- Randy, the husband, also known as Spinnerdude, is celebrating his fiftieth birthday today.

- I found out last night that I won an Honorable Mention ribbon at the San Diego County Fair for a photo I took back in February 2009 of a Cal Poly SLO – Navy Academy rugby match down at the Del Mar Polo Grounds.

-  Today is Friday.

I knew the photography exhibition at the San Diego County Fair was big, but had no idea it was this big.  4000 submitted photographs?  982 different photographers?  Wow.

Received an e-mail this morning providing the list of accepted entries: this photo from a February 2009 rugby match made it, this photo of Diego at last June’s vacation doesn’t seem to have made the cut.  Awards won’t be announced until June 11.

Cal became national champions at Rugby again yesterday, beating BYU 19-7 at Stanford.  I didn’t get to see this year’s team play, but there are some shots of the 2008 and 2009 teams up from their visits to San Diego.

This is the 24th time since 1980 the Bears have been national champions.  Go Bears!

Every year around this time the rumors that Comic-Con will leave San Diego for greener pastures start rumbling around town again.  Comic-Con is huge, maybe too huge for the convention center.  Comic-Con needs more parking and hotel rooms than the eighth largest city in America can offer.  Blah, blah, blah, they always come back next year though.  Inertia’s a wonderful thing.

Unfortunately that’s not the way with every big gathering though.  Las Vegas appears to have stolen the USA Rugby 7s tournament. This tournament was a part of a larger Rugby gathering that drew Cal Rugby to San Diego the last two years, giving me two enjoyable February afternoons watching the Bears beat up on OMBAC and Wyoming.

Cal sports teams come to San Diego rarely enough as it is.  I hope they’ll still find a reason to visit this far south, but I’m afraid this will just be another opportunity for the UC penny-pinchers to cut some more on the great drive to mediocrity by at least eliminating a road trip for the national powerhouse program.

Having a very good Friday here.  The weather held just long enough to spend most of the day at the San Diego Rugby Invitational at the Polo Grounds.  Caught three games, two of which featured Cal, and the other being the Cal Poly – Navy matchup in the posted photo.   Great event, lots of fun and entertaining even for someone with a pretty minimal knowledge of rugby like myself.   Eye candy, naturally, and a fun time with the alums as always.

Also got to see the return of Ellen in the latest Battlestar, which was verrry interesting, even if it raised more questions than it answered at this point, and am giddy as a schoolgirl for the debut of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, which comes on in about 45 minutes.  Tonight’s about the geeking.

And yes, just to rub it in, I do have plans for Valentine’s Day tomorrow.  Dinner and whatnot.

Between lawyer work, website maintenance and whatever is wrong with my arm I’ve been a very dull boy lately. No swimming, no surfing, no photography. Not sure when I’ll return to the water, but weather permitting I’ll spend Friday cheering for Cal Rugby with some alums and my trusty camera. Same tourney as last year, but they’re scheduled for three games this year at the polo grounds, against VMI, Wyoming and Navy.

As for the rest, the arm is doing better but I’m taking things slowly, and the new photo gallery software is working nicely after the still unexplained crash of the previous site.  There’s still a lot of work moving over captions (one cut and paste at a time), but I like the new platform and think the templating in Zen Photo is certainly much easier to customize than in either of the other two packages I’ve used here.

Big Game week is upon us. The only football game that really matters, ever, will start in a few minutes when Cal and Stanford meet for the 111th Big Game at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley. We did Big Game dinner with the local alums at The Linkery on Thursday, and though Spinner had met the alums before the look on his face when it came time to perform the various drinking songs was priceless. Seeing the local matriarchs who probably graduated well before The War doing their Grrrahs (complete with bear clawing motion) was a little too much for him. Even with all that though, I won’t pretend to be much of a football fan – just a Cal fan who tolerates football as a means to financially to get us through to the sports where we win. Want the better views of the blue and gold? At least rugby, water polo, rowing and swimming are all considerate enough to visit those of us in extreme southern California.

Spent Friday afternoon watching Cal Rugby walk all over some local opponents at the San Diego Invitational.  Nice to spend time hanging with the alums again, wearing the blue and gold. 

The only downside was dealing with some self-important event officials who with a poorly conceived idea of which viewers should watch which game in which zones around the fields.  They eventually gave up.  I guess they didn’t realize the Bears have been masters at sitting where they’re not supposed to for more than forty years.

Nice morning swim today.  Good unwinding after yesterday’s fifteen-hour day at the polling station. 

Remember that just because I work at home doesn’t mean I always blog at home:  Mardi Gras and election stuff was posted to KPBS here and here. 

Thinking that politics just got even more interesting with the California Supreme Court setting a date to hear the same-sex marriage cases.  With a ruling due 90 days after the March 4 hearing, there should be plenty of time for one candidate or the other to make the ruling an issue, no matter which way the case goes.   

Busy with law work the rest of the week, but hopefully with a bit of time off to catch Cal Rugby when they come south this Friday.