Woody Cavenaugh

Now available in a webpage. I found about this through UNCG's faculty and staff newsletter "Campus Weekly", which landed on my desk a half hour ago.

From their website:
"Greensboro VOICES provides access to a growing collection of oral interviews housed in the Greensboro Public Library and in the University Libraries of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The recordings, collected over the past thirty years, provide a rich resource for historical research concerning the Civil Rights Movement in the Greensboro area. The project will digitize audio recordings and transcripts of over 100 interviews collected by UNCG and the Greensboro Public Library."

I can't help but think this will be a fascinating resource for future generations who want to hear about Civil Rights events in Greensboro strait from the mouths of the folks who made it happen.

Posted by at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Perhaps it has to do with watching two seasons of Titus on DVD recently. But I have found myself recently noting just how complimentary Sara is to me. For instance:

I like shopping.
She hates spending money.
We will never go broke.

I love eating.
She hates cooking.
I am encouraged to create.

I'm a recovering dog person.
She's a recovering cat person.
We have a lot of pet hair.

She wears my t-shirts.
I wear her t-shirts.
We save money on t-shirts.

I've been known to be in a bad mood once in a while.
She has been known to be in a good mood once in a while.
We are never in a bad mood at the same time.

I've been known to put my foot in my mouth a little too often.
She's been known to stick my foot in my mouth to shut me up a lot.
Sara calls me out whenever I am a jerk.

She doesn't like to drive.
I excel in driving.
She is driven.

I never got around to graduating from college.
She got her associate degree, undergraduate degree, teaching certification, masters, and now she's working toward her PMP.
She finishes what she starts.

I have a tendancy to be an emotional eater.
She makes sure I don't eat the whole bucket of chicken. (No matter how much I cry.)
She cares about my health.

My mother has always been worried I would do something to get me on the six O'clock news.
Sara would kill me long before the lenslingers arrived.
She keeps me out of trouble.

I fence as a way to keep fit.
Sara plays football as a way to keep fit.
She's a badass.

I walk to keep fit.
Sara gets dropped off at the door of the building so I can walk across campus at my own pace after I finally find a parking place.
She finds creative ways to encourage me to keep fit.

Did I mention I have a tendency to put my foot in my mouth?
Sara tends to never forget when I put my foot in my mouth.
Sara doesn't want me to hurt others by talking without thinking.

I forget things.
Sara forgets NOTHING.
There are no bad surprises.

I use 1/4 of a king sized bed.
Sara uses 3/4 of a king sized bed.
We are always close.

I write blog entries.
Sara writes full length movie scripts.
She could make money from her words.

You know, its kind of weird. I am suddenly reminded of a poem by Stephen Crane called "A Man Feared" It's short so I'll place it below.

A Man Feared

A man feared that he might find an assassin;
Another that he might find a victim.
One was more wise than the other.

Stephen Crane

Maybe I've watched a little TOO much Titus. Either way. Sara is perfect for me and I'd be lost, lonely, broke, homeless, hungry and directionless without her. Thank you honey, if anyone ever shoots at you, I'll take that bullet for you. I owe you that much and more. HEY! No funny ideas about shooting at her either!

Posted by at 3:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

There is flooding in the Haw though I couldn't get close enough to see how bad it was. There is a rather steep hill down to the bank from my back porch and I couldn't get past the mental image of doing a Michael Douglas ala Romancing The Stone minus landing face first in Cathline Turner's lap at the bottom. Add instead landing face first in a whole mess of copper headed water rattlers on their way to higher ground. Fear is a powerful demotivator.

Due to some interesting topography, my 500 year flood plane is about 10 feet from the bank on my side, and 150 yards out on the other side. The last time we had a flood it looked like this, (in October of 2003):

Click the image for the full sized version. That was the view from my back deck.

At any rate I'm feeling the urge to hoist the sail on the Fairlane and engage in some misbehavior of the river pirate kind. Arr!

Oh they steal from the rich and they give to the poor
Sighted on the city council and gave them what for
Our motives and methods are hard to explain
The pirates of Reidsville the ship called Fairlane

*sigh* I guess I should patch the sky lights, and the porch roof first though. Whatever happened to "we rape we pillage" anyway?

Posted by at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok, maybe not specifically your pleasure. Everyone likes something different and that's true if you are the user, admirerer, or owner. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I'm talking about America's average bra size. You think I kid? Time Magazine says so, and that's good enough for me. They're not always accurate, but they are within acceptible tollerance. Plus my own eyes give me ancidotal evidence. Basically America went from a 34B to a 36C.

