Hello?

Yes, yes, I’ve been chided for not posting. I guess I haven’t had much to say here. That and I haven’t had any time to say it.

 

So, here’s the recap of the past week:

 

 

Last Friday I went to dinner with Brian, Al, my cousin Andrew, and Rachel. It was somewhat of a belated birthday gathering, but mostly just a reason to drink. A lot. A lot a lot! We had a good time, got to bed super late. Rachel and Andrew crashed at my place, Brian and Al went home. Slept reasonably late for a 3:30AM bedtime, like 9:30AM.

 

The next day, I did a whole lot of cleaning and what not, and then the Kung Fu folks descended on my house to meet up before seeing a movie. It was me, Brian, Rachel, Jonesy, Nieport, Farber, Jacob, Mike, Keith, two of their friends, Jason and Tiffany, and Ben. We went to see Fearless, with Jet Li. It was fantastic, made better by the fact that Jet Li practices our style of martial arts. Seeing him do some of the things we are learning is pretty darn cool. People came back to my place afterwards, and we hung out until like 4 or so.

 

Sunday was a lazy day for the most part. I watched the Bengals game with my brother, then went to my grandparents’ place to fix their PC. Had dinner there, then came home and did some work.

 

This week has sucked. I’ve had 6AM calls every day but this morning. I’ve had tons of other work too, so no early off times. Lots of stress on the homefront too, so that has sucked.

 

But, Jen got into town last night, and everything seems to be ok now.

 

So that’s the week in a nutshell. More later!

Tired

Alright, so I’m still tired. Sorry for no posts, but I’ve been a workin fool the past few days.

 

Tuesday I was in early (7:30A), and then I had a big project start at 2PM. I worked that project until 5 AM the next morning, went to a 6AM appointment, then went back to the project until around 1PM. I did a few other things, then went to the dojo last night to work out. That was tough on no sleep, let me tell you! I didn’t get to sleep until about 11:30P last night, and then I was up at 7AM again.

 

I feel a little worn out today, but it’s not completely horrible. I don’t require much sleep anyway. I am definitely more tired than I normally am, but not overly so. My muscles are more tired than normal from working out, and I feel a little sleepy, but that’s ok.

 

 

For the record, I had to do a residential call this morning to an absolutely disgusting house. I have rarely been in a house that smelled worse. The lady is a AKC breeder or poodles, and you’d think she does all of this IN the house from the way it smells. That or she lets them use the basement as a restroom. The house was clean overall, but the stench was nearly enough to make me faint. I HATE RESIDENTIAL CALLS. The money simply isn’t worth dealing with most people.

 

 

One Full Birthday

Well, yesterday was one full birthday……….

 

I woke up tired from the full day on Saturday. Jen and I had a pleasant morning together being with one another. Then, Greg came over and we went to the Bengals game, which was a very nice present from Greg, while Jen went to her girls lunch. We parked in NKY and walked across the suspension bridge to get to the game, which was right up my alley. The game was wonderful, if a bit hot. I got quite a bit of sun. Once we got back from the game, Jen and I had dinner with my parents and grandparents. Jen left from the restaurant to head back to Chicago, got to the other side of town and realized she was too tired to make it. She ended up coming back to my house for the evening and leaving this morning. In the meantime, Rachel had called to come hang out during the evening. So the three of us did a whole lot of nothing, which was great.

 

Oh, as a surprise, Jen hid 7 different little letters throughout my house for me to find for my birthday. Each said something different that she loved about me or about us. It was a very thoughtful surprise, and one that I enjoyed thoroughly. Thanks Jen.

 

 

 

Lastly, everyone wants to make a big deal about 30. I don’t get it. I feel stronger and more capable now than I ever have in my life. I can do more now in any area of my life than I have ever been able to do in the past. What exactly is wrong with that, and why am I supposed to feel old?

Tournament Time!!!

So today was the big Fall Gathering for the Shaolin-Do Association. Big tournament in Lexington. People from all over the country were there to compete. There were kata competitions and a sparring competitions.

 

Although I wasn’t confident in what I was doing, I decided to participate to see what I could do.

 

Jen was nice enough to get up ultra-early with me (6AM) this morning and go down to watch.

 

It was a really long day. The little kids went first, which was very cute. Our school doesn’t teach children, but many others do, so there were a ton there.

 

Things finally got started, and myself and Brian and Jacob were all competing in the blue belt level competitions.

 

We each did an open hands form, a weapons form, and then we had a little round robin sparring tournament.

 

Sparring was tough, but fun. Although head contact is illegal, I got clocked twice, once in the mouth in my first match, and then once in the nose in my last match.

 

It was great to watch everyone do their stuff. Our school did extraordinarily well. Almost everyone that went got a medal. Including me! I got two, one for weapons form (Bo Staff), and one for sparring. Both 2^nd places, so silvers for each.

 

 

It’s a wonderful feeling to get back out and compete in something again. I’ve needed this badly.

 

I couldn’t be more thankful for today really, and mostly because Jen came to watch when she understood it was important to me. 6AM to 10:30PM is a really long day when you are doing something that you really aren’t taking part in, so I’m very appreciative of the sacrifice.  

Blergh!!

Ya, so, check this out…………..

