Woody Cavenaugh

Mario from over at Of Gods and Goblins came up with a pirate flag that represented him best.

So I made one for me:

By special request I even made one for the club's official Plunder Bunny to her specifications:

Posted by at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Ten or so years ago I had the need to don psycho repellent. I traded vanity for gluttony, added 120 pounds, grew a beard and long hair. A couple of years ago I gave my hair to charity. Recently it occured to me that as well as the psycho repellent worked, (toowell some would argue) I don't need it anymore. Thus, I am trading gluttony back in for some proper vanity, I am 40 pounds into the 120, and the beard is just going to have to go.

Thing is, Sara has never seen me without a beard. That could make April a very interresting month.

If I look half this good I'm going to have to take vacation time in front of the mirror.

If I discover that I'm not to die for under the fuzz, I'll just have to take some vacation time to get sloshed while I grow the beard back.

Posted by at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

As predicted 200 fencers decended on an unsuspecting Burlington YMCA and the winners of their respective events are truly the best that NC has to offer and I didn't get to see any of it.

My job at this event was to manage entrants, and run the event. Project Management to the rescue right? First, if any of you have ever been involved with any activity, especially with parents involved you know how interesting things can get. I had all of that in spades.

"The schedule says that Under 16 Women's Foil was supposed to start at 8:30. It is now 11am and they have not started yet. I just wanted you to know that I am complaining to the USFA and the Division about this."

My reply, "Good morning to you! Here's our situation, four events were scheduled for 8:30am, two large ones and two small ones. We finally got the two big events up and running, and much to our surprise they are using twelve out of a possible twelve strips. Currently we are at 100% capacity in strips and referees. As soon as the pools are finished and we can start direct eliminiation in those events, we should be able to get a strip or two back to start your child's event. What we learned from this is next year we should make pre-registration manditory so we know in advance exactly how many fencers we are going to have for each event. This way we can tell you for sure when you come in at 7:15am that you aren't fencing until later in the morning."

It was like that all Saturday. Mistakes were made, and several of them were mine. When you have 200 people that are all going to want to check in with you at 7:15am you can't try to run things like you would in a small tournament. Ooops. Sunday was much better thanks to lessons learned and 5 hours of fitful sleep dreaming every possible senerio for the registration desk until one came up that was the most efficient.

Day one, the building opened at 7am and we didn't leave until 10pm.
Day two, the building opened at 7am and we didn't leave until 9:40.

My lessons learned:
0. Divisionals should take place over 2 weekends. Perhaps we could do the Opens on one weekend and the Junior, Cadet and Team events on another.
1. Pre-registration must be manditory.
2. Pre-registration ends on the Thursday before the tournament.
3. Check in will be staggered. If your event's scheduled check in time ends at 11am, I don't want to see you before 10am.
4. All fencer's ratings come off of the USFA report. If it says unrated and you claim you are a "C" tough.
5. If the USFA report says you are a South Carolina Fencer you WILL NOT fence in this event.
6. A white board will be posted with updated estimated start times.
7. Said white board will be 50 feet away from the registration area.
8. When the fencers check in they will show their USFA card, they will:

• Pay for all events they plan to fence.
  
• Sign a waiver.
  
• Show their USFA card again to me and they will tell me what event they are checking in for. (If they are fencing in six events they will repeat this step six times over the course of the weekend.)
  
• Go away.
  
• Get their gear inspected at the armory.
  

If these things happen, the event will run much smoother and everyone will be much happier, parents, fencers, the division officers, and me.

In the relm of the good stuff, we had about 20 fencers from our club compete and most of them qualified to compete in Division II/III summer nationals being held this year in Atlanta Georga. This makes me very happy. In fact only four of my fencers have reported that they were disappointed in their outcomes. In every case, we both knew exactly why they did not perform as well as they hoped.

Posted by at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

See the best fencing North Carolina has to offer this weekend at the Alamance County Community YMCA as over 200 North Carolina Fencers decend on the poor unsuspecting town of Burlington.

