Keychain Count Grows By Two

I was grocery shopping today at the Union Kroger which was significantly different than the Florence Kroger
I had gone to before.I had thrown away my Kroger plus card so I had to
get a new one, but it still rocked. While I was there John and Holly
called me and invited me to come out and play frisbee golf with them
and Kyle (aka Whitey).

I came home ate a quick dinner and threw on some shorts and out I went.
I’m always thankful when people invite me out. We ate at Graeter’s ice
cream where it is apparently ice cream month and got another key chain.
I got to share my story of coaches college and hear about Kyle’s trip
to Boston. Good times.

On the way home I got to thinking about life especially now that I’ve
really got no one to set my girlfriend sights on. For the longest time
that has been a big motivating force and a source of focus. Recently
life has felt a little blurry and you’ve seen that reflected in my
decreased posting count.

But I was thinking about compromises, and how life, for me, is about
being happy and helping others be happy. To me you live, you die, and
that’s it. If you’re not happy while you’re alive what’s the point? And
if the people around you aren’t happy, what’s the point of trying to be
happy? Anyway, all that leads into how sometimes you have to sacrifice
your own happiness to make someone else happy. The question then
becomes, how much do you sacrifice? In a win-win situation you don’t
have to sacrifice any happiness for someone else, but that aside, you’d
hopefully sacrifice a small amount of personal happiness to gain a
large amount of happiness for someone else. In the worst case, you’d
want a net happiness of zero, your sacrifice = the amount gained by
someone else. It seems silly to sacrifice more than is gained because
then the other person really ought to be compromising more.

And then I pulled up to my apartment.

Foil Is Changing

There’s a big long thread about this on fencing.net, but basically they are testing some changes in fencing to the weapon foil. The target area will be extended to include the weapon arm and the bib on the mask. Simultaneously the white light will be done away with, so there will be no off targets as there is in sabre. Most of this is motivated by a drive to make the sport more spectator friendly.

Now before you foil fencers freak out, realize that the two parts, target area and white lights are connected. The idea is that if you hit someone in the arm it’ll still stop the action (but now someone gets a point). Yeah, it is going to change the way we fence, and it means shelling out some serious bling for new equipment, but the sport keeps changing, just like it’s fencers. To say "it’s gonna suck" is to be stuck in the past, those people can go fencing with Captain Classic all they want, I’m sure he’s up for a bout or two.

I’m not a zealot

While Brittany’s post was a contributing factor in getting my mind
going about issues surrounding life, I was not responding to it. But
after writing I realized how fired up I was, and it made me think that
maybe anti-abortion is a cause I need to be more active in. So I did a
Google search on just that.

Everything I came up with had some sort of religious ties, or was
talking about the anti-abortion demonstration that became violent, or
the doctor that was murdered because he performed abortions. None of
that is me. I’m not going to stand in your way at the doctor’s office.
I’m probably not going to talk about this beyond the realm of this blog
because this is my space and if you want to read it you can, you have
that choice. I will talk about it if asked to do so, but I will not
assume anyone wants to hear what I want to say.

I guess to me I feel like my passion comes from my background with
adoption, knowing that someone had a reason to choose my death, but
instead chose to let me live. I wonder if there is an anti-abortion
group that centers around being pro-adoption. Because that’s really
where I belong. I don’t want to split hairs over what is life and what
isn’t, I really just want living children to have the shot at life that
they deserve. The same shot that I was afforded.

I was not aborted

TV news, talk radio, issues in other states about this or that. Is it
really so bad to be pregnant? To harbor another life inside one’s self?
Every day we make choices, we have that freedom. But we make them for
ourselves, not for others, that is the same freedom that is provided to
us.

I stand here today, bending your ear, because someone else, my birth
mother, did not make a choice for me that I would not want. She took
care of herself, and passed on the responsibility of raising me to two
excellent parents. Look at your friend, look at your brother or sister,
look at yourself and tell me that you would be okay if that person
never existed. That person who has consoled you countless times, who
has brought you many smiles, and who has trusted you with their own
emotions, adding value to your own life. That person who may have even
saved your life. Tell me it would be ok if that person was never part
of this world. Tell me that, and then I will consider what you have to
say about preventing a life. But until you can say that, I encourage
you to thank the parents of the people around you for the richness of
life those people afford you.

Birthday Recap

Gold Stars to Heather, Anne C, Big Joe, Jenny, my brother, and my parents for all wishing me a happy 24th birthday. Everyone else I know it may not be your bag to keep up on birthdays, so I don’t hold it against you. I just wanted to say thanks to those of you that put in the extra effort this year!

More gold starts to: Jacqui, Graceful Nick, Marlowe, and "Graceless"!

I’m Numb!