It should be noted that we're talking about bra sizes and not what fills them. That's another entry I haven't worked up the courage to hit publish on yet. By the way, any other bloggers out there write stuff they just can't click "publish" on? There are probably several reasons working in concert for this sudden "growth". I am sure part of it is the fast food lifestyle, we're all packing on the pounds and the ladies have a garmet designed to support some of them. Also, it's hard to get good advice about something that is so often considered an "unmentionable". So maybe because of Oprah, maybe because of the internet, whatever reason, women are becomming more willing to talk about their boob slings using scientific method to come up with a proper good fit.

Me, I'm not there yet. Yes, there have been times I have really wanted to walk up to the stranger on the street and politely mention that her bra doesn't fit so she has the quad boob thing happening. Rarely, but occasionally I witness empty bra syndrom where due to its not being filled one cup colapses. Talk about sunken chest! But I will never approach these women. One, I am shy about that stuff, and two not even my own wife will tell me when my zipper's fallen down on the job. At least in your case you can see your own fit or lack there of in the mirror. Men's rooms aren't famous for the full length mirrors required for us to notice our zipper's down fall.

So to summerize, I am in support of the bra boom. Like batteries they are engineered in different specific sizes for different specific needs even though most of them deliver the same voltage. Lifted, separated, and equal to all others.

Posted by at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Forgive me readers for I have sinned. It isn't often I consider confession. My wife was out of town. My buddy's wife was out of town. We were hanging out at his house having pleasant conversation when it happened. It was sudden and it was passionate, it was amazing. I don't know what I am more ashamed of, the fact that it happened or the fact that I enjoyed it so much.

He treated me to Leblon. The only way I could tell I wasn't in heaven was that the never ending parade of meat on a stick was served by men with sashes around their waist and not bare breasted women. When I was in my teens there was this girl and I remember thinking that life couldn't possibly feel any better than it did right then. That was the honest truth until I put to my lips the first intoxicating bite of sheer bliss.

I had butterflies in my stomach, my hands were trembling, my heart was pounding, I was flush, if you've ever experienced anything better than Lablon do not share it with me, that would be bragging, and extremely unkind. I don't know how long we were there, time stopped existing, an empty plate stopped existing, I was consumed by wild passionate flavors.

Even now a day after my transgression, I am flush and sweating with the memory. I can still taste the garlic on my lips.

A friend who would probably prefer to remain nameless once said that he felt like back in his dating days his dates seemed to order from the menu based entirely on what they thought he would expect from them in return. Most ordered the cheapest meal and he always wondered why. This surpassed even the surf and turf.

Sara can never know. One, she has previously forbidden me to ever go for fear that this would happen. Two...it feels too much like I had an affair. Is it possible to have a mealgasm?

If so I had multilples.

Posted by at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Starvation is an exageration of course. I'm just making a lifestyle change to avoid eating whole fried chickens as a meal. But in watching and tracking what I eat and making choices that optimize maximum effect, some of my meals end up being small and uninteresting. Food is becomming fuel and not a pastime, which is as it should be, but may run counter to my dearly departed grandfather's wisdom. "What you get out of life is what you eat." I am also taking supplements that help cover the spots where I might not be getting enough stuff.

Those supplements done correctly can make up for a lack of passtime and pleasure with food.

For instance, for lunch I had a smallish meal that featured a boiled egg. Early afternoon, I take my suppliments.

Mid afternoon, little belch no doubt caused by the egg, so quiet no one would hear. Wow, lunch sure was delicious. Mmmmmm....grilled garlic salmon steak....
Wait? What??? Why do I taste gormet food?
Oh! Right! Two garlic tablets and three fish oil softgels.

Dietarily speaking Its like cheating on my wife with a swimsuit model.
All the excitement none of the substance. What's even better is there is no guilt, and I don't get my butt kicked when my wife finds out. Also, I can actually get fish oil, and garlic! I wonder if there is a basel supliment, and a beef oil softgel? If you are going to sin, sin big. :)

Posted by at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sunday morning I dropped Sara off at the train station so she could spend a few days in Virginia getting educated at a project management conference. This is a good thing. I want her to do well, when she does well, she gets paid more, when she gets paid more, I get toys. This trip however is very poorly timed.