Fencing will begin at 9am on both days and will likely continue through the early evening both days. As always admission for spectators is free and highly encouraged.

24 of our fencers will be competing, and our coaching staff will have their hands full trying to keep up with them all.

Posted by at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My wife sent me this earlier today and it was just so good I had to share. For some time I have been really cynical about the different and conflicting nutritional information available out there. Much of it from supposedly respectible places like The American Heart Association. I always suspected it was all crap, and now I know it is all crap.

The only meaningful advice in the world is:
1. Eat a variety of foods.
2. Don't eat a lot of food.
3. Exercise.

Follow those three things and 80% of the world's overweight population could right itself.

Posted by at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For some time I have been trying to think of some way to be a Carolina-Cardinal superfan in honor of my dear sweet wife who opted to join the team and beat the p-mortal stuffing out of others from the front line. Since she is being called Tank by her teammates I first had this vision in red of a football helmet modified to resemble a military tank. The problem was making the gun make firing noises without endangering myself or others, or breaking any possible law's.

I was wrong. That isn't the way I want to go at all. My problem was that I wasn't taking into account that I teach Fencing at The Downtown Fencing Club. Once I put one and one together it became so obvious what I must do.

I shall be the first of the Cardinal's Guards. I ask you, what could be more perfect?
1. Red? Check!
2. Related to Cardinal? Check!
3. Related to Fencing? Check!
4. Able to allow others to join in the fun? Check!

Best of all, I have talented friends who can help me pull it all together, and likely join in the fun! What can't be made can be bought or borrowed.

Life is good. All I have to do is get it ready for the first home preseason game April 15th.

Posted by at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It finally arrived, and now I am the proud owner of an entry model fiddle. I even got a DVD to learn with. In the first five minutes of the DVD I learned that the DVD is not a substitute for professional training. I also learned that I need to buy a tuner, and some tuner-loc.

I think that with my taste in music the fiddle is the obvious choice. Fiddle is heavily used by They Might Be Giants. I think I first considered fiddle back in the 80's thanks in no small part to the stylings of Dexy's Midnight Runners. Celtic Rock favorites Seven Nations, and the Young Dubliners. My favorite band,, well...my OTHER favorite band uses the fiddle heavily. Great Big Sea plays music traditional to Newfoundland Canada. Of course, you can hardly have bluegrass without fiddle.

My first goal is to pick out "Come on Eileen", and "Istanbol (not Constantinople)". My second goal is to really learn some of those amazing old tunes that Great Big Sea has brought back to the surface. As rich and as interesting as the music this is I'm betting that the traditional songs of North Carolina will also be both fun to learn and fun to play.

But first, I have to survive that terrible period of time where I can only make squawking noises that all manage to hit the "kill my husband" button on my wife. I can only hope I am a quick study, and a fast runner.
Wish me luck

Posted by at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I am going to say that the single event that kicked off the series of events I will call a "lifestyle change" was Sara signing on with the Carolina Cardinals. It doesn't seem like something she is doing would cause so much havoc in my life, but I can see no other prime motivator for it.

Saturday I sat down and watched the second half of the Boston College VS Carolina game. Worse yet I enjoyed it. Not the part about Carolina losing, the sport. The activity had meaning all of the sudden. Then on Sunday I actually made a point to watch the entire Boston College VS Duke game. Ewwww....ballsports.... I know I should be feeling all icky and stuff and I don't, and personally that freaks me out.

Again I have to blame this on Sara. Had she not gotten involved in good wholesome gridiron action, I could have grown old and died happily not liking ballsports. Its focuses on a ball, and two teams fight over it. All ballsports are the same. Yet, here I am looking forward to watching her games, and I actually sat on the edge of my seat during both ACC games over the weekend.

Add to this, looking in the mirror recently I started honestly thinking about shaving my beard off. I haven't done it yet. I know that planets will have to align, as it were, for me to make this move but it is moving to the forefront of my thoughts and I just don't know what to make of it.

That and the whole starting to compete in fencing thing I can't seem to shake.

