I just realized something.

When I write in this blog it is usually because I FEEL something and want to make a note of it.

The words that best describe the emotions I most often have when I write are:

Surprised

Wondering

Confused (one of my favorite emotions!  It means I've got something to learn right in front of me!)

Joy

Interested

Curious

Perplexed

Elated

Amused

A lot of people have read this blog.  A few people have commented on it.  Some of those people have commented on the blog itself, many have just sent e-mail.

Sometimes those comments are along the lines of "Why do you let this bother you?"

They read me as:

Annoyed

Bitter

Angry

Crabby...

Well...you know.

So, I just REALIZED this.  My emotions are not coming through.  Some of you get that I'm worked up...but you attribute the worked-up-ed-ness as negativity.

I'd just like to say for the record that I am a student of the universe.  Not, perhaps a particularly apt one, and maybe one prone to some flights of fancy once in a while (I do love me my Scifi)...but EVERYTHING and ANYTHING will seize my attention and focus...no matter how trivial it may seem to you, I can find it fascinating.

I might think about the obnoxious behaviour of someone days later, and people say "just let it go"  because they think I am still stinging from ill treatment.

In fact, I am still just trying to figure out what happened, trying to fit it into my world-order...

...understand it.

I can continue to worry an idea long after the life has left it for most people.

Like Eyore playing with the burst balloon and the empty honey-pot.

It might cut for some a gloomy figure...but trust me:  I'm perfectly happy.  Don't worry about me.

When the bread comes out of the oven...the first loaf disappears within a couple of hours (before it is completely cool), and my family only eats it with butter.

The second loaf lasts 2-4 days and is mostly used for toast and sandwitches.

This tells me that if I only made one loaf at a time, I would be baking every day and my family would weigh 300 lbs. apeice.

If I made three loaves at a time, the third loaf would very likely get mouldy before it was finished...

so it is probably for the best that I make exactly two loaves at a time.

My best bread-making hint:  raise the bread by setting the bowl and the pans in the kitchen sink, with about 1.5 inches of hot tap water, and cover the bowl and pans with a dishtowel.  The bread will raise perfectly every time.

Poor Jay has a sore on his left side...right behind the shoulder.

The vet thinks it might be a "hotspot": a scratch or scrape or bug-bite that he has worried and irritated through licking.

But he's not SURE that it's a hot spot.

He thinks it looks "a little funny".

He wants to treat it as a hot spot for the next two weeks, and then look at it and decide if we should just take it off and get it biopsied.

the main treatment for "hotspots" appears to be: oral antibiotics, topical antiseptic/anesthetics spray, and...as the vet assistant so ironically put it...a "party hat".

Those stupid-looking funnels that go around the dog's neck and stick out past his head to keep him from licking himself.  I've also heard them referred to as "lampshades" and "Victorian collars".

But there's no gettin' around it - Jay is a funnel-head dog now, and he knows it.  His shame and humiliation are painful to watch, especially at those times when he is trying to suffer them with a sort of false dignity that is unbecoming to him.  He has never been a dignified dog, naturally, so seeing him try to fake it is heartbreaking.

The only consolation are those times he gives in to the goofiness of it by doing things like tossing a stuffed animal up into the air, and then catching it in the funnel like one of those Mexican ball-in-a-cup games.

I spent last night running around doing unceasing battle with the brain-goblins...while storms raged outside.

Apparently I was not the only one, because the dog was having nightmares too.  I ended up letting him sleep at the foot of the bed and he seemed to do much better.

But on the upside, it is the first day of summer vacation.

Adventure Boy got his numerals in Band and Drama, and has a solid "B" average for his last term in his Freshman year.  I think was can safely speculate that he has finished "adjusting" to high school.  He's backing off a little on his schedule next year...not taking any accellerated classes this time.  I think he hopes to bump up his GPA and letter in Band and Drama.

He plans to go to the gym and work out, and continue Kung Fu in lieu of organized sports...which is just fine with me.  Marching Band is an excellent team experience, and actually quite athletic enough.

Grasshopper got an A, three Bs and two Ds.  We will be working the summer homeschool magic on the two "D" subjects.  I think it is a matter of learning proper study techniques, as he is usually quite good in these subjects, and seemed to be working hard at them...but he just wouldn't follow my suggestions for how to study them more efficiently...so I think he wasted a lot of effort.

He seems to be interested in running, so I hope to go running with him a lot this summer.

Rocky set up the weight bench at home, so even on days when he can't make it to the gym, he can get a few lifts in quick at home with me spotting him.  He seems to be leaning toward biking...so I'll probably get a lot of biking in with him.

And of course, I'm still training for the breast cancer 3-day walk.  Linkage in case you havn't contributed to my fund yet, but would like to:

http://08.the3day.org/site/TR?px=2078421&fr_id=1191&pg=personal&JServSessionIdr007=uq74uf3q11.app322a

And a big, hearty thank-you to those of you who have ponied up enough cash to bump me past the 1/5 mark!  I've got the best friends in the world!  And even a couple of people I don't know came in from Rocky's blog and contributed!  THANK YOU!

