First off... Rugby was awesome! I had a ton of fun watching the games and seeing it in person. So cool!
Went to two games on Saturday, the first one against Canada and then the one in the afternoon was against Great Britain. By the end of the second game I was feeling like I had a slightly better feel for how the game works. I mean, I already had the basics from the movie and from reading Zupan's book, but it's a whole different thing watching a game all the way through and not all cut up the way it has to be in the movie.
Then on Sunday was the championship game, got there plenty early and caught the second half of the 3rd place game (Canada vs. GB) and then watched warm-ups and all that fun stuff until the actual game started. They were playing New Zealand in that one. There was quite a bit more knocking over of players in that game than in the other two.
And we won. Yay!
I did take an absolute ton of pictures, but taking pictures in a gym is a difficult prospect, it's this balancing game between blurry and enough light. I pulled my shutter way down so I at least had a shot at non-blurry pictures, but that means I have to brighten every single one of them to have any hopes of getting a decent picture. That is going to wait until I get back to Rhode Island, because the laptop just isn't quite up to the task of that much photoshopping! But it looks like there's at least a couple that approach decent so I should have some that'll be ok.
And after finally managing to get my nerves up I went and asked Mark to take a picture with the frog. Oh, I should explain the frog.
There's this wooden frog that is always waiting for me in the guest room at home whenever I go home on vacation. (I'm not sure where he lives when I'm not there) He always has a note of some kind for me when I get there. This time his note said that he wanted to see Seattle. So I snuck him in my bag when I left and I've been taking pictures of him all over the place.
So... there were a couple other people asking Mark for pictures so I went over and did the "I have a ridiculous question to ask... I have this frog and would you take a picture with him." And he said sure and then I said that I might possibly have a book that I'd love to have signed as well and he said "even better." And he asked someone else to do the picture taking so I could be in it too and was totally cool. I'll post those once I get back to RI too. I had the cover for my DVD of Murderball in there too and the pen I had wouldn't write on it so he went hunting up a Sharpie for me.
And as an aside to Mark (on the off chance you ever stumble across this)... I'm not usually that much of a shaky spaz. I get all freaked out whenever I have to initiate a conversation with someone I don't know. Really doesn't matter who they are and then it of course goes fine (it always does so I don't know why I freak out, there's clearly no reason) and all that pent up nervous has to go somewhere and I get shaky.
So all in all Rugby rocked and I really have to figure out if there's any teams that play anywhere near me.