Nap Time for Teddy
Originally uploaded by dalcher.

We caught Teddy napping this weekend… ain’t he cute?

I’m trying to get more used to posting the pics I take into Flickr… I take quite a few but rarely ever post them properly.

My cousin just left my house, he was all excited to have me listen to his demo that he finally got professionally laid down. Its good. Far and away better than I expected given some of the rough cuts I had heard before from the singer that John is working with.

Several of the songs are very reminiscent in sound to Barenaked Ladies, but the lyrics aren’t anywhere near as irreverent as BNL. They’re heading more down an adult alternative path. Its a very clean, polished sound. They did a good job in the studio.

John had a surprise for me tonight… one of his friends that he used to work with knew John was into rings (he wears 4-5 on each hand) and decided to give him The King of Men ring from LOTR. His friend got it for Christmas and wasn’t really into rings but didn’t want to go through the hassle to return it. John didn’t really need any more rings either and he knew I would appreciate it, so he donated it to my collection. It could use some cleaning but it will be a nice addition, it already looks good on my mantle.

Tonight we were looking for something upstairs and we unearthed an unexpected treasure: my 1997 bookbag, locked frozen in time somewhere around mid-May.

I changed bookbags for my senior year and discarded this one in a corner somewhere and it must’ve made it over in the move.

What great stuff it contained! A fascinating time capsule complete with 1997 yearbook featuring me with a flippy bowl-cut during my inaugural year as a black belt. There is a great write-up in there that included some quotes from Sensei Brewer and a picture of my sister kicking me in the stomach. Good times.

This was also the year that Tasha and I started dating, so there were loads of great notes and cards from here in there. The yearbook commemorated the Homecoming dance that happened roughly two months prior to when we started dating… it was so weird to see us both with other dates to a function.

In the bookbag was my trusty Eddie Bauer umbrella that served me well throughout my sophomore and junior year, I had thought it lost for a long time. That thing never wore out or turned inside out and I loved it. The front zipper pouch contained my trusty calculator that sported two “I Love Math” stickers from times that I was able to not fail one of Mr. Wooding’s tests (thank you dear!), and my small snippet of The Towel of Knowledge.

At the very bottom of my bookbag was an unexpected treasure… the little golden man from the top of one of our Speech and Debate trophies. I can’t remember how exactly it came into my possession, I seem to think that it was the year they made Mr. Ewan clear all the trophies from the window of his room and he was just giving them away because they would be thrown out. I took the most prestigious looking one, I don’t know why I kept it.

It was fun traipsing down memory lane for a little bit… I’m confident that I got the best girl in that entire school. Unfortunately, there was no advertisement for the little cafe that we had our first date at, so I still don’t know the name. I may have to go down to the library and go through some archives to find out what that place was called so it didn’t drive me crazy.

As planned, I started my new Sochin regiment. It takes me roughly a half-hour to get through four slow and eight medium speed kata. I didn’t do too much more than medium today, as I am taking my own advice and working on perfecting the movements before I explore speeding up the data.

After 15 Sochin kata, I was about completely spent. However, I was goaded into sparring for awhile with and . Compared to my sparring of late, it went very well. My timing was for some reason on today and I landed a few interesting techniques and a slightly larger measure of non-interesting techniques.

It was a good time today. I want to continue this trend of heavy kata and relaxed “no mind” style sparring. I think it will help us raise our training to the next level. By the end of this year, my body will just know how to do Sochin, and hopefully I can continue that internalization into next year.

For some reason, Sochin squeezes the most horrible stink out of me. It really was awful and I apologize to all of my dojomates that had to be within a mile radius of me today. Hopefully this will abate with the leg trauma, but I doubt it. 🙂

I find myself once again in the solitude of my basement. The dog is snoring softly at my feet and I have decided to sit in the rarely used black leather chair that we took from our rental house (with landlady’s permission, of course).

Now, this chair used to belong to my cousin, who rented the house before we did. It has the stigma of being “someone else’s chair” and we are told was oftentimes the perch of my cousin’s Big Dog (mastiff, I think). We were always told the chair was usually pretty dirty, but it outwardly appears to be in pretty good shape. I took a damp cloth tonight and wiped it off, it didn’t appear to be that bad.

Let me tell you… that dog knew a good thing when she had one. This chair is really comfortable and has the excellent quality of keeping you slightly warm as you’re sitting in it. The small hexagonal table that we were given by my grandparents sits at the perfect height to hold both my MasterReplica’s Sting sword and a can of Diet Coke with room to spare.