Now, I have to find something house-worky to do or I will fall asleep.

I just resumed my Hardanger fiddle lessons.  I'd taken a two-year break because of a combination of the car-crash shoulder injury, and the fact that the grinding stress of the last couple years has turned my brain to mush.

Anyway, hardanger fiddles are cool.

They have eight or nine strings (more traditional fiddles have eight, more modern varieties have nine)  Four top strings, which are bowed, and four or five understrings which resonate in sympathy with the bowed strings.  You often bow two or three strings at once, and use complex multiple fingerings to create elaborate embellishments on the melody.

Come to find out, that the fiddles supposedly came from the trolls, that really good fiddlers were often reputed to be taught by the devil, and that Hardanger fiddles were burned by Christians.

(Here's another source, and a quote:)

Because of the association with dark magic, thousands of fiddles were burned or destroyed by religious fanatics throughout the 19th century. This is one of the primary reasons that today's fiddlers have more contemporary instruments. It is also the reason that the few existing old ones are kept in sealed cases, like biological specimens.

Grump.  First Science Fiction and rock and roll, then Martial Arts, then Yoga...now the hardanger fiddle.

How come the devil gets all the cool stuff?

More about the legends from this site:

Legends

Some hardingfele tunes are rhythmically very complex. The springar, though basically in 3/4, appears virtually impenetrable, with beats which vary widely in length; it is nevertheless a dance tune and is accompanied by foot stamping. More accessible are the different types of walking tune, from the slow march to the gangar, a steady 2/4 or 6/8. The halling is another 2/4 tune, played for a solo dance where a man attempts to leap high enough to kick a hat off a stick held by a girl. The origin of some of these old tunes is cloaked in legend. Some come from the troll or Nacken who lives in lakes, waterfalls and streams; if you hang your fiddle overnight under a bridge where he lives, the troll will retune your fiddle and play a tune on it, finally leaving his own instrument next to it. If on returning you pick up your own fiddle, the troll's tune and supernatural touch will beyours . If by mistake you pick up the troll's fiddle, your soul is his forever!

Rammeslatter are tunes which, because of their hypnotic quality can put player and listener alike into a state of trance; the fiddler will play, unable to stop, until someone drags the fiddle from his hands. It is said that fanitullen, the devil's tune, was first played by the man himself who appeared, hooves and all, at a village dance. He grabbed the fiddle and began playing a tune so wonderful that the gathered people continued dancing until they died from exhaustion- and then their corpses continued dancing until their skulls rolled out of the door and down the hill!

Another group of tunes, the Gammeldans, were imported from Sweden in the 19th century; these tend to be more predictable and less mysterious and melancholy. The mazurka has a bouncy 3/4 rhythm (eg. Brage Gilles Mazurka ); a similar dotted rhythm, but in 4/4 is found in the schottische (eg. Schottis fran (from) Lima .) Polkas, (not to be confused with polskas) and Reinlenders have a jolly 2/4 rhythm. Sweden has its equivalent to the walking tunes of Norway, including the brudmarsch (wedding march) and the ganglat. Gardeby Laten is a ganglat so often played that people sing along with it words which mean "aren't you sick of this tune yet?". Also well known is Appelbo Ganglat .

Probably the most important group of Swedish tunes are the polskas. These have a 3/4 rhythm with stress on the first and third beats; the emphasis of these beats varies considerably from region to region. Polskas, and indeed many Scandinavian tunes, are often named after a revered fiddler from the past whose playing defined a particular tune, though he is unlikely to have actually written it; for example Polska efter (after) Karl Linblad, or Polska e. Per Osa . Very useful for the fiddler is the skanklåt- an "I want to get paid " tune which reminds the guests at a wedding that the poor musician has been playing for five hours, hasn't been offered any sandwiches, hasn't been paid, and wants to go home.

Most of the above Swedish and gammeldans tunes are played on the normal fiddle (called flatfele in Norway), often in ensembles with other instruments such as accordion, recorder, or fattigmannsfele (poor man's fiddle)- the jew's harp. Spellmannslag are large groups of fiddlers who meet regularly to learn, play for enjoyment, and maintain the tradition.

Yesterday I took out our old, broken-down kitchen faucet (I was the only one in the household who still had the “Fonzie touch”, and could work it), and replaced it with a shiny new one.

Well, I had SOME help.  I was going to do it all myself, and I had begun to… I turned off the water supply under the sink and disconnected the faucet from the shut-off valves.

Then, I got my head-and-shoulders under the sink and began to try to remove the nut that kept the old faucet stuck to the sink.

As you might know, it was awkward.  I had to twist my head just so to get it under the drain pipe where it ran out from the garbage disposal, performed a goose-neck, and then turned and ran into the wall.  There were two angles that I could use to attack the problem:  option one was crappy, and option two was a giant flying whirlpool of suck.

I went with option one, and began to remove the nut, one quarter turn at a time.  I didn’t have a real good angle, so I ended up jigging the sink, a lot.  Some old rusty crap rained down on me.

