Year in Review (3)

Following the return from San Francisco, good friends B&A were married (to each other), a most excellent and suitable match.  This is when I found out about the strange issue with the d7000 that causes it to drain battery when a non-cpu lens is attached.  Instead of three weeks of battery life, it turned into less than a day.  A little surprising, but that's the reason that I don't have pictures of the ceremony.

Watch out for the train.

The week after this was State Games.  It was moved this year, so we had a smaller tournament.  Our hotel overlooked the Susquehanna River, where J and I got some pretty interesting pictures.

My title defense in forms was successful, although the field was smaller and less competitive than years past.  My experience as a judge was likewise lean—no one really stood out except for a Tae Kwon Do fighter who really schooled pretty much everyone.  One of the other judges told one of the guys who lost to him that the way to handle a guy like that was to "sweep the leg, Johnny" (I paraphrase).  I told him after the fact that buddy wasn't missing his head on accident—so he'd best be careful about following such inane advice.

August began with a training camp for the national team.  It bettered my expectations, probably because I was half-asleep when I competed previously.  I confess some disappointment with how the team was run, but in the final analysis many of the people on it were decent.  I came home with some bruises and welts thanks to some overactive fighting.  The week after that was a trip to visit another master for some application education; it was a long day, but well worth it.

This was right.

And then Sacramento—another wedding, another trip to Cali.  The travel was brutal.  We were delayed on the way and barely made it out of the first leg of the trip.  Dramatic weather patterns grounded most of the flights out of the city, and by the time we arrived in Chicago-Midway our flight to Sacramento was well and gone.  That we even got there was the result of an air traffic controller calling in a favor—he bumped us up from 25th in line to 1st so that we could get off the ground.

The staff at Midway were mostly unhelpful, but we did run into a former army field medic who traveled for a living.  He had accumulated so many frequently flier points that he could probably live the rest of his life in hotels if he wanted.  In any case, he comped us a room, just asking us to pay it forward.  It was really helpful.  We got to the airport at 6AM to see about getting on an earlier flight than the 10:30 or whatever they promised us—only to find that they would have charged us $1000 to do it.  It would've been nice to find that out the day before, so that we could've gotten another three hours of sleep.

In any case, we were delayed out of Midway, too, arriving in Sacramento so late that we missed the ceremony and barely beat the bride and groom into the reception.  This was made all the more difficult since we were meeting up with Char to make whatever arrangements were needed for her transport, et c.  I probably ruined the day for J and E by my incessant texting.  In the end, making the lolreys probably made the trip worth it.  WHY WON'T TEH DON RETURN MAH EMALS??!?

In any case, the flight out was delayed—yes, again—but the gate agent rerouted us smoothly through Denver.  A good thing, since Char was going the same way and we had an opportunity to spend some more time together.  She tolerated Boggle and some other conversation before our paths diverged.

I felt pretty sick when we touched down.  I think it was largely related to exhaustion more than anything: we landed pretty late—around 12:30 or so.  I tried to puke for about an hour before we left.  L bravely picked up the car and got me about 1:30, and then we got back in around 2:30 or so.  It was just brutal.  Needless to say, I got into work late the next day.

Yay cousins!

In September, cousins A&G stopped by during their furlough from Uganda.  They're a special treat any time we can see them.  G was born in Costa Rica and speaks Spanish fluently, so when we went to NYC, he and the waiter had some fun chatting.  It was my first real time with him—we had only met at the wedding in 2008—and I came away fairly impressed.  He stopped by the studio and moved a bit with folks in the gym and left a good impression there, also.

My immediate family is fairly close, I guess, but we have always been pretty tight with the extended family, especially folks on that side.  I have always enjoyed their company and would look forward to seeing them sometime in Africa.  One of the difficulties of missions work is representing oneself to two (or three, or four) different cultures equally.  I have often said that A's dad is more African than he is American.

400mm goodness

At some point I picked up some additional lenses and a camera, some of which I still need to sell.  (New Year's resolution.)

The next week was another tournament, styled a "tune-up" for our Canada trip.  I found myself again in a bit of a funk, but I won my first grand championship there anyway.  D probably should have won it for his weapons form, but they gave it to me instead.  The real story of the day, though, was that J won his 99th, 100th, and 101st medals (all gold), finally eclipsing the century mark he has striven for throughout his career.  To be a part of it was pretty crazy.  His life growing up was difficult (as a sample, his mother left him to take care of his cancer-ridden father—still alive and kicking—as a kid), and karate was the hammer God used to shape him into the man he is today.

Making jong.

At the end of the month, L and I took B&A to visit with her grandmother, who taught us to make Chinese rice dumplings. It's quite a process:  you have to boil the bamboo leaves for something like five days before you can really begin.  Then you fill them with rice, mung beans, pork sausage, walnuts (we didn't since L doesn't like them), mushrooms (only a little, since I'm not a fan of fungus—compromise is wonderful), and other goodies.  Then you boil them for four or five hours.  They can be frozen indefinitely and only need to be boiled for 20 minutes or so to reheat them to delicious consistency.  I would advise not forgetting the oil, since it makes them a bit easier to eat in the end.

October began with a trip to Gettysburg with D, J, J, and R.  It was tons of fun, though I managed to lose a bit of film thanks to my inability to properly load the Nikon F2 I got.  (This may have something to do with a slightly bent pin in the loader.)

Nikon d7000

Some of the shots were taken at the seminary in Gettysburg.  It rained a lot, and the seminary was welcome relief, and relatively warm.  It was a surprise that it was open, but a pleasant one and very necessary on what was a pretty ugly day.  Unfortunately the power of 20mm on a full-frame camera really doesn't come through because of the film loss.

400mm with the b&w treatment.

Finding some Fujis.

Fall is my time of the year, but the past couple autumns haven't quite evoked the sort of response in me that I'm used to.  This one was the exception with the enduring color and unexpected snow.  At least in this respect, October and November were pretty solid months.

The snow actually really helped evoke a more autumnal feel by juxtaposing all of the gorgeous fall colors with the whiteness of the snow.  It was a solid six inches of the white stuff at the end of October, and really made the season for me. I'm sure others were less amused, and I confess I didn't care much for shoveling.  But there it is.

All in all, it was a pretty time.  More after the new year.