Sara has over the years learned to lower her expectations towards me. If she were to produce the average woman's "honey do" list, that list would now require the sort of shelf space our Encyclopedia Brittanica currently collects dust on.

That said, I would like to accomplish at least some small thing so that when she comes back it wouldn't look exactly the same as when she left. The problem is she comes back on Friday, I had a fencing camp Sunday so I wasn't home until the evening. I've been working all week and teaching fencing on Monday and Wednesday nights. I managed to do dishes and take out the trash on Tuesday, so today, besides the sink full of dirty dishes and the overflowing trash can, I still have all of the other task I would really like to see done waiting for me. If I skip working out today and head strait home today, I'll have four hours to do something. I am not sure what that something should be.

I could sandblast the green stuff out of the bottom of the toilet.
I could pressure wash the carpets and furniture.
I could steam clean the bathroom sink and countertop.
I could replace the grout from the last time I steam cleaned the bathroom sink and countertop.
I could probably clean a counter.
I could try to clean the coffee table.
I could shovel the clutter in the floor of the living room.

I could manage to maybe do one of those things halfway in the time I have available. I almost wonder if I wouldn't be better off burning the whole trailer down and start over. Of course then there would be the problem of not having a place to sleep, store the cats, or a method of starting over. Yeah, I'm thinking the whole start over idea might not fly too well with the wife. I can see it now, I go to pick her up at the train station and her first words are, "Why do you smell like smoke? You didn't burn the trailer down did you? I can't go anywhere anymore without making sure that someone is around to supervise you." Yeah, I'm thinking that might be bad.

I believe my goal will be to clean a counter. I am always wishing I had more counter space to put stuff. I pick her up tomorrow afternoon, I sure hope it stays clean enough long enough that she notices. It would be a serious bummer to do all that work and it not be noticed.

Posted by at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Music sets the mood, they use it movies and plays. You've heard a song on the radio that depressed you or boosted your mood, made you happy, made you angry, made you energetic. This is not news. It is also not news that very often I blog about stuff that you simply don't care about. Those blogs I write for me. This is one of those me blogs. You are not obligated to read it. If you do, you may gain insight into my character, but it may take effort, and you probably have better things to do.

The followin is my week or so in songs. Often the music means as much as the lyrics so by posting lyric links understand that you may only be getting part of the picture. You can listen at itunes or something to get the rest of the story.
Friday June 9th and the morning of Blades at the Beach, the song was Lose Yourself by Eminem. Clearly the fencing had not started at this time.

Fencing began and "lose yourself" was lost to me. In its place though I didn't hear it, The Air is Getting Slippery by Primus. In this song the music is everybit half of the meaning. This should give you a short sample. Confusion, thinking I had reached all of my goals, deep down inside the feeling of tumbling down into nothingness. This didn't really stop describing me until Sunday morning.

Sunday morning the reality started setting in like a two ton heavy thing...on a pendulem. For the next five days hopeless bleak dispair. None of my goals were met, not even a little. Critical failure and the reality pounded me to a pulp.

Bitterness is the refining fire through which hate becomes determination. By Friday and Saturday morning I was head strong. My past, I felt was behind me and now was the time to scrub out the suck.

10am Saturday morning. Hopeless bleak dispair all over again, this time imagine it in a really really bright room, now turn the volume way way up. Like the lyrics say until I died and went to hell, but my dispair had ascended to heaven, and that's how I finally got rid of it.

Well not excatly. Monday my dispair actually left me starting at lunch and through the rest of the day. Sometimes nothing seems right and you just have to trust someone else to show you the way. They are like angels. It was just like heaven. I was reborn.

Tuesday, even now I find it strange that so many of the songs mention heaven and hell. Today is no different, there's nothing like a bath of fire to get that deep down dirt out of me.

It has been a week of reflect, repent, reboot. I have a goal, it is realistic, and attainable. Ready to rock on port 9999.

***
I know me, I'll be back here about September to reassess my situation, and measure outputs. 296 113/66 71

Posted by at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

They say an intelligent man will look before crossing a one way street. They also say a wise man will look both ways. Wisdom often comes from unexpected places, usually in a painful way. This is where I come in.

I found my self standing in front of the boulivard of unrealistic expectations located one block from the boulivard of broken dreams to the north and one block from the road paved with good intentions to the south. For the first time in a long time I looked both ways, of course not before getting ambushed from behind by the thunderous crack of realities whip. What I discovered behind me was a roadway filled with signs marking unrealistic expectations and lame excuses.

