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January 2012
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Last of the snow pictures

It is crazy to think that it is almost the end of January and that the snow storm that blew through is completely gone. No more snow piled up in the backyard or along the sides of the road. Driving is so much easier in the rain instead of the snow! I was thinking though, I should probably post the rest of the snow pictures before spring is upon us!

I’m enjoying living in Washington so much. I think it is so beautiful here; the sky, the trees and the seasons keep changing into the most beautiful pictures. Although I’m glad it finally melted off I enjoyed the first couple of days of snow for its novelty. Clark and I are enjoying being able to indulge ourselves with all the time we have together, with activities that we enjoy and with being able to visit the big city if we want to. It is a blessed life.

Remmy the snowman destroyer, part two

For your enjoyment:

Remmy the snowman destroyer

And if you don’t remember here is last year’s video.

The most expensive thrift store visit or Pri-pri has a bad day

Yesterday was a comedy of errors. Clark forgot a key at home that he needed at work. Like, needed it a half hour ago, what are you doing sleeping in so late? (8:30 is a total normal time to wake up, right? I mean, I stayed up late reading a book…okay, back to the story.)

I drove it over to him and on the way home I misjudged a corner with a snow pile/curb that ended up taking out the prius’ hubcap thingy.

Old hubcap with broken clips (laying on top of package with new hubcap.)

I was a little shaken up about the whole hubcap thing and thought I’d stop at the thrift store a block from our house. While I was in the store a man came in asking about who owned the blue prius. He had backed into it. He felt really bad. I came outside to get his information and noted that in the whole giant parking lot there were…three cars, including his. And he backed into mine. *sigh*

It’s a hole! In my pri-pri! Poor car.

Bumper is popped out now. Still driveable but not looking as good.

Pri-pri is looking pretty ghetto at this point. I am thankful that the man was honest and admitted that he hit me. I don’t think a lot of people would do that nowadays. And I’m really thankful he did when I got the estimate today. $560 dollars to replace the bumper!  We don’t have to pay that but we did have to pay $50 for a new hubcap.

Did I mention that I usually don’t drive home the way that took out my hubcap and that I didn’t even find anything good at the thrift store?

It was totally one of those days.

Thought stream

My Uncle recently asked me my thoughts on Aikido as a martial art. Given how important both my Uncle and Martial Arts are to me my response was inevitably long winded but I wanted to share it as I’m writing about something I’m very passionate about. I start out in referring to a comment he made about the Aikido demonstrations he’s watched having very compliant aggressors and his concern over that:

First, your assessment that the aggressor appears too cooperative is an extremely poignant and insightful observation which plays to the heart and inherent fallacies of many traditional martial arts. During the 1700s Japanese martial arts, under imperial order, became much more structured and less prone to injury. Kata, that is choreographed routines of martial demonstration, became popular and with it the beginning of the compliant attacker issue. Justification for the lack of hard practice and sport-ish competition was made that the art was too deadly for practice on resisting opponents and the like.

At the furthest extreme of the above described line of thinking you have martial arts like this. For the record, the MMA fighter he fights is a nobody. Additionally, I have no doubt that his students believed it worked, through and through. A sort of group hypnotism, a common psychological phenomenon well understood.

So, the question regarding Aikido and its usefulness: it’s a mixed bag. Of the many martial arts which fall prey to the above described problems my opinion is that Aikido is one of the better ones. Many of its techniques are inherently useful and though not often practiced in a sport environment, some of them are ones which are used in sporting situations. How beneficial it is when it comes to self defense can also be extremely subjective on the quality of the instruction. Dan Zan Ryu Jujitsu, the type of Jujitsu I’m a blackbelt in, suffers from many of the traditional problems. I also know some fellow practitioners who, with the martial revolution which started in 1993, have done a lot to make their DZR substantially more proven and useful. In the end, Aikido: better than a lot, but desperately lacking compared to a few. It can be practiced fairly safely and of course is better than no martial training. Practice would be decent workout though Aikido be hard on the joints if you’re not careful.

While what I’ve written thus far has answered your question my response wouldn’t be genuinely thorough if I didn’t explain a few other things, namely sport, 1993 and the other “few” (martial arts).

