Mizblog

On Wednesday, my dad was transported to the hospital. He was weak and swollen and confused. Matt was worried so he called me. Rob was in Las Vegas for his new job. I convinced Matt to call 911 and he did it.

Now my dad’s recovering in a hospital bed. I can’t get word from a doctor, and the nurses don’t seem to know anything beyond immediate care issues. Apparently he’s not in imminent danger.

Last night he called Matt and told him to pick him up at Mason and Victory. Matt panicked and told Sangeeta to come pick dad up, because he couldn’t. Sangeeta did a reality check and convinced Matt to call the hospital to see if he was still there. Well, turns out he was still at the hospital.

Note that every time Matt has to do something, he has to first be convinced to do it. He’s very reluctant to make any action decisions on his own. He passes all the stress on to me, amplified. I’m stressed, and it feels like my body has started to fall apart. I’m planning to do Krav Maga training later today, but I’m very afraid that parts of me are going to break.

Saranya tested out of Kumon level F (multiple operations on fractions and decimals)!

Now she starts on Kumon level G (Positive/negative numbers, exponents, Algebraic expressions, Single-Variable Equations with 1-4 steps).

I got to take Saranya to her orange belt test.

She passed. She passed me in only 6 months of training, and I started Krav Maga in 2009!

Her consolation to me was “don’t worry, dad – you’re old and fat.”

Tuesday morning class with Mark Morales. We worked on riding a turtle, tipping it over, and choking it out. At the end we practiced being a turtle and rolling the rider off.

I got a scrape on my left ankle at some point.

Then that night I was trying to show Saranya how to do a flying side kick and I re-aggravated my right calf. I’m too stupid to move.

While watching the LA Kings play the San Jose Sharks tonight, I was also stripping off the remains of the peeling laminate that covers my kitchen cabinets. It’s a weird black nylon/plastic covering that looks like it was mostly never glued on at all. The cabinets were purchased from Ikea and installed by the previous owner of the house, and they’ve been falling apart for some time. The doors and hardware are all very solid, but the covering of the fake wood keeps peeling and wrinkling and bubbling and looking awful. We visited Ikea to see if we could get them replaced, but not only do they not make them anymore, they no longer even have any of them left over to replace them with. Moreover, their new cabinet designs use a totally different set of measurements, so we’d have to replace all our counter tops if we wanted to swap out the existing cabinets for the new models. Nope.

So I decided that we should have them painted. Sangeeta knows a guy who does handy man work and he agreed to paint them all for $500.

He also installed a new faucet in the kitchen. The old one became so corroded that the swivel hinge at the base could no longer swivel, so turning the faucet from side to side forced the connector nut to loosen, and the whole thing began to wobble. The new one went in in about an hour and a half (including a trip to OSH to buy a hose adapter so the little connectors to the new faucet could mate with the big connector on the hot water valve under the sink) and it’s pretty sweet.

Anyway, I was stripping the nylon laminate while the Kings were losing 2-1 and time was running out. I didn’t want to watch the Kings lose, but they came back and surprised me by scoring the tying goal with 12 seconds left in the game. Then, with less than a minute left in overtime, Marian Gaborik lasers the puck past Martin Jones (former Kings backup goaltender) for the game winner. Had the Kings lost in regulation, San Jose would have pulled to within 6 points in the standings. Instead, the kings pulled a little farther away, opening their lead to 9 points in the Pacific Division. Sangeeta and I cheered so hard that we woke Saranya up. Oopsie. :)

EDIT: I forgot to mention that earlier in the game I had installed our new Epson printer. The old one died a mysterious death where it would simply error as soon as the power was turned on.

Woke up late! Barely had time to have my coffee before it was time to dress up and prepare for class. The girls had already gone. I got there in time to watch the end of Saranya’s class.

Saturday’s class was taught by TJ. He also had come to watch his kid in the KMx class, and he was not impressed. Saranya was pretty good. Looks like she had fun.

Anyway, warmups went fine. Shoulder tag went well. I was able to do very well against novices. I got a cramp in my right calf.

I met Andrew (Steve and Anna’s son) and we partnered up for the partner drills. Bursting in right cross then 1-2 combos while moving around. Front kick and 1-2. Then we did 360 defenses, then added a simultaneous punch, then worked it into overhand knife defense. It was a little different from the way I learned it last time, in that we controlled the wrist and pushed it back behind the attacker. It didn’t feel very secure. But we did put a lot more work into the disarm, which I had never really done before. Step back and extend the arm while putting the attacker off balance, then roll the wrist and either unroll the knife from the fist or (if the handle is sticking out) lever the knife from the hand. We finished with a stress drill where we stood with eyes closed and got to do either a front kick attack or a knife defense when someone approached us.

The family and I went out to test drive a new 2016 Chevrolet Camaro today. The Thousand Oaks dealership had two of them on the lot – both SS models with the V8 engine, and both with manual transmissions. It had been a while since I drove a manual shift, so I was apprehensive.

First we packed the girls into the back seat. That was rough. There isn’t a lot of back seat back there. Saranya had to sit behind me. Still, we all got in (including salesman Tom) and I fired it up, put it in gear, let out the clutch, and stalled. Oops.

After that, things got better. I was able to merge into traffic, shift up to 4th gear (out of 6 gears total) and finally got onto a freeway on-ramp. The car handled so solidly and smoothly! It was wonderful. I barely had to accelerate and I was speeding excessively. They’ve made the whole city into a 55mph zone. Ick. Anyway, I didn’t get a chance to try out how much power it actually puts down. It felt like rather a lot.

Visibility was poor, but I’m used to driving my 2004 Hyundai Tiburon so poor visibility is a regular thing. The Camaro wasn’t much worse. And it has a heads up display of speed, so you don’t have to take your eyes off the road to see how much you’re speeding. That was the biggest surprise of the test drive, seeing that number pop up on the windshield when I accelerated onto the freeway. It was very helpful.

Got the numbers on buying it, and it’s going to cost about $500/month more than my current car costs me to operate. That’s rather a lot.

Saranya tested for Krav Maga yellow belt and got skipped ahead to the yellow stripe level! She’s been doing really well and her instructors are always coming to me with compliments about how well she’s doing.

Loraine’s class. Started with jumping jacks and shadow boxing. Little bit of shoulder tag.

Focus mitts with some covering and rolling. Jammed my thumb at the very end.

Then we did knife defense, same as Saturday but slightly different technique. Kept the head hard to the forearm.

Didn’t get too sore. The last focus mitt strike I landed was a right cross, and it tweaked my thumb a little bit. The thing is still sensitive. I think I need new boxing gloves. The fasteners on the old ones are crap, and the padding seems to be leaving my thumbs very vulnerable.

I felt very fat. My fat is really forcing its way into my consciousness. I got to watch myself shadow box in the mirror, and it was not very pretty. Time to do something to get rid if it.

Saw Saranya’s yellow belt and certificate. She’s testing tomorrow!

We had our front door painted today. Had to keep it open all day long, letting in the critters. Still, it came out beautiful and shiny. I’m still getting used to it.