lazy

for the last few days I’ve been stay­ing up too late, and that’s putting a seri­ous damper on the entire “get up early and swim.” So I’ve missed doing that the last two days. Hope­fully I’ll be back in swing or swim by tomorrow.

I just real­ized that I’ll be out of the area (if you count last week­end) for four straight week­ends. Last week­end we headed down to Corn­ing NY to visit with a friend to work out, more on that later… This week­end I’m going home to cel­e­brate my birth­day with family. Next week­end I’ll be in Cort­land for a Mar­tial Arts sem­i­nar with Dan Inasanto (one of Bruce Lee’s clos­est friends and who Bruce hand picked to take over for him). The week­end after that it’s up to Toronto for Film Fest. So for the next couple of weeks I’m going to be one busy boy.

As for that trip last week­end, I’ve been con­tin­u­ing the Mar­tial Arts research that I started at the Super Sum­mers Sem­i­nar. To have things make a bit more sense, here’s a short his­tory of the Mar­tial Arts. Basi­cally every­where has some type of indige­nous form of self defense/combat system. “Modern Mar­tial Arts”, if they can be called that, began in China, it’s ini­tial devel­op­ment influ­enced by a number of Indi­ans who were living in China. It even­tu­ally spread to Oki­nawa by sea trav­el­ers (yes that same Karate Kid Oki­nawa). From Oki­nawa it spread through­out Japan. The Arts also spread from China across the Asian Sub­con­ti­nent along trade lines. With each new local they mutated and were inte­grated into local fight­ing sys­tems. Each culture’s values, ideals and needs were inte­grated into their approach to mar­tial arts.

In the case of Japan the argu­ment can be made that cul­tur­ally they are much better at inno­va­tion than cre­ation. They are not nec­es­sar­ily as gifted as Amer­i­cans, for exam­ple, in the cre­ation of wholly new ideas (this is not meant to be a cul­tural slam as every­one has areas where they excel and areas where they do not). How­ever, when it comes to taking an idea and stream­lin­ing it or build­ing off of it, Japan leads the world. As a friend put it, forget the art, Japan’s all about busi­ness (which is a bit of an over­state­ment, but as a broad com­ment works).

Anyhoo, why does all of that mater? Well most tra­di­tional mar­tial arts are taught through the use of forms. Basi­cally any given form (or kata in Japan­ese styles) con­tains a subset of moves from the whole style. Their use in the form teaches stu­dents about both the moves and the over­all appli­ca­tion of the style. In many cases (includ­ing my own) stu­dents are given the forms to work and have to deci­pher them on their own. I study Chi­nese Mar­tial Arts. The Chi­nese tend to hide a lot of what mar­tial tech­niques do in subtle actions or artis­tic dis­play. So I’ve been beat­ing my head up against a number of forms for a number of years, look­ing for clues to unlock them. At Super Sum­mers, I found a key where I never expected.

I attended a sem­i­nar given by Sensei Kevin Jones, from Corn­ing, where we were taught a kata from Goshen Ryu Karate (one of the oldest forms of Oki­nawan Karate). As I was work­ing the form in the sem­i­nar I sud­denly have the huge real­iza­tion that the form incor­po­rated aspects of Tai Chi, Wing Chun, and other Chi­nese Mar­tial Arts (as these in turn were the basis for Goshen Ryu). But, because of the stream­lin­ing of the tech­niques by the Oki­nawans and Japan­ese, the appli­ca­tion of said tech­niques was much more obvi­ous. This was HUGE! I had found my Rosetta Stone. Look­ing at the Japan­ese inter­pre­ta­tion I was able to imme­di­ately see the appli­ca­tions of tech­niques whose mean­ing had been escap­ing me. In turn, under­stand­ing those tech­niques, lead to under­stand­ing of other aspects of the forms. Thank­fully, due to expo­sure to a number of other world-​class instruc­tors at the event, I was in the right mind­set to receive that info.

Since then I’ve been work­ing that kata as much as I can as to not to forget it. So, as I men­tioned ear­lier, last week­end my self and a few friends took a trip to Corn­ing to catch up with Sensi Jones, hang for a while, talk bad kung fu movies and work tech­nique. One thing I love about the Mar­tial Arts, and this is true of any hobby/passion, is the net­work of friends that it builds.

Any hoo that’s enough for now… I have to get back to work.

YMCA: Day 2

We’ll the morn­ing laps went much better today. I got through three laps each of freestyle and side. Breast on the other hand is a dif­fer­ent story. Boy, do my lats need work. Plus my tricked out right hip doesn’t help either (it’s angled off to the side a bit). I only got in one and a half laps. My goal is to work up to 10 laps in each. Tomor­row should be inter­est­ing as it will be my first pilates class. On the plus side, I also dis­cov­ered that my YMCA pass allows for 2 hours of free park­ing at any­time in the East Ave garage. Which will make it much easier to go to Java’s during the day (as well as the Y of course).

Tonight it’s off to see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back! More on that later… Snoochie Boochies!

she’s leav­ing home… bye, bye…

Di left today. She arrived in last night and we got the chance to see each other for a bit. We slept in this morn­ing. I left for work. She packed her things and headed off to Pittsburgh.