I am ready.
It was the heat.
I am ready.
I need to drop down to 300lbs first.
Walking for an hour on the treadmill will be just the ticket.
I need new equipment.
I will take it slowly at first and gradually build up.
I was unwell.
It was the altitude.
I'm big boned.
Its genetic.

Not a very inspiring view is it? But let me make it perfectly clear, this is not a pitty party, I don't want your pitty. Save that for the starving babies in Africa who have no choice. I'm a scientist. All problems can be overcome through observation, analysis, and experimentation. If the experimentation doesn't yeild the expected results, then my analysis is wrong, I stop, reassess my situation, make more observations and start over from the beginning. Every new beginning is another new beginning's end. It is progress, and I am proud to be a part of it.

I feel that as of this moment I am at the end of a failed experimental phase. I will take some time off to gather the data, reassess my situation, formulate a new better plan and impliment that plan. It is the circle of life. :)

Preliminary Data:
1. Stretching is not an aerobic exercise.
2. Warmup activities should not keep you from the actual activity.
3. If you skip warmup so you will be able to participate in an activity you might be fooling yourself.
4. If proper hydration and a healthy focus on heat reduction doesn't keep you out of trouble, you might be over your head.
5. "It will learn" is not an appropriate response to seeing stars during exercise.
6. "It will learn" is not an appropriate response to not being able to easily catch your breath.

"It will learn" is really more of a macro attitude, and not a micro attitude. I will learn. Eventually, with enough blows to the back of the head by reality.

Feeling embarassment, feeling disappointment, feeling fear, feelings of failure to myself and others, these things are not real and I don't need them, they do not exist. So don't piss me off by assuming they do. The feelings aren't real, but the anger will be.

Posted by at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When one shoots a rifle, the first thing you do is aim. You do this by putting your eye in line with the sights down the barrel so if all goes well you put the bullet where you are looking. The same skills are used when punching the button on the elevator. It is all geometry. Since with the gun you are shooting at something many many feet away from yourself you put the eye as close to inline with the barrel as you can. It makes you more accurate, and the math is easier.

When you push the button on an elevator you are using three points of reference to figure out where your finger needs to go to make the elevator go up the hole. Point one is your eyes, point two is your shoulder and point three is the tip of your finger. As your eye is only about 8 inches or so from your shoulder it is pretty easy to do the math to move the tip of your finger (the bullet) located two and a half or so feet away to the button. Elevator goes down the hole. If you had a tiny little camera on the end of your finger the angle would be the same as from your eye, but the camera would be closer to the target.

Foil is pretty much the same math changing the variable of the "bullet" being an extra meter away from you when your arm is at full extension. When you are enguard, the other point of the triangle moves from the shoulder to the elbow. This is one more reason why you extend before you lunge. Not only do you want to establish right of way, you also want to make the math easier when you aim at your target. If you had a tiny little camera on the end of your foil the angle wouldn't be the same same as from your eye, it would be close, and even closer to the target.

Epee is even more complicated, because the whole body is target. Yes, you can use your eyes and the point of the epee to make one side of a shape that is sometimes a triangle sometimes a polygon. But the angles involved are larger. It isn't eight or so inches to your shoulder anymore it is a foot and a half to your elbow or two and a half feet to your wrist. Your eye's point of view, and the imaginary "epee cam's" point of view are vastly different. Your eye sees the top of the hand, and you will often go for it as a fencer. Your epee however doesn't see the top of the hand, it sees the bottom.

What I hope I am getting across is that if you get your head right with the math, and your weapon's point of view, more of your opponent's target becomes available to you. When you fence, be aware of what you see with your eyes, but also try to imagine what the tip of your weapons "sees". If you get good at this, you will start to get a lot of touches that leave your opponent scratching their heads. You will have hit them where they literally can't see.

Posted by at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We teach our fencers to keep a log of who they fenced, what they did right, what they think they did wrong, what worked and what didn't. It allows them to go back to a frozen point in time and analize what was going on in their head right after the bout occured. Yesterday's blog was for me that kind of thing.

Get all the details down and later on analyze it with a clear head. Blades at the Beach was my first time back in the saddle since the 1990's. From my analysis of that event, I can create a baseline that I can compare all future tournaments against.

