Kitchen

We painted the kitchen this weekend. We tore down the trim (which was just Styrofoam), and haven't gotten new stuff yet, so it still looks a little off. Steve's black belt test is this Saturday, but the weekend after that we'll get the rest of the kitchen finished off...except for the electric work and getting a new microwave to go over the stove.

Steve has to travel this week, so he won't be making it to class, but I think he's ready for the test. His parents are coming down to see it. It will be the first time they've seen him doing tkd, so that should be fun.

Conferences are tomorrow. I have all slots except two filled, so it'll be a long night. Since Steve is out of town, I have to drive home and let the dog out before I go back. Long, long day...

The tournament in Dayton last Saturday went well. It was the best run tkd tournament outside of our school I've ever been to. We were done by 4:30. I won forms after tying for first with My Tien. We had to do our forms again at the same time and I ended up winning. Good that CTC people went 1 and 2. Sparing for most people didn't go that well. I didn't spar, but I was coaching. Most of us that went either didn't have much experience or hadn't been doing any serious sparing training recently. No one got hurt, and no one embarrassed themselves, though. Simply ran into some good competitors who were obviously training and going to lots of tournaments. I think it was kind of hard for a couple of the kids who hadn't been to a tournament before, but it was a good experience for them. All together it was a pretty good day.

Steve had his fast and meditation this week. He started the fast Wed. morning and meditated for two hours this morning. I know he's glad to have that over with. He did a good job (no cheating).

Only a few weeks until his test.

I'm going to a tournament next Saturday in Dayton. Just doing forms...I don't train enough to spar right now. Steve has his second pretest for his black belt test tonight. The focus is on sparing and breaking. I don't know if I'll be judging or not.

Last night I had my first class as the official Wednesday night teacher. I made it relatively hard since people show up to Wed nights to get a good workout. Everyone was sweating, so I guess I accomplished the goal.

Hopefully Max and I will get a chance to run through our two person staff form. We are going to try to get it on video so the next time we forget a piece we have something to look at. At one point this summer we forgot part, and since we've changed it from the original, no one else could help us out so we just had to keep doing it until one of us remembered.

Power outages

Today is my second day off school as a result of the power outages. On Sunday we had a huge wind storm. No rain, just wind...it was weird. Sustained winds of 40mph with gusts up to 76 mph. We were lucky and didn't have any significant damage. Some branches down in the yard, stuff on the deck was blown all over, but everything is back in order now. The power went out sometime on Sunday (I was at my parent's watching football). It came back on about 2:30 yesterday. My parent's power came back on at 4:30 this morning. Apparently 90% of the city lost electricity. Duke energy had sent some crew down to Huston to help out with things there, so they started out a bit shorthanded. They recalled some of those crews and brought in help from South Carolina. Almost all the schools in the area have been closed yesterday and today because they don't have power, or the power outage affected the food supply or the bus fuel.

I tried the 3 brick break again yesterday. It didn't go well. I just went into the parking lot to do it and I don't think I was really prepared. I thought maybe not thinking about it would help, but it didn't. I ended up hitting way off center. I have it on video though, so I can see the problem. I didn't try it more than once this time. I'll start actually spending some time practicing and then take care of it.

The counters are in and they look really good. Next up is painting, although it'll probably be a few weeks before we get around to that.

School started last week...so far so good. Week number 2 starts tomorrow. Olympics end tonight, so I can start getting to bed earlier.

The CTC school picnic went pretty well this weekend. The setup was good, food was good. I felt like we lost a little control when it came to the games with the kids. There was a lot of running around and yelling and shrieking. I'm not a big fan of people shrieking right next to me because they won a three leg race. Maybe if we had a more organized pregame plan for the games we may have been able to reign it in a bit more. For some reason I had envisioned more adults participating with their kids in the race type things, but game time turned into keeping the kids occupied while adults were eating. In the end it seemed to work. The sidewalk chalk we bought was the best idea. I think we can just give the kids chalk and water balloons and they'd be entertained.

The demos all looked good and everyone seemed to have fun, so I think it qualifies as a success.

We have the new cabinets in and they have measured for the counter tops. Those will be installed on the 15th. Then we just have to paint. We're going to wait on deciding anything about color until the counters are in.

School starts on the 18th, so I'm now in the process of planing everything and getting lessons ready to go. I'm getting all the notes for CP transferred into powerpoints since I now have the smart board to work with. I also have day by day plans for the first semester for AP and CP. Environmental science will have some advanced planning take place before school starts (probably).

The cabinets were delivered yesterday. They are now sitting the garage until they go up this weekend. I'll be taking everything out of the old ones over the next couple days so we can take them down.

The OMAC 3rd dan test was Sunday. It went long (even a little longer than expected) and we didn't get home until after 10. I think my technique was pretty good, but I had a lot of mental errors in some forms. And, I only broke one of the three bricks. I'm going to try the brick break again at the school picnic on August 23. Between now and then I'll figure out the technique flaw that is causing the problem.

The high today is only 79, so I think the dog and I will go for a run.