Greetings and Salutations Culture Vultures,

Hopefully this letter finds you and yours all as fit as a malley bull and twice as dangerous. Having promised you all a web site, I've finally had the time to do something about it.

As you can see by the Flash Page, I've updated the site to show our annual snow mobile trip to McCall that I organize each year. I only just got the photo's back recently, hence the lag in time getting them up on the net.

This week has been hectic. I've gone out and bought myself a house which I close on Thursday and move into on Friday (Rest assured that photos will be posted to the web site). So getting all the little things out of the way gets a bit tiresome at times. Home inspections, appraisals, loan documents, final walk throughs, packing up, moving, yada...yada... yada. Plus having my leg in a cast isn't real helpful.

I was having a ball playing rugby on the weekend (against the team I hate, the Snake River Snakes as they are a bunch of pricks) until one of them deliberately took out one of my knees in an submarine tackle not 5 minutes after he tried doing the same thing to another one of my team mates. Hence I'm sitting here with a cast on my right leg waiting to see the orthopedic surgeon on Monday. The Snakes and their penchant for foul play were the reason why I gave up rugby here in Boise 4 years ago.

They won a B grade U.S. title 5 years ago and as such, expect everyone to just let them walk over them, unfortunately by Australian rugby standards most of them would not get a run in an Under 5 volleyball team. I for one, have never taken a backward step from anyone on the rugby field and my team mates pick up on that, and as a team, we start to play at our full potential. Unfortunately the Snakes get pissed off at a team who has the "audacity" to not just lie down for them, so they start to put the "shit" in. Stuff like late tackles, illegal chop blocks, eye gouging, stomping, biting and using elbows in tackles are the norm for them to use in trying to intimidate the opposition.

Like I said earlier, I don't get intimidated by their school yard bully tactics and actually get stuck into them while staying within the rules of the game, and more importantly, I stay within the spirit of the game. I know, old age has mellowed me somewhat. I have no issue with crunching people in tackles or running into them like a runaway train when I have the ball or even laughing at them when they aim their trash talk at me, which pisses most of them off no end. They don't expect someone to take it to them, especially one of those damn foreigners!!!
I love the sport of rugby, but it is just that, a sport. Some of the "wanna be" wankers should realize that, and just play for the love of the game, rather than thinking they have maim or injure someone to have bragging rights in the pub afterwards. Anyway, I'll step down off my soapbox now.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Stay Happy ;-)

Fitzy