One upmanship

Why do people see the need to brag and one-up each other? What's the point in that? I know that people have harder lives/better jobs/better kids/perfect marriages/perfect weight/a better house/whatever. Hey, we ALL know that! Does it really make the one who is bragging feel better about him or herself to demean what someone else says?!
The entire point of this is, I have a dear friend who is constantly belittled by people in her hometown who are apparently parents of geniuses. Another good friend of mine is knocked down any time she says anything--there's always ONE PERSON who has a better life. How does the one doing the bragging feel after saying "well, MY house is paid off because I worked 14 full time jobs and I paid it off in 10 years but I didn't see my family or friends ONCE." or "MY child learned to play the piano at the age of 6 months and gave his/her first concert at the age of 15 months!" or "MY child/spouse/significant other did such and such or knows so and so." Why does society, as a whole, feel the need to brag and posture so much? All it does is foster resentment in the person who is on the receiving end of the bragging. You won bragging rights. Yippee. Congratulations. I'm sorry you had to work 14 full time jobs to pay your house off and had no quality time with your significant other/family/friends. I may not have a house, but I spend time with my family and friends. I haven't had to sacrifice my life for a house so while I agree that being out of debt is a great thing, I'm sorry you felt that people would judge you for having a mortgage payment. (Talk to me someday about my thoughts on houses.) I'm proud for you that your child learned to play the piano at the age of six months. (and my thoughts are just whirling at THAT because everyone knows that babies, while they learn quickly, the attention span's not all there, even at 15 months.) My kids fell down, sat up, learned to eat and learned to sleep through the night. I'm satisfied. They're NORMAL. I don't CARE to push them beyond their limits right now. I'll let them decide for themselves what they want to be or do when they grow up. As long as it's not a professional bum, I'm happy.
What brought this about, you ask? Well, I have a scratched cornea which is *extremely painful*. I am having a hard time seeing today--my vision's blurred and my head is pounding as if a marching band is inside. I came in to work today to have someone tell me "I've had them to where I couldn't open my eyes and I had to lay in a dark room all day." Thank you for sharing. I just mentioned that my eye hurt. I wasn't looking for a one-upmanship course today. I got it anyway. Well, you know, I'm sorry you had to be in a dark room. I'd LOVE to be in a dark room right now, but...I have a job and have to work for a living. This allows me to continue doing the things I love. Oh, wait...am I one-upping someone???

