Not going to make it for the Crew Classic finals on Sunday this year, though I still hope to get out there Saturday to cheer for Cal during the prelims.  I’ll miss being able to hit the alumni tent.  Haven’t made it for the finals for a few years now, and I’m starting to feel like a slacker.

Hopefully the timing will work out better next year. The Bears don’t come this far south for very many sports, and I don’t get north, especially during the college sports seasons, nearly as often as I’d like to.

Spent the morning interviewing scholarship applicants for a Leadership Award given by the Cal Alumni.  The future of the Golden State is skinny, soft-spoken, and two-thirds of the time had trouble answering the questions posed.  Two-thirds of the kids in front of me seemed to prefer to try and insert scripted sound bites or neutral blather rather than focus on the actual words of the question.  I’ll take the session to mean that some have spent too much time looking at the current political leadership, and not enough thinking about how they might be able get things done themselves.  Fortunately one-third was different though.  There may be hope yet.

Unfortunate to see the swim news this morning that the Belmont Plaza swim complex in Long Beach is being closed as seismically unsafe.  I cheered for Cal at the Pac-10 swimming championships back in 2005, and thought it was a very impressive site.  I know the economy is still rough, especially for large capital projects, but I really hope someone can step up and put something comparable here in Southern Cal.

The annual Crew Classic in Mission Bay is in a little over a week.

In previous years I would’ve been all excited by now.  Cute rowers and alumni fanboy stuff, all with great snacks.  Now the finals are in the morning instead of after lunch, and the demon alcohol is banished to special areas by Nanny Diego.  Last year I missed the finals while waiting for Randy to fly home from a judging gig, and this year I’m just kinda feeling ‘meh’ about the whole thing.  I’ll probably go, but having trouble getting excited about it, and probably open to other offers (hint, hint).

Things haven’t actually been slow, just too busy to post here.  Spending more time playing on Facebook, and spent too much time this month cleaning up a hack attack on my server that completely shut down the photo gallery and messed up a lot of other things.  Law work and holiday preparations and Cal cheering and the supreme purpose of my life, i.e, holding Diego’s leash and gushing over at his ability to sniff and poop have also kept me away from here.

Spent the morning in La Jolla interviewing high school seniors for the Cal Alumni Association’s Leadership Scholarship.  This is the one that’s not just about academic excellence, or sports accomplishments, because we’re talking about Berkeley and everyone is academically and/or athletically outstanding, but demonstrated leadership potential.  Not going to talk about the five I interviewed other to say they’re all amazing kids well-qualified to rule the world at some point in the not too distant future.

Just dropping a note about the interview parameters and the hilarity of political correctness and willful ignorance.  When the interviewers arrived we were told to primarily stick to the official questions, but that we could do some chit-chat as a warm-up as long as we didn’t get into politics or personal issues.  Nodding our heads like good little sheep, we quickly scan the first application: intern for a city councilman, founder of his high school’s Straight-Gay Alliance, blah, blah, blah.  Fortunately there’s a two page limit.

Uh, miss, so are we allowed to ask him about his resumé or not?

Time once again for an alumni fanboy weekend, courtesy of the San Diego Crew Classic.

Time to hang with Cal alumni, time to watch Cal Crew kick ass, time to snap some pics both for here and the local alumni website.

Feel free to browse the galleries and enjoy some fuzzy retrospective moments until the real event starts this weekend.

I may have been slacking in my personal swims lately, but smelling the chlorine vicariously this morning with this video.

[via]

Love being able to combine alumni fan-boyism with the vicarious smell of chlorine in the morning.  It’s especially good when it involves seeing Cal Bears out giving back locally and working with the kiddies.  Now if I could only get up the energy to get to an actual swim…

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!

Had a great weekend with the alums cheering for Cal at the Crew Classic. Not much to write up: Great food, Cal’s men won four races outright and was the only boat with the balls to take on the Olympic Team in an exhibition race, and for whatever reason, Cal’s women did not travel to the event this year.