Its a wonderful, cozy little kingdom we’ve wrought for ourselves down here.

So tonight I was prompted to log into my LJ account and I saw the “My LJ” option and decided to check it out. I really enjoy portal technology, and I really like this interface.

It has provided me some interesting information: it appears that shares the same birthday as my sister. I may have known that once upon a time but have since forgotten it. Very interesting stuff.

This voice posts thing is really quite strange to me… publishing a glorified answering machine message to my blog isn’t really something that turns me on. I wonder if anyone actually uses that thing… it reminds me of the canned audix messages that our management sends out… “this is a canned message for all employees… end communication.”

Weird.

We had a long productive week in the office for a change. For some reason this has sapped me of all desire to do anything but camp out in front of the TV tonight.

Where some motivation fails, others succeed… we were able to pay off credit cards #2 and #3 in the quest to no outstanding debt. Take that, Sears. We are slaves no longer to your 25% purchase interest rate! Ha ha!

Tomorrow begins The Great Sochin Regiment. There was some contention as to whether or not I was serious with my goal: I assure you that I am. As a matter of fact, a new feature of my blog will be a running total with each numbered karate post detailing my progress toward my goal.

I think I’m going to do the escalation style progression for my beginning workouts: 4 slow and light, 4 medium with some tension, and 4 as if life itself depended on them. I will then finish off with one however I feel like doing it for the workout. The numbers may change to help me catch up a little, we shall see.

Tonight after class, Mike-san and were discussing kata goals for the year. For those that don’t know, Sensei Hartman is on some sort of sadistic quest to do a bazillion katas this year. I don’t know the exact number, but its A LOT. I think it was 100 of each kata, with three katas per month.

That being said, it was recommended that I join them during the month that they do Sochin. I had intended to set a kata goal for the year but never quite got around to it. So here it goes:

I’m going to do 2000 Sochin kata this year.

If I figure in my 156 workout goal for the year, that breaks down to 12.82 (so I’m going to say 13) Sochin per scheduled workout. With such a regular workout in Sochin dachi (stance), my human legs should hold out until April, when my annual bonus comes in at work. At what time I will purchase cybernetic implants, get them hardwired in, and finish my goal for the year.

That means I’m going to have legs like a mechanized Greek god by the end of this year.

Tonight marked the unexpected return of our very own . I was happy to see him and we engaged in some pre-class slow sparring combat.

Young Mr. Tomms has a very strong sparring style. His backfist strikes are fast and strong (during slow sparring) also, however the control was a little… painful tonight. He whistled one across my chin at a pretty hard clip right as we started slow sparring and it took me by surprise.

I… calmly explained to him that we were friends and he didn’t need to crack my face open. We had a pretty good match for the rest of the time, the small bit of pain kicked us both into high gear and it was a fun exchange. My side kick and hook kick met their mark a few times, so things evened out nicely.

I noticed during warmups that my chin was sporting a roughly dime sized bruise. Its darkening nicely, so it should be a nice war medal by tomorrow. It was a good backfist strike, as I am feeling it in my opposite jaw right now worse than on the impact point.

Class was good tonight… focusing on core strength and kata. We got to work on slow controlled front stance and slow controlled techniques. This is the type of training that I really need to make my Sochin sing. Second class was sparring drills, during which a few people met with the Wrath of Tomm.

He got me again in the ribs with a very close range reverse punch which I was tensed for so it didn’t bother me, but I took the opportunity to remind him about control again. 🙂 It was all in good fun, everyone was laughing about it after class and it was great to see our good buddy again.

I got off work a little late tonight, but still had time to do some running around tonight. Tasha and I paid a few bills and then picked up some dinner. The rest of the evening was spent lounging around the house doing nothing important for a change.

The dog was very affectionate tonight. He jumped in my lap for no reason and laid there for about fifteen minutes before he had enough of that and went to sleep by the front door. We played catch for awhile tonight but his legs still aren’t responding to requests properly and he tends to fall down a lot.

Tasha talked to the vet today and he said that this was fairly normal for the “getting used to the drug” phase and that he should continue making slow progress back to normalcy over the next two weeks. We have to have him in around the first of the month to get his blood screenings done to ensure that the medicine isn’t hurting his liver at all, hopefully he’ll be a little more coherent by then.

The doctor said that if he wasn’t they were going to adjust his dosage so he doesn’t fall down so much. That would be a good thing. Watching your dog splatter his ass running for a tennis ball is only funny once. After that its just sad, and you’re always worried that he’s going to break a leg/hip/something.