For instance, I have enough information now to know that I was affected by the heat during pools long before I knew I was having heat issues. I know this because:
1. My math was so completely off when I was tracking progress against goals.
2. In my first direct elimination bout I believed I had already achieved all of my goals for the day.

So baseline is I am very succeptible to heat related illness. I'm overweight and on high blood pressure medicine. Duh. Of course I am succeptible to heat related illness. This shouldn't be a problem as most tournaments are air conditioned and normal cooling strategies work just fine.

The interesting wild card is that last week I was 295, and last night I was 306. I can say with relative certainity that at no point during the weekend did I eat beer battered fried sticks of butter cooked in lard and washed down with a tall glass of gravey. Didn't happen. The popular theory is that this is just water weight gain from all the water I had at the tournament. I seriously doubt that with all the sweating I did, I could possibly retain anything. I will however study this.

I know that normally my blood pressure sits at a comfortable 110/63 with a pulse of 73 on average. Yesterday, it was at 331/82 with a pulse of 60. First I think any strategy I have been contemplating to get off the meds can just be shelved for now. In addition, it demonstraits that my recovery from Saturday is taking longer than expected. The fact that at this moment it is 123/75 with a pulse of 73 I can guess that I am in a recovery phase now, and maybe just maybe I should have taken yesterday off from work to sleep it off.

Most problems in my life that I can solve with fried chicken and cheerwine can just as easily be solved with a good nap. So for my next competition, I will be sure to plan to take the following Monday off for rest and recovery.

My final analysis? Lose weight, fence more, and avoid 90 degree tournament spaces. Easy.

Posted by at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Saturday was "Blades at the Beach", a fencing tournament in Myrtle Beach SC. For me it was my first competition since 1997 or 1998. I was in two events, Men's Epee, and Mixed Team Epee. Each experience was so different even today it feels like two entirely different people experiencing two completely different things in two completely different worlds, where even the physics was completely different.

We arrived in the gym at 9:30am, and the close of registration for our event was at 10:30. This is a good strategy as you don't want to have to rush around at the last minute. The downside was that there were no referees, and they were running behind. I think my first event actually ended up starting around noon.

I can sum up the first event by saying that I made excellent performance goals and I hit them all. As a coach I often see fencers go into tournaments with completely unrealistic goals. Having seen that so much I felt like I could make a performance goal that was realistic and attainable. My goal was simple. I wanted to land square in the middle. This is easy to measure mathmatically. You simply keep a running talley of the points that you scored and the points that were scored against you and you subtract received from scored. This "indicator" can be a positive number if you are doing well, or a negative number if you are not doing so well. My personal goal was to land as close to zero as I could. In effect, every touch scored against me I would have countered by a touch I scored. At the end of my pool of seven, my math in my head put me at -1. Not a dead on hit, but well within tollerence.

There is a problem with this system: Zero isn't actually the middle. Statistically it is for each individual pool but when you put all pools together, a pool with six fencers is going to weight differently from a pool of eight fencers, and one pool could have its winner at a positive 20 when the next pool over the winner only gets a positive 5 because the competitors are closer to the same skill level. The software takes into account the fencer's ratings and it tries to weight each pool as close as it can, but some pools are going to have a cumulative strength of 2.0 and some may still end up with a weight of 1.5. There is another problem with this system. What if the math you are doing in your head is wrong. Looking at the posted results, I came out of pools at a -5. I was farther from my target of zero, but I was sixth in my pool out of seven. Goal not achieved, but I didn't know that until just now so the knowledge didn't hurt me going into direct elimination.

This gym was at a YMCA in Myrtle Beach, it is June, it is HOT, the gym is unairconditioned. The four outer doors have been propped open with chairs and there is a fan in two of the doors trying to keep air circulating. I place it 90 or so in the gym. Its way too hot. I am way too hot. I strip down and wait for direct elimination to start. I am a good coach and I practice what I preach. In those conditions hydration is the #1 concern so if I wasn't on strip, I was drinking bottled water. I was sweating like I had sprung a leak, and that is good, that means that my body is working overtime to keep my core temperature down.

