Karate: The Return

09.28.2006

Back at the end of March I took a break from karate class as my knees were telling me that supporting 400 lbs of twisting, kicking, punching mass was too much to ask of them. Today, with a hint of trepidation, I took my knees back to test the shallow shoals of karate.

So far I've survived to tell about it.

I had originally intended to start back in karate class next week. October starts a new quarter of classes, so I wouldn't be jumping into the middle of learning a batch of new moves. Then I remembered that I haven't excercised any in the past 6 months. It's possible that my knees aren't ready for twisting, kicking, punching mayhem yet. I'm 50 lbs lighter, but I'm still a big boy at 350!

With that thought I aspired to go to class today to go through the warm-up and then see how much of the class I could get through. Luckily Sensei Leonard also thought that was a good idea. Even better, today is the day before the next belt test, so it was a "what do you guys want to practice" class instead of a "let's do punch and kick drills until you can't breathe any more" class.

I managed my way through the workout without dying. I even did tip drills instead of replacement-running in place for the first time. Afterwards I was amazed at first of how much I've forgotten of various katas, then counter amazed at how quickly it started to come back after running through them once.

So now I've got a couple of days to see (1) how sore I'm going to be after jump starting my body into action, and (2) make sure that the soreness is going to be worth it. I was afraid when I started my little break that I wouldn't come back to class. It's always easier to give soemthing up when you've been away form it for a while. But lately I've gotten to where I miss the physicality of it. Plus, it is good excercise for me.

And now I've got new people to introduce to my mad wrestling skillz!

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Tree Fiddyish & Holding

09.25.2006

Today marks the 6 month mark of my South Beach Diet inspired diet. Since starting my diet in March, I've managed to peak my weight loss at 56 lbs. I say peak, because since July I've managed to stay between 348 and 352 (or varying between losing 56 lbs and 52 lbs).

My body has reached an equilibium over the past couple of months. My body is ready for something new. The same old diet isn't going to get it any more. It's at this point that the person inside me tired of dieting says "screw it, I'm going to Pizza Hut for the buffet. Every day!" Luckily, I can't hear that person inside me. I have decided that I'm due for a small break from dieting, at least my "hard core" dieting, for a little while.

I'm not giving up. To be honest, this diet is actually pretty easy to stay on. That may be from sticking to it (98% of the time) for 6 months, but I've gotten used to not only eating certain things, but not eating certain things. I never thought I would actually fix myself a plateful of steamed brocolli for dinner when there was actually other food in the kitchen.

I'm also due to start back in karate next week, which should be a whole different shock to my system. I've been trying to stretch at home in preparation, but I know I haven't been stretching enough. I'm curious to see how my body acts not only after 6 months of not punching, kicking, or falling, but doing all of that with 50 lbs fewer to move around. At the very least, I hope I can walk normal the following day. Or at least as normal as I can walk.

So, for now I'm on a diet, but I'm not trying to see how much weight I can lost. I'm not going overboard eating pizza and hot fudge sundaes - I even had my semi-regular salad for lunch today. My little blurb in the corner updating my weight loss is going to go away for a little while, if for nothing else due to seeing a pound up or down each week isn't very interesting when the total stays in the same range.

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TV Nite Returns

09.22.2006

Last night was the season premiere of the 2 shows left that I actually watch on network tv: CSI & ER - evidently I enjoy shows that are abbreviations as opposed to the full name. I can't remember how long ago we started, but Thursday nights became the regular night I would go over to Gina's and everyone would have dinner and watch tv together.

One of the primary rules of tv night was that you had to be finished eating dinner by 8:00 (Central). It's a little rough to eat dinner while watching CSI. Although it's tv and all the grisly crime scene gore is fake, that do a surprisingly realistic job of presenting said grisly crime scene gore.

We sat and watched the shows last night, and I remembered the fun I have in watching with others. Gina and her mom are trying to figure out whodunnit on CSI, sometimes before the dunnit's happened! The ER teaser told us a cast member was going to die. Who's it going to be?

So another tradition is continuing. At least this way I don't feel guilty for being a couch potato 1 night a week.

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100% Pure Whoop Ass

09.18.2006

Have you ever bought something but you're not sure why? Kind of like an impulse buy, but there's more thought that goes into it?