It is worrisome. If this were a PAX movie, I'd expect my doctor to be calling any minute to let me know my days on the earth were short or something.

Cleanshaven? Ballsports? I need a drink.

Posted by at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some of my friends and I, part by plan part by coincidence, ended up getting married one year and one week apart. In fact a couple of us even celebrate birthdays within a couple of weeks of each other. I am pretty sure that was a coincidence.

So about the same time of year our conversations turn to anniversary gifts.
"I got her flowers and I am sending her to the spa." says one,
"I am taking mine to dinner and a movie" says another.
"I bought her a pedometer, a couple of dumbbells, and a football" says I.

Always the other side of the conversation takes place too:
"My wife got me a card and took me to dinner." says one
"My wife got me a game and a part for my computer." says another
"My wife did the same this year she did last year." says me.
"Nothing again huh? Sorry dude." says they.

Of course, the other guys don't have a professional football player for a wife either. That makes up for any gift giving disorders I might encounter. (Plus when she does get around to thinking about buying a gift, I usually get a whole years worth of loot at once.)

This really happened:
Yesterday morning she's sitting on the couch, the stereo is on music is playing and one of our cats climbs up on the arm of the couch and starts clawing it. Sara in her "authoritiarian" voice shouts "STOP IT!" The cat stopped instantly. The stereo went immediatly silent. The electricity in the whole house actually and literally stopped flowing. Sara gets an slightly annoyed look on her face and in the same voice shouts to the house and stereo, Not You! The electricity came right back on. Though I had to press play on the CD player.

Some think of my lovely wife as "Heavy Duty". Yeah, you could say that.

A few minutes ago she was sitting in her office. It is a pretty day so her window was open. In this particular building the windows don't slide up, but pull in. As she is sitting here, she hears a *THUMP* against the glass. She turns around and there is a bird laying on her floor. She picks it up and is looking at it as another person walks in to find out what the bang was about. The bird which was limp in her hand suddenly regains consiousness. But is disorientated so it can't fly off. She talks to it, calms it down and takes it outside where they talk, just she and the bird-mostly about the weather I suspect. After about ten minutes outside with the bird sitting in her hand, it got itself together enough to fly off, and did.

Well, yeah I guess you could say I was bragging....

Posted by at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is my own opinion and I have been known to be wrong on occasion. Fred Phelps is way older than me, so baring divine intervention it is fair to say that he will kick the bucket before I. This being said, when my day comes and I get to hell, I will see Fred Phelps and he will have a very shocked and surprised expression on his face. Most of the world eats from the Christian buffet, I feel he and his stick to the old testimate section doling out heapling spoonfulls of crazy onto their plates.

I believe that most, even on high, might agree with me that going to the funerals of fallen soldiers to celebrate their deaths as the hand of god striking down the wicked is a not good act. Not even a little. First off, if Mr. Phelps wants to rub it in the faces of the fallen, he's missed his chance. He needs to be in Iraq just as the IUD explodes to mock the dying. Once they are dead the only people getting the message are the parents of the dead, and they are innocent of the "sin".

His whole campain seems to miss his own point. He seems to be saying that he is revolting against the US Government for not stoning the homosexuals. Has anyone seen him cast any actual stones? If he's in America fighting a revolution against the American government, isn't he a terrorist? Isn't he using the act of desecrating Military funerals to strike fear (and loathing) in the hearts of all Americans? Isn't that how they define "terrorism" these days?

At least The Patriot Guard exist to oppose him. The world needs hero's and like in the comic books, they also wear leather.

Posted by at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

First off, while I wasn't thrilled that Sprint just tossed us over to Trinsic without so much as a "be seeing you", I have to say I am VERY pleased with the service. When I got home last night not only did we have dial tone, we didn't have someone sharing it with us. That is a huge improvement over the past several days. (Just got off the phone with their customer service letting us know they did have to make a repair.)