Direct Elimination: I think this started about 3ish, I don't remember exactly. My target of landing dead center is right on task. I ended up 16th out of pools and I had to fence the 17th guy to move up. If I won that bout I would fence the #1 guy, a "C" level fencer I had already fenced in pools. As it turns out the 17th guy was one of my own fencers, soon to be one of the coaching staff, Mario. At this point since I had already completed all of my performance goals for the day I was either going to be beaten by Mario or beaten by the #1 guy and it really didn't matter to me who did it. I was freaking hot, Mario was on his game, I gave the performance of my lifetime, he won the bout 15-5. I stripped down and sat by the door. I ate an apple and an All Bran bar, drank a lot of water and tried to get rested up for the team event.

The thing about my performance goal that I was so proud of was that I had made it dead center, I knew that because I had to fence the guy one place below me. The reality I didn't know at the time was that there were only 21 fencers and we were working off of a round of 32 direct elimination tree. 16 out of 21 does not equal half way, but ignorance is bliss and I was the happiest I could possibly be. I was also really hot.

About 6:30pm the team event started. There were seven teams, and three of them were made up of our people. It could have happened where for the first round we didn't have to fence one of our teams, it didn't work out that way. The first team we fenced was made up of Mario, Jim, and Jordan. I started the day with a single goal of having fun in teams. Teams are fun events. I couldn't remeber that at the time though. At the time the goal was to not let my teammates down. Cameron had said to me several times that afternoon that I looked "hot". Since I knew that she wasn't into drunk Jim Belushi types belly flopping into a swimming pool, I knew that she was just trying to bolster my confidence. I knew that she knew that I was going to let her down. I wasn't going to let that happen. I wasn't going to let her know that I was cramping. I wasn't going to let her know that the pressure to keep up was so great it was an effort not to cry right there in my fencing mask. I kept drinking water between bouts, I felt like if I had one more swallow of water I would vomit, but I wasn't going to let her or Kathy know. I wasn't going to fail them. I was going to give them every single thing I had to not let them down. I wanted to be captain of my own ship. I wanted to make my team proud of me. It was hard fencing on a pitching deck but I would not stumble, I would not fall, would not fail my team. We defeated the first team and I stripped down and two fisted bottled water trying not to cry or vomit. I couldn't figure out why I wanted to cry so bad, the cramps were everywhere but I had certainly hurt worse before. I tried to put it out of my mind and focus on not throwing up. The second team match begain...

I have to be honest with you. I am not sure what happened in the second team match. I remember a woman with trees for legs, I remember being jealous because I wanted trees for legs. I remember someone with a hand in a cast. I wasn't sure if I hurt them or not but I hoped not. I remember a blade going through the center of my chest. The blade was cold and it felt good, I was glad for the hole, I kept thinking that now the steam could escape. I remember everyone being happy, but I didn't know why. I remember being in the floor with another stupid bottle of water. I hated water with my very soul. I remember sitting in the locker room trying to get my feet under me so I could take a shower. I remember not wanting to vomit, I can't remember if I had vomited already or not. I remember someone handing me a pirate's ship, I made captain. Good, now I could die. I remember 9:30pm on the car clock. I remember trying very hard to be cool and act like everything was fine. I remember a searing pain in the top of my head. I remember sitting eye level with the biggest beer ever and thinking "how was I going to drink all of that?" I remember sitting around a table playing munchkin I couldn't see everyone there with me, everyone was there, but I didn't think I could keep up the act much longer, so I went to bed laying on top of the covers It was hot. I took off my shirt. It was still too hot. I took off my shorts. It was still too hot. I took off my underwear. It was still too hot. I took another shower. That helped some. I was still too hot, but I was too tired to do anything about it. Sleep.

I woke up Sunday, and tried to take stock of my situation. I was naked, I was on top of the covers, the sheets were wet. I looked in the mirror. There was no blood on my head or in my hair, so my head was ok. There was no hole in the center of my chest, or even a bruise. No need for stitches. I didn't have a mark on me. I was tired, and my right gluteus was hurting way deep inside like I had been kicked. I took a shower, and shaved, and thought about going back to sleep but the sheets were too wet. I didn't hear a sound, everyone left without me. I dressed, and went to investigate. Everything was quite. I got into the kitchen, Trevor and Tommy were sound alseep in the living room. There was coffee. Cameron, Jim and Mario were on the patio. I took my coffee to the patio and tried to play it cool. I spent the rest of the morning, paranoid about my gaps in memory and trying to figure out what happened without letting on how much I didn't know. Best I could tell, everything was fine. I spent the rest of the day and the ride home trying to bring my core temperature down. Lots of big cold things. Everything made me nauseous.

