Perhaps these techniques will be helpful:

Ctrl+* (on the numeric keypad)........selects the current region, around
the active cell, that is bordered by blank cells.

I just wanted to point out for those touch typists out there who prefer to
keep their hands on the main part of the keyboard, there is nothing
magical about the asterisk on the number pad... you can also use
Ctrl+Shift+8 (that is, Ctrl plus the asterisk on the main keyboard's
number 8 key) to accomplish this.

Something else the OP might want to play around with is
Ctrl+Shift+<ArrowKeys which extend the current selection, on first press,
to the end of the data in the arrow's direction, on second press, to the
first piece of data in the next data group in that arrow's direction, on
third press, to the end of data on that next grouping of data in the
arrow's direction and so on until there is no more data, in which case it
extends the selection to the beginning or end of the grid (depending on
the arrow key's direction).

Oh, and I forgot one other potentially useful selection method...
Ctrl+Shift+Home which will extend the current selection to the last data row
and last data column, skipping over any internal blank rows and columns in
the process.

Rick