Mizblog

I think I got Saranya’s cold. Irritated sinuses, congestion, and coughing. Feeling a bit miserable. Had to skip KM class tonight.

Saturday morning. Saranya had a sewing class so it was just me, driving in last minute, almost out of gas, scrambling for the bathroom, and paying for Saranya’s ongoing KM lessons.

I got paired up with Mike while Adam taught his first class. I didn’t know either guy, but I had seen Larry, Susan, Brian, and Brian before. Warm ups were not so bad, but both Mike and Brian were unable to jump because of their knees. I didn’t feel so bad about being gimpy compared to those guys.

For focus mitts I learned combo 5 – the liver punch finish. I need to work on that one. Also I need to work on holding my hook pad right in front of my face instead of out to the side. Nobody mentioned that I need to get my hands up in front of my face after a combo, so I might be getting better at that.

We also warmed up on all the level 1 chokes. 2 hand pluck from the front and back, 1 hand pluck from the front and the side. Head lock from the side. I was very very rusty.

Then we did basic gun from the front. New one on me. It seemed simple but I messed it up every single time in stress drill at the end. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After that we did overhand knife from the front (again) and then underhand knife from the front. They used to call it “Chinese Stab” but now they call it “what we used to call ‘Chinese Stab'”. That was harder but I did okay for my first time.

Finally, for stress drill, we did “Circle of Death” where one person goes in the middle and everyone else throws attacks on without a break, and the person in the middle has to defend as best they can. I forgot the choke from the side defense and I did the gun defenses wrong every damn time. Blah. But I kept my intensity and never quit. Survived the class and I’m not terribly sore or bruised up, as far as I can tell.

Found out they’re starting some daytime classes now. Tuesday 12:30pm is a Strikefit class, and Thursday 12:30pm is a KM ALL class (taught by AJ Draven himself). I might hit that one up…

My 4th Krav Maga class back went down this Saturday morning. There were lots of people invited to the classes to participate for publicity videos that AJ was having filmed. They were regular people. I liked them fine.

We had interesting rope-ladder warmup drills where we worked on footwork and took turns standing in line (big class!) so I feel the class size contributed to my sense of improving cardio. I wasn’t gassing out by the end of warmup.

Then we partnered up. I got paired last, with a girl. We did straight punches for what seemed forever, with a flurry drill that left me gassed by the end but I didn’t give up. We did round kicks and groin kicks, with the “Cheshire Cat” pad drill (or “Pendulum” drill, more traditionally) where the pad holder holds the pad at various angles and the kicker throws the appropriate kicks continuously. Exhausting!

For the defense technique, we did defense against a gun to the midsection from the side, in front of the arm. I may or may not have done that drill before, but it felt somewhat natural so maybe I did. I’m still kind of intimidated by guns. I view them with reverence and respect for their power and utility, and danger. Finally a defense technique that doesn’t hurt the defender (like the knife defenses we’d been doing the week before) but it sure bruises up the gun hand when you’re playing the attacker and having the gun twisted out of your hands repeatedly. If you do it right, you’re going to have a bruise between thumb and forefinger.

Saranya did her 3rd class (first with equipment and a belt) and I got to watch. The kids’ classes are way less intense than the adult classes, and Saranya’s home practice sometimes made her look like an expert in front of the other slacker goofy kids in the class. She learned 1-4 combos, groin kicks, and front choke pluck.

UPDATE: Four hours after the class, I’ve had a nap. My left knee feels really gimpy. When I try to straighten it, I feel pain on the outside of the joint.

UPDATE 2015-09-13: Knee feels better already, but sometimes goes “out” and has to be “popped” back in. This has been “normal” for years, but the discomfort of it being “out” feels worse now.

I signed up for a month of Krav Maga on Tuesday, and took a beginners’ class. Thursday morning and I’m quite sore. I’m banking on the prediction that the soreness will become more manageable the more I train. Maybe I can one day work my way up to taking 3 classes in a week!

In my Tuesday class we did punches, forward elbows, groin kicks, and 360 defenses. That was my 3rd class back, and my 3rd class in a row doing 360 blocks (first 2 were downward knife stab defenses). My wrists are darkening.

Saranya also started training Krav Maga this week. She should be passing me by in about a year, just because she’s able to recover more quickly and take more classes (3/week for her, half that for me so far.)

Today was the first time I’ve ever hosted a family Thanksgiving feast. It went better than I expected, except now that it’s over I’m exhausted, sore, and am coming down with the crud. Or, as some would call it, “The ‘itis”.

Quick recap of injuries I’m still trying to recover from: mid thoracic sprain, gout, plantar fasciitis, and a strained right quad. The real killer is the sprained back, which I think is the root cause of everything else bad that’s happening to me. It’s preventing me from doing regular exercise because it hurts when I breathe deeply. I’ve been doing physical therapy for the last month, but all they’ve managed to do for me is to make it hurt worse.

Bird Mite Infestation.

A friend of mine is currently battling a bird mite infestation. It’s a horrifying experience. The medical establishment is not well equipped to deal with such an infestation, and many doctors don’t even imagine that bird mites can live off of a human or a pet.

They can!

The CDC is investigating strains of drug-resistant bird mites growing in California. It’s truly frightening. Bird mites are tiny (up to 0.5mm) and translucent, making them almost impossible to see without magnification. They’re most active at night, burrowing into skin and invading the nose, mouth, sinuses, and even the urethra.