Its Monday. I can reflect on the weekend with a more detached eye, I was suffering from a heat related illness. Nothing I could have done differently would have changed anything. I can't change the weather, I can't change the fact that the venue was not air conditioned. I cannot change the fact that we were in that un-airconditioned space for 12 hours fencing or waiting to fence. There is in fact only one thing I can do to help keep that from happening again. It something I like to call "my tubby ass needing to drop a hundred or so pounds". Today is a new day and I have a renewed desire to take that part of my life back. So far so good, the half of a peanut butter sandwhich I had for breakfast made me nauseous. I also know that I have the best group of fencing friends that one could ever hope to have. They all took care of me wether or not they realized it or not during a time I was unable to take care of myself. I am very appreciative, and I hope it never has to happen again.

Posted by at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

July 21st!: A prop, a character, a genre, a line of dialogue, and 48 hours to make a short film from it all. Each year has been better than the last and this year is shaping up to be the best of all! 20 teams are registered and ready to rock.

This year the screening for the finished products are planned to be all in one day, so that is a bonus, you can catch them all without having to block out three nights to do it.

And yes, once again I will be reviewing them on the blog. I was thinking seriously about not being on a team, this way no one would blast me for daring to state my opinion when I was on another team. Then I realized that if I wasn't on a team and I reviewed, I would be blasted for stating my opinion without having any connection to the event. So I have opted to play. I will be a boom operator for the first team that expresses an interest.

I will also be reviewing again. But just to do my best not to piss anyone off, I will be doing all reviews as a Pirate. Therefore where last year I might have said something like:
I am not sure I got this one. The script wasn't coherent to me personally, and the actors didn't help make it better.
This year I will be saying:
There she blows! Wrote like an oyster toad, cast of Davie Jones' own harpies!

See, I can be flexible. I'm a hell of a guy. I also love having guys blast me online, and drinking a beer with them, at the after parties. They are a great bunch of people, a little sensitive, but all really good folks. If anyone out there wants to be on a team, check out the board or the online form. You will have fun, but you won't sleep!

Posted by at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We kicked off a little preparatory epee at 5:30pm. By the end of the pool I was ready for a cold one, not more abuse. My teammates however had abuse for me at the top of their agendas. Fenced direct eliminate, and was happy to lose it quicly, I couldn't seem to make anything else happen for some reason.

You'd think that after that it would be nap time. Think again. They had saber planned for me as well. What no saber lame in my size? Shucks, too bad, you guys fence without me. Nope. They put me in a foil lame and sent me back out. We finish the pool, I have a stitch in my side, and a strong desire for sleep. No sleep for me, they make me fence in direct elimination here too. Hey! It's 8:30, we don't have time to fence any more direct elimination!! Time to pack up! Saved!!!

Nope. My tubby butt had to fence all the way to 8:45. I managed to make it home only because Sara picked up some extra food for her dinner that I could have. I am pretty sure I got my pants off before falling asleep. I didn't wake up in pants anyway. It's OK guys, I forgive you for your abuse and my shattered epee (I have been using that epee since 1998, it broke into 3 pieces). I'm fine. I survived. Who put all these stairs around UNCG anyway? Ow! Ow! Ow!

My comeback tournament is Saturday, I'm just glad the knickers have a flask pocket.

Posted by at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I always thought it would be idiot politicians, or stupid drivers that lead to me ending up on the six O'clock news in spite of my promise to my mother. I have to add one to the list. Microsofuckint Project is now on my list. I'm not the type of guy who studies the bible or goes to church every Sunday to have someone else's interpretation of the bible force fed to me, but I can take it on faith that god didn't grant man the ability to create software for the purpose of pissing man off. (Although some would argue that there is ample evidence for this.)

This is a test. I have to remind myself that this is a test. It is a test of my patience and forgiveness. I must not break things, I must not throw things, I must not go to any meetings this morning, I must not throw heavy things out of my office window. However, it is comforting to know that thanks to Barry at Leons on Tate Street yesterday my hair looks OUTSTANDING! So, if I fail this test, I can smile knowing that I will have great hair on TV later this evening. Actually, I'm looking pretty fabulous today so if I do intend to break my promise to my mother, today would be the best day to do it.

More news at 6pm on your local station...

Posted by at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In foil last night I noted that many folks were leaning way forward putting the bulk of their weight on their front foot. This is bad. I spent the