Well, well, well. Why did I just write the word "well" three times in a row? Who knows. I don't even know, and I'm the one that did it!

However, I've got some really cool news. I am now a purple belt! Yay-who! We tested Monday night and I didn't score anything below a 4 (out of 5). My breaking went very well. I did three boards with a knife hand strike (the "karate chop") and broke them on my first try. I also did three boards with a side kick and broke on the first try. That means that I've made it all the way to purple without ever having to it a board twice during testing. Ethan tried breaking three boards with a ridge hand, but wasn't able to do it. I think that must have something to do with him being sick, because he has a ridge hand that would stop a bull. So he did a round elbow instead and broke them quite nicely. Anna, poor dear, ended up with some horrible boards (don't blame me, she picked them out herself!) She literally hit those baords for five minutes. She was able to break her foot boards with a front kick (after several tries), and finally broke her hand boards after we found some replacement boards for her. She bruised her hand up really good, but impressed everybody there by the way she wouldn't let anything stop her from breaking, no matter how much it hurt. She says her hand didn't actually start hurting until after the boards were broke!

Saturday was the ABKA Missions Tournament. I did Wansai Sho again, and took first! That was pretty cool. Then I was beat in fighting. :( But it was only by one point. And the guy who beat me went on to take first. Still, I think I could have beaten him if I had been a little looser and lighter on my feet. This was Isaac's first tournament and he took first in kata and in sparring! Yay! Because of that he got one of only six Outstanding competitor trophies. He was the youngest person and the lowest belt rank to get one of those!

It took us two weeks to re-roof our house. And it was not fun. But we've finally got it (almost) done. All that remains is to cut a few shingles so we have a strait line and to put the ridge caps on (something we haven't done because we still haven't got it totally figured out). We've got all the big piles of shingles picked up from off the ground, but it will be months before we really have it all up. Bits of shingle and tar paper and nails are everywhere.

I'm still trying to figure out what to do about my car while I'm gone. Any thoughts? I had a random idea that I might loan it to a ministry while I'm gone, but I really need to have a car when I get back and I'm not sure who I could trust not to run it into the ground.

I'm telling you, having a miniDV camcorder and a DVD burner is cool. I can burn high quality DVD's of our home movies right here and we won't have to worry about the tape wearing out. Pretty spiffy, huh?

Did you know that nail guns are some of the coolest things around? Can you imagine trying to put down 80 million shingles by hand nailing them? That would be tough.

I read an interesting article about walking on hot coals on HowStuffWorks.com. I'd never thought much about how that was done, but it's cool to know.

Am I the only one who gets really annoyed with people who don't want to know stuff unless they have to? People who don't see learning as a pleasure in and of itself? Like the Dreyfus Affair in France at the turn of the century (if you don't know what that is, look it up. Very interesting). Not exactly something you need to know, but it's interesting and fun to learn about non-the-less. And most people don't even want to use the mental enegry to learn about those types of things. They are mentally lazy! I just don't understand it.

What annoys me even more are people who refuse to learn about things that do affect you life. Like politics and economics. The number of people who simply don't care simply astound me. How can you not care about those things?
And as long as we on the topic of annoying things, how about brown belts that refuse to act their rank? We've got two of those at our dojo. One is a total know-it-all and a pretty poor martial artist. The other is a total wimp. She won't fight, she won't lead, she won't act like a brown belt.

And while we're at it, how about love songs that try to sound so sweet, but really they are totally self centered? Like "I want to be your everything". It's supposed to be such a sweet and moving love song, and it boils down to a guy telling his girlfriend "I want to be the center of your universe".

Oh, and then there's the "I'm sinning and I'm singing about it" type song. I hate those!

And on that wonderful note I shall leave you. Bye!