Since I am a former farm girl, I luckily had my mouth shut tightly, and I was just congratulating myself on not getting nasty old bits of rusty sink-crud in my teeth, when one of those bits of crud started scrambling down my neck.

I stifled a girly little shriek, twisted minutely, but vigorously, and gave a flip of my hand.  A spider flew off my neck, landed on the bottom of the cabinet, and scurried to the safety of a small, dark hole in the corner.  I went back to working, only to find that I needed two sets of hands for this next bit, because I needed someone to keep the assembly up-top from turning.

So I called Rocky in for moral support.  When he’s home, he’s always happy to take a short break to lend a hand like this, and though I probably could have found some way to do it myself, I wanted an extra pair of hands.

I know some feminists will ridicule me for this, but I never claimed to be a feminist…so there.

I’m just sayin’ – Spider!  ‘nuff said.

A little bit of team-work had the old faucet removed in no-time.  Luckily, I got under-the-sink-duty, because several small but potent drips of rusty sink-crud-laden water still needed to fall after all the jiggling and jolting to get the old faucet disconnected, and Rocky needed to go to a meeting.

Rocky was kind enough to say that he thought that girls with rusty sink-crud drips on their face looked sort of cute.  He was even convincing.

Then he had to leave for his meeting, and I figured all the old spiders were safely in hiding by then anyway.  I got the new faucet assembled and installed in no-time…except…it was leaking.  I tried to figure out where the leak was coming from, but it is difficult to turn the water off-and-on and look where the water is coming from at the same time, so I called our friend Eric.

He came right over and we found the problem.  One of the connectors had some debris in it from the factory.

Eric said “Do you have some tweezers?”

“I’m forty years old and a natural brunette…do I currently look like Groucho Marks?”

“Uh…no.”  Eric replied. 

“Then of COURSE I have a tweezers.”

The debris was promptly removed, the hose re-connected, and viola!  Perfectly working new faucet.

It was time for me to leave to get to go teach my Wednesday class, so I “thanked” Eric by giving him enough time to pick up his tools before hustling him out the front door, rounded up my boys (who are assisting me) and ran off to teach.

Today, we drill a hole to allow for the installation of my soap-dispenser.  Woo Hoo!  Soap dispenser!

Once again, my friend Sue has done it:  She’s gotten me into trouble, and over my head.

I’ve committed to participate in the Susan G Komen walk for the cure…3 days…sixty miles.

It’s mainly because, when your best friend comes to you and says “I have cancer” and you say “Let me know if there’s anything I can do”…you can’t really renege when she comes up with something…even if it is a grueling three-day walk in September.   Even if it involves sleeping with a stranger in a two-man tent that even the site trying to recruit you describes as “cozy”.

Here’s my personal webpage for the event.  It hasn’t been personalized yet, but the donation button works (nudge nudge).

Here’s the personal website for my team-mate Susy (not to be confused with Sue, who is also on my team, and has met her goal).

Our Team name is “Beautiful Feat”.  Originally, I proposed the name “Oh, my DEAR GOD!  My Feet!  My Feet!  My beautiful feet!”

Most people seemed to think it was really stupid, but nobody came up with anything better, so they shortened it, turned the word “feet” in to a word-play, and  viola!  Clever team name.

When we do a testicular cancer walk, though, I have the perfect team name picked out :  “Not my gum-drop buttons!”

Anyway.

I’d like you to meet my personal trainer, J-dogg.  He’s a real slave-driver.  With him as my coach, I’ll be able to walk to Tibet.  Not that I’d want to walk to Tibet:

But I’ve got a problem.

In order to do this, I have to raise $2,200 in donations.

That’s where you come in, gentle readers.

It is time to bring you and *the begging* together in the same place.  I don’t ask much of you.  I don’t put ads up here to make money, and I don’t make personal demands upon you except for the occasional participation event (which most of you ignore anyway).

I know you’re out there.  I see the hit counts, and I can count subscribers on the newsreader sites…so don’t pretend you can’t hear me.  Please, please Pleeeeeese contribute to  my fundraising account.

And those of you who keep coming here off of Google searches for “Wookie Scrotum”…

…I think you get enough amusement just from that alone to make it worth a ten-spot.

Yesterday I had to run up to the Home Despot to meet my Sifu and hand off some sashes that he needed to give to some students of mine who are transferring over to his class due to a scheduling conflict.

The Home Despot is near his work, and I had to pick up some mulch.

After handing off the sashes, I wandered into the Home Despot and found the piles of cedar mulch.  Naturally, the brand I wanted was behind a pile of other stuff, so it was awkward, but I was managing just fine.  I was loading the two cu.ft. bags onto a flat-bed push-cart when I heard:

 “Hey!  Can I give you a hand with that?”

I looked up, and there was a guy with a silver ear-hoop, a buzz cut, and one of the most spectacular tattoos I’ve seen in a while.  The tat was a reproduced photograph of a little Chinese kid surrounded by wood grain, and illuminated by gothic script, which I couldn’t read, ‘cause the guy’s arm kept moving while he ignored my assertion that I was doing fine on my own, and pushed past me to begin loading the bags.

