Happy Festivus (a little late)

I hope you had a jolly Festivus (the holiday for the rest of us), and that your feats of strength were many and varied, and the airing of grievances was cathartic. For those of you who celebrated Chrismukah I hope you wallowed in many presents.

I myself managed to purchase many and sundry gifts, and in fact received several as well. I have a beautiful wallet from Coach from the little lady, some delectable sausages from NutNBunny, 2 Partagas 160s from mom, and a new 1911 from me. Yes, John Moses Browning's design is still running strong close to 100 years later.

Yes, the slightly blurry, and much to far away picture at the top of the page is indeed my new toy. Ignore the knife, I haven't told the wife about that one yet. Wait. Doh!

Not everything can be funny ...

Not every post can be funny. In fact, this one is probably going to be downright depressing. I think this Christmas Eve makes 20 years since I have seen my biological father. It's either 19 years or 20 years, I can't really recall. That in itself is a little depressing.

I'm 31. That means that it's been close to 66% of my life has been without him. Most likely for the better. Yet, I still wonder. Why? I don't have any kids, but I think if I did not seeing them for 20 years would destroy me. How can I be related to someone who doesn't care? At what point do you just say fuck it?

It's funny what you remember. We went to eat at Hart's Chicken. He gave me a bicycle (a red ten speed). Then left. For the longest time I thought he was dead. Turns out he isn't. In the end, we probably are better off, but yet ...

What kind of training have you men been doing?

AAAAAAARRRRMMMMYYYYY training sir! Well, not really, but I think Stripes deserves a nod every chance we can get.

I believe I mentioned it before, but I subject myself to physical torture 2-3 times a week (depending on my availability). This torture does have a name. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (if you ask a Brazilian they will call it Jhooo Jhieetsu - but most Brazilians sounds like they are speaking Russian anyway). The gi class was tonight, and I thankfully had a clean gi ready to go (these things get super sweaty - think about fighting with your friends for 90 minutes while wearing a terry cloth bath robe).

Now, as I walk into class at Austin Jiu-Jitsu I noticed things were a bit odd. Instead of the usual class, we were paired up with someone of a similar weight class (or at least height in my case), and proceeded to do techniques as requested. After an hour of this, we went to wrestling. I first wrestled a Blue Belt, and he armed barred me fairly quickly. Then wrestled a less experienced student. I tried to get fancy, with a judo takedown that backfired, and he ended up in half-guard. I released halfguard to move to a better position, and he mounted me. This isn't good. I kept my cool and kept breathing, which is suprisingly difficult until you learn what you need to do. Attempted the Upa mount escape enough times to get him to move out of mount, and while he was in transition to an attempted submission, I reversed him and moved into side control. He attempted to escape and I transitioned into Kesa Gatame, which is Japanese for "oh crap, he is crushing the life out of me!". After that, I trapped his right arm, and captured the Americana, which is a shoulder lock, and he tapped out. I know I didn't need to go into details, but hey it was exciting for me.

So anyway, we watched a few more matches, then everyone was pretty much exhausted. Dave Thomas, the instructor then called us up and gave us our next belt stripe. Now, it may sound anti-climactic to you, but belts in BJJ aren't easy to come by (the typical path to the 2nd of 5 belts is around 4.5 years). This was only my second stripe on my white belt, and I think the term giddy would be accurate. All in all, i'm happy. Wanna wrestle? =)