Tasha and I are joining my new team leader and his girlfriend for dinner at a fancy restaurant in downtown Denver, followed by a nightclub with live music, followed by fireworks at midnight!

For those of you that care: yes, we are taking a cab to and from our venues so no one needs to be concerned about our welfare.

• Debt Repayment!

This one has been going very well in 2008.  Our relocation, while stressful, was generally beneficial to the ol’ bank account.  We have reduced ourselves down to just three remaining debts: two of my student loans and one of Tasha’s.  Unfortunately, the debt snowball dictates paying off the smaller debts first, so now we are left with big debts to finish off.

Since the relocation option presented itself around the first quarter of 2008, we immediately stopped aggressively paying off our debts and started stockpiling cash.  With the added benefit of our relocation money and some aggressive efforts to relocate on the cheap, we’ve saved up enough to nearly wipe out two of the three remaining debts.

We’re still waiting to get our taxes done before applying that money toward our debts (in case Uncle Sam takes more than we expect), but that will take place early next year.

With any luck, we’ll make major strides in 2009 and stay on target to become debt free in 2010!

• Karate

This one was very disappointing.  I made 90 workouts this year, which averages out to a depressing 1.73 workouts per week.  There were many factors that contributed to this failure, notably the amount of effort required to relocate to Denver.  That being said, the workouts that I did attend went a long way toward Sandan preparations.  We spent much of the year focused on kumite and drills designed to cultivate the required skills for the Sandan exam.

I am going to redouble my efforts toward karate and general fitness in 2009, so expect to see this goal repeat next year.

• Learning to Relax

This goal was intentionally intangible, however I have rediscovered gaming by virtue of Rock Band 2, World of Warcraft, and our StupidRanger.com website.  I’ve made some new friends as a result of all of these ventures and had a good time while doing it so I’m counting this one as successful.

• 2008BloPoMo

I ended up blogging each day in five months for 2008, many months I missed by only one or two days.  In the end I blogged 319 out of 365 days, or 87.39% of the year.

On the plus side, there were 386 posts this year.  My intent was to blog for solid months in the tradition of NaBloPoMo, however I think since my number of posts this year exceeds 365 I can consider this one a success.

I don’t really know what to tell you to expect, as I’ve not seriously mulled my 2009 goals yet.  We’ll see what the next few days hold!

I headed home, changed into my gi, called the YWCA to see if they were still open (they were) so I headed over to the dojo.  I knew something was wrong when the windows to the dojo were dark, and I got one really confused lady at the front desk to inform me that class had been cancelled around 5:30.

She said she called everybody on the list, and I told her I probably wasn’t on the list anymore since I moved to Colorado.  For some reason she felt compelled to apologize to me, but it really wasn’t anyone’s fault!

I intend to make it to the dojo Saturday morning and Tuesday next week, hopefully I won’t have brought my gi in vain!

Things are going about as expected… work has been busy (but productive!), sadly winter weather has kept me from the dojo thus far, and I’m still without my wife as she is travelling back to IL this weekend.

I have enjoyed being home to see my family and visiting my at-work buddies, but I really have been wishing for an extended period of time in Denver so I can get settled and back into my normal routine.  Travelling every two weeks has not been very conducive to life patterns.

I’ve been thinking a bit about my year-end wrap up post… its getting about that time again and a lot has happened this year to reflect upon!

One for my new job, one for my old job, and my personal one that has enough horsepower to play World of Warcraft.  I would’ve stashed one of these laptops in my suitcase, but my gi is taking up its share of my cargo and I need clothes to last me for two weeks so that is right out.

In other news this week, I received a letter from the homeowners association informing us that we had a broken satellite dish hanging off of the side of the house.  Since it was deemed an “eyesore” I had to get up this morning and remove it to prevent invoking the wrath of my homeowners association.  I really dislike having someone tell me what I can and can’t have hanging off of my house, but unfortunately it is pretty normal out here to have “covenant controlled communities” like mine that enforce such rules.

The only other chore I had to do this morning was cleaning the rabbit cages, which was made significantly more easy by the use of cat litter pan liners to catch the bulk of their poop.  We ran out of them, so I had to put their litter in the actual pan this time, so next time is going to be Quite Gross.

That’s all for now, I’ve gotta shower and hit the road!  See all you flatlanders soon!

Christmas shopping is going well, we’re almost done!  Having saved all year long makes the shopping all the more enjoyable, its almost weird freely spending that much money all at once!

We have made plans to have those same people over soon after the first of the year, hopefully every get-together will be this fun!  I might have to get some nerf weaponry around here to keep myself safe though!

With the temperature dropping and the snow, I thought it would be a nice opportunity to get our fireplace going for the first time.  I’m not that good at making fires, or God is very good at creating trees… we had this one log that just wouldn’t burn through.  With enough additional logs it eventually gave up and there’s still a few embers glowing.  I really wish we would have used the fireplace I had in my basement at the old house… I find it very relaxing.

The niceness of fire aside… I still really hate snow!

I got to talking with one of the guys I met previously (named Mike) and headed downstairs to change.  Sensei Yaguchi must have just arrived because he was in street clothes.  He spotted me and said “No shoes!”, since I was wrapped up in conversation with Mike I walked right past the shoe rack on the way downstairs to the changing area.  Great first impression.  Excellent.

So I apologized and quickly made my way back upstairs to take off my shoes.  I went back around to Sensei Yaguchi’s office and introduced myself as a member of Sensei Brewer’s dojo, and that we were affiliated with Sensei Hassell’s organization.  He asked how Sensei Hassell has been, and said that I would be welcome to train with him.  He outlined the monthly costs and the registration fees with the ISKF and JKA and then I excused myself to suit up.

Quickly it was time for class to start, they went through a pretty standard warm-up that felt very much like ours.  Then Sensei Yaguchi took the floor to teach “some basic warmup combinations”.  The first combination was stepping backwards with a face level knifehand strike, then using hip action swing that same hand in a circular motion around into a face level ridgehand strike, then reverse punch.  And we did like 30 of those on each side.

After this, we immediately went into another combination: stepping back with downward block, front leg front kick, then two reverse punches with the same hand.  We did these in chains of three steps backwards, which is about all of the room we had to move forward and backward.  By this time, I was pouring sweat and practically panting… the elevation had set in!

Several times Sensei Yaguchi would stop in front of me to watch and would say “You’re a mile high!  Take it easy or you will fall over!” then he’s slap me on the shoulder and chuckle a little.  Graciously, he stopped us for a water break!

After this, we got into a partner drill.  One side attached with a face level punch, the other side stepped back and did two rapid succession rising blocks with the same hand using body vibration.  Sensei Yaguchi indicated that this might not be very effective, but it does disrupt the power of the attack and is a good timing drill.  This rising block combination was followed by a switch back reverse punch.  We did this about 30 times each side, and switched partners once.  My legs and lungs were burning at this point, and I’m afraid my technique was showing the strain… Sensei kept correcting me on my rear hip drifting out and my shoulders leaning forward.

After another short water break, we did three iterations of Tekki Shodan, focusing on the foundation of stance and hip movement.  Sensei Yaguchi had a few differences from the way we tend to do Tekki Shodan, the circular punching combination did not rely on pullback, in fact he corrected us to not let the elbow break the plane of the shoulders.  The power of the technique as he demonstrated it was due to body vibration and the snap of the wrist.

The last portion of the class involved doing your “own personal kata”.  I selected Sochin, since I was used to doing that kata while exhausted.  Sensei Yaguchi corrected me on the brushing block/backfist strike combination toward the end of the kata, taking special care to show me my mistake by putting a lunge punch right in my face.  Apparently I wasn’t moving my hands at the same time to provide protection for my face, an important detail for sure!  He told me that Sochin was a special favorite of his and the kata was very special to him so he looked forward to working with me on it.

That was all for the class, Sensei Yaguchi took the time to tell the class that I had come from Illinois and they should introduce themselves to me before they leave.  After class had bowed out, I thanked him for the opportunity and he thanked me for coming to his school.  I was very impressed by Sensei Yaguchi’s matter-of-fact teaching style and his demeanor during the class… I am sure training under him is going to positively impact my training!

One of Sensei Yaguchi’s head black belts told me that this was an unusually hard workout, altitude or not… so I don’t feel so bad about my performance.  That being said… I am TIRED and already starting to get sore from the workout.  I have a social function to attend Thursday night, but I plan to be back at it on Tuesday… and I’ll probably need at least that long to recover!