I'm up early

I get up early every Christmas that I can remember.  I've always been the first one up in the house, always.

When I was a kid I would be up at like 4am, I'd tip toe quietly downstairs and snatch my stocking from on top of the TV unit where we hung them and take it back up to my room to examine the booty that I had received.  That was the rule, I could open up my stocking whenever but we had to wait until mom was up to do presents.

The contents of my stocking were similar each year, candy..  jube jubes, willowcrisp, chocolate rosebuds, gum and then typically practical type items...  I don't really recall what those items were as a kid, as a teenager it would be like deodorant and razors and stuff.  But I'd sit in my room, eat some candy, look at the things.  then try to make myself go back to sleep to pass the time until it was actually reasonable to be awake.

It usually worked and I'd wake up at about 7ish.

That was not the end of the wait for the real presents though.  Because my mom had to be "ready".  So we'd all eat breakfast, watch TV (if there was anything on - we only got 3 channels when I was a kid).  It always seemed like an eternity, like mom was just finding things to delay with to make us wait.  Eventually mom would be ready and we' get to the presents.

I'm up now, being mature, and waiting for Amber even to open my stocking.  I realize that the joy of giving is seeing how much people like what you got them, I also realize that the stocking is clearly an invention of parents to delay the wake up time for them and occupy children in the early morning.

When Amber and I have our own children I intend to still be up early (like I have a choice really), my rugrats won't have to wait till I eat breakfast, and brush my teeth to open presents.  We'll get to the good stuff right away!

Everyone should get a 6am wakeup call on Christmas day.

I do what I can

A lot of people ask me to do things for them.  Some are trivial, some are important.  Unfortunately I can not do them all.

In general I have a hard time saying no to people, it's in my nature to help out, especially when all I would be giving up to help out is time, need a ride somewhere, especially when I am already out and about I'm usually good for doing that, need a hand with some homework, or notes posted?  I'm usually good for doing that too.  Those things are easy, and I enjoy doing them usually.  The common thing that those things share is that they are in my comfort zone, its easy to give someone a ride somewhere, it's easy to post notes online and such.

In school I decided I would only help those that help themselves.  I think that this decision has not only helped me in brushing off people that want to get somewhere with no effort, but it's also helped the people around me do their own hard work. At karate I will help everyone of course, it is my role there, those who are showing real effort to learn and grow, no matter their level are always going to get that little extra.

In life in general it's much harder.  If I did everything asked of me by everyone I would go insane.  Sometimes I agree to help people just so they stop bugging me, that is usually how I get tied up on the phone doing surveys and crap. I rarely flat out deny anyone, because I'm the type of guy that if I have the time I'll do whatever it is that is being asked of me.  Sometimes I delay a decision and feel crappy about it after, struggling to be okay with what I decided, or put off deciding.

I do what I can.

Injuries

You may not know it to look at me, but I have be injured so many times over my 31 years that it's amazing that I still am in working order.



The spots marked in red are sites of severe injuries, some of which were just downright nasty..  others come with a pretty good story.  I have of course had many of these injuries nag at me for a long time the most notable of which is my shoulder.

The shoulder injury

Back in 2006 I believe it was we were doing throws at Karate, and after some hip throws and such we moved on to sacrifice throws which look something like this:

Now, this might look pretty scary, and if you are unsure of what to do it would be, I however had no trouble with this until I began to tell my partner what a great job they were doing mid-flight.  And since my brain was thinking about words, it forgot to think about what had to happen to have me land safely on the floor.  So instead of doing a nice roll or break-fall, I came straight down on my shoulder.  The sound I heard was horrific!  I'm not sure if anyone else could hear it but it was sort of a wet crunching type sound.  Lovely it was, made all the better in that I had to spring up and pretend it didn't happen so as to not scar the kid I was working with for life.

The Knee

Each of my knees has been hurt, more than once.  But the best one was of course the sledding incident.  Growing up outside of Buckhorn we lived in the woods with a bit of a hill on one side of our house.  Part way down the driveway there was a bit of a natural path between the trees and this was an excellent spot to take the GT down the hill.

I was about 13 or 14 at the time I believe and a friend an I were out sledding that day. At this point I was a bit too big for the GT and my knees stuck out on either side.  I was hurtling down the hill when the front ski, the one that steers, lost contact with the snow.  Being unable to steer on a wooded hill is not the best thing that can happen, especially when your knees stick out.  My right knee caught a tree, turning all my forward momentum into a spinning motion.  I exploded off the sled, screaming in agony.  I'm sure I swore, and I'm sure that this was the only time I didn't get any trouble for it.  My knee swelled up to twice the size, full of blood.  I spent time on crutches, my doctor drew black blood (because it wasn't getting any oxygen) from the knee.  I was told to stay off it and rest...  I played hockey the next weekend.

The Nose
Anyone who knows me at karate knows that I've had my face kicked a couple of times, but that's not the good one.
We were building our first house, I was 7 I think and to pass the time and stay out of my dad's way I was riding my bike on our little turn around street.  I was weaving my bike back and fourth at a pretty good clip I assume, because when I hit the rock everything went pear-shaped. My bike stopped moving forward, I did not.  The front wheel and the attached handlebars work fantastically as a fulcrum, and I hit the ground face first.  I cupped my hands over my mouth and nose and ran up to the house and did what any kid does went they hurt themselves, I found my mom.  "What happened?!" she asked.  In reply I removed my hands from my face, a full two handfuls of blood spilling to the ground!  "I fell".  There was a trip to the hospital after that and I had huge black eyes for days.

I think that's enough for now...  More to come.

Let the break begin

Today is the first day off after the most stressful semester I have had at school so far since my return to academics.  I think I did pretty well all things considered.  I did have a few distractions from school this fall like getting married, earning my black belt, taking on extra work in tutoring at Fleming and the additional outside of class time work that the toddler program demanded.

I'm glad the semester is over, but I'm really happy that my main group of friends grew to include a new person this fall and that we all did really well, especially on the big 'real world' type of assignments.  I'm a bit sad that we won't all be together again next semester.  I'll miss coming to school and seeing everyone all week.  I'll miss the teachers too.  I think some folks create an 'us vs them' mentality when it comes to their teachers and look for as many faults as possible.  Don't get me wrong we had one teacher whose methods I could not stand at all!!  But by the end she was not so bad really.  I hope the folks in my class have host educators that they can get along with easily for their block placements.  Somehow I can envision a few of the girls not getting along just for the sake of creating drama, some people always have the mentality that life is out to get them.

I have so much nothing I want to do over the break, get out my guitar again and learn something new, I've been able to borrow my cousin's snowboarding stuff and I hope to try it out a few times, play some hockey, go to the gym and work, karate and of course to cap off my break is the cruise that Amber and I are going on.  I'm so excited for that! Eight days cruising around the eastern Caribbean and five places to visit, it should be fantastic!

I hope all my ECE ladies enjoy their break as much as I do!