“Nice tat”, I said, “Is that of anyone in particular?”

“Yes.  It’s a kid I met while I was on a mission trip to China helping out a missionary running an orphanage over there.”

“Oh.  He must be pretty special.”

“Yeah, he was.  You know, all those kids were damaged some way.  I wasn’t comfortable around them.  I’m not proud to say it, but I wondered, ‘where are all the normal kids, why can’t I work with them?  This kid just came up to me the first day and plopped himself down on my lap, and I was like ‘OK, little dude, you’re cool.  He was my little buddy the whole time I was there.  I just loved him so much.”

“That’s really great,” I said…figuring the story was over.

He continued, “Before we left, the missionary went through and told me about the kids, told me their stories, and why they were at the orphanage.  Then he got to my kid, and told me that he’d been born with both male and female parts.  Wow, that was tough, you know, dealing with that.  But God had already worked in my heart by that point, and it didn’t matter.”

“That’s a cool story, thanks for telling me.”

“Yeah, that’s why the Bible verse here.”  He pointed to the script, which I still couldn’t read.

I thought it was a great story.  You know, a lot of people don’t believe that they need God to work in their heart to avoid judgment and express compassion for others.  But a lot of people do.  And my feeling is, if you feel that's what you need to make yourself better personally, you go with your bad self.  Do what you have to do, just get there.  I don't care if you think you need to wear a watermelon on your head to help you be a better human being.  If it works for you, great.  I will bring you fresh watermelons every day to help you.  Just don't try to force one onto my head, and don't turn the term "watermelonless" into a slur.  We'll be cool.

And this man was great, he wasn’t telling me that without religion, I was going to hell.  He wasn’t telling me that without religion I’m incapable of love and compassion (or that while I might be able to have love and compassion, it is meaningless without a “foundation”.)

He was telling me about his personal and meaningful story about how he personally won a victory over judgment, narrow-mindedness, and bigotry…and how the reward was a richer, more loving life.

And it made my day, and quite possibly my life better.

(disclaimer:  please realize that this conversation is recounted from memory, so the words in quotes are not direct quotes, but my best recollection of the conversation)

We held a fundraiser at my house last night.  Just a little get-to-gether to celebrate my friend Sue completing her cancer treatment, and to raise money for our 3-day walk to raise money for research.

In the middle of the chaos, someone asked me, "Is {Grasshopper} your son?"

Me:  "Uh....yeah?" (you never sure what you are agreeing to take responsibility for with answering this question)

Lady:  "He's soooo sweet!  He came to my son and said 'There's nobody downstairs playing video games, would you like to come down and play with me?'"

Me:  "Oh.  That's nice..."  (Not particularly impressed, being a somewhat observant host is the minimum I expect from my kids in a situation like that)

Lady:  "And then he turned to me and asked 'What is his rating limit?'"

LOL!  Now THAT'S pretty cool!

Grasshopper has been getting into radio plays, BIG TIME.  He's been listening to The Adventures of Ruby over and over again, for instance.

So he wanted to make a radio play, and he and Rocky are putting together some little tests to garner the skills needed.  Here is the first test.

Some of you might recognize the voice of the "damsel in distress"...what can I say?  A voice actor I'm not. 

For those of you who do not know, there is a growing food crisis world wide.  The cost of food is going up because the costs of producing processing and delivering it are going up.

What you may not realize is that BEFORE the gas prices really got cooking, and BEFORE the mortgage crisis, the biggest growth of demand for food shelf assistance was in the elderly (medical perscription costs cutting into food budget).

The second largest growth was in was middle class suburban families.

The current statistics say that 50% of the people served by foodshelves are children.  The demographic experiencing the largest growth is working families.

One of our favorite places to donate money is the Emergency Food Shelf Network.

I urge you to donate, if you have money that you can donate.

If you need food, and can't afford it...please go to your local food shelf and get some food.  Hey, when you get through this rough patch and back on your feet, you can always make a couple of donations, right?

Grasshopper is ten years old.

He has had a series of writing assignments meant to illustrate various grammar concepts.  The following is his response to an assignment where he was supposed to use verbs in past, present, and future tense:

The Cave

By [name redacted]

     A boy got told by his mother never to go into the Howling Cave, but one day he needed to go.  It was just too mysterious.  So he went with a little food and water and a flashlight.  Later, he didn’t know the way back.

     “I don’t think I packed enough food for me to get lost, and I already feel hungry.” He thought.

     It was dark in the cave.

     “I better turn my flashlight on.”

     Then, he saw yellow eyes.  They were bats!  They started to fly.  A few seconds passed, and he realized he could follow the bats out.

     He ran after the bats, out of the Howling Cave.  When he got home, his mom asked,

     “Where have you been?”

     He said, “At the park.”

     He had mud and scratches all over him.

     “Well, clean off for dinner.  I will find out where you really were eventually.” His mom said. 

The end.

