the phagos blog

Well, this year’s martial arts clinic came and went, ending Sunday. The verdict is still out whether the clinic was the best one yet though. Because of my injured wrist, I concentrated on healing classes this year, not getting on the mat until the last day, and only for a couple of baguazhang classes. Also, I spent most of the first 2 days in a Huna 1 class. I learned this year that I have a lot more internal work that I need to do than I thought. And it only took blowing my third yearly goal to figure it out.

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I’ve been looking at things lately, and there’s something about which I’m unhappy.  Well, rather than turn this into a rant, I’m going to do something about it.  You see, lately I’ve been checking my email more often, about once an hour while I’m home or at work.  I don’t get that many emails, only a couple people email me with any regularity.  But it begs the question - what did I do before email, and why do I check it so often?

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After a chance encounter with a stranger who told him say yes more, Danny Wallace decided to do just that.  The result of his experiment was published in a book aptly titled ‘Yes Man’.  His quest for several months was to answer every question or invitation that could be answered with yes or no as yes.  It resulted in quite a journey.

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Lately I’ve been pretty irritable, and admittedly, on some days, I’ve been down right bitchy.  I look at the things that have become normal, or the status quo for my life, and I’m unhappy about quite a bit of it.  Yeah, there’s a rant coming, because I just need to get this off my chest.

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Well, Samhain (pronounced sow en), or Halloween is tomorrow. After much debate over the matter, I’ve decided to publish here the article currently circulating in the Ave News, since it’s not available online. If you’ve read the printed version, you may notice a couple of slight changes, but those were for space and left the article essentially unchanged. Without further adieu, here is the article.

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Today was the first meetup for the parkour group I started over at meetup.com. It looked like it was going to be just me for a bit, so I just did some wall jumps, stair running, and some rolls on the grass. After close to 40 minutes, when I was about to hang it up and leave, someone else showed up.

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I went to jujitsu class tonight, and it was rather frustrating to say the least. I almost didn’t make it through the warmup, it was so hot and humid in the dojo, and after we started doing the techniques, I could tell something wasn’t quite right - things felt a little off, like something was misfiring but I couldn’t figure out what.  Then we hit a technique where I just kept getting worse and worse.  Finally I said, “I’m done,” and sat on the edge of the mat for the last 45 minutes to an hour of class.

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In what I can only think of as ironic, tonight I found myself wishing for the company of a friend - any friend.  Not because it’s been a hard day, or anything bad has happened, but I just wanted to hang out with someone.  This is a complete turnabout for me, as lately I’ve wanted nothing more than constant solitude.  Yet tonight, I have paced back and forth from the tv to the pc, hoping to hear from a friend or relative, and yet unable to reach out to any of them.

Perhaps it is just as well I have not heard from anyone, solitude after the company of friends can sometimes take a little bit  of re-adjustment.  They say no man is an island; sometimes, like tonight, I’m not so sure.  Truly though, I don’t have much say in the matter - it’s not like I can call my friends and go hang with them - I have to work tomorrow, and so do they.  I’m getting tired, and will be going to bed shortly anyway.

Well, there’s been quite a bit happening the last few days - I thought rather than write a post on each particular thing, I’d just hit the highlights, or lowlights, as appropriate.

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I’m happy to announce that there is now a Columbia Parkour Meetup!  I went ahead and registered the group at meetup.com, we’ll see if any other traceurs come out of the woodwork.  If I’m going to move forward with things, might as well start with this one.