About a year ago I got caught up looking at wrestling license tags on eBay. I don't know why, it was just something that caught my fancy at the time (lately I've been looking at chairs from wrestling events, mainly because I never really thought of people selling them online before and am a little shocked at how cheap some of them sell for). But I digress.

The tags were fairly inexpensive, and on a lark I bought one. As is the curse with eBay, I soon found myself with 4 different tags. I had originally thought it would be quirky to afix one of the tags to the riding mower. It was around this time that I caught a marathon of Pimp My Ride on MTV and thought about trying to fix-up the mower - maybe attach some bling or spinning wheels. 6-9 months later, I've come to my senses, but I've still got a couple of wrestling tags laying around.

I spent part of the weekend cleaning, and caught in that cleaning was the mower. A hardy power washing found that beneath those layers of grass and dirt lay a scratched up red mower that's seen a lot of use over the past 4 years. looking at the newly cleaned tail end of the mower, I couldn't help but think how a license tag would spruce it up a bit. Looking at the collection of tags I had managed to horde, a Budweiser inspired Stone Cold Steve Austin tag seemed to fit the bill. A mower in the boonies should have a redneck-centric tag on the back.

I somehow feel the circle of life has brought me back to my trailer park youth.

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Floppies

09.12.2006

Over the weekend I managed to do a little Spring Cleaning even though I'm 6 months behind the times. I cleaned bathrooms, garages, power washed the house (should have power washed the bathrooms), washed the car, moved stuff around, and generally wore myself out.

With every Spring Cleaning, especially those 6 months too late, I find those little piles of paraphernalia that I've kept although there's nothing in the pile that I need or really even want. One such pile I found myself faced with was 5 boxes of 3.5" floppy disks. Most of these were old games from when I got my first PC. Yes, before the advent of programs coming on CDs and DVDs, you could often find yourself with a stack of 25 floppy disks in order to install one game (Leather Goddesses of Phobos had a small mountain of disks). For years I've been actively keeping this horde of floppies. Why? The only 3.5" drive I've got is a portable/USB drive I keep hidden away. The only time I've used the drive was to rescue a file Gina had lost/corrupted on her computer.

I can see it now: 1 3.5 floppy drive. Only used on Sundays. Low mileage!

I started looking through my pile of floppies. Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Geoworks (a predecessor of Office). David Wolfe: Secret Agent. Piles and piles of games and applications I had copied (most unsuccessfully). Even if I hooked up the floppy drive, what were the odds that any of these 13+ year old programs would even run? What are the additional odds that I would go through the trouble of tracking down and loading whatever configuration is needed to get these EGA classics to run, and would any of them be worth it?

So with that I chunked the mountain of floppies in the garbage. Well, almost all of them. I kept a couple of special games, not that I will ever play them again, but I get a nice little warm fuzzy when I see the disks:

• Star Trek 25th Anniversary - Can a closet Trekkie get rid of Trek paraphernalia? I rememeber having a lot of fun playing this game, mainly because each mission was presented like an old tv episode with the mission title coming up as the Enterprise entered orbit around a planet.
• Wing Commander - This was the game I wanted a PC for. I played this game every moment I could manage, and even some that I couldn't - that may explain why I didn't go to classes at UAH as much as I should have. I most remember a glitch in one of the mission campaigns which caused my wingman to get mysteriously killed between missions so that when the final mission came, my lone ship didn't have enough missiles to destroy the enemy starbase. Evidently there's still a community keeping Wing Commander alive. Maybe I'll peek in there and see what's going on.

Usually I don't replay video games where you follow a story along. The old pile of floppies got me to thinking about games I've had and played through that should still work on my current PC. Since I just finished watching the entire run of Star Trek Voyager, my mind had switched to thinking of Elite Force 2, one of the better Star Trek games, especially for a first person shooter. I had never finished the game since it had been released in 2003 - there was a "defend the Enterprise by manning a phaser turret" mission I couldn't get past. well, I loaded the game, started playing it, and finally managed to defend the Enterprise. Now I'm playing the last couple of missions, and it's like a whole new game. Granted, the graphics are no Half-Life 2, but it's still fun for a 3 year old game.

Theres a new Star Trek game coming out in November. It looks to be along the lines of Star Trek Armada or Star Fleet Command. There's nothing wrong with either of those, so I think I'm looking forward to this one. I just hope there's not a "defend the ship from a phaser turret" mini-game in there anywhere.

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