2013-52 Week 1

And we’re back. Well, I’m back, and I’m glad you are too. I will admit that the pendulum has swung pretty far: I had to stop myself from posting something on January first, simply because I knew that if I didn’t take one day off, I would keep going until I accidentally missed one and felt bad about that. The last few days have been the other end of that pendulum, it’s been tough to motivate myself to write again since I’m not in the consistent rhythm. And of course when I did go to write something in the hour I was home yesterday, the internet was being weird (Jess correctly pointed out that perhaps the most impressive aspect of blogging everyday last year was that I was always able to get internet access wherever I was and with no outages).

So what have I been up to in my first week without writing in a year? Well, one thing is more writing, as I’m working on a new blog with Master Kemmer for the Cutting Edge Karate blog that was started at the end of last year. I would expect it to be wrapped up and online sometime this week and will, of course, drop you a link in the post here after it is available. Minor spoiler for my faithful readers: it’s on goal setting. Speaking of Karate, I passed my 5th Gup test on Saturday (yay!) and am getting my Green-Black belt tonight, so I can officially (and somewhat retroactively) cross off that last resolution from 2012. Also, much respect to Master Kemmer who, after having a couple of last minute cancellations, had to single-handedly run testing for fifteen plus adults/juniors and five Little Dragons in about three and a half hours.

Let’s see, what else? This weekend was particularly busy, starting with a particularly rough grappling class on Friday night (all the “big boys” were there, which meant a more bending and folding than usual), with the aforementioned three and a half hour test on Saturday followed by a birthday party in the evening. Sunday was busiest of all, with church, a gaming session, and then another birthday dinner followed by more games. Not complaining at all, since everything was a lot of fun and there are far worse ways to spend a weekend, but it didn’t leave much downtime (which I suppose isn’t too bad since we just came off a vacation with what some might argue was a little too much downtime).

One sad aspect of such a busy weekend was I wasn’t able to fit in any running, as the windows that I did have were closed due to soreness (mostly from Friday’s grappling class followed by Saturday’s test). So where I had started the year with three days of three miles each, I am now even with three days of having not run. I intend to run again this evening after the belt ceremony, so I’ll be back up a day again. I’m still double last year’s mileage at this time (I’ll be keeping track of that progress at the bottom of these posts), but I want to make extra sure that I am consistent and getting the miles in early in the year so I don’t end up in the same position as last year with too many miles to make up and not enough time to do them.

The same can’t be said for my writing, but I’m pretty sure I’ve earned my week off and hopefully should not have too much difficulty making up the difference of the next 51 weeks.

Ah yes, I was going to wrap up this post there but then remembered I had one more story which I thought, at the time, I had to put in the blog, since it was the only reason it made sense for me to be in that position (well, that and a not particularly bright decision on my part, the following story is for illustrative purposes only, do not try at home). I was driving back from running some errands after my Karate test (a cat has to eat, I suppose) and was making the turn off of the very busy main street next to our place onto one of the smaller side streets. As you might suppose, making a right hand turn off a particularly busy street is sometimes an adventure when people like to go really fast on your tail, but I also know that this particular street is lined with apartments on one side and nothing on the other, so all the cars on the far side are parking for the apartments. So I wasn’t much surprised when, coming around the corner, there were two people walking across the middle of the street a mere twenty feet from the crosswalk. I was surprised, however, when the guy stops in the middle of my side of the street to start swearing at me.

Thankfully it is not a busy street, so I easily slide by him and continue down the road. Looking in my rear-view mirror, I see them getting to their car and then proceed to make my questionable decision, I turn around at the stop sign and proceed back down the block to see what exactly this guy was trying to accomplish by placing himself in the position to get hit by a car. We roll down our windows and I swear this is a near complete transcription of our conversation:

Man (yelling): “Slow down you @—-le!”
Me (normal voice): “You do realize I was going slow enough to avoid you in the middle of the street by 5 to 10 feet?”
Man (screaming): “CALM DOWN!”
Me (still normal): “Uh, buddy, I’m not the one yelling.”
Woman (from passenger seat, yelling): “My grandmother was just hit by a car!”
Man sticks his hand up in the woman’s face in the universal “shut up” gesture.
Man (slightly less yelling): “You can’t be going so fast motherf—–!”
Me: “Can I suggest that next time you use the crosswalk that is twenty feet over there so that oncoming traffic can see you?”
Woman: “The crosswalk over there?”
Man: “F— you, slow down!”

He pulls out and the woman flips me off as the head the opposite way. I’m not entirely certain what motivated me to turn around and get involved in what turned out to be a waste of everyone’s time, other than the couple participating in one of my worst pet peeves of crossing a street illegally (and, more importantly, dangerously) within spitting distance of a crosswalk and then deciding to cuss me out from the middle of the street. Also experiencing someone screaming “Calm down” at another person who is perfectly calm is always darkly funny. So while I’m pretty sure I can claim the moral and logical victory, I’m also pretty sure the other guy thinks he won based on volume and ratio of swearing. Well, I also suppose I also got a win for gaining a storytelling exercise.

So there you have it, even I do stupid things sometimes (all the time? A lot of the time? I’m not going to lie, while they usually aren’t involving strangers, they’re probably more common than you might think). I’ll try to cut down on those things before the next update, even if it does cost me blog material.

Weight: 230 Loss: 0 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 9 miles (+9 miles) Last year-to-date: 4 miles – Words-to-date: 1240