Saturday's a Rugby Day

This is my mantra beginning today and and will last through May 23.

Then it will be my mantra on and off during the summer (I am determined to play 7's this summer, though my position is not actually on the field in 7's, but a flank turned lock can dream, can't she?).

Four years ago, I hadn't even heard this phrase and if I did, it wouldn't mean anything to me. Seriously, who cares?

But this has changed my life and I owe it to my friend and teammate Tammy. She and another teammate suggested I come to practice.

When you've had a few beers, really, is anything a bad idea?

Tammy called me a few days later and reminded me that I was going to practice with her. Naively, I asked if there was a lot of running involved. It's not that I was completely out of shape then; It was that I didn't know anything about rugby except that I'd always had a penchant toward the rugby style shirt.

Tammy and I took a run around my block twice that night and, presto! I was ready to join the team.

Oy.

I started playing the sport at 25 years old. I wish I'd learned about it sooner. I wish it had been an option for me in high school or in college.

No, I should say: I wish I'd known sooner that I needed this in my life.

If rugby was offered at my college (which I found out there had been a team years earlier), I don't know that I would have joined. My hobbies in high school were mostly theater arts-related. When I started smoking cigarettes in college I quit singing, and didn't see myself as an athlete (beer pong and keg stands excluded).

Is it just that I'm part of a team now? Nope. I did play softball through the parks and rec in my town and actually did indoor track for two seasons in high school (until I broke a hurdle with my trail leg toe). I've been on teams before. And, it's also not the same as being a cast member, though, my closest friends in high school were my cast mates.

It's nearly indescribable for me, this feeling I get when I'm playing or even just thinking of playing. I get intimidatingly enthusiastic on the pitch. And I'm thankful and fortunate that my teammates understand this about me enough to know it's a fire inside me.

Part of my love of the game is that it feeds so well into my feminist ideals. I want women to play rugby with the same frequency that men play (though it's a minority sport in the US, the number of men's to women's teams is... a lot more. I don't have the statistics). I want women of all ages to help spread the sport here. I want women to say that they're playing this sport they never imagined playing and to find more women with whom to share this bond. AND, I want women's rugby to be held with the same regard as men's rugby.

To date, I've had four black eyes (one involving stitches, another involving a golf ball bruise on my forehead), a softball-sized hematoma under my knee which was eventually drained, and I'm currently icing my ankle for its second sprain of this season. (Tomorrow my team is playing a night game in Portland, ME. I'll be driving two hours to watch and yell from the sidelines in 37 degree weather.)

I've also had a dozen conversations with my family about this and I think they're starting to understand it more -- not the rules of the sport -- they're starting to realize that rugby is in my life. For reals. While they don't know why I am so torn about choosing to play or choosing to miss a match on the big Jewish holidays, they know this is one of the biggest decisions I face every fall.

Rugby has taught me so much about myself. I want to play for as long as I can. I get sad thinking about the time when I won't be on the pitch anymore. I get fired up every season as younger and younger women are joining us. The fear that a new teammate could take my position is what motivates me to keep pushing, to keep driving, to keep. going.

And, I think, what if I knew at 18 years old how much I needed rugby...

(tears welling)

Yankee Swap

I'm pleased with a gift idea for my company yankee swap. Yes. In December, around the holidays. Last year was the first one I'd been to, having only been with my company for five months at the time. I knew it was sort of an "anything goes" kind of swap. And being jokey mcjokerson, I didn't want to show up with a gift anyone would actually want. So, while at a car show last year I picked up a poster of a Nissan -- one of their sports car models. I got a cheap frame from Target and wrapped my present in copies of that week's Metro newspapers. I even included the pages with my 75% completed crosswords.

The person who selected my gift opened it with such gusto! I found out afterward that he was expecting it be a Farrah Fawcett poster or something more scintillating than the car. As with all yankee swaps, he had the option of switching with someone else but he didn't and so took home my brilliant gift. Perhaps he'd bring it next year to the swap! And maybe, this would be one of those amazingly awful gifts that makes its way to swaps year after year...

A week later, I asked him if he'd hung up the poster. Our conversation was in passing, as in, he never fully stopped walking in his path. Maybe he was in a hurry or just didn't think it was important enough to stand still for a moment. He told he me that the poster wound up in his garbage can... and continued to walk away.

I was crushed. To this day, I mentally give him hairy eyeballs. Well, I hope it's mental and doesn't outwardly show. His arrogance puts me off. And I've spent the last 9 months thinking on what I could bring to the next swap.

Yes. I really have been thinking about this for 9. whole. months.

I'd thought about super gluing $10 to a rock, making it unusable, to reflect how I felt my last $10 spent on the frame was treated. But then I'd have blown $20 on yankee swap gifts, further creating more waste.

Another idea was these mini orange traffic cones at my desk that have Volvo's logo on them. I typically give them to new hires who get a company car (yes, it is a Volvo). But since I'm the only one with the cones, it would remove all anonymity.

It came to me today.

