First Post

Contemplated setting this up for a while now. Finally got around to doing so. First post will be long-ish, as I have several recent events to catch up on.

General status of life: Pretty good. I'm tired (as always). Had my circadian schedule flip-flopped on me a couple times recently. I can handle this short term just fine, but when it happens week after week, I just start craving sleep. I've been able to sleep whenever I wanted since getting back from Brazil, but this takes it to extremes.

Bo's started taking a daily (at least) walk down to the pond. It's a good several hundred feet horizontally, and 20-30 vertically. This wouldn't be so bad, except that the trail's rather overgrown, and I haven't taken the time recently to bushwhack it again. Once he gets down there, he loves to squat on the shore and throw rocks into the pond. The pond is about 60' x 20', and 3-8' deep (never measured center). It's mostly full of decomposing leaves (one of these days we'll get some goldfish, plocoscomai, and other scum-sucking bottom dwellers down there to clean it up) so the dogs can walk around in it for the most part.


Speaking of the dogs, we live on the edge of a highway (2 lane, not insanely busy, but frequent traffic), and I had to go out yesterday and clean up after the dogs again. They love to drag roadkill (or predator kill from the hollows) up by the house, and gnaw on it for a while. I'm fine with this for the most part (it makes feeding them cheaper), but every couple weeks I start thinking how redneck having all the bones around looks), and collect it all for the garbage. This week I found several deer horns, assorted bones, large and small turtle shells, several armadillo shells, and the recent remains of something with 6" feathers.


Martial Arts: Recently attended a seminar by Joseph Chen (Chen Zhonghua), a very skilled instructor of Chen-style Taiji (look him up on youtube, or his site, chenzhonghua.org, it's worth it). I've been doing taiji for about 3 years now, and am just starting to see where it goes from here. Very interesting fun stuff. Also been acting as a substitute instructor in the 5 way (to be described in a future post) when the grandmaster's out.

Music: My dear wife recently allowed me to upgrade my fiddle. I spent some time with Jay Young (from Wullfenstejn Hardanger Fiddle and Mandolin works in Provo, UT) determining what I wanted (good instrument, relatively low cost, etc) and he put together what he calls a 10 string violetta. It's a combination violin/viola (has the range of both), but with the sympathy strings of a hardanger / viola d'amoure. He took apart an older Roth viola (15") , redid the neck, carved a beautiful dragon head for the scrollwork, and put it together. I got it about 3 weeks ago, and it is simply amazing.
















Other stuff: Trust me there's more, but I'm too tired to think about it just now. I'll update later this week.