June - Top 5

Promotion

Relay For Life made it official. June 5, 2009, is the day I was officially promoted to 2nd degree black belt and received the title of "Deshi," though nobody calls me that.

In all actuality, the Relay was boring this year. I opted not to participate for so long this year, showing up around 1 and leaving around 5:30 or 6. It was mostly an afternoon of deciding I was officially burnt out with karate.

Be that as it may, I decided to suck it up and not get behind on my training. I was rewarded for my efforts.

This day (and week) was also sweet because David was home from the Army.

Learning New Stuff

June wasn't all together an extremely exciting month, though looking back I got excited about learning a new kata (Naihanchi San). This is the third and final installment of what is really O Naihanchi. Black belt classes at Mr. Hawkey's began again, and luckily he had Justin and I work the interpretation for it.

I feel I've gotten a better understanding of this new form than Naihanchi Ni, which I've known for almost 2 years. For some reason, some katas get taught to me real well, and others seem to fall by the wayside and I don't have a great understanding of them.

Plus we've learned two new ippons, and Mr. Hawkey has worked with us on advanced interpretation for different kata and applications that, at this point in time, would never have revealed themselves to me otherwise.

Learning a new weapon (kama) is fun, too.

Finishing a Class

I got an A in my May term. This is exciting. As I write this, we're in the final week of another class. Since the end of last August, I have gotten 2 weeks of break between terms at most. So finishing CIS 300 was a nice milestone - racking up gen ed points and an A.

In other news, Bradley finally switched us over to Interactive Media. Except I have no degree audit, currently, so I don't have anything to look at right now in regards to what classes I've knocked out.

Continuing this stream of consciousness, bollocks to IM 313 not being offered in the fall. Bollocks, I say!

Focusing on the Positive

It has never been my intention to use this blog as a LiveJournal or talk about emotions. I don't think it is right (or necessary) for people to air grievances on public spaces when the issue is personal.

Instead, all I'll say is that I have decided to cut off contact to negative people and negative situations. Initially I was worried this wouldn't work out, but I'm still having fun this summer.

Working Out

I'm working my way up to run some races. I'm not there yet, but close. I've also recently taken up riding my bike, in the hopes to ride to Germantown and back next week without completely feeling like crap afterwards.

Eventually one day, I think it would be sweet to run a marathon, but that is a loooong way away.

Other Notable June Moments

-Leading the Metamora Martial Arts crew in the Old Settler's parade for the fourth year in a row.
-Invision Power Board 3.0 coming out finally.
-Helping out at this arts conference deal at Bradley
-Splashdown with Sarah and her cousins