In Review

This has been a busy, busy week. I slept from 9 last night to 9.30 this morning, interrupted only by a semi-scary dream involving bees and an alarm that I forgot to turn off last night. (And who could blame me? I fell asleep reading the first eight pages of the Lord of the Rings prologue.)

Monday was supposed to be a bit longer than it was. The folks were flying back in from Portland (where they attended a wedding for a family member on the West Coast) and missed a connecting flight from Las Vegas due to a delay. So I ended up picking them up on Tuesday morning at 6.30 instead of 11.45 on Monday night.

Of course, I had karate on Monday, and I was pretty tired the next morning. I was up at 5.15, and so I think I grabbed about six hours of sleep. Naturally the flight was delayed, and no one knew about it. I called the airport, even, and they said, "Hey, we can't hear you. There's too much static." No flight information was available online at the airline's website or the two airports'. It was crazy.

So naturally I waited in the car for awhile in the "Cell Phone Lot," reading a bit of The Iron Lance (another Lawhead novel, purchased Sunday evening). I made the huge huge mistake of taking the turnpike back home, thinking it would be less congested at this time than the normal route. Naturally, though, it wasn't, and we didn't get back until about 8.30. I took a quick shower (looking for flight schedules took all my time after waking up) and got to work about 9 or so.

Now R had gotten into town the previous day, and so we got together. He is shortly to start a new job, which he is looking forward to. Graduate school was hard on him as it was on me, I think, and so getting out is welcome relief. Four hours a day to yourself that you can do whatever you want! We shot pool, played some hard-core SSB, got some ice cream with his wife, and played dominos all together with his mother.

(Dork moment here. Dominos is just one giant graph problem. The dominos are nodes, and connections occur between matching numbers. To decide how to begin to play, find the largest subgraph of your current set of dominos, given a certain starting value. Update depending on what is available to play on. This will be my next programming project. I have the Graph library set up some, but I need to add some algorithmic stuff.)

So I got into bed that night at one. It's my first twenty-hour day since graduate school. Up at 8:30 for work at 9:30 or so, back at six. Still beat, though, and the next day was karate again.

Naturally I forgot that we were going to another gym. The experience was great. The instructor used to teach with mine. He's an incredible fighter and extremely tall. (I think 6'4"? I'm about 5'7".) He kicked over my head like it was nothing, and did it often. I had a pretty sweet opportunity to sweep him, actually, when he caught me out of position. My back was turned, I knew the kick was coming, and dropped. I couldn't see, though, without my glasses, and got muddled while I was on the ground. Instead of spinning into the sweep, I got back up. I had him on his back a little later, but because he let me.

He's so tall that you have to get inside on him and attack from the back leg. I'm a primarily front-leg fighter for speed (and distraction), and not very good at it. So I got completely schooled. It was great.

The rest of his students are incredible, too. Not so much on forms, but they know how to kick. In fact, they chamber their kicks so high that you can't leg check them. (The leg check turns practically into a side-kick.) All in all, very impressive night, and a good work out.

I came back with two bruises on my head (I didn't keep my hands up during a fighting drill), one on my forearm, one on my foot. I probably have some others I haven't found yet. My left hamstring has been tight for a couple weeks, but I think I worked the knot out while I was there. It's still tight, but it doesn't have the pull in it that it did when we arrived.

Testing is next week (Friday and Saturday), and should be a good time, too. Though I will get destroyed in the conditioning part.

Yesterday was another karate night, taking over for Master C with a few other guys. The night was uneventful, really. The kids responded well, surprisingly. B knew how to rotate them and keep them busy, which was nice, and the time went by really quickly. Afterward the four instructors, all testing next week, spent a bit of time reviewing our upper-level forms. Two of us are testing for third dan, and two for second. Another student is testing for first.

I got home around 6.45, ate dinner, watched the news. I took some pictures, too, because it was an absolutely beautiful day. The weather this week has been brutal—base temperatures in the triple digits—and it was nice to see a clear sky yesterday with beautiful cloud-cover. I color-corrected a few of them (well, "corrected" might be the wrong word), grabbed Lord of the Rings and started reading. I promptly fell asleep.

This morning, a hummingbird flew within four feet of me. That was a treat. Tonight is my birthday celebration (though I won't turn over until Monday). So yes, it's been quite, quite busy. The sleep was good. Pictures to follow in another posting sometime.