it's all so fa...st
vegas was great, though as far as i was concerned, it could have been in detroit for all the extracurricular that went on... ie NONE. i got to know the hotel pretty well, and that's about it. but it's over now, and i thought i had a chance to breathe out, but it turns out my internal calendar is all discombobulated, and i'm off to atlanta next week before i breathe back in. whoosh.

the team did wicked awesome, i'm so proud of their effort and enthusiasm. i've said it before and i'll say it again: i consider myself damn lucky to have been hooked up w/the ryuei ryu fools, and if they weren't so successful, i probably wouldn't be doing karate at this point. it's fun to be notorious. our group of 19 walked outta there with 12 gold medals, 5 silver, and 3 bronze >> out of 720 competitors!! geez, it blows my mind. for details on the who and what, click here.

there was one scandal to report on: the girl who won the green belt division last year was back again in green this year. tough for joann and amber in green-ville. and the girl won again this year, smokin' everyone in kata and kumite. the issue i have is that she then put on a brown belt and proceeded to win the brown belt kata division too. not usually allowed, but apparently special permission was granted...
she's an awesome karate-ka, and absolutely deserved to win my division. she probably should have even gone into black belt land. but i think it's POOR sportsmanship to run through all the green belts just because she could. i feel really bad for the green belts, and feel really sorry for this girl on a different level, because obviously there's something in her that needs to be triple-gold validated. bummer.

black, blue, red, silver, gold
i have come back from vegas with a myriad of colors.
((thank you for the well-wishes ... results posted soon!))

rumbly tumbly
vegas. tomorrow. tournament. saturday.
i'm a little nervous. i'm freaking out.

a new beginning to closure
ever find yourself wandering to a thought about a person you knew way-back-when but we-drifted-apart, the thought peppered with all the usual veins of whatever-happened-to and what-are-they-up-to-now?

charlie was one of those thoughts over the past 8 years. i think the last time i saw him, i'm pretty sure my mortarboard cap poked him in the cheek as we were tangled in a half-congratulatory, half-goodbye hug at high school graduation. and then life split and off the paths we went, with vague news of where he was in life drifting in like tabloid gossip. but i wondered...

something made me turn around at the tavern last night, and stare at the man shuffling past me, flanked by the traffic of muddled spring-breakers...

and there was charlie. and for the last 8 years, he's been thinking of me too.

on the subject of tshirts
simple thing, a tshirt. probably the most basic of clothing items, yet the amount of potential it holds to be as unbasic as possible is infinite. i have never really considered myself a tshirt kinda girl... mostly because of the shape and wear: either they are loose and boxy on me, or tight and borderline inappropriate. fit is the word, material is the key.
nowadays, i have really gotten behind this concept of tshirts, and have also become acutely aware of how much of a cultural item they are. apparently everyone reads tshirts, and apparently i'm the only one who hasn't noticed up until now. i have been living life unawares of the messages printed (or embroidered or splattered or whatnot) across the chest or back of my fellow peoples, assuming it was a company shirt or participation freebie or something corporate and boring. and since i didn't really care to notice the messages, i assumed others didn't read mine. so when i wander out of the house wearing a "naughty amateur home videos" tshirt, and stop traffic, i figured it was just a busy traffic day.

seemingly this is not the case.

i have had a 3 or 4 conversations in the past week alone about tshirts, and more particularly, the messages on the shirts and how much people pay attention to them. i had always assumed people paid less attention to what is written on the shirt (ie 'the message') rather than what the message is written on (ie 'the boobs'). but it seems that people look closely to the message and actually remember it, like the guy who recalled a tshirt i was wearing when i first met him last july. crazy.

as i come up with (and seem to lose... i should start writing these down more) fabulous tshirt ideas on a daily basis, i will have to keep in mind that these endeavors are more than a great lesson in 'the medium is the message' and are waiting to entertain more than my own easily amused humor.

are you feeling lucky?
SIDENOTE: i'm on hold with a production company and they're playing tv themes as their hold music... "i want charles in charge of meeeeee!"

this whole concept of st. patrick's day is interesting to me. last year i wore a tshirt that said "pinch at your own risk"... and i had to knock down a person or two. this year i got into the spirit a little more and am accepting of the people who are 'irish for a day'. i'm not sure if my friend kelly would agree with me on that front, but i figure americans need any holiday they can get at this point, even if it means being irish or mexican or canadian or whatever. maybe i'm just thinking that because i'm looking for an excuse to hang with people. or wear green.

nutshell

"I must learn to love the fool in me - the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries.

It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility and dignity but for my fool." - Theodore Rubin

i'm a giving soul
my horoscope said so:

CANCER: You're a giving soul. But the neediness in the world is just too strong a current, and succumbing to it will drag you in over your head. Though you won't be able to give people all they want from you, give what you can.

it's easy to tell how busy i am in direct relation to how often i update this little journal of happenings. it's not that i haven't had anything going on in the past week that merits gracing the cyber pages of history here. and it's not even necessarily the fact that i haven't had time to update it, though that's a ginormous factor in the equation. the issue is that my energies are being zapped in other means, a prime example and very direct 'can't be everywhere at once' situation...s. it's as if writing an email to one person detracts from my writing here, or the hour spent with the girls negates my ability to tap out an interesting vignette from the day before... what a strange give and give and give and take.

those front and center to me know what life has been like recently; the challenges and the load and the planned breaks and the unplanned everything else. and i'm staying afloat... barely. but the past week and a half has been a wonderful exploration of limits, a treading of boundaries, and the rusty utterance of a rare word in my life: 'no'. i'm trying it on for size, and it's not quite fitting yet, but i might get used to that roomy feeling soon enough.

the tables are turned
the relationship between parents and their children is such a strange phenomenon. you grow up watching their every move, deciding to emulate or spurn their behavior "when i grow up", whether its a conscious or subconscious decision. they are cast into a role of solid justice and infinite wisdom, and except for those fractious teenage years, they're who you go to for counsel and guidance.
when asked, i have nothing but praise for the man and woman who raised my siblings and i; i think they did a fantastic job. in addition to governing rule by wit and humor and very little coddling, i think what speaks highest of them is the fact that we were always allowed to make our own decisions, understanding that they may not agree, but they would be supportive. it comes down to a "okay... as long as you're happy..." mantra, and their opinion would still weigh heavily, but not forcefully, in whatever fork we took on our paths.
so i guess the tough part is this: when the role is reversed, and your parents are doing something that you, as their kid accustomed to being the disciple, don't agree with, what do you do? like my sister pointed out, "sometimes it's difficult to remember that they're just people too, trying to figure out their own lives". lord knows, it's hard enough to do that, let alone with a gallery of opinion waiting to weigh in. and because of how i was taught and the liberties i was given, the best i can do is register my disagreement and quietly say "okay... as long as you're happy..."

good things, small packages
a great big CONGRATULATIONS!! to brahman, new-daddy to baby emily, and to heather/tristan, new-mommy/daddy to baby nathan.

life as they know it is OVER.