 

 

MRI came back on my knee. I have a torn meniscus. I found a nice article about what this means here: http://orthopedics.about.com/cs/meniscusinjuries1/a/meniscus.htm

 

It means another surgery.

 

I’m really trying not to be depressed about this.

Experience

I believe it’s a challenge to live one’s life as part of the experience rather than passively experiencing life.

 

I believe age is the sum of your experiences, and it has nothing to do with numbers.

 

I think most people experience merely 30% of what really happens during their day. The other 70% is discarded as distracting, off topic, background, etc……………

 

I believe some people don’t need to tune the other 70% out………

 

I believe this difference in experience gave rise to the term “old soul”. Although usually attributed to those who have experienced much tragedy or hardship in their lives, it is not always so. Some people just seem to have experience more overall than most others do.

 

 

I believe it’s possible to make one’s soul younger. Through surrounding oneself with positive people, doing creative and beneficial things with one’s time, and through sheer force of will, one can retain the life lessons learned yet still view the world with a sense of wonder and newness. And continue to learn new lessons in everyday activities.

 

Is this not the true fountain of youth?

Rainy Weekend

So, I went to Chicago this weekend to see Jen. Talk about lousy weather! It was cold and rainy all weekend long!

 

Jen surprised me on Saturday for my birthday. She took us to a place called Heavenly Massage, and we got a couples massage. 60 minute massage together in the same room, then the special thing about this place is after the massage. You get your own little bathroom to go to. This bathroom has a HUGE shower stall with a steam attachment installed. So, you get the massage, then you can relax in a steam bath as long as you want, then take a shower to get refreshed. It was great, and they let us share the same shower, which was even better. Having never shelled out the money for a professional massage before, it was fantastic. I’d sign up for some monthly thing here in Cinci if I could find a massage parlor that has the steam bath/shower thing at the end. (I’d almost pay the massage rates just for that if you want the truth….)

 

Saturday made Sunday standing in the rain watching her soccer game ALMOST worth it (j/k, I was with Jen, it was worth it.)

 

We had a pretty significant fight on Sunday after her game. This is becoming distressingly common. I’ll chalk some of it up to the fact that we have to part ways every weekend, and it wears on both of us. Neither of us wants to be apart from the other, but we have no choice in the matter currently. I’m sure that’s most of it.

 

Regardless, we always seem to make up in the end, and neither of us lets things linger after we are done arguing, so that part’s good.

PSA

Ya, so I switched to the Beta Blogger, and I also can’t comment on anyone’s blogs anymore. It should be a temporary thing until they can get the authentication systems synced up, but we’ll see. (Google owns Blogger if you didn’t know that, and this beta thing is all about using your gmail or google ID for blogger.)

 

 

Anyways, the week has been good thus far. I have a doctor appointment today to see if I can figure out why my left knee and my right side are hurting. It shouldn’t be anything serious, but I’ll let you know.

What happened to............

Common sense?

 

 

Everyone here in Cinci is aware of the Marcus Fiesel situation.  If you aren’t from here, here’s a link to a recap:

 

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=newsmarcus

 

 

 

Now, the birth mother, the one that couldn’t support him and had him taken away is filing a wrongful death lawsuit to the tune of $5 million dollars.

 

This is the lady that couldn’t get things straight enough that child services took ALL of her kids away from her.  Not just Marcus, but her other two children as well. (OH, BTW, all 3 were from different men) The house stank so bad that child services assumed she had dogs or some type of animals in the house. (She didn’t) Marcus was covered in flea bites and bruises. He got out of the house on two different occasions before he was taken away.

 

This lady could NOT care for this child. She did not have a job, relying on social services for money.

 

Why in the world is this lady entitled to a DAMN THING over what happened? In my opinion, and I may sound a bit heartless here, she is EVERY BIT as responsible for what happened to Marcus as the foster parents that killed him. How damn difficult is it to keep a house clean? How difficult is it to keep tabs on a 3 year old that has a mentality like an 18 month old because he’s autistic?

 

What lawyer with ANY decency would take this case? What judge would even pretend to hear it?

 

What sane person out there sees this as ANYTHING but a flat out money scam? I’m not downplaying her loss in the slightest, it certainly was her child that died. But if she wants the money now, she should have wanted Marcus just as much when she had him. Her actions don’t back that up in the slightest.

 

And people in this country wonder why foreigners think we are stupid. If she wins a single penny out of this, they are all right. It would be a mockery of our judicial system, and everyone involved should be ashamed. These are the things that make me ashamed to be part of this country, this system.

 

I’m not Anti-American, but I am Anti-Stupidity. I wish more of us existed.

Rested

The entire weekend thus far has been incredibly restful. I won’t claim to have been totally inactive, but it’s been close. We saw “Crank” last night with Brian. It was an entertaining action flick, nothing entirely special. Some neat visual effects, I’d say worth the money to go see.

 

I’ve gotten quite a bit of my book read this weekend, without even trying a whole lot. I’ve had lots of little bits of time to read a chapter here, chapter there, and I find I’m halfway through.  2 more after this one, and I’ll have all 6 in the Dune prequel series done. They’ve been really good books, very enjoyable.

 

I am slowly organizing myself into training mode again. I’ve got to get studying for some certifications again.  This is a daunting task, and I’m not sure how I want to accomplish this. However, I’ve been given the end of Sept as a target date for taking the test.

 

I refuse to stress out about this.