Tonight is jam night at Walton Manor!  I’m off to pack up my gear and get over there to rock out!

Got to the gym late today (after another fairly long day at the office), where I did a short cardio workout on the elliptical.  Tasha did some laps around the track and then it was time for weights.  I felt stronger today, moving my weight up on a few machines.  We ended the workout doing some ab exercises, and Paul and I did some balance and medicine ball training just for fun.

The assisted chinup machine is what makes me feel the most accomplished during the gym workouts.  I was never able to do too many chinups before this, and thanks to a 70 lb weight offset I’m able to do two sets of 10 each (and tricep dips too)!  Tasha put up a good showing on that machine too, so it was a Dalcher family chinup celebration tonight!

More Olympic watching tonight, so I’m off!

Today wasn’t as long as yesterday, but still pretty long.  I got out of the office around 6:30 pm after a day of mild productivity.  Tonight we had Week 7 of our Financial Peace University Home Study review, so that was fun.  It’s Ash Wednesday, so it was a day of fasting and no meat… I also have to come up with something to give up for Lent.  I’m thinking of trying to give up McDonalds again this year.  We eat there several times a week and I don’t have many other good ideas of things to give up, so that might have to be it.

I’m going to watch the rest of Women’s Downhill Skiing, they’re crashing left and right and its exciting.  More later!

I had an exceptionally long workday, peppered by bug-fixes, inexplicably long meetings, a disappearing morning, one coworker that went home sick (after summoning me to gather his garbage can for him prior to barfing), another coworker with a mother in critical condition, and finally at long last the workday ended.  About 30 minutes ago.

So tonight I’m intentionally doing nothing.  I missed my karate workout, so I’m going to spend the rest of the evening doing whatever I want.  That may involve some for-fun coding, but likely it will just involve watching the Olympics and vegging out.

This afternoon Paul B and I got together for another sparring workout.  This time we worked more on ironing out some of his stylistic differences in preparation for his cross-rank exam for Shodan.  He tends toward having a high, boxing style sparring guard which leaves him somewhat open to lower counterattacks.  He also tends to like to spring in and finish with a jodan downfist strike, which place him at a relatively dangerous distance for the good ol’ fashioned Shotokan reverse punch.

So we went back to some basic sparring drills, three-time attack, three-to-five time attack, and some semi-free sparring.  After the kumite was done, we did a few Tekki Shodan kata to finish up the workout.  It was a good time!  More tomorrow!

Tasha was working today, so I ventured out to the rec center to have a karate workout.  I got there early and knocked out Bassai Dai and Kanku Dai before Paul arrived, once he showed up we moved into basics.  We did some stationary blocking training, and I gave him an introduction to pressing block.  Before too long we were discussing distance and timing, and he asked how this can be used in sparring.

I explained to him how shifting in and out with the attack was important, so we went through some distance drills while shifting in sparring stance.  The workout was cut short when Paul’s ankle started to bother him from the pressure of shifting, and we opted to call it a short workout instead of risk injuring his ankle further.

It wasn’t the world’s most difficult workout, but I did get a sweat going and that’s all that matters.

Paul, Kara, Tasha and I are going to see Meniskus record a live CD tonight at the Walnut Room in Denver.  Tasha’s been at work at Genghis Con all weekend, so I took the opportunity to pick up the kitchen, load the dishwasher, and vacuum so she didn’t have to.  I even made a Key Lime Pie (that one was for me, I’ve wanted one all week!)

I love long weekends… I still have two days off and I’ve already got most of my chores done.  I’m looking forward to watching more of the Olympics and getting some karate done this weekend too!

For starters, let me say that I really didn’t want to go to karate tonight.  I had a really long/bad day at the office, and I really wanted to just sit down and veg out tonight.  But after Paul called, we both decided it was best if we worked out.  So off to the dojo we went!

Tonight was a master class in roundhouse kick.  We did various two-kick combinations, starting with the rear leg and later the front leg.  Eventually we did these kicking combinations with a partner, where they would provide targets with their hands as they moved back.  We wrapped up the class with a few Heian Yondan kata, then Tekki Shodan, and finally our own personal kata (Sochin for me).

For whatever reason, my left hip still continues to hurt.  It’s affecting how high I can kick on my left, and how dynamic of a motion I can make when stepping down after kicking.  Time for some ibuprofen!

Tonight was a good gym workout, not much cardio (since apparently Paul had been there 20 minutes before I got there) but we hit the weights pretty quickly.  In addition to the normal machines, I added the ab crunch machine.  It felt good to work out my core again, and I was able to do a bit more weight than I expected (90 lbs).  We also did the chinup machine again, which was pretty fun.

The gym didn’t seem that busy, but yet we were asked if people could cut in with us on our sets.  Paul and I do three sets of 15 reps apiece, so it doesn’t take that long on each machine but for whatever reason people were impatient.  We opted out of letting them cut in, Paul likes to keep a fairly quick pace to his weight sets.  Me, I’m usually good for a break but I don’t like meeting new people so I was fine to let him decline the cutters-in.

I’m pretty tired, but I have a feeling of accomplishment after tonight’s workout.  It probably didn’t hurt that I had a good day at work too!

So a few weeks ago, amidst the cleaning frenzy of the Man Cave project, my Dyson vacuum started acting up.  I noticed that the hose assembly had lost suction but the regular vacuum was working just fine.  While I was trying to diagnose the problem, the vacuum up and quit working altogether.

I quickly admitted defeat and called the Dyson Support Page and got the number to call.  A very nice lady picked up a few rings later, answered some questions, and told me that my vacuum was under warranty and they’d be happy to send out a replacement cyclone unit and filter free of charge.  It arrived two days ago and I just got around to installing it, but unfortunately it didn’t solve my problem.  I noticed that the hose was collapsing when the vacuum was on, so I found an online video explaining how to remove the hose assemby and check for blockages.  After about five minutes I confirmed that the hose was totally clogged and some shaking and stomping the thing on the ground yeilded a wad of rabbit hair, poop, a few small pieces of plastic, and some tags off of old laundry.  But the hose was clear!

I re-attached the hose assembly and fired the thing up  and I FIXED IT!  Woot!

I do want to recognize Dyson for having an excellent customer service line and a good warranty (which came with the vacuum, this wasn’t even an extended warranty!)  Even though they didn’t quite get down to the root cause of the problem, it was nice to have them be so quick to ship out replacement parts.  I’m sure had I called them again they would’ve gotten to the bottom of it.