Red belt test

Want to see what I did last night? You can go here to look at it. I'm pretty proud of my accomplishment last night!! Let me know if the link doesn't work. I'll fix it. Got to the dojang about 15 minutes before the test started. Since I drove, I had to put my purse away in one of the lockers. I talked to Beth who was extremely nervous about testing. We went into the big room and found Marlene and Kim and talked to them too, then we all started stretching. It was a good thing we did because they ran us through a bit of warm up jumping jacks and things beforehand. I really don't like jumping jacks. We were supposed to do 50 but our instructor/test administrator for the night said he was "bored with it" at about 40-45. After that, he had us do front rising stretch kicks and then we went into punches. Then we got to do front snap kicks, round kicks and side kicks as part of the warm up. THEN he put us through our paces. We did combinations first, then started into the forms. The intermediate students got to sit out while the beginners did their forms up to the highest. Then it was our turn!! We did our forms (top 4-5) and then sat down again while the lone girl who was testing for red/black did her forms with one of the black belts. Then it was time for one-steps. I partnered up with the same young lady I worked with at the last test. She is a very sweet young lady and I am more than happy to partner with her. We did our one steps and she had to tell me to tap out because we never practice them to the point where we have to tap out. I guess that from here on out, we'd better learn 'em like that!! (I need to get over my fear of falling too, but that's for a different blog.) After the one steps (top 5 hands and feet), we got to spar for about 2 minutes. It felt like 10! It was extremely physical, although neither of us came away bruised. I found some things about sparring that I'm going to have to work on, like changing my attacks and shaking up the kicks and punches I use. It'll be a LOT harder in the black belt tests!! After the sparring, he had us return to the back of the room in preparation for our board breaking. We had four or five of us who were breaking boards. They started with the youngest, who was a brown belt and then went to the brown/black belts. The young man did an elbow strike and went right through his board on the first try. Then my partner went and *she* broke with an elbow strike, on the first try. After that, it was "the triplets" (Marlene, Beth and me). He took us in order from the youngest to the oldest, so I had to go first. I did a front snap kick and went through the boards (plural--they held two boards). It didn't hurt and was actually quite fun!! Marlene was next, then Beth. We all did the same kick, but we all broke our boards on the first try. Post board breaking, we had to line up in belt rank order again and do our stamina trials. That was hard because we were tired and hot and ready to get it over with. We had to stand in riding horse stance and do front punches for about five minutes while the black belts walked up and down the ranks and shouted encouragements to us. Then we had to do front leg, front snap kicks for five minutes per leg, again with the encouragement of the black belts. Then it was time for our belts. This was pretty cool. We lined up in belt rank order and faced the audience for a final time as the belt we were currently on. Once we'd been presented, we had to turn and face the board. They then came through the ranks, untied and removed our belts and laid them on the floor beside us. Then Mr. M and the board came around and tied the new belts on us. He gave me my belt, for which I feel very, very honored!! After the test, we went out to Ricardos, a local restaurant next to the dojang, for celebratory margaritas. WUHU!! I had a whole ONE margarita, LOTS of water (about 5 glasses) and some 'pineapple chicken tacos'. Hung out for about an hour or so, then went home and here I am! Today has been a very quiet day. We went to the pool party our complex was having, where the kids ate lunch and Tony won $10.00 for answering a question about a song the Eagles had performed (New Kid in Town). We must have been the oldest people there! LOL!! When we got tired of that, we came home, hung out for a bit and then went to the store for some minor things. We just hung out and didn't do very much after that.

Blood donation day

I donated platelets today. THAT was a weird experience. It took a *long* time, and apparently the machine hated me. Every time after it pumped back the blood product it didn't want, it would post an alarm that said that the "draw pressure was too low". WHAT?! Draw pressure too low?! What was the cause? Well, my blood pressure is to be envied apparently...it was like 112/78 and for that machine, apparently it thought my vein was collapsing. There were three techs there trying to silence that silly alarm! It took over an hour to draw not even a pint of platelets. WOW! I can go back in two weeks to donate blood. I will do that because I wholeheartedly believe in blood donation. I've been doing it since I was 15 or 16. I am almost 41 now, so that's a while. I didn't donate while I was pregnant with my kids, obviously, but I've donated as much as possible when I can.
If you don't do anything else, if you aren't underweight or terminally ill, please consider donating blood. It's something everyone can use!

Book babbling

I love Amazon. I have found *so* many books that I want and think I need, it's not even funny!! I found just a bunch of books about Tang Soo Do today and have been going crazy, adding them to my wish list. If I was really using my head, I'd go to Half Price Books and see if they're there, but...I'm very fussy about my books. There are some books I'd rather NOT buy second hand! Others, I have no worries about. I am now using PaperBackSwap and am having fun with it. I've got two books on their way to me. I have to go through the pile of books on the shelves and see what we have that I can swap.
I am currently reading a murder mystery called Night Sins by Tami Hoag. It's a very interesting book. I've read it before, but it's been long enough that I've forgotten a good amount of the book. I'm still trying to figure out who the suspect/perpetrator is based on who the author has introduced in the story. My suspicions are on the college professor. Can't put my finger on why though.
I just finished reading "The Jane Austen Book Club". I can't remember the author off the otp of my head. It was a good book. I will have to list that one at PBS too. I found it interesting in light of the fact that I've read my very first 'classic' novel by Austen. I read Sense and Sensibililty this year. Just finished it at the end of February, beginning of March. Another book that I recommend reading.

