Tag Archives: Tae Kwon Do

Time to Kick Ass and Post on My Blog.

Posted on February 13, 2010 | 2 comments

And I’m all out of blog posty-stuff.

It’s been a busy few weeks. Here’s a quick rundown, the good and the bad:

  • A mentally ill parishoner burned down the church my wife and children attend, doing millions of dollars in damage and forcing them to seek temporary space for the next 9-12 months.
  • My wife got swine flu and, mostly, recovered.
  • My father came for a visit!
  • Junior spent the first night of my father’s visit throwing up.
  • I had to go to Austin for a few days while the Siren was sick. The Lass and I tried to work out a meeting in the holographic projection we call the real world, but our schedules didn’t mesh.
  • A case that was going to have me in Peoria for a week and a half straight for an arbitration settled at the last minute.
  • I wore my Vibram FiveFingers for a half-hour treadmill run shortly after my last post, and they chafed in a couple of spots badly enough that my feet bled. I’ll try them again to see if I can break them in a little, but I think they’re just a size or two too small.

Well, enough of that. We’re all in reasonable good health, I’ve started to get some more work done on Breezeway, despite having a busy time at work (I can’t recommend Merlin Mann’s recent post, “First, Care,” highly enough to assist you in getting off your personal stick, by the way). My running is off and on but I’m registered for the Shamrock Shuffle and getting ready for the start of the racing season in less than two months.

Unfocused Girl and I are testing for our high green belts in taekwondo next week, so today was board-breaking practice ahead of the test. Witness the Unfocused Family’s destructive might:

That’s five boards: Unfocused Girl and I each broke two, and Junior broke one. After TKD, Unfocused Girl and I take a marital arts weapons class. We recently moved from nunchaka to bo sticks, and our new bo sticks arrived today:

Don’t let the smile fool you — we Unfocuseds are totally badass.

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M Is for Her Many Falls on Her Head.

Posted on May 11, 2008 | 3 comments

Back in January, the whole Unfocused Family signed up for a family Tae Kwon Do class at the local YMCA on Saturday mornings. After a few weeks, it was clear Junior wasn’t ready for it (he had just turned four), and he and Mrs. Unfocused dropped the class.

Last weekend, after Unfocused Girl and I were working on her white belt form in the backyard, to prepare for her yellow belt test later this spring. Junior said he wanted to take the test, too, and after I explained that the test was part of the class, he said he was ready to try it again. The Mrs. and I were reasonably certain that he would forget all about it, but if he decided he wanted to try again, we’d be happy to start him back up in class.

On Friday night, Mrs. Unfocused and I went out for the first time in weeks months quite a while, to see Don Giovanni with some friends. It is possible that the Mrs. had a couple of drinks at dinner. It is also possible that she woke up with a bit of a hangover.

This made it extra special Saturday morning when Junior announced that he wanted to go back to Tae Kwon Do. I offered to take both kids and let the Mrs. stay home, but she insisted on coming along so I wouldn’t be outnumbered. Unfortunately, because we hadn’t planned on her or Junior going along, she didn’t have time for breakfast or even coffee.

It was the perfect class for them to start back up with, because instead of practicing kicks or punches, self-defense moves, or even forms, yesterday’s class was all about falling. Falling forward. Falling backward. Best of all, we worked on falling sideways, which involves throwing out your arm as you hit the ground and bouncing your head off of it.

But it worked: Junior paid attention, and participated in most of the class; he wants to go back next Saturday, which is great (especially considering his swimming lesson later in the morning consisted largely of holding onto the side of the pool and screaming “Mommy! Mommy! I want Mommy!” over and over again, but that’s another story).

So here’s to Mrs. Unfocused, and all the other mothers out there who hurl themselves head first into all sorts of things for the sake of their kids. Happy Mother’s Day!

P.S.: Just to avoid Mrs. Unfocused having to comment about this herself, I will disclose that the rumors are true: she did buy her own Mother’s Day present this year. But five years ago, I did buy her a red Kitchenaid stand mixer for Mother’s Day, and she’s still using it, so I figure I’m covered.

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10K & TKD

Posted on January 14, 2008 | 1 comment

All in all, a pretty good weekend. Mrs. Unfocused, the Princess, and I had our first Family Tae Kwon Do class at the YMCA. Junior was signed up for it but got nervous and freaked out; he watched for a while, then the Mrs. took him to the child care center. He says that next week he won’t be shy about it, and did shake the instructor’s hand very nicely when we ran into him later on. Because TKD is 9:15-10:15, and the Princess has a swimming class at 11:30, we will be spending every Saturday morning at the Y; the Mrs. and I can each grab a workout while the kids are in childcare after TKD, and I can take Junior to Starbucks while the Mrs. takes Princess to swim class.

If a plan ends with me getting coffee, I’m all for it.

On top of that, I got a 10-mile run in this morning. I ordered some new cold weather running gear a few weeks ago, and tried some of it out today, and it all met expectations. I’m still slow, but at least I’m not a corpsicle.

I have to come up with a new nickname for the Princess on this blog, because if there’s one word that does not describe my daughter, it’s Princess. I used it in my first post for lack of the imagination to think of anything better, but she does not now, nor has she ever, given a good goddamn about princesses, or Barbie, anything similar. She is a nice, bright kid who’s interested in science, ancient Egypt, and animals. And Harry Potter. And Batman (although not as much as Junior). And Star Wars. And various other things.

Right. Unfocused Girl it is. That was easy.

To top it all off, I finished my 5,000 words for the week in the novel. That means I’ve got 10,000 words written (10,024, to be exact), which is the same length as my senior thesis in college. The Mrs. picked out a new laptop for me to work on at home (the old Pismo was on life support, unfortunately), and it came this week: a new MacBook running Leopard. I spent another forty bucks to buy Scrivener, a nice app for writers that provides a real assist in organization.

Yes, I know. I get five thousand words into a novel that, in all likelihood, no one will ever read, and all of the sudden I need a new computer and special software, when writing the first 5,000 words in OpenOffice (free) on my old work laptop ($1 when they switched me to a new one) worked perfectly well. If you’re thinking that’s a little ridiculous, you’re right. But I needed the new laptop anyway — they can make me use a Windows machine at the office, but I’ll be damned if I’ll use one for personal work at home (literally damned, because that’s my definition of hell).

As for Scrivener, hey, it was $40 — not exactly a fortune. It is very useful, too, including half a dozen easy to use features that I will probably actually remember to use. I note that productivity maven Merlin Mann uses Scrivener. He’s very productive, you know, so the software has to be useful.

So now I’m blogging away on my new MacBook, and it has been a pretty good weekend. The only problem is that it is now 12:43am on Monday morning, and I’m still messing around on the computer when I should really go to bed. That’s the problem with new toys.

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Posted in Kids, Meet the Larssons, Novel, Running, Scrivener, Writing

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