I'm going to buy a bunch of non-perishable food items: pasta, soup, beans, tuna fish, etc. I'll get decent stuff, too, avoiding dented cans, etc. I'll include a note that says something like, "I was dismayed after hearing that the gift I thoughtfully brought last year was thrown away. Feel free to keep these items for your family, or donate them to a local food shelter, as there many in our communities that go without daily."

Boo-ya.

Area Woman Abbreviates, saves tm

Colleagues of local area resident woman Elena "Lany" Mamlok report that Mamlok is saving time by shortening the spelling of words.

"Thx", commented Mamlok. She went on to say, "At first I was worried I'd hurt the integrity of the English language.. but I've just saved so much time. Even cutting back on the ellipses helps."

To interview Mamlok for this article, she suggested we meet at the "Du Do" in Davis Square, Somerville, and grab a cup of coffee.

Studies have shown that the measures Mamlok has taken have provided her another whole minute over the past three months. Mamlok and her sister, Charna Mamlok Westervelt, also an abbreviator, combined their saved time and applied it to Cape Cod traffic.

"I'll admit, I was a little disappointed that I didn't use my time more wisely.. but there are still other ways I can get that back." Mamlok feels strongly that if she starts referring to the National Broadcasting Company as NBC, she will gain an additional five minutes by the end of 2010, since it's not a leap year.

However, not everyone is on board with Mamlok's verbiage. "I have no idea what she's saying half the time -- either in person or over e-mail", expressed a colleague who asked to remain anonymous. "And she also just sounds unprofessional. She calls a sandwich a 'sammich'. How does that save time? It's the same number of syllables. She just sounds like an imbecile." When asked to comment, Mamlok said she would have chosen "idiot" over "imbecile" to gain the milisecond in the long run.

Fun in the Office!

My office is really beautiful -- who ever thinks to say that about their office? I mean, this building is stunning, for an office building, of course. To promote the concept of openness, all the offices and conference rooms have glass walls. The conference rooms do have curtains, but the only curtains in people's offices are the window shades. I can see what my colleagues are doing -- the walls are see-through. (I guess that's redundant. Redundant.)

It's Friday. And it's a warm, sunny day. I'm at the point in the week where I'm only operating at about 79% if my co-workers are lucky. I'm having these grand delusions of running or skipping or trotting by my Senior VP's office waiving my arms hysterically just to see if he notices out of the corner of his eye. It's not really inappropriate office behavior... just different. And it may be a distraction, I suppose, but there are lots of other distractions that happen all the time here and I'm never one of them. I'm just sayin I don't think there'd be any real harm...

For fun...

I found this bathing suit while looking for a new two-piece one myself:
http://www.swimoutlet.com/product_p/11748.htm

While marveling at this suit, and the whopping $0.05 savings(!), I thought it would be funny to call up the live chat and treat it like a phone sex line (or how I imagine a phone sex line conversation would go).

I also, and I'm being serious when I say this, created a free "postlet" account. If you've looked on craigslist for either real estate or a new apartment for rent you may come across these pretty nice ad templates created by postlet. I was going to put up a big box (like refrigerator-sized) in the real estate section... on the corner of Somewhere and OverThere, provided there's no sudden gust of wind.

That's all I have at the moment.

Deleting Rows in Excel

Cambridge

Local area resident woman, Elena "Lany" Mamlok, has decreased her effort by nearly 50% in manipulating a file.

"So I get this data dump of a report once a month and it's not formatted for anything useful. It costs me at least a day to reformat into something pretty... well, pretty as far as Excel can be attractive," Mamlok whined.

This particular step is where Mamlok deletes over 100 non-consecutive rows. "There's practically no data integrity left by the time I'm done deleting all this crap. I mean, the amount of human error in this process is huge."

Mamlok went on to state that this report does eventually make its way to Senior Vice Presidents in her company.

When asked if she could further explain how she cut her manipulation efforts down dramatically, Mamlok said, "Well, I used to highlight the row and then right click and select delete. Now I just right click, which selects the whole row and gives me the delete option at the same time. So I just saved half."

Half, indeed.

"My wife's pregnant, so she needs an SUV"

Ugh, no she doesn't.

I manage a company car program for a pharmaceutical company. Our field employees (sales reps and medical positions) who visit doctors, patients, and hospitals have company cars.

I'm continually amazed at the requests I get from employees.

We offer three solid vehicles -- all of which are nicer than the car I drive -- so it's hard for me to empathize with employees when they insist the trunk space isn't big enough or they MUST have a third row of seats.

These are work vehicles. And the last time I checked, sales people weren't bringing their children on their sales calls, nor were they carpooling with colleagues. Of course employees can use these vehicles in their personal life, but that's a perk; it's not the standard we're using in our vehicle decision-making.

My parents drove sedans and managed to fit me and my sister (who was likely still in a car seat when I was born) just fine in their cars when we were young. They didn't even have a station wagon and the only time they drove a mini van was when they moved us to college or the time we drove from CT to Atlanta to visit family.

This person who told me his wife needs an SUV is actually really friendly and seems pretty level-headed. I hope he ends up choosing the hybrid sedan we offer.