I made it to Peoria safely enough last night, but I was quickly warned that there was a giant snow creature of epic proportions descending upon 29 states.  It’s icy breath is set to lay waste to the entire Illinois River Valley, depositing 10 – 20 inches of snow. The roads weren’t bad on the […]

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Yesterday, after Kangeiko I noticed that my car was sitting at 99,999 miles right as I pulled into my buddy Paul’s driveway to drop him off.  A few blocks later, my car hit the 100,000 milestone (on Oak Street, if you must know).  My Saturn has been very reliable to me since I bought it […]

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Today was the last day of Kangeiko, which always brings equal parts optimism and complaining about creaky joints and muscles.  After warmups, we headed right into combinations.  Today, it was sanbon-zuki (three punches) done up and down the floor.  After that, Sensei had us perform a shuffle step with a front leg front kick.  First, […]

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Today was another crowded Kangeiko morning. I began my driving duties this morning, we arrived around 15 minutes early, which is just about perfect. Class got off to the normal start of warmups, this is the point in the week where things begin aching or tightening up entirely on their own.  Basics consisted of a […]

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This morning’s Kangeiko workout went very well.  It was warmups, followed by basics.  Sensei Yaguchi focused on elbow strikes; our basic combination consisted of sliding in with an upward elbow strike with the lead arm, following by a chest level elbow strike with the rear hand.  From there, we stepped forward drawing the arm across […]

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This morning I awoke at 5:00 am to get ready for Kangeiko, Day 2.  I was downstairs around 5:15 am, expecting my buddy Paul to pick me up around 5:20 am.  By the time 5:30 rolled around, I was wondering why he was running late.  I texted him, and about ten minutes later I called […]

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Today was the first workout of our Kangeiko spirit training week.  Morning came for me at 4:30 am, and after a relatively uneventful drive to the dojo the workout began.  It was packed in there, probably around 50 people in a room not much bigger than the Pekin dojo.  Everything is made logistically more difficult […]

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Tomorrow morning begins the annual Kangeiko (spirit training) at the Denver dojo.  This event consists of early morning training (traditionally in the dead of winter) to rededicate one to a year of strong karate, and let me tell you: I NEED IT.  The training comes on the backside of a truly hellish few weeks at […]

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Today I had to replace the headlights in my Saturn.  One of them burned out, and as we checked them it seemed that they had all accumulated some gross stuff on the inside of the bulbs.  Since I was changing one anyway, I just picked up replacements for all of them and got them all […]

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Tonight was only a mildly late night at the office, followed by a nice night of getting caught up on American Idol.  I really like Steven Tyler as a new judge, he’s funny and seems to genuinely enjoy the good contestants.  Now I’m getting online to finish up a few unit tests in order to […]

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