Those old styles of Japanese martial arts were thrown on their head by Jigoro Kano. Mr. Kano took a decent number of the techniques from Japanese Jujitsu which he deemed unpractical or inherently unsafe for real sporting practice and created Judo (another art I’m a blackbelt in). He proved his point when his students thoroughly dominated the jujitsu practitioners in a big tournament designed to determine the official martial art of the Tokyo Police Department. You see, nothing is as good as practice with a fully resisting adult. Extremely deadly techniques can’t be practiced by anyone, martial artists or street thugs alike, but learning to apply techniques on another trained individual really develops the skill to use them. Note, that skill will be easy to apply on someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing (i.e., mugger).

In some instances sporting martial arts have gone too far and neglect the threats of knives, bats, guns, two opponents, etc, things you won’t find in a ring but are all very real on the street. Of course, in most of those instances any good martial artist would tell you to run and/or give them what they want. Weapons defense training is great and can be practiced well with chalked rubber knives and the like (honestly, I’m more afraid of a knife than a gun).

1993 marked the first UFC, an event which caused a martial revolution unlike anything the world has ever seen. Martial arts have changed more since then than they have over the last two thousand years. We learned that a lot of those kata-based martial arts were, well, fairly useless and were thoroughly dominated by a handful of sport style martial arts, namely Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and American Wrestling. Later, Thai Kick Boxing came into prevalence as strikers learned to avoid the take down of the grapplers. These days mixed martial arts (MMA) is effectively its own martial art, consisting of the best from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Boxing, Kick Boxing, Wrestling and a few throws from Judo. For one on one fighting, nothing is better than those. Single style vs. single style, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu proved itself to be the best. Those are the “few.”

Backtracking

I got caught up in the snowy excitement and posted about that first but before we got snowed in we had a fun extended holiday weekend.

Back on Sunday there was light snow two towns over where I work. This was my drive home from work:

But back in Bremerton it was beautiful, although cold:

Clark and I were excited to have Monday off together. Between all the work he does and me always working on the weekends we don’t often get to wake up next to each other. It is a treat to do so and we decided with our day off that we’d go into Seattle. I got some gift cards for Christmas and they were starting to burn a hole in my pocket so we had a loose plan of where we’d go. We started out on the ferry, which we ran to catch and were the last ones on! We are spoiled living so close to it and have had several close calls to catch it.

Clark makes me laugh all the time but it is harder for me to make him laugh out loud. It is always a personal triumph when I do.

And one of me…

It is an easy walk from the ferry to Pike Street farmer’s market. I don’t care if it is touristy,  I love visiting the market. Besides being a visual feast for the eyes there are so many good places to eat.

Our first stop was at the tiny shop that sells Clark’s favorite pork hum bow. Imagine delicious BBQ pork wrapped in fresh sweet/sour bread.

And a little later we stopped at my favorite french pastry shop. Everything was delicious, although the chocolate eclair doesn’t look terribly appetizing in that picture.

We continued on through various shops. We stopped at Sur La Table, which I had a gift card to, but I admit to being overwhelmed by all of my choices and I ended up just buying a couple of little things and will have to try going back again sometime with a more clear idea of something I want. There are so many cool things in the big city! On this trip I also enjoyed going into an antique store I’d never noticed before. What was nice was that everything was clean and easy to see. Sometimes it seems like antique shops are just jumbles of junk. This one had beautiful estate jewelry and fun furniture and decorations.

It was a great day and I loved being out with Clark. I’m already looking forward to the next time we both have a day off together.

Whoa

So on Tuesday night snow was predicted to fall. Clark and I were excited and did a snow dance.

And it snowed and snowed. Apparently our snow dance is more powerful than we know.

It was exciting on Wednesday and Clark got the day off of work. We snuggled on the couch under a pile of blankets. Remmy kept our feet warm and we watched movies, tv shows and surfed the internet.

However now it is Thursday and still snowing and I’m thinking this isn’t quite as exciting. Especially as ice is settling in with the snow.

How exactly am I supposed to go anywhere with a car that matches the road in its snow coat?

I never grew up in places that snowed. It is both a wonder and kind of scary as roads get icy and it is hard to get out to go grocery shopping.

