Overdo Post

Sorry I haven't been on for a while. I've been trying to get on, but everything's been jerking me around lately, including me trying to get our home Internet running again. Most of this post was written a day or two back, but I've quickly gone over and edited it to be more time-appropriate. Please forgive me if I didn't catch everything. Where any significant portion of text needed to be added, I've put in “BREAKING NEWS!” in front of it.

Oh, hey, so you guys are probably worried about Mom, right? I told you guys about the Hep C and forgot to follow it up! Well, Mom's going to get treatment. She's got Type 1 Hepatitus C, which is the most common and easiest to treat. It's got a 51% cure rate for people who get treatment. There are three ways that this disease could go, if left untreated. One way is that it sets in after ten years, another is in thirty, and another takes so long, you'll never get symptoms, because old age will take you first. She doesn't have the ten year one, which means if this disease is going to become serious, she'll have to lose two coin flips. 50% chance the treatment doesn't work, and 50% it's the type that will effect her in her lifespan. They generally don't give treatment to people who don't have any symptoms, but since Mom has slightly elevated liver enzymes, they're going to treat her.

Some things I forgot to say about karate that were noteworthy. Firstly, emotional pain is still greater than physical pain. I figure if I can go through all this hardcore physical stuff and still come out all emotional, I'll have proven it's not unmacho to have feelings.

Also, while my rival did progress to yellow belt last month, and I didn't until this one, he hasn't got a stripe yet, which means we're both stripeless yellows. He progresses a lot faster than me, so I never had delusions that I'd be able to keep up with him forever, but I thought I could keep up until yellow belt, since, you know, I've been at this almost exactly twice as long as him. So, the question is, even if I didn't get my yellow before or at the same time as him, does it count as having kept up with him until yellow belt, if we both are yellow belts without stripes at the same time? I'm writing the rules, so I say yes, yes it does.

The new kata I'm learning for my belt is fun. My brother correctly noted that it's a series of superhero poses. Also, it's even more dance-like than my white belt kata. I could totally hit the dance floor with moves like these.

Another observation I made during grading, that I forgot to mention was, the guy at the highest level who was being graded had to do an advanced kata that was just a series of simple defensive positions. So why was it an advanced kata? Because the head sensei is allowed to beat the crap out of you while you do it, and you've got to finish it! The head sensei went up and punched him in the stomach repeatedly, kicked his legs, shoved him around, put him in pressure holds.

Duncan randomly told me today that I looked tough, and like I could take a punch to the stomach without reacting, so I told him to go ahead. I screamed and doubled over. Not tough enough yet, it seems.

Hey, did you know that the erogenous zone for each horoscope sign is also the part of the body that is best controlled by them? So that means I'm supposed to have good control of my stomach. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but the next day, in karate, we were taught grabs and counter-grabs, and the counter-grab for one of them was a BELLY BOUNCE! And nobody could get past ferocious gut! So, as far as I can tell, although I haven't exactly experimented, my erogenous zone is most definitely not my stomach, but I do have good control over it.

Mom went to see our family doctor two days ago, and asked her about my Katimavik forms. Remember how I did that follow-up call, which was a follow-up of my follow-up visit? And she said they'd get them to me in a week, and that was two weeks ago? Well, turns out, now she needs to know my weight, height and blood pressure, and I'm going to have to go in and get checked. The forms said I should get a meeting with my doctor ASAP, because it could potentially take weeks to get an appointment. Took me the standard three weeks for the appointment. I followed up a couple weeks after that, and then again a couple weeks after that, and again a couple weeks after that. That's like, two months, and I still don't have them.

BREAKING NEWS! Just went to get those things checked and they set up an appointment... for January 28th. If they get my forms to me that day, it will have been 14 weeks since I started making this attempt.

Regarding another thing that has taken far too long... We finally got our desktop back. It broke, took a couple months to fix, we got it back and it wasn't fixed, so we had to take it back again. It's been broken longer than it's been usable. Broken longer than this blog has been active. I remember like, my second blog post was about one week from it being fixed the first time. And this blog has over eighty posts, which means it's been AT LEAST eighty days. Now we have it back, but our Internet's busted.

BREAKING NEWS! We got our Internet up-and-running but the connection's as bad as it was before it shut down completely. Now we're thinking it's the modem that's causing it, whatever that means.