The apart­ment seems a lot bigger with her stuff gone and I real­ize that I’m strug­gling to under­stand the new friendship/relationship dynamic that we have. I know it will work itself out over time. We’ll see what things will be like when we see each other next (in mid October).

So, in the mean time I guess I’m back on the dating scene. So Alyson if you want to get together drop me an e-mail. ;-p

dear god I’ve gone girlie

I’ve also noticed that my blogs and some of my actions offline have been, well, rather “chick-like.” First there was the Alyson blog that was some­thing out of an issue of Tiger Beat. Then I blog about join­ing the YMCA and doing pilates. Then yes­ter­day in an E.A.T. Team (our employee activ­ity team) I sug­gested we do a spa day here at Kodak.com. It was around that time that I noticed the dis­turb­ing trend. So I decided to forgo my orig­i­nal post today on my new diet I’ve also choose to cut upcom­ing blogs on the fol­low­ing sub­jects:

• How I’m plan­ning to tighten my abs and butt

• Dreamy boy bands
• How Rosie is just misunderstood

In their place I’m plan­ning a series of blogs on manly sub­jects like:

• Lift­ing heavy things

• Sweat
• Meat (espe­cially Bar-B-Q’ed

famous face (my friends rock update)

Check out Julia’s Blog for a shot of her and Matt with a cer­tain Junior Sen­a­tor from NY.

young man, there’s no need to feel down

I went out and joined the YMCA yes­ter­day. Been plan­ning to do it for a while. It’s right down the street from me (in fact it’s directly between me and work). More impor­tantly, while I get a good work­out from mar­tial arts, my cardio/aerobic con­di­tion­ing is pretty poor right now and needs to be improved. Prob­lem: I hate to run. I mean I hate it. Bleh, never have liked it, never will. Swim­ming on the other hand, I enjoy. So the plan is to go swim­ming every other day at the Y (as we in the know say). Plus they have great facil­i­ties and offer Capo­e­ria (a Brazil­ian mar­tial art that resem­bles a dance), yoga and pilates classes (which are free with membership).

This morn­ing I went for my first swim. I dragged my sorry butt outta bed ’round 6.30, had a light break­fast, threw a bag together and headed out to the Y. As a bit of back­ground, I grew up on the water. By my last year of high school, I was living on a canal. Every summer week­day until I was 16 was spent at swim­ming and sail­ing lessons. I com­pleted the lifeguard-​training course (but never took the test). How­ever, since I moved to Rochester, I’ve spent very little time on the water. That being said, I think I’m prob­a­bly in the best shape I’ve ever been in. I eat very well and get a full body work­out a couple times a week. Or at least that’s what I thought… This morn­ing I con­fi­dently walked to the pool, plan­ning to get in at least five laps of each of the three major strokes (freestyle, side, breast). One freestyle lap later, out of breath and body aching, I decided it’s time to re-​evaluate my plan. I made it through 2 free style laps and decided it was time to shift stokes. Each stroke brings into play dif­fer­ent muscle groups (breast stroke, for exam­ple, works your lats more than the other strokes). Well, I didn’t real­ize how uncon­di­tioned I really am and after one lap of each of the remain­ing strokes I decided it was time to quit.

I’m not upset about the expe­ri­ence. The cool part was that I could really feel it work­ing muscle groups (which is what I need). Plus I have a goal to work to (like get­ting a solid two laps of each stroke in as a next step).

martha stew­art nude

Aaron’s blog has been get­ting traf­fic from web searches on “Martha Stew­ard Nude” (ugg… there’s a mental pic­ture I won’t be rid of any time soon). Any hoo, I was curi­ous to see where he popped up on Google. So I bravely plunked in “Martha Stew­art Nude.” Among the sites I got back was Odd Google a col­lec­tion of weird refers from Google to people’s blogs. Aaron, while Martha Stew­art Nude (there goes that pic­ture again) seems bad, read through the list ’cause you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. My per­sonal favorite is the 6th entry from the top on this page.

in other news my friends rock!

That says it all! Abby just returned from LA and brought me this cool Muppet’s post­card from Disney’s Cal­i­for­nia Adven­ture Theme Park. Plus she learned to surf while she was out there (which has been a long time dream of hers!)

Closer to home Julia once again met and talked briefly with both Sen­a­tor Hillary Clin­ton and Chuck Schumer. She and Matt also got a pic­ture snapped with the former first lady. (digres­sion: is it former “first lady?” I seem to think that is usu­ally the way the news refers to her and other first lady’s after their hus­bands leave office. Kinda sucks, I mean ex-​presidents are still referred to as pres­i­dents, but their wives have the titles pulled out from under them.) Any hoo, it’s good to know that friends are, for the most part run­ning Jamestown NY, and the sur­round­ing areas.

But most impor­tantly, about all my friends, they have all been very except­ing of my Alyson Han­ni­gan admis­sion. Well, all of them except Joel… but he’ll get his… he’ll get his… mu-​ha-​ha-​ha

ok, as it turns out I got my ques­tion­able terms wrong. I was reminded it wasn’t “Lust Friend” but rather “Lust Boy” or in my case “Lust Girl.”

Sadly I also was informed that my blog seemed rather… *sigh*… girly. There goes that macho image I’ve been work­ing so hard to foster.