"Leftovers"

I'm still adjusting to it being spring, with the snow melted and all that.  Now I can ride my bike to the gym, or run if I wish.  Today I rode my bike, as I had already been out for a long walk with the dog.

So I arrived a the gym and my work-out went really smoothly.  I was able to put a lot of explosive power into each lift, and really get the muscles burning.  Sometimes I arrive with a sort of lackluster energy level, and can't really shake it.  Not today.  The muscles were really happy to work, and the burn felt GOOD!  In fact, I was completely wrecked by the time I finished my stretches.  I was a big pile of goo, ready to go out and get in my car and drive home for a soak and additional stretching in the neighbor's hot-tub (whish we have a standing invitation to use any time we want to, as it is out-of-doors and they're really nice people).

Yep, I'd managed to put everything I had into my work-out, and I felt really good about it.  I hadn't held anything back...

...and then I opened the locker and saw the bike helmet there.

Crap.

It was only a mile-and-a-half home, and surprisingly,even though I thought I had nothing left...I made it back.

"I juggle my family" (ten brownie points the the person who gets that referance.  Hint: it is said with a crap Russian accent)

Two of my favorite machines are the hip abductor and hip adductor machines.  I like to work on explosive power on these machines, keeping the weight down somewhat, and just working on maintaining a fast and powerful, but controlled contraction through the full range of motion.  I've found that this has really helped those muscles relax later, when I stretch them, and has helped my flexibility as well as the speed of my kicks.  These muscles take a lot of abuse in the martial arts, and isolating them for a little intense, focused work makes them feel really good.

I do 145 lbs on each machine  (these machines work both legs at the same time, so it isn't as much as it sounds).

Anyway, I got on the hip abductor the other day, and the weight was set to ninety lbs.  I didn't think anything of it, there are a lot of little old ladies at the gym that time of day, and tiny little trophy wives.  They use the weight machines, but can't lift very much weight (I routinely find the bench press at 50 lbs).

I rapped off my first set of twenty, and then paused before doing the second set, and realized that the lady on the hip adductor machine next to me was openly staring at me.

I wondered for a minute if there was a green, slobbering space monster behind me or something, but then I realized that the lady had the machine set to 90 LBS.  I smiled.  She smiled back uncertainly, and then began painfully struggling through another set.

I blew through my second set, and went on to the glute machine to wait for her to be done with the one she was on.

The moral of the story is, apparently, I am very scary to suburban housewives.

"Dirty old men...kind of".

There's this little old lady that I see at the gym sometimes.  I'll call her "Carmen".  She's in her late '60's and she's just the cutest thing.  she wears a pink Nike track suit, and she works out everyday at about the same time.  I always enjoy seeing her there, because she's friendly, but I must admit that I get some entertainment at her expense sometimes.

I'm not proud of it, but I think you'll forgive me when I tell you why.

Carmen has replaced much of the subcutaneous fat that we all have when we are younger with a nice layer of muscle.  She does a lot of shaping and toning exercises, so that her posture and shape is that of a much younger woman...

...and hence the humor

You will see her working out, and every once in a while you will see an older man here or there who has not encountered Carmen yet, and he will be checking out her butt.

Then, he suddenly realizes that he is checking out the butt of a woman he must imagine is decades younger than himself, and he looks chagrined.  Then, he gets a look a Carmen's face and realizes that under that dyed red hair is the face of someone more his age, and then he gets a different expression a "I was checking THAT out?!?" expression...and then he realizes that the old lady he finds so unattractive is his own age, and he gets another facial expression, which is best described as deflated.

Gen. O'Neill: [smugly] My, this is an occasion. You know that bitter taste in your throat? It's kind of wrapped around your uvula? That's what's left of your pride.

                                         --Stargate SG-1

I like to help.  So when Eric called and said that he and his friend Chris had removed a wall of his three season porch, and would I like to come over and help move his ginormous hot-tub out through the de-constructed wall, naturally I said "Sure!"

The event started out with the usual planning and plotting and disconnecting and unwiring and lifting and prying, and tweaking and situating...and culminated in a concentrated push across the floor, down a carefully constructed ramp, and onto some improvised skids in the yard.

In between, of course, was the part where we started to push, and got the thing going REALLY well...and my foot slipped in a puddle of water, causing my face to slam chin-first into the edge of the hot-tub.

There is no visible bruising, but the area is quite tender.  The tip of my chin and a small, puffy bump on my lip that you can't even see on the outside, but I can feel with my tongue on the inside.

Thank God it didn't get ugly and purple.  I teach class tomorrow, and I don't want to scare the parents of the children I teach by showing up with my arms all covered in bruises (most hidden by my shirtsleeves)  AND with my face all banged up.

I left them to put the wall back together, and get the space ready to recieve Eric's incredible new piano.

Had a great time at Kung Fu today.  One of the other second degree black belts and I mixed it up with some old-school grappling/strikeing/take-down/groundwork stuff.  It was fun.