So don’t let birds nest anywhere near your house. When disposing of abandoned bird nests, wear gloves and long sleeves. A dusting of borax wouldn’t hurt either.

If you do find yourself host to bird mites, you’re in for a fight. They’re hard to kill, they infest everything around you, and they go nuts on you at night, making sleep difficult. You’ll have to clean everything every day, fumigate your house, treat your pets, shower twice per day, change your diet, and invest in a variety of exotic cleaning supplies just to manage the infestation.

There is no cure.

Don’t you feel itchy?

Well, it’s finally happened – my wife and daughter returned from Nepal after a 3 month vacation. They’re epically failing to adjust to the local daylight schedule, having slept through most of their first 3 days back. It seems there’s rarely an hour of daylight in which all of us are awake. The trip has turned my whole family into extreme night owls!

I just had the most stressful day I can remember since leaving the navy.

Yesterday we put in an offer on a house in Thousand Oaks. Nice neighborhood, clean house in good repair with an awesome floor plan. We underbid by $29k but I bet we could have gone lower. Anyway, we’ve got a clause in the offer stating that if the house appraises for under the offer price, we’ll buy it for the appraisal value. Nice, huh?

Anyway, Sangeeta’s been really nervous about the whole house buying process, and I hate to admit that it’s starting to affect me. I spent the day second guessing myself and wondering if I did right.

So I spent the morning scrambling to gather and send paperwork for loans and such. I was supposed to get it all in by 10:30am. I got the first wave in by then. Supplements followed until noon.

Then I found out that my domain name had expired. mizerai.com was off the Internet. Crap, something else to rush and fix.

Everett went on vacation today, leaving an experiment with a buggy program. Phil asked if someone could take a look and see about fixing it. Uh, yeah, I guess he meant me. That makes three concurrent projects, plus the real estate situation.

On the way to the lab I narrowly avoided two accidents. First, an old lady crashed her car into another car, then careened through a fire hydrant and into a wall/tree. Water was shooting higher than the buildings on the street. I was in the parking lot behind the wall.

Then at UCLA I pushed a pedestrian with my car. He was cutting in front of me so he wouldn’t have to walk all the way to the intersection/crosswalk to cross the street. Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t expecting that and didn’t see him until I had threatened to run him over. He warded off my bumper with his hands, and gave my mouthed apology a couple of over the shoulder dirty looks.

By this point, the adrenaline had gone sour in my blood, and I was shaky. I got to the lab and found out I’d be lunching by myself, and then heading over to a meeting by myself. Who would think that a business meeting with two attractive women would be stressful? Well, now I know. At least the meeting went well.

On the way to the meeting, Jerry called me from Krav Maga Worldwide about my introductory lesson scheduled for tonight. Well, my wrist is still giving me shocks of pain occasionally (hockey injury from last week), but Jerry said we could just tape it up if it was a problem. Oh, and I should wear something I wouldn’t mind getting sweaty. Great. My gym clothes were still at home. I left after the meeting.

Once home, it all crashed down on me. I canceled the lesson and just laid down for an hour. I’m now struggling to stay up until 9pm. I made it through okay but now I feel like I’ve been beaten down. Hope it’s not as hot tonight, so we can all get some good sleep!

“I never could get the hang of Thursdays.” — Arthur P. Dent

Does it really take 21 days to create a habit?

I’m cooking chili. Just got a call from my boss, telling me we just got 99.9% certain funding from the US Army for a medical training program. Almost ready to shampoo my living room carpet.

I think I’m finally starting to settle into the single life. It’s been really rough, since I’m used to having my adorable wife and daughter keeping me company all the time, but I’m adaptable and I’m adapting. Sure I’m still lonesome a lot, but I’m having an easier time dealing with it lately. At least until it gets dark and quiet, and the screen savers start showing me slideshows of family pictures…

Last night was my first and last D&D night in a very long time. Rob, Greg, and I headed out to Kagel Cyn. to hang out at John’s place and do some gaming. Traffic was awful, so Rob and I had plenty of time to talk on the way out.

At John’s place we got to see all the progress he’s made toward getting the place fixed up. He’s been living there for years, and his family has done a ton of work to take the building from a dilapidated piece of crap to a skeleton with furniture. It’s shaping up to be a really nice place, once they finish installing the fixtures like kitchen countertop and sink. Oh, and stair railings. It made me worry about Saranya falling down stairs, and she’s on the other side of the freakin’ planet.

D&D was fun but I wasn’t very into it. Rob wasn’t either, and he was DM. That lent a “yeah whatever” feel to the happenings. Maybe I’m getting too old for this shit. That’s an unhappy thought.

We got home by midnight. I crashed and got up this morning with the usual sinus congestion, but also with an ugly rotten feeling that I just can’t explain. I think it’s called “depression” and it seems a stretch to tie it to anything that’s going on in my life right now. Sure, my wife and daughter are going to be gone for at least 2 more weeks. Sure I’ve got a project deadline that falls just after they come back. Sure I’ve got an apartment that is not yet halfway cleaned even after 2 solid weeks of daily effort.

Hmm, now that I think about it, maybe all this stuff is just adding up to be overwhelming. Yesterday I felt fine, though. Today I feel like shit. Maybe it’s just one of those things.