Just got back from getting a root canal or three. It was a fairly
painless process and the dentist fenced a fair amount in college so
that made the one way conversation fun and enjoyable.

Speaking of fencing I also just returned from my week-long coaching
extravaganza! Between naps and dropping Joe off in Lafayette it was
roughly 32 hours on the road and I was exhausted by the time I got home
so I ended up taking the day off from work.

I already miss former Purdue fencer and now friend, Marc, who coaches
up in Northern Indiana. He was a good resource as far as coaching went
and he really did a good job of motivating me through competition.
There was a written and a practical exam at the end, I passed both so I
am now certified by the USFA in Level 1 Epee.

Before I left I mentioned I was feeling like maybe it was time to move
on from fencing. Well I can’t say that I’m terribly excited about
fencing in Cinci, but being at coaches college last week made me want
to be back in Lafayette to coach. I feel like there is a lot of good I
could do back there and I want to take care of RCF. Jefferson High is
still growing and there is talk of starting a program at West
Lafayette. I know the PFC president and I have our differences, but I
could really be a good influence there too.

Marc encouraged me to go back, to make a go at it, be a full time
coach. While the idea does have a great deal of appeal, I really don’t
want to move again right now, and I like having my stable income. We’ll
see, but for now I’m glad the longest drive I have to worry about for a
while is the commute to and from work.

At the OTC? Yeah! You Know Me!

Here I sit in the lobby of the Olympic Training Center (OTC). It’s day four of our schedule and they’ve been running us non-stop. We start at 8AM, suited up and ready to fence, and we get out at 9:30 PM, just enough time to stumble back to our dorm and go to bed with lights out at 10PM.

But one thing is for sure, I’m already a better coach.

The great thing about the class I’m in is that it is 32 other people of varying coaching experience and while we’re lead by a head coach, we all seem to have a great deal to contribute to eachother from our own limited experience. It’s a nice comfortable, reassuring environment.

I’ve been having a kick ass time hanging out with Big Joe here and the road trip out, while fairly uneventful, was nice having 20+ hours of windsheild time with a guy who I only knew through fencing & Neon Cactus nights prior to this. Joe and I have an added bonus of rooming with Purdue Alumnus, Mark who coaches up with Nads in Northern Indiana. Mark is great at telling a story, and if he doesn’t tell you himself, he’s a sabreist and he loves baseball.

They let us out at 5:30 tonight so we could study for our written exam tomorrow night. Idecided to break out some nice clothes since I never get the chance to change out of my work out clothes and managed to catch the eye of not one, but two lovely ladies. I’m excited, and there’s still 3+ days between now and Monday morning when life returns to normal… ish.

Lawrence Y’All!

Last week I mentioned a consultant by the name of Lawrence,
and that he’d be back this week. Well he did come back as promised on
Tuesday and stayed through today and we did some more trouble shooting.
If I didn’t know my way around the hardware last week I certainly know
it now. Tuesday was fun because I was learning, and we were narrowing
down the cause of problems. Wednesday was even better when we got to
the point where we could start solving the problems, and by lunch time,
Lawrence was dancing.

Yes, dancing just like I dance every time I write some sweet code or
kill a program bug. I think that’s what people like me do, we dance.
Lawrence must’ve been hesitant at first, because we started out with
high fives and variations on the concept. Then before I know it we’re
both stepping out a foot or two and shakin’ what our mother’s gave us.
I think the privacy of a lonely electrical room helped. It really is
quite the sight to see a skinny punk white boy next to a black guy in
his forties, both celebrating what most would consider a trivial
victory over technology. But it is fun and well deserved after the
effort we put in to get to that point.

Yes, blogging is back early

Monday a good person asked me to leave her behind and to move on with
my life. I told her I’d meet her request because it was the right thing
to do. I had done my hurting in the weeks prior, so Monday was more
getting over the reality of the situation. I didn’t want to post
because I didn’t feel I could write about anything in a positive light
for a while.

I packed up the things that reminded me of her and stored them in the
closet, that helped a lot. I also found a resolution that tied in both
logic and emotion so that finally my heart and brain could agree. I
won’t say I feel great now, but the ground is much more sturdy having
good hard answers in my hand that all make sense. Now I’m rambling and
being aloof, so if you want to know what I know, ask.

In the meantime I’ve got post ideas coming out my wazoo. It’s good to be back.

Why Taxes Are Important

I was driving down the road and I snapped a pic of a green exit sign
for "Needmore Road". I’d post the pic, but the sign is small, blurry,
and doesn’t really add anything to this post. Besides that, my plugin
won’t let me upload now for some reason. Anyway, the sign name is a
clear statement by the people that more roads are needed. Pay your
taxes, people need more roads.