However someone loves the snow. Check out his happy-excited-bushy tail.

And snow tipped nose.

He’s making snow dog angels.

And running like mad around the back yard.

He also enjoys catching snow balls in his mouth.

Seriously though, how cute is he? I’ve even caught him catching snowflakes on his tongue. I didn’t know dogs did that. But what I really want to know is if it is cold enough to snow outside…

…why is my dog still shedding so much hair?

I remember…

I remember always dreading pullup bar day in middle and high school PE. Most kids would get on the bar, do some number of pullups, usually one to three. get a good job from the teacher and leave the bar. A few select kids would do a bunch, ten or more and everyone “ooo’d” and “ahhh’d.” Then there were the couple of kids who couldn’t do a single pullup and I was one of them.

Because academics came so easily to me I never really understood why athletics didn’t. Genetics is part of it I suppose but I also never really trained.

Today I went to the gym for a lazy Sunday morning workout and before starting my workout I did ten dead-hang pullups. BAM. I also weigh more than I did back in the day and pulling that weight the length of my arms is no easy feat. Oh, and after the ten pullups and some other warmup stuff I hit a personal record of a 25lb weighted pullup (a pullup with 25lbs hanging from my waist). All this with my forever not quite right left shoulder post-surgery.

My point is that hard work and dedication can result in amazing physical changes so go get in the gym!

A walk in the woods, part two

Okay, not really the woods. More like the marsh.

But it was beautiful. And not full of mosquitoes and other scary bugs like, say, South Carolina’s swampy marshes.

The paths were well kept and it was sunny. Cold, but sunny.

Someone was loving life. No whining here.

We’d been hearing about how great these trails in the next town over are but we didn’t know where they were. So this weekend when I got off work we went exploring and found the park that these trails lead off of. It was so nice!

Remmy says “What are you doing back there? You are holding us up!”

Making Clark laugh.

Such a fun time with my boys! And no whining! We’ll be back.

2012

This is going to be an exciting year for many reasons. First, while I assume the worst it is always an exhilarating experience to watch our political process play out. Yes, I think Rick Santorum is the epitome of everything that is wrong with politics. He’s a crooked, biblical literalism believing, nut job. Yet he nearly won the Iowa caucus. Scary stuff. Despite all that I still excitedly follow the primaries. Unfortunately Ron Paul won’t win the GOP nomination and we’ll probably be stuck with Mitt Romney or Obama, neither of which excites me, but oh well.

Of course I’ll become free of the Navy this year!

2012 and in particular December 21st are significant if you’re looking forward to everything from the end of the world with the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar or perhaps the timewave zero phenomenon. Society is rapidly changing and this year will be no different. Come on technological singularity!

Of course I’m also nervous to watch how Iraq unfolds now that we have withdrawn. For the record, I expect Iraq to crumble and dissolve into civil war. And last, but not least, we have the transition of power in North Korea and Iran rattling its sabre even more. Regarding North Korea, I’d like to share some funny/interesting images:

A walk in the woods

The sun was shining and Remmy wanted to get outside. It had been raining for a couple of days and I thought I’d treat Remmy to a walk in a wooded park that we don’t go to very often. I took my camera because I knew it would be beautiful. And I was right, it was beautiful:

HOWEVER, someone did not find it as peaceful and beautiful as I did.

(You have to imagine this picture accompanied with incessant “mmmmmmh, mmmmmmh, mmmmmh” whining)

I tried ignoring him, distracting him by posing him for pictures and then telling “ah-ah” (dog speak for no). It should have been so much fun and a great outing.

But he was sure bears were going to lumber out from behind the ferns and attack us. Or wolves were going to run by and he’d have to join them and he’d never see home again.

Or a cougar was going to drop out of the tree and take me down while he had to run for help. Or something. Who knows what he was thinking but it was vocalized with lots of whining and nervous looking about. Needless to say it wasn’t long before I was no longer having fun. And we know Remmy wasn’t having fun. So off to the car we went where I angrily told him to get in and be quiet. Of course once we had started heading for the car he had stopped whining. And so that was our walk in the woods. I’m guessing we won’t be returning. Unless I have earplugs.