Well it’s true!  A lot of my relaxation time revolves around chat with my family and friends.  It’s very interesting to me how small the world is becoming… over the last week my office continues to be abuzz with up-to-the-minute updates of the earthquakes in Christchurch.  We have several coworkers that work there, and many of my officemates hail from New Zealand so they have family and friends in the quake zone.

We got to break our good news about our upcoming baby via Skype to many of our family members.  My Facebook practically exploded after that news was circulated, which was really cool.  We live in a connected world, and it is easy to pass the time and remain close to those you love even when separated by long distances, and that’s a pretty awesome thing.

The march of technology continues… today Google unveiled their instant search that loads results even while you’re typing.  It seems like a fairly novel idea, but it’s incredible how they have taken something already fairly simple like typing into a search engine and made it appreciably faster and easier to use.  Improvements like this make me think about my summer class on Forward Looking Computing and Futurism, which talked about emerging trends in technology and some of these ideas were discussed there.  It’s neat to watch ideas come to life and technology continue to make the world a better place.

So yes, Mom.  It is entertaining to chat with you every night.

The stars were incredible… the Milky Way looked like a highway in the sky, and I could see so many stars that it was very difficult to make out constellations.  I totally get how people go up into the wilderness and come back inspired to write books and poems about natural beauty.

On Sunday we got a touch of cabin fever, so we ventured out to Cripple Creek, CO.  We went originally so the girls could peruse the local shops and maybe get a lunch out, but while we were eating at Ruby Tuesday Tasha thought it might be fun to take their narrow gauge railroad historical tour.  It was SO COOL!  We got a healthy dose of local history, including seeing the remains of gold mines.  The train conductor informed of the names and history of many of the mines as we passed by, remarking casually that certain mines would pull $1-$2 million in gold and a few hundred yards away another might pull $10 million.  Near the end of the tour, the conductor told us that the dollar amounts that he quoted were actual dollar amounts at the time the gold was taken out when it averaged around $25/oz.  Now gold goes for around $1,200/oz, which means this place generated a LOT of money.

At the top of the tour was a modern mine still owned by the same company, which uses a high-tech cyanide slurry solution to isolate the gold.  Last year it pulled out $291 million.  Incredible.

The only downside of the weekend was the forced chores that came at the end.  You see, the cabin rental company required us to leave the cabin in “ready to rent” condition so we had to do a bunch of cleaning to ensure we got our security deposit back.  It was still very worth it… taking the time to relax and go slow is really important and something I had been sorely neglecting.

Back From GenCon!  Part Two: prepare for hot, stinky nerd photos!

The weekend cabin trip should be over if everything has gone according to plans.  Back to regularly scheduled nonsense tomorrow!

This is my #3 longest post by word count, at 1,578 words:

My 100 Random Questions!

Nidan Examination … or … The Rabid Chihuahua Fights Back

So without further adieu, I present to you my longest post by word count at a whopping 1,923 words:

Loading Wedding Processes… [ OK ]

I am happy to report that my long weekend begins at 2 pm tomorrow, when I will flex some time back so we can get down to Colorado Springs.  Paul, Kara, Tasha and I are splitting a cabin for the long weekend so we can get away from work, the city, and our responsibilities for awhile.  The stress level has been very high at the office for everyone lately, so we need an opportunity to unwind.

That means I will be going off the grid for a few days, so don’t expect to see me on chat unless I get really bored and get some 3G connection on my iPad.  I probably won’t be doing this though, as I’m trying to be away from computers for awhile.  So here’s to a break!

I haven’t brought this foul of a mood home with me in quite some time, so I decompressed by way of having dinner and venting to Tasha.  She was kind enough to listen to me espousing my concerns even though she couldn’t really offer any advice.  She’s so good to me that way.  After that we headed over to Walgreen’s to get her pre-natal vitamin prescription filled ($66 for a month!) and then we retreated home for some lazy TV and Internet time.

I whiled away a good portion of the night on my acoustic guitar, continuing to practice the Beatles Anthology 3 demo version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”  I love the song and I’m getting pretty decent at the intro, but I get lost during the transition to the chorus and all the barre chords.  More practice will solve this problem.

Speaking of more practice, I’m happy to report that I wasn’t that sore today from karate last night.  I have a few healthy bruises on my arms from some hard blocks, but aside from that I am largely unscathed and ready for more.  I might attempt some Sochin at 9200 ft over the weekend at this rate.  Time will tell!

We did these combinations with a partner, and then we moved on to more fun partner drills.  The attacking side started in standing position, walking in to the attack (like a normal person) with right hand punch followed by stepping in with a reverse punch using the left hand.  The defending side blocked the first punch with a high level inward block, and the second with a downward strike (like Jion).  They followed up with a backfist strike with the same hand, which the attacker would block by sliding back with a high level outward pressing block.  At this point, we were instructed to both race to the reverse punch counterattack.

We did many repetitions of this combination, many times my partner and I collided reverse punches in a rather painful way.

We ended up the class with kata: Heian Godan, Tekki Shodan, Kanku Dai, and our own personal kata.  We did these in rather rapid succession so I was winded by the end of the set of katas.  It was a good workout and my technique is coming back in line slowly.  Always good to work out!