My Wushu Blog

This title sounds like a horror movie title.

We ordered a large 8×12 shed, and oh goody, it arrived on possibly the hottest weekend this month. When Michele went to get lunch, she reported that her car said it was 105, but then cooled off to 101.

I really don’t think I have ever worked that long, and that hard in heat like this. I had my Step Dad (Jim… I mean, Mike) today, and my Father in Law (Curt) yesterday and today. I really don’t know how I would have gotten all of this done without their help, especially my Step Dad. He is a very skillful carpenter, and he even had to make up for some of the inaccuracies we made Saturday with the foundation.

So, here are the pictures of the last two days, and thankfully the camera didn’t melt.

I was very envious of Pico, thats what I wanted to do

Curt working on the floor, above our hand made foundation

Another shot of the floor

The almost finished floor from Saturday. This took almost all day

Caralyne wanted us to take a picture of a bird in a horse hair nest.

Day Two, Big Mike takes the lead and gets a whole wall up in an hour

Discussing how hot it is (and its hot too!)

Owen joined us outside

Zoey was constantly finding shade from the heat

The heat was starting to get to Caralyne, or the mescaline was kicking in...

The finished product

Side shot

This is how many water bottles we drank today.

Now, just because, here are a few pictures of my new guitar. I really like it, it plays great and sounds good too. It’s hard to play right now, my hands are cramped up from all the hammering and “work”.

My corner in the garage is getting packed with gear

Those tuners are really solid and well made, I like them

EMG active pickups, I've always wanted them.

I didn’t want to forget to blog about this, it is a little late.

Over a month ago (Jan 31st), Jenny invited me to hike Mount Diablo with the Stanford Outing Group, lead by “V”. I’ve posted her photos to the gallery here, and you should read her post on our trip. Its more entertaining than mine

http://jettagirl.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/mount-diablo-hike-to-the-summit/

This was a 14 mile hike, took about 6-7 hours (I think) and made my legs feel like jelly. That’s definitely my kind of workout, now only if it was 20 miles instead…

The start of our hike, at Mitchell Canyon Road, is about 15 minutes away from my house. Thats right, I have a freaking mountain to hike in my backyard and I’ve never actually done it. For that matter, its been about 10 – 12 years since I was last at Mt. Diablo. I really do need a group of people to get me out of the house on a weekend. The entire group ( Jenny is excluded from this statement, because she’s always cool) was cool, and the leader, V, was hilarious. I loved how he would mention ways we could die, or how to check for ticks (or you’ll die!), or if you trip… you get the idea. He comes off as overly- cautious, but he was great to hike with and talk too.

This was my first hike, and I was glad I could ask Jenny before hand what I should bring or wear. I brought a couple of bottles of water, and I ended up re-filling one on the way back down. The three of you that check out this blog already know how much I sweat, so the minimum water recommendation for a normal human being should be doubled for me

The trip up was strenuous, I would zone out and put one foot in front of the othe during the real up-hill parts. We took a few breaks to get some water, have a snack, but the real enjoyment was when we reached the peak. After all the “hard” work was done, I felt I could look around more, check out the scenery, and even talk a little. On the way down, “V” and Jenny told me about the different rock types (“scree” is difficult to walk on), saw a little waterfall and a cave on the side of a cliff, and then we found our own little cave on the side of the path. It was cool.

Overall it was a awesome trip and I look forward to doing one again. I don’t think I’ll get lucky with it being 15 minutes away from my house any time soon though. Eventually I’ll have to start learning to get up before 8am

So thanks Jenny and “V” for a memorable trip.

For the 3 that read my AnD blog, I’ve re-setup my blog import from http://www.mywushublog.com/

I finally finished re-copying the entries I lost when my server died. Letting AnD import my blog is a very nice way to keep a backup, and share with the HK community.

I put up two new gallaries on my main site

• http://www.m87-blackhole.org/photos/

One is of the server rebuild and the other is of the family (mostly Owen).

 Both Owen and Caralyne keep michele and I very busy. For instance, right now I’m typing this up as Owen is taking a short nap and Caralyne us playing a computer game. I may try and workout, but the little guy is already stirring and Michele wanted to take a nap so I don’t have any coverage.

Speaking of working out, its sort of weird how restless and ansy I am without Wushu. First off, I’m not sore constantly, and thats with doing a lot more weight lifting and cardio than before. I think most people would thing thats great. For me, its just a constant reminder that I’m being lazy . Secondly, since I don’t have those two intense classes a week that really sap all my energy I can’t stop thinking about how I should be working out even more. I think its because our classes at Wushu West were so physically demanding that I know how far I can be pushed, and nothing else that I do accomplishes that. I only last so long on my own will power too, I need others to push me. Now with the Olympics on and knowing that James is in Beijing training at Shi Cha Hai, I feel very removed.

I imagine this is what retirement will feel like. I’m like that old guy that keeps coming back, trying to comiserate with the people who are actually working but he only has those same stories and while everyone humors him with polite gestures and feigned interest, he’s not really part of the team anymore. I feel like that, a by-stander.

Thankfully it’s back down to the tolerable 80′s, but the triple digit weather in antioch pushed me to shut off my server this last week until things cooled down a bit. It stays stupid hot in that garage, close to 100f even at 10pm.

Hopefully it wont get that bad again, but if it does I’m shutting it down again.

I broke it…

Okay, I didn’t “break” anything, I decided to upgrade my server to fix some corrupted files (this is what happens when you let your server melt in 100+ degree weather), and in the process I sort of forgot to backup the large MySQL Database….

And to think people pay me to do this for a living.

I was a lot more entertained than I expected to be. I went there to see the Wushu West folks and the flavor group, but I enjoyed almost everything else. Especially the chandlers girls, when I wasn’t so interested in the Romeo and Juliet specific scenes, I could just look up at them. They moved so slow and fluid it was hard to notice when they changed positions. Too bad they weren’t in all the scenes. I mean, after the fighting and killing, it goes into the sappy side of the play. Not that it wasn’t done well, it was, but I was more interested in the first half of the play so during the rest they would have been nice to look at. Yeah, I know, I’m a Neanderthal male for it. ME LIKE FIRE!
I think the should sell a DVD (or since they are a non-profit, give away when you donate to them) to schools, because I would have appreciated the story more if I was shown this instead of the 1970′s version. See, there was no dialog, and it was just better that way. So when you in high school and you spend a couple weeks reading each act over and over again, dissecting each painful line, the last thing you want to do is watch a cheesy movie adaptation with the exact same dialog you’ve been reading. Just an though.
I guess Collin was sick and couldn’t make it, so we didn’t see him on stage, but everyone else was really good. Kenny was pretty funny, he has that jovial attitude and persona down its hard not to laugh when he’s on stage messing around. Shawn Hallman was great though, I was glad he has as much stage time as he did.
I started off each paragraph with “I”, it’s a good thing I don’t write this stuff for academic credit…