I got to show off the superior core-lower-body strength of women fighters.  Men like to think that they have the upper-hand because of superior upper-body strength, but in the end, all that does is put you at risk for letting yourself get put off balance.  Don't get me wrong, upper-body strength is great for climbing trees and chucking spears and stuff, but when it comes to throwing your opponant over your hip, I'll take a nice, low, girlie center of gravity any day. 

I also got to show how rabbit punches (sorry, meant rapid punches.)to the body, comined with knees to the solar plexus and elbows to the jaw can short-circuit a lot of standard wrestling moves.

And yes, I pretty much got powned after my opponant drove his shoulder into my chest, and knocked me into the wall. I wasn't even thinking when he went to back off and I put him into an elbow lock, but I didn't hit him.

Normally, I hold back quite a bit because I am sparring lower-ranked people and it is my responsibility to make sure that neither of us gets injured, and to make sure that they improve and learn.

What's great about this, though is that even thought it LOOKED like we should have been completely wrecked after the fight (knees to the solar plexus, elbows to the jaw, trips, throws, etc. - neither one of us had even a minor injury.

I get more bruises from a tepid sparring match with an intermediate student. 

I got rocked pretty good when my break-fall didn't completly keep my head from hitting the ground after a leg-trap-take-down, but it cleared right away.  No worries. 

 I'm happy endorphine girl now.  It's been a while since baby's been able to play.

So I am at the Doctor today, waiting to get the anti-biotics that will help me kill the projectile lung crud that always takes over my body this time of year and makes me not able to run. (Point of interest, even with said projectile lung crud, my peak-flow at the athsma Dr. last week was 550, which I damned impressive, if I do say so myself)

Anyway, I got there early because the errends I planned to run on the way didn't take that long.

So I pulled my old Algerba book out of my back-pack and started working some problems.  I'm brushing up so I can help Adventure Boy put in some extra study time.

The nice lady in the headscarf across the room, gets up and says "What are you studying, can I see?"

She's all jazzed, "I love Algebra, it is my favorite subject!"

We start working problems together, and I try some Arabic on her.  Turns out, she doesn't speak Arabic, so I assume she must be from Iran.  I never learned any Farsi.

But we don't get too far when the nurse calls her in for her appointment.  :-(

Who knew you could make friends doing Algebra in the doctor's waiting room?

It occurs to me that I have not linked to Conrad Zero for a while.

It’s not that he hasn’t had anything worth linking to.  After all, I enjoyed his entry entitled “No, I never Slept with Diablo Cody” enough to comment on it.

It’s probably mostly because I am mortified that I am sometimes described as “the first fan of Jagged Spiral who is not married to them or related by blood”.  Yet I have not been to a single solitary one of their live performances.

Ever.

Mostly because they keep having them on nights when I have to work, and my husband is out of town, and I’m tired afterwards, and someone has to go home and make sure the kids are still alive and check their homework, and get to bed early enough to wake up at 5:30 AM make them a hot breakfast and get them to school on time.

You would think I’d be able to excuse myself with the above reasons, but I can’t.  What kind of “first fan of the band to DEFINE the genre of northern gothic epic rock” begs off because she has to check homework, she’s too tired, and she has to get up early?

But I finally have to admit it.  I’m a fraud.  Don’t get me wrong, I like their music a lot, and I find their personalities and personal details very fun and compelling, but those are just the beginnings of fandom.

Fan is short for “fanatic”, after all – and a “fanatic” would make it out to a bar on a weeknight and leave the kids a bottle of Jack Daniels and a book of matches to amuse themselves with for another couple of hours.

I DID vote for them numerous times on “Rock the Dash” (and you can too.  The Band is Jagged Spiral.  The songs are "Let it out" and "Not Enough Bullets" You can vote once per day).

But I’m afraid it’s too little too late.

Well, there.  Now THAT’s out of the way.  I feel a great sense of relief, and though it was difficult to come to terms with it, I think my energy that was previously directed toward denial will be more useful in overcoming my enduring sense of shame and loss.

And I think I can begin to link to Conrad again from time-to-time.  Now seems like a good time.

Conrad has re-defined his war on emo.  He now defines it as a war on emo music, not a war on emo kids.  Because having a war on emo kids would be lame…and he’s right, of course.

But as someone who has passed difficult passages of time sustained only by The Cure and (naturally)  Gary Newman, I really feel that I must speak up in defense of Emo (and yes, Screamo) music.

I’m reminded of a prim little English teacher who once pontificated that vulgarity was the last refuge of the illiterate.  In other words, if you couldn’t find words to express yourself appropriately, you resorted to vulgarity.  I didn’t raise my hand an point out that there were, in fact situations for which there WAS no appropriate vocabulary except vulgarity.  Mostly because I wanted to nip out for a smoke on a pilfered bathroom pass, and figured that calling attention to myself would be strategically counter-productive.

But I have long since stopped smoking, and Conrad can’t send me to the principal’s office, so I’d like to just raise my hand here and say that there are some days where you just can’t find a better way of expressing your feelings than to flop onto the couch and play a ten-minute spot of Bright Eyes…or slip on the gloves and work the heavy bag to a half album of Lincoln Park.

