Soreness

All sore. Mostly from the fact that we did karate on Tuesday and Wednesday. We generally never do concourrent nights, gives some recuperation time as well... plus Tuesday's class had kicking practise with pads, and the pads get awfully heavy when you have to hold them at shoulder height or higher for quite a while with someone bringing their leg down on it pretty hard. I'm sore not sleeping too well last night didn't help either though.

I have a nice new bruise on the top of my right underarm to add to the collection ;) It's kind of faint, but a nice pale purple shade.

Saturday's promotion test looms, and I'm somewhat nervous. We paid the money for the test today, so that's an additional $70 (each) incentive to do well. The weather looks like it'll be okay on Saturday... 22C and partly cloudy, so hopefully not too sweltering in the dojo.

Yesterday I also found out why Nancy, one of the other white belts is so surprisingly good. I knew she'd done karate before, but I didn't know she used to be a third dan blackbelt. Which means she'd outrank the senpais that usually teach us. She used to do a related style of kyokushin. There were some splits in the organisation, many dating back to 10 years ago when the founder of the style died and not everyone agreed with the successor. Politics in sports, fun stuff. Not my bag really, as long as the place I'm studying teaches well, I'm happy.

Saturday the 19th is the All American Open Tournament in NYC. PreZ and I are thinking of going to that. I'd love to go all day, but PreZ has skating in the morning, so we won't be able to leave here until noon or so, which still leaves us most of the day programme, and the finals, so all's well. If anyone wants to come too, let us know.

PreZ and I now have a kitty and a bird. Pet-sitting for Cherie while she's off road-tripping. Luckily Chestnut's generally not a handful, and Zen usually only gets excited when the taps are running within earshot, leading to much animated chirping.

Tomorrow a sport free day, though I guess I should finally try out one of those tapes and get some stretching going. Friday is yoga. Hopefully it won't leave me sore or tired for Saturday, last thing I need is for that day to be one where I don't feel 100%. Of course now I'll have issues sleeping the night before ;) I already had a weird dream this morning in which I was forgetting all the punches, blocks and kicks. Argh.

Kit Kat Klub

It's interesting having animals in the house again. I forgot how amusing it can be to have animals wandering around. Chestnut had some fun last night sitting in a corner going randomly nuts... jumping after her own tail, pouncing at the door jamb and trying to open the door to the bedroom, and randomly bouncing around in circles.

She'd come by for the occasional cuddle while we were watching tv, and while we were having pizza, with her eye on the pizza the whole time. Though she did not get any ;)

Other than that she'll generally curl up and sleep wherever we are. Yesterday afternoon when I took a nap she napped at the foot of the bed. If I'm at my desk she's either asleep on the red plush star-shaped pillow that's on the floor next to my desk, or, like right now, she's asleep under my desk. Sometimes she'll sleep next to PreZ's chair if he's the only person in the room.

This morning she watched the world go by from the living room window, so I cracked it open for her so she could get some fresh air and hear some sounds. The window is covered in a metal flyscreen, so she's not going anywhere.

Last night she got on my nerves a bit. I'd left the bedroom door open because I knew from last time she stayed here (a year and a half ago) her first night she decided to do full bodyslams against the door along with lots of wailing, because she was disoriented and lonely and she doesn't like closed doors. Only last night, at about 5am, she decided to wander around in the closet on top of noisy plastic bags, and noisily wander around the wooden ledge that goes around half the room, so I evicted her. I don't deal well with interrupted sleep... I need it to be quiet so I can get some decent shut-eye. Luckily we didn't get a repeat of her previous stay's first night... other than a few small wails and some pawing at the door she didn't get too noisy, and eventually wandered off to sleep somewhere else.

Weight Wonder

So if Dr. Phil is leading the way in weightloss with his tv show weightloss campaign, and book, and no doubt other related merchandise, why is he so fat? I mean, if you're going to admonish people about their bad lifestyles and flabby asses, and motivate the country to lose weight, you can't exactly be sporting what looks to be at the very VERY least a good 50+ excess pounds and a second chin.

The media's hypocritical attitude to weight is also annoying me to tears. Every time I stand in line at the supermarket I catch a glimpse of those gossip rags which always complain about stars' weight. There's a constant media pressure to look thin and beautiful, and if you have 10 extra pounds there's almost an extra issue released to talk about how much this or that actress is "letting herself go", yet now they harrass the Olsen twins and Calista Flockhart and various others for being anorexic and too skinny. Then, on the very same cover as where they're claiming Kelly Ripa is too skinny, they have pictures where they complain that Lisa-Marie Presley is so overweight, coming in at 150lbs with her 5'3" stature. Okay, maybe 150lbs isn't that ideal if you're very short, but I mean, it's not as though she's the size of a whale at a mere 150lbs! It looked like some extra butt, thigh, chest and tummy padding at most, not layers and layers of blubber which would make it hard for her to walk through a door without going sideways.

It's no wonder people have such fucked up weight issues, when you're getting too many conflicted signals.