Greetings rowers, it’s the occasional-Wednesdays-in-the-winter-when-there’s-not-enough-news-to-send-one-every-Wednesday-and-sometimes-I-might-go-nuts-and-send-it-some-other-day Wednesday email.

This week we have:
The Christmas Extrava-geansai. Wear your Christmas jumpers and get ready to belt out your fave karaoke tunes in McKennas on Saturday night.
 
There are three very important points to note:
1) Let Gary know what song you want to sing so he can be sure to have it for you.
2) There will be prizes of WINE for the best Christmas jumper efforts. I like wine. Wine is nice. 
 
3) Arthur McKenna has very kindly agreed to provide some late night pizza for soakage. Obviously you should still have yizzer dinners beforehand and drink responsibly, not on an empty stomach. Ahem, no need to tell you I’m sure. 
 
In non-party related news…
 
Aisling Lahiffe (our wonderful fundraiser and party organiser extraordinaire – thanks Aisling!) has asked that if anyone gets any unwanted Christmas presents this festive season, instead of re-gifting them to someone you hate/back to the person that gave them to you, please consider gifting them to the club to use as raffle prizes instead! 
 
We are currently in the process of rejigging the website to make it SUPER AWESOME, AND MEGA USEFUL. It will have all sorts of switzy new bells and whistles when we are finished with it – the subcommittee involved is Ger Ryan, Eoin Clarke, Vinny Scully and myself. 
 
While some of the website content will be stuff like the Blue Book and coaching and cox training resources, we would love to invite members to contribute to it on an ongoing basis so that there will be regular new posts. If anyone wants to write anything, please let me know (and even if you aren’t sure your writing skills are up to scratch, don’t worry – I’m an editor by trade and I can fix it up)
 
Sample ideas for members’ blog posts:
– winter training tips
– diet for rowing – post-training protein fix foods
– warm up exercises
– rowing technique
– personal reflections on what rowing club means to you 
– Celtic challenge memories
 
And finally, don’t forget to work off all that Christmas overindulgence with winter training at Monkstown Boxing Club, Tuesdays & Thursdays 7pm – 8pm, fiver per class, pay as you go, at the Mounttown Community Centre, Fitzgerald Park (just up from McCormacks pub).
 
That’s all for now amigos and amigas, see you Saturday for more (much more) nice wine! 
Deanna