Continuing in yesterday’s trend, here is my #2 longest post by word count, weighing in at 1,676 words:

Nidan Examination … or … The Rabid Chihuahua Fights Back

I’m off to a long weekend!  A few days ago, I installed WP Word Count, which informed me of several things.  First, I have written 567,077 words on this blog since it started in June, 2003.  It provides a view into which posts are the longest, and I found that my longest posts to date were important points in my recent life, or at very least a few interesting stories.

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

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Today saw my work issues largely resolved.  I raised my issues to the appropriate level so that more analysis can be done, and if decisions are made that come down and bite us in the butt later I have a paper trail that absolves me from responsibility.  This dramatically improved my workday today, and I was even able to get some design and coding done today.

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!

It seems like it was me against the world today.  I had the esteemed pleasure of being the only guy raising up what I feel are rather serious concerns about an application feature that we are building, so that equated to a day full of respectful yet semi-heated arguments.  This is one of the few times I’ve had the “between a rock and a hard place” feeling at this job, hopefully some further discussion tomorrow will lead us to a compromise.

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!

I opted for no nap before karate tonight and the workout went pretty well.  We did two primary combinations: jab, reverse punch, jab, then step in lunge punch.  We then did the same combination with front leg front kick in place of the jab, and rear leg front kicks in place of the other two punches.

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!

Tonight Teddy, Tasha, and I went over to our friend Rick and Kristine’s house.  They are going to watch Teddy while we are “camping” this weekend.  Camping is quoted, because more accurately we are staying in a cabin with Paul and Kara to get away from the city for awhile.

Teddy got to meet their two dogs.  They are both smaller dogs, and I think they were a little intimidated by Teddy’s size.  One of the puppies warmed to Teddy fairly quickly, but the other wasn’t having any of it.  Luckily, their dog is crate trained so they are just going to crate her when they aren’t around.  Teddy was VERY excited to meet new people and I think he’s going to have a fun weekend as well.

Aside from that it was a productive workday and a very lazy evening.  I worked on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on the acoustic guitar and it is sounding good!  I’m working on the demo version that appears on The Beatles Anthology 3, which is one of my favorite versions of the song.

Today I woke up at the crack of noon (gotta get all this out of my system before the kid arrives!) and proceeded to dutifully accomplish my chores.  I mowed the lawn, accumulated the soda cans in the proper receptacle, and adjusted the sprinkler system to hopefully soothe the three large brown spots in my lawn.  It’s strange… it appears like these spots are getting watered by the sprinklers, yet they remain brown and dry.  Fertilizer, maybe?

Tasha was having a bean craving today, so we had to go to the mall to get her a bean burrito.  After dinner was done, we hung around the house and she played video games and I surfed the internet, nursing my sore muscles.  The dojo floor was covered in dust from construction that we attempted to clean off on Friday night, but I suspect we didn’t get it all… the parts of my feet that slide on the floor when moving in stance felt almost as if they have splinters or slivers in them but I can’t make out any injury.  Hopefully that will all resolve in time for my Tuesday workout.

Just as it normally is with Sunday nights, I’m not looking forward to work in the morning.  At least this coming weekend is a good motivator, being a long weekend.  We’re renting a cabin with Paul and Kara to get away from the city for awhile, so we’re both excited.  More soon!

As I mentioned during my last karate post, they are renovating the dance studio that we use for our dojo.  They recently refinished one of the wood floors near the room we train in, so the place was filled with the hanging vapors of wood sealer and varnish.  Add to that the lack of air conditioning and I was cooking like a summer ham during the workout.

Last night’s workout was a tough one.  We did our monthly combination, which really got the sweat rolling.  We did some partner drills working on proper form while blocking, and I noticed that my stance and connection are getting better but my legs are still weak.  We finished up the night with many repetitions of Empi kata, which was fun considering how rarely I’ve done that kata since my Shodan exam.  Sensei Tarrant let me count through it a few times for the class, and I was happy that he provided the class some of the same pointers that I did as we went through it.

My tight hamstrings really made me suffer through this kata, though.  I got a knot in one of them as we repeated the opening sequence from Empi but I toughed it out.  I’m going to have to do some more stretching or something in order to loosen them up again, or else I’m going to end up blowing something out.  Nobody wants that.

I was drenched by the time the workout was over, which was a good feeling.  I ended up the night by going to my buddy PW’s house for a jam session, which was fun!  Now I’m headed off to a Green Day concert, more soon!

I can’t stay long, Tasha’s out with the girls for Girls Night Out so I am off to play guitar for awhile.  For those of you that worry about such things, I went to karate first and had a really great workout.

More soon!

Words don’t describe how excited I am to announce that Tasha and I are expecting our first baby!

We’re at 9 1/2 weeks (due March 26) along and we got to take that excellent picture and hear the baby’s heartbeat (a healthy 170 beats per minute) on Wednesday.  My favorite part of the appointment was when the doctor wanted to try to “wake up the baby” and did so by gently prodding Tasha’s stomach until the baby twitched and moved a little in protest.  It was a really awesome sight, and we were both relieved to see some proof aside from the blue + on the home pregnancy test.

Tasha’s doing fine, aside from constant all-day nausea and pretty significant fatigue (both normal symptoms).  The doctor said everything looks great with the baby and we’re both very excited about the next doctor’s appointment.  I’ll post more progress here, so stay tuned.  It’s going to be an interesting 9 months!