Finally on that front, it looks like they may be hiring two new people in the department to handle my job. Ha! I did the work of TWO PEOPLE for years and years!

***

Had finals in my philosophy class and programming logic class. Both were easier than I had expected, though the philosophy final was a bit compressed by a server outage. (Final started 17:30; server died at 16:55. ack!)

***

Went to my first rugby practice on Thursday night after the second final! The coaching staff was a bit pre-occupied by preparing for a weekend match, but the players themselves were extraordinarily helpful and friendly, even while attempting to run plays.

Started off running a pick-up touch game, then followed it up with stretchy sort-of-calisthenics and a running/passing drill. The major problem I had in the running/passing drill is that the guy I was paired with was blazing fast — I am not blazing fast — and that I’d rarely get to the ball in time to, y’know, catch it. I’d like to think I did pretty well when I did catch it, though.

Afterwards they split into forwards and backs. I got sent along with the backs and received basic backfield wisdom from a lanky young wing with the Ur-scruff and a cloud of coachly disfavor (since he had done something foolish in their last match). Ran a bit more, then ran some more, then ran some more. And ran.

Eventually the A-side and B-side scrummaged against each other. I hung out on the sidelines so that the different squads could practice together, and in the process chatted with a few subs, newbies, and veterans. Passed the ball around a bit, too.

By this point it was getting pretty late, so the coach invited everyone to a bar nearby for a glass of water “or something, haha”. I begged off — between a long day at work and a final and a small lunch and no dinner I was wiped — and came home.

Fiercely sore on Friday, especially in the adductors, hamstrings, and mid-section. That has mostly resolved itself, though.

I cannot wait until I can attend another practice, perhaps this coming Thursday…

***

Adding a couple new categories: Work, School, and Rugby. Over the next day or so I’ll be perusing archives and adding posts to the relevant new categories.

I’m also kindasorta thinking of upgrading to the new version of WordPress, though I think I’ll hold off for a couple days there.

Today’s job interview went smashingly well. The interviewer mentioned several areas of expertise that they were looking for, and — well, I had notable experience in all of those areas. (”Why yes, I *am* familiar with MediaWiki syntax!”) It certainly didn’t hurt that I am used to dealing with fiercely independent fiefdoms or that I don’t get flustered by operating systems localized to something other than English.

Next week I’m going to be meeting with the department’s admin staff and with a couple senior-level people. Nothing is definite yet, but after today my prospects for a change of office scenery look VERY good.

Also met up with an on-again-off-again chorus member, who is unable to perform in this show but who helped set up the local gay bike racing club. Bike racing is a summer-only thing for him, and he’s long had an interest in playing rugby. Long story short: we’ve decided to go to a couple practices for a local predominantly-straight club, try things out, then make a further decision about starting a predominantly-gay club. His experiences with Big Crank should prove very valuable should we take the latter route; aside from the networking he’s done there, he also knows a thing or two about the administrative back-end work involved in establishing such a group.

J* will be attending a Bombers practice tomorrow night, just to check things out, but he’s as excited as I am about this…

Also: found Fred’s favorite draught beverage on, uh, draught here, at a local Welsh pub. Methinks I’ll be returning with him soon.

(this post’s title is intended to put a song in your head. bwahaha.)

It’s been a busy week at the office, thanks mostly to budget season, but also to the usual “why did the whole building shut down when i turned off the network hub” questions.

I would like to indicate, however, that if everything goes well on Wednesday, I may be having a change of office scenery (not to mention a notable raise) in the next month or so. In this regard, prayers, chants, positive vibes, spells, and wishes of good luck will be greatly appreciated.

This weekend should be busy as well; between a friend’s birthday observation tonight, an equinox observation tomorrow, and my youngest brother’s birthday observation on Sunday, the schedule is pretty full.

Noticing lots of traffic from the English Planet Wikimedia aggregator when I post in the “Wikipedia” category. Goodness.

Technorati-authority-increasing love to Joe.My.God, who writes one of the best blogs out there, gay or otherwise.

Classes are going a little too well. I’d love for them to be a little more challenging, because then I wouldn’t be trying to use the quadrille paper for crazy graphs instead of notes.

Workouts… um. I’d rather not say.

Rugby? I’m still unsure about whether I should try my hand with an existing, predominantly-straight club, or whether I should start a predominantly-gay club. I already have an e-mail from somebody local who might be interested in helping start a gay club, though, so that’s promising.

It’s late, and budget season is always an extra drain on the energy, and I had a couple drinks at Mike’s thing (happy birthday Mike), so I think I’ll end it here for now.

Yup, it’s another in a long series of quick updates.

• First, the title. For a long time now, I’ve been interested in learning how to play rugby, but have put it off for some silly reason. This past week has had a couple Universal Nudges<tm>, though: a story in the Post-Dispatch about a local club, a post by Jimbo that mentions a recent match of his, and a rummage through the cold-weather clothes that turned up a rugby shirt I like.

  Following up on these, I discovered that the Chicago Dragons are willing to help start an IGRAB-affiliated team in St. Louis. I wrote the current president of the Dragons, and was invited to Chicago this weekend to meet the team (along with the visiting Atlanta Bucks and Madison Minotaurs [please be gentle with the Minotaurs link]) and potentially scrummage with them; though I can’t make it, I’m eager to visit sometime in the near future.

  Building upon this even further, I did a bit more research and learned that the Bombers run their B-side as a developmental squad during the fall. I can’t make practices until this school term is done in mid-October, but as soon as I can I’ll be there trying to extend my rugby-feel from purely intellectual to grittily experiential. (and no, I did not just make that last word up.)

• Chorus rehearsals started Monday with a full house and 5 newbies. Our interim director for this show has a very emphatic, fluid style that I like; it doesn’t hurt that he’s easy on the eyes. That said, I’m sad that a particular song has already been stricken from the program (and no, it wasn’t the crazed medley that kept venturing into 7/8, although that one would have been quite a challenge).
• My traffic has gone upwards lately, and it took me a few minutes to realize why: a feed from the “Wikipedia” category hereupon gets published on Planet Wikimedia, a blog aggregator administered by the Wikimedia Foundation. Since I’ve had two new posts in that category, I’ve had a surge of new visitors for those particular posts.
• Speaking of which: I keep meaning to post a response here to Kelly Martin’s excellent post “On Ignoring All Rules“, about the Wikipedia policy of the same name. It’s on my list, and I have a rough draft saved, but have not yet finished it for regular consumption.
• Did some clean-up on the scrubbook’s hard drive over the weekend. I found ~25GB worth of songs that I NEVER listen to, so *poof* they vanished. That still smarts.
• Also started to tinker with the header images on here. Nothing is ready yet.
• Been having some lingering phone and network issues at work. Yesterday got so bad that, while the network admin and my boss were busy shepherding the telco’s tech from one piece of infrastructure to the next, I was able to re-do most of a major workflow app. (Normally I’d be inundated with calls and e-mails, but when nobody can call or e-mail…)
• The weather is freaking awesome today.
• Classes are OK. My programming logic class is a walk in the park because I already use programming logic nearly every day. My philosophy class, OTOH, is somewhat interesting; it’s a pretty diverse group of students, with pretty diverse views on things, so discussions can get lively when we aren’t watching Woody Allen movies.
• Yeah, definitely loving this new theme so far.
• The inaugural Tour of Missouri is this week, wrapping up with a big finale in STL on Sunday (at the same time as Cardinals-Cubs and Rams-49ers). Apparently things are going well on the Tour as long as they keep armadilloes out of the peloton.
• Wow, somebody had better update the IGRAB page. No new posts in over a year? Seriously?

That’s all for now.