It might not be the best choice, or the socially acceptable choice, but sometimes it’s just plain the only music that does the job.

A couple weeks ago Adventure Boy came home all exceited and happy.  His band director had invited him to join the jazz band as a bass guitarist.

He's going to be the next Geddy Lee, you know.  Bought himself a guitar, taught himself how to play, practices every day.

I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, as I realized that I was going to have to say "no".

Adventure Boy has a B- average.  Barely.

He's a Freshman, and he is working hard, but he's just not settled in to the High School academic pace yet.  He's taking accellerated classes, and he was in the Winter play, and now he's in the spring play, he's playing tuba in the band and Chamber Winds, he hangs out with his friends a lot playing D and D, doing martial arts, playing basketball, etc.

He's even hoofed it down to the Caribou for a little hanging-out-and-studying-with-the-gang.

He's busy is what I'm saying, and he's treading the soothing waters of average while throwing himself into the whole teenager gig with gusto and positivity.

And that's great and all - but I saw one more activity as the death-knell of his academics.  I don't have real high standards when it comes to grades, but this is a kid who COULD get straight "As".  And as far as I'm concerned, if he doesn't have a "B" average, he's not making the cut.

Add two hours of jazz band practice per week, and the performance schedule they have...and I can even kiss a "B-" average goodbye.

Not cool.

So I said "no".  I explained that extra-curricular activities were "EXTRA-curricular", and that his curricular activities had to come first.  If this opportunity arose again later, when he had a solid "B" average, I would say "Yes", but until that happened, he would need that time to focus on his studies.

He looked crushed, but he nodded and said he understood.

And I went upstairs to do dishes, because I figured that if I had to feel like a puppy-kicking monster at least I could also be productive.

Now, lo and behold, the drama club is doing "As you like it" and Adventure Boy has a small role (William, a country fellow), and the director asked if there was anyone who could play an instrument in the play...just be a sort of roving minstral wandering through the scene.

Adventure Boy is going to get to play his guitar after all. 

Today, I had a chance to take one little problem off of the top of a big pile of someone else's problems -

and make it disappear.

Poof!

Damn, that feels good!

Some of you might have noticed that our server has been up-and-down for the last couple of days.  Apparently, I have a zombie army of computers rapidly trying to post pingbacks to my blog, which was over-loading the server.

The attack continues, so  I just want you to know what's going on.

It seems very strange that anyone would consider my little blog to be worth the trouble.

Not really, but this woman appears to be an exact psychological clone of my mother.

http://themakersacres.blogspot.com

It's a little weird.

I found her through a comment she left on Karen's blog.

The other day I was “up nort” for a family event and I witnessed a conversation that went something like this:

Guy 1: “Do you ever see red fox up here?”

Guy 2: “I’ve seen one sometimes.”

Guy 1: “How about wolves?”

Guy 2: “They’re beautiful.  They have a beautiful pelt.”

Guy 1: “Can you trap them?”

Guy 2:“Not yet, but we’ll see…depends on the damn environmentalists.”

Guy 3: “If they let us hunt ‘em their populations will probably go up.”

Guy 1: “Yeah.”

Guy 3 :“It’s like the bald eagles.  I mean, how many eagles do we need?”

Guy 1: “Keep the roadkill cleaned up good though.”

Guy 3: “Yeah.”

The rewards of lurking near a conversation like this make it worth the effort to not interject your opinion.  Even though I grew up in the area, I’d only ever seen one timberwolf, maybe a handful of bald eagles, and never a fox, and never a trumpeter swan.

Now, after numerous environmental protection measures, they are ubiquitous.

Guy three was right, when a certain population level is reached, there’s some scientific indication that controlled hunting will increase the population, as has been the case with the deer population in the area.  but he's wrong in implying that hunting in and of itself is automatically a forcer for population growth.

The question is what is the threshold?  And no matter what, without the “damn environmentalists” there would be no beautiful wolf pelts to argue about taking or not taking right now.

And yes, I know that if I had pointed that out, the guys would have asserted that the population lows we saw during my childhood were “natural” lows in the populations that would have come back with or without conservation efforts.

However, I think we’ve seen enough evidence to the contrary all over the world where conservation efforts were either never attempted, or were circumvented by market pressure for poaching or habitat destruction.

Another interesting portion of the conversation wandered into the subject of "the damn buck-shooters" and how there weren't very many bucks in the area anymore.  It is important to note that the "damn buck shooters" were probably not being complained about because of concern for the effect that a limited number of males might have on the genetic diversity (and therefore health and stability) of the local deer population, but because of resentment for "six-one-tourists" (tourists from the cities...which used to be dominated by the 612 area code) coming up and sniping all the good trophies.

On a personal note, I don't know if I qualify as a "damn buck shooter" or not.  I grew up in the area, but now I live in the cities (not the 612 area code anymore, though) and I'll shoot anything tastey that comes across my path, doe, buck or itty-bitty fawn.  I hunt to eat, I'm not a trpophy hunter...