Friday

It's FRIDAY!! Woo hoo!
I just figured out how to delete the underline!! YAY!! This is too cool! Now I have to figure out how to convince the hub to get me some ice cream. LOL!
I hope you've all had a great day today. I spent the day with the kids. We went to Target and then had lunch with the hub and a co-worker of his. That was fun. I was stuffed when we left, so we decided to stop off and do some grocery shopping. I'm caught up, except for our holiday dinner, which I haven't planned yet. I'm tentatively planning tomorrow's dinner, but as for Sunday, I'm not there yet.
We watched Narnia tonight. That was a really good movie. I saw similarities between that and LOTR. Not without good reason...CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein were good friends from what I understand. It was really nice to watch the movie. I would have enjoyed it slightly more without the running commentary from the kids but you know...kids are kids. (grin)
I'm sure I'll be around tomorrow. I'll be somewhere. I still haven't figured out what we're doing yet.

Monday...again?

My friend, B from work is trying to teach me how to edit my blog. I'm so slow...need to get her to explain html in a way that this old tired brain can comprehend! LOL! I'm having problems editing the template (me @ DUH dot com!) to include links. Figures. It'll take me forever to learn it! LOL!!
Here's a picture from Saturday. If you've seen this picture elsewhere, well, I'm sorry but...I am darned proud of it!!

Brown/ Black belt, anyone?

I tested this morning at 11:00 for my brown/black belt. I am sufficiently worn out now because in addition to your forms and combinations, we had to do one steps and since we're intermediate, we had to spar too. That was wicked cool! I enjoyed the sparring. I got to spar with a young brown belt named Holly, then again with Mr. Martin, who is one of our black belts. He's fun and boy can he hit! I kept hitting back, trying kicks and trying to get past his defenses. After the sparring, they had us break boards. I broke one with my elbow. After that, we lined up according to our belt rank. He belted the lower ranks first, then had the intermediates move up to be belted. That's a pretty cool thing. He belted us, then he had us do punches in a horse riding stance for a minute. Then he had us do front leg front snap kicks and then we had to switch and do snap kicks on the opposite foot! The lower ranked belts stopped first while the intermediate belts had to go a little further/longer. It HURT! LOL!By the time he called time, we were wondering if our legs were going to hold up.
It's official. For all the whining I did, I managed to make my test a productive one and I "faked it with confidence"! I loved it! I will have to do it again in three months, so I'll be ready for it!!

Saturday

StressRelief101
I don't know if this is going to show up or not. I'm trying to use the "Blog this" feature. I haven't quite figured out how to get my dashboard to work so that I can blog from my front page. We'll see if this works out.
Had to work today. It was from 7:30-?? We got out of there at around 2:00. If we'd gone another hour, we could have picked up 8 hours of overtime. 6.5 hours is not too bad. I'm picking up an additional 30 minutes for yesterday too. I talked to my manager about it. I'm not giving them anymore time. If I work through lunch, I'm either going to walk out early or else I get paid for it. Period. If I don't, I'll be going to HR. I've just gotten to the end of my rope on giving them my time.

Battle Cruiser stats

OH man. The Battle Cruiser is here. It's HUGE. I mean hurking HUGE!! The front end of this car is enormous!! The car was built in 1985. It's all engine. I don't know WHAT the boys from Ford were thinking (it's a Mercury Grand Marquis)! All engine and woof! The kids nearly got lost in the backseat! I'll need a GPS for them!
The good news is that the front seat is not one solid bench. It's separate seats, complete with their own arm rests. Too cool. I still don't want to drive it. Hubby knows that I hate huge cars and is not expecting me to drive it. I won't, either!!!

OH man. The Battle Cruiser is here. It's HUGE. I mean hurking HUGE!! The front end of this car is enormous!! The car was built in 1985. It's all engine. I don't know WHAT the boys from Ford were thinking (it's a Mercury Grand Marquis)! All engine and woof! The kids nearly got lost in the backseat! I'll need a GPS for them!
The good news is that the front seat is not one solid bench. It's separate seats, complete with their own arm rests. Too cool. I still don't want to drive it. Hubby knows that I hate huge cars and is not expecting me to drive it. I won't, either!!!

I'm back!!!

I had nearly forgotten that I had this blog. I knew I was set up but haven't done anything with it in a year. I'm back though.
It may be an intermittant posting..I don't have loads of time.
I'm still taking karate classes and am going to be hugely busy for the next several days with karate, my kids and the other things that go along with being a mom.