Nick ‘n’ Heather

We had a busy weekend this time around.  After I wrapped up work on Friday we headed out to Hutchinson for the tournament Saturday.  We crashed at Tim’s place Friday night after meeting Master Roy & Teresa for supper. 

We got up early Saturday and headed to the tournament.  Started off with patterns, then it turns out there was nobody in my division for me to compete against.  So I got myself all worked up for nothing.  Oh well, maybe next time.  After refereeing and judging for a while they did the black belt breaking.  I ended up taking first in my division for that at least.  After that I ended up running a ring for the rest of the day.  It was a lot of fun, but really tiring. 

I had one little girl smoke a boy in the head a little too hard for the controlled contact rules.  I feel bad for penalizing a kid for kicking hard, but the rules are the rules.

After the tournament was wrapped up, we headed out for a quick bite and then there was a short team practice.

We went back to Tim’s and cleaned up a bit and headed over to the hotel where a lot of the people were staying.  I ended up tossing a couple of kids in the pool as a joke and it quickly turned into a full-out carnival ride and I had like 8 kids in a constant line waiting to be tossed.  I really should have been charging for it because I would have easily made over a $100. 

Sunday morning we got up again early for a black belt class.  It was a pretty easy day because everybody was so beat up.  We did some timing drills, worked on forms and I showed a couple of wrist locks to everyone.

We finally made it home today around 5 and immediately took a nap.  Got up a bit later and started the process of unpacking/cleaning/getting ready for the week.

In sadder news, though, after I got up from my nap I found that my beloved betta fish, Edward, had died.  He was looking pretty rough a couple weeks ago, but seemed to recover just fine, but I guess it just went south over the weekend.  It’s too bad because he really was entertaining to watch eat.  Still haven’t decided if we’ll get a new fish or not.  We’ll have to see.

I don’t know how you people can go so long without updates from me.

Another weekend that flew by way, way too fast.

Got into Moorhead Friday night and went to Dan’s house. Heather and Ethan, Dan’s son, were there as well. Ethan and I had an epic sword fight and he managed get a few good whacks in on Heather as well.

After we left Dan’s house we went to Heather’s apartment where we met up with Brouse and Marisa and headed over to Kroll’s for some late night supper. A peanut butter & brownie shake always hits the spot. Then we went back to apartment where we all had a slumber party and spent the night. It was like some weird version of Friends where I was Joey and Heather was Chandler, Brouse was Phoebe and Marisa was somebody too…I’ve never actually watched friends…I just know they live in an apartment.

Saturday morning I talked Heather into going to Quizno’s so I could get my new favorite food. Then we headed over the gym were I did some serious stretching. Then Black Belt class started and I actually felt pretty good. I led the warmups and stayed pretty loose during the class. I only wanted to die once. We covered some interesting stuff and somewhere along the way Heather managed to almost kill herself again… she fell wrong or something and strained her neck. Doing alright now, though. I also got to show one of the master instructors why tae kwon do people should stick to kicking and punching. He tried talking about different groundfighting techniques and Master Roy had me get on top of him on the ground and have him “show” his ideas. It ended up with him puffing and huffing and me just chilling on top of him. I think that’s when Roy told him I was a black belt in Jujutsu as well.

After class we ate out at the Jade Dragon. Then Tim, Heather, and I went to see Beerfest at the movie theater. It was pretty good. At least Tim and I had some good laughs.

When the movie was done we went back to the apartment and all of us headed over to Kroll’s again for some more food. Cause Chinese just doesn’t cut it for me. Then we went and passed out.

This morning we got up and had some food and I fixed Heather’s router so she could have internet access. Then we went over to Dan’s house to watch him shingle. I finally took off around 4. Another fun drive home.

I got back and my muscles were not happy. I’m pretty stiff from the workout and the long drive.

It’s kind weird. MSUM started classes on Thursday and tomorrow is the first day of class for Tae Kwon Do at MSUM. This is the first time in 4 years I won’t be there on the first day of TKD. Kind of bummed about it. Oh well. Alright I’m gonna go, later.

Pictures of the weekend here.

My tae kwon do instructor from MSUM sent me an email today asking how things were going. Also had an interesting proposition for me. The master instructor that has a gym just outside St. Paul has left our organization. I actually just went to the school last Thursday, before I knew this was official. I’ve still been struggling with were to train, and there are four options.

• Train with the instructor that left the organization, 20 minutes away
• Train in Cokato, an hour away
• Train in Hutchinson, an hour and a half away.
• Leave the organization

The Cokato school is new to the organization, and could probably use some support, but and hour drive with $3 gas is kinda expensive, so that rules out Hutchinson on a regular basis. I don’t really want to leave the organization either.

All that being said, it would be great to have a Northwest school close to me, and I’d do my best to help out. The problem is that I’m still getting set up down here and like I told Master Dan until I feel settled in I want as little financial responsibility as possible and running a gym can be kind of big. There would be two other black belts going in with me as well, one of them with a lot of business experience. However, I would be more than willing to do what my friend Tim did in Hutchinson, teach for free to until he’s bought the gym, it’s now his and it didn’t take that long either. Of course, this wouldn’t be for the entire gym. But I could teach until I had “paid” my debt. So I could teach/train for free which is what I was already doing and eventually even make some money off the deal. Which would be very cool…

What to do?

My friend Tim called me up on my way to work today and asked if I could do some teaching tonight.

Well, I moved to the cities over a month ago and I still haven’t found a place to work out.