...but I have to admit, I was a little proud of the 8-point monster buck I pulled out of the woods a couple of years ago.  As a matter of priciple, I don't take trophy photos, but I was tempted that year.  Sorely tempted.

Aaaaarrrrrgh!

I've been developing detailed descriptions of how to do the Kung fu techniques that I teach my students.  I write them down into study guides to help their parents double-check and be sure that they are doing it right.

I created two study guides this weekend while I was up visiting my folks, working in the car to use my time wisely.

Then I got home and Rocky found that the server had crashed.  So he (being the efficient, hard-working guy that he is) restored from the last back-up.

And when I connected my computer to the network it auto-synced (Rocky is efficient and hard-working, did I mention that?  And thoughtfully set my computer up to auto-sync everytime I connect and disconnect to the network.  It has saved me numerous days worth of work over the years).

Naturally, when my computer synced THIS time...it found that the two study guides I created over the weekend had been "deleted" from the server...so...it "synced" that action on my computer.

grumble...

I would like to say, for the record, however, that I am NOT complaining about having a competent, hard-working, thoughtful computer genius who thinks ahead and takes great pains to set things up so that I can have all of my work backed up and updated continuously without having to lift an extra finger to do so.

That would be dumb.  All of these things have added up to saving me many times more work than the few pages I lost.

Mostly, I'm grumpy because my dishwasher is broken, my car has been in the shop three times in the last week (to the tun of a couple of grand), my dog is obsessed with eating my headscarves, and now my computer ate my homework!

Oh, and I got a nose-bleed at kung Fu tonight.

blah.

Went to my brother's wedding last weekend.  It was a nice service.  The bride is really sweet, and she's going to make a great sister-in-law.  The wedding dance was fun, and there was Kareoke.  I didn't do a song, but my brother sang a nice love song to his bride.  People seemed amazed that he had a nice voice, but of course we knew that, just because he's kind of quiet and sort of a rough-neck and a smart-alec when he ISN'T quiet doesn't mean he can't sing. 

The bride's family is very nice.  They threw a bon-fire party and kegger.  That was lots of fun, but we couldn't stay late.  The bride lamented that the bon-fire was kind of small because they "didn't have any outhouses to burn this time".

My kind of people.  Fire and alcohol DO Mix and those of you who think otherwise are just a bunch of wimps. 

On the other hand, with all the running back and forth I've been doing up between here and "up nort", I've also had quite a few reminders of why I ran away and became one of those much-hated "big city libruls". 

For every girl who understands that throwing an entire out-house on top of a bon-fire the size of a small car is just good clean fun...there are a half a dozen guys who think that the height of entertainment for you is having them cornering you and making you listen to them slur incoherantly while they bungle dirty jokes. 

And just so you know, if you are looking for a place where a Christian can excape the horrible persecution of having no choice but to go to a SECULAR paintball gameplace and store...you will be thrilled to know that Bemidji is a nice, safe haven where Christians can go to a Christian paintball gameplace and store.

Hey guys, do me a little favor - K?

Come up with some good turn-down lines that my fellow Kung Fuer - Maggie- can use.

10 brownie points for the best one.

Stuff like "I'd love to call you on the phone, but for some reason my electro-magnetic fields keep getting reversed, and people's phones get hot and explode when I call them".

Or "No, I can't sleep with you.  I shouldn't even be talking to you.  I have projectile herpes.  Oh!  There goes one now.  Sorry."

or "You want to buy me a drink?  No thanks, .  My last trip to the bar, they were all out of the blood of the innocent."

Adventure Boy is home from school today.  Classes were cancelled because of an alleged threat against the High School.

So far, that's all we know.  Probably, that's all we're going to know for a while.

He's downstairs working on some homework right now.

When I told him he was indignant, and a little outraged.

Rocky's not happy.  When he was a kid, his school was closed several times due to bomb threats.  Looks like we're headed into the '70s again whether we like it or not.

All my students passed with flying colors!

I took Adventure Boy to school today.  He had some last-minute stuff to do, and would not have gotten to school on time if he had tried to walk.  On the way, we saw his two best friends, and picked them up so that they could not freeze as well.

As we approached the final turn near the High school, we witnessed an accident.

This intersection is atop a small ridge that runs for several miles, winding through Eden Prairie.  So the road we were waiting to turn onto has a steep incline on either side.  There is a yellow double line for "no passing" down the middle of it on both sides.

Of course, someone JUST HAD to try to pass the person in front of them.  After all, who wants to be stuck behind someone doing the speed limit in a school zone?  THIS IS A FREE COUNTRY after all, and if you can't speed while passing in a "no passing zone" in the middle of an intersection...well then, the terrorists have already won.

Naturally, this being rush hour near the largest high school in the state, there was a car coming the other way.

The jackass thankfully avoided the impending head-on collision by swerving into the guy next to him...forcing him to collide with the car on my street that was waiting to turn left, and effectivly bunging up the whole intersection.  All three vehicles sustained a surprising amount of damage.  One of them lost a wheel.

I eased into the right-turning lane, and took an alternate route.  I got the boys safely to school j