Posted by mike on April 28, 2008
My little boy was born ( 04/22/2008 @ 10:25am ), at a nice healthy weight of 7lbs and 13oz with a height of 20″ ( all in all, almost exactly what Caralyne was, she was 21.25″)
We don’t have him home yet, and I’m sure I’ve keep almost everyone up to day, but he has a collapsed lung, or pneumothorax. This happens a lot, but most of the time it’s a tiny hole and the body just absorbs the escaping air and the lung heals within a day or so. Owen’s was a little more severe, he was transfered from Antioch Kaiser to Walnut Creek (which is great, WC has a kick ass NICU). Michele was also transfered the same night and I’ve spent a few nights on some very uncomfortable fold out beds, couches, mattress pads, etc… I hurt my back exercising and sleeping on all those various torture devices only made it worse. The irony of me getting hurt even more in a hospital was not lost on me, and I had to buy my own Advil there at the pharmacy too.
Michele was discharged from Kaiser on Friday, and the last two days we’ve spent visiting Owen. Thats kind of rough, to have to leave him like that, so I can’t wait till we can at least hold him. He has a few machines breathing for him, and they have him so sedated that he’s almost lifeless. Once he can breath on his own, we should see a livelier and possibly a little crankier baby 
No wushu for a while.
Posted by mike on April 11, 2008
After CMAT I had felt a little extra bit of motivation, it has dawned on me that this past year I had really digressed in wushu. There has been little focus for me, and work has been more and more demanding so I recognize that as an issue. Mostly though, the majority of ‘coaching’ I have received has been about the website and computer work. What I really need to do is to be less passive about what I want and be a little more persistent.
Tuesday’s class was very light, those of us that were not part of the Olympic ceremony in San Francisco on 4/9 did our own thing on the side. Isao and I have been working together on a broadsword set Patti is teaching us. It started to feel REALLY slow, but then thursday she had up really pickup the pace on it, and it then immediately kicked ass It went from a slooow 1 full section of a form to 1/16 of a section. I can’t wait to continue learning it and building my stamina back up.
Thursday was a lot nicer, more intense and I felt good about the workout. I’ve started to stretch again on my own in the morning, and James and I stretched each other on the wall. After we did that, out basics were so much better. It was nice to hear Patti’s encouragement and overall happiness with our kicks.
I’d like to say that I’ll be working on updating this more, but everything but my spare time has been increasing lately.
Posted by mike on April 11, 2008
After CMAT I had felt a little extra bit of motivation, it has dawned on me that this past year I had really digressed in wushu. There has been little focus for me, and work has been more and more demanding so I recognize that as an issue. Mostly though, the majority of ‘coaching’ I have received has been about the website and computer work. What I really need to do is to be less passive about what I want and be a little more persistent.
Tuesday’s class was very light, those of us that were not part of the Olympic ceremony in San Francisco on 4/9 did our own thing on the side. Isao and I have been working together on a broadsword set Patti is teaching us. It started to feel REALLY slow, but then thursday she had up really pickup the pace on it, and it then immediately kicked ass It went from a slooow 1 full section of a form to 1/16 of a section. I can’t wait to continue learning it and building my stamina back up.
Thursday was a lot nicer, more intense and I felt good about the workout. I’ve started to stretch again on my own in the morning, and James and I stretched each other on the wall. After we did that, out basics were so much better. It was nice to hear Patti’s encouragement and overall happiness with our kicks.
I’d like to say that I’ll be working on updating this more, but everything but my spare time has been increasing lately.
Posted by mike on April 4, 2008
Class has been a little laid back for me, which is alright, I haven’t been working as hard as everyone else so it’s not like I can even bust out a section of a form right now. It is a little hard to go to class when everyone is so fired up and is at their peak. Patti is still giving me new moves here and there for the broadsword form, and James said she really wants to give us (those of us who are just learning dao) a really good old school wushu dao form, which is every cool for me. I really like the older flavor that Patti’s generation had, so being able to work on that would be sweet.
Anyway, everyone looks good, and i think Wushu West will have about 12 or so people competing at CMAT. Yup, WW is going to clean up I’ll be there to record as much as I can. It’s too bad Caralyne isn’t old enough to sit down all day and watch wushu I mean, I could drag here there for an hour maybe but then she’d want to do something else, so I’m bummed I wont be with here at all Saturday. Soon though.