According to the Albuquerque Journal, the University of New Mexico has a new president. Finally, they picked someone to replace Louis Caldera, the former Clinton-era Secretary of the Army. Although I have to say, having graduated from the University of New Mexico, having someone running the show who had to run an institution like the Army would be a benefit when dealing with that damn teachers union! 😉

Instead of picking the “safe” candidate, New Mexico Tech President Dan Lopez, the regents at UNM went with president of Oklahoma State University, David Schmidly. Schmidly was picked in part because he comes from a larger institution with a medical school. Lopez was the safe pick because he was endorsed by the Hispano Roundtable , and because he runs a college in New Mexico and everyone would have been happy letting him try to run UNM.

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Things have been busy in the last few weeks.  With Christmas coming to an end and the new year hitting shortly thereafter, I’ve decided to try and get my credit (already shaky thanks to an ex-wife who… nevermind) back into order.

I finished cutting up two of my credit cards earlier today, and since they are small debt cards (only $500 each) I hope I can get them paid off soon.

Why am I doing this?  Well, my GF and I have been talking and she raised the point that she didn’t want to get married until I was out of credit card debt.  It’s not that much debt (under $5K), so I wonder what she is trying to tell me… 😉

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(A shout out to my friends who have asked this…)

The quick answer is “why not”? It’s fun!

The longer answer: It started many years (and about 60 pounds) ago in college. After one summer (when I drove to Boston and back for no reason), I found myself with a lot of spare time and nothing much to do except work out.

Fast forward to the end of the summer. I returned to school and ran into a friend of mine in the gym one day. He was surprised at how much more I was in shape and he recommended I try out for the team. So, I walked out to the field the next day.

It was love at first hit.

Yes there were no pads in the game, no helmets. That was one of the greatest things about the game. The other was the team.

The team was excited to have another victim… er, player, on the field. They were happy to have me out there with them. We became very tight knit, wewere happy to be on the field and just enjoyed each other’s camraderie. We even hung out with our opponents after the game, we got along great because we all played what we considered to be the greatest game on Earth.

Unlike when I went out for football in high school, where they didn’t want to be around each other.

The sociality (is that a word?) of the team and the game kept me coming back. Plus I got to go to exciting places like Wales and Australia as a result of my time on the rugby field.

Will I ever stop?

Nope. You’ll have to peel me off the field.