That said, high speed internet means little to me in a place where I can't even get consistant reliable land line phone service, cable TV, DSL, or delievery pizza. You know, my cell phone only started to get signal at my house in the past six months or so. The first time my cell phone rung while I was at home I was sure it was spirits from beyond calling me with dire warning. (Turned out it was a fencer reporting on his tournament results.)

However, for the rest of you, I realize it is important and for some of you at this point it must feel like a right given from on high. This blog is for you. My good friend Rob wrote a very good article about how every American who thinks they have high speed internet access at home is just fooling themselves.

Check it out. Are you really getting what you are paying for?

Posted by at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It keeps happening, again and again. We pick up the phone and someone else is already using it. We try to strike up a conversation with them and they hang up. We notice the phone is in use, we pick it up and they are annoyed at us. It has gotten to the point where if they are on the phone I sing to them, badly, on purpose just to annoy them. Sometimes they just hold down a key on the phone to answer back. Tonight, I will be reading from the Monty Python All The Words book. I'm starting with The Lumberjack Song. With feeling.

Why does this sort of thing always seem to happen to us? Are we the only people in that junction box who have a land line? I have called the phone company so if the trend holds we will have no dial tone soon. Then I call back and we go back and forth for a week or so and then we get our phone back, and we're charged for the privilage.

Posted by at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I love this time of year, as the days get warmer and the sleeves get shorter, some UNCG student's thoughts turn towards campus politics. The goal of student politics of course is not to hold power but to draw attention away from it. It is really a cute way of making students think they have power. They don't of course, but instead they get trained in how politics works in the real world. I suppose it is like in the military training without ammunition.

What makes this time of year so much fun is the campaining, the signs, the fliers, the meetings, the wild promisses for things that they couldn't deliever even if they wanted to. Every year just about every candidate says that they will fight to lower tuition and fees. That's like Bush claiming he can bring world peace to the middle east. That's like me saying I am going to change the shade of the color of Mr. Sun. There are forces in this universe that are outside of your control. Happieness comes from identifying those and accepting the situation for what it is. For me, I like Mr. Sun just the way he is.

I only wish I knew of some student candidate websites I could link here. It is interesting to see what is important to them, and what they think they have control over. Better still would be if I had a digital camera that I could take pictures of the campain posters and fliers. It is really an interesting exercise.

Posted by at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Generally I understand that everyone has one of those days where events turn them into demons behind the wheel. They flip you off, cut you off, stop in the middle of the road for no apparent reason or even speed. I can forgive these people easily, so long as they don't make a habit of it anyway.

Today I had the misfortune of being in the way of a guy who gets no quarter. In my humble and unsolicited opinion the driver of this truck is a grade "A" jackass, and I don't use that word lightly. I have a whole slew of four letter words that I keep around for using lightly. The moron in the maroon and black mid 90's GMC pickup truck with the bed cover and the license plate number TWJ-3847 was so daffy duck behind that my wife felt it was necessary to call him in. This while everyone around us are snapping camera phone pictures of him. What could a guy do to possibly get my ire this far up?

1. Passing (me) in a no passing zone...
2. During school zone speed zone hours....
3. In a school zone!!
This happened this morning in front of the Brown Summiit Monticello elementary school on HIghway 150 at around 7:45am.
Then just to make absolutely sure that everyone noticed him, upon reaching the 150/29 interchange the asshat drives around vehicles patiently waiting their turn to make their turns, while others are turning onto 150.

Upon hitting 29 himself, he stands on the gas and fades into the distance noticable only by the taillights of the people he cut off to get ahead of them.

Now, I am not heartless in this matter. What if he was a volunteer fireman rushing to help someone in need? Oh wait, they have lights for their vehicles, and when they don't they use their hazard flashers. Well, maybe this guy was rushing to the hospital where some loved one was being treated in the emergency room for some horrible accident. Again, if the guy had been using his emergency flashers, the rest of us would have probably worked to get out of his way. That isn't an invitation to turn on your flashers and play "Streets of San Francisco", or "Dukes of Hazard." However, if you have a real emergency, you have a real method of letting the commuters around you know.

Rant off.

Posted by at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)