The rest of the evening was taken up with our grocery shopping and watching the closing ceremonies.  Good times.

It is quite tempting to just put up a message saying “old browsers not supported, uprade” or something like that, but now its a matter of pride to get the thing fixed up correctly so everyone can enjoy it.

I’d best be off, or else we’ll be late to dinner!

Two miles on the treadmill (took me 23:21, really sad) and then three sets of 15 reps on the weight machines which included the chinups and dips.  Since I was by myself, there wasn’t near as much waiting between sets and I was able to get all of my weights done inside of 35 minutes.  This was probably pushing it a bit and I will likely be sore tomorrow.  Thankfully, we got our shipment of protein shakes from Kara so I got to treat myself to a vanilla protein shake to top off my workout.  It actually tasted great!

More soon!

The Karate Rosary
Originally uploaded by dalcher

Thanks to yesterday’s gym workout, tonight’s workout was an exercise in pain. A lot of arm movements and body shifting defined the workout, however that’s not what I want to talk about tonight.

Tonight, I want to talk about my buddy Matt. We’ve trained karate together for as long as I can remember, and I got word today that he has returned to the dojo after a break in his training.

Matt and I have shared many excellent karate memories including learning to teach together at Kid Power, getting ready for our respective belt tests, and many, many sparring matches. In 2006, we embarked on perhaps the most insane karate thing I have ever done to date: a goal to do 2000 Sochin in a year.

For my birthday that year, Matt made me a karate rosary to help me keep track of my progress. On the last blog post where I kept track, I had made it to 2105 Sochin kata in a year and Matt wasn’t too far behind me. It was one of the most epic things I have done to-date, and he was there with me. And so was the rosary, which has quickly become one of my most prized possessions.

Anyway, long rambling story aside… welcome back to karate, Matt. I wish I could physically be there to train with you again, but at least we’re together in spirit! I’m proud of you for getting back in there. Osu!

After that, we did some partner sparring drills, where we working on using different blocks.  I attacked with sanbon tsuki and he did a rising block and two mid-level blocks.  After he did that for awhile, I had him do rising block, inward block, and downward block to show the difference in how the blocks can cross the attacker up and make it harder for them to attack back.

We closed the workout with his kata (Heian Shodan) once before we were done.  Good workout, more soon!

In other news, we found out we get a big fat tax refund this year!  It will go toward the final stages of eradicating my student loan debt.  With any luck, we’ll be done with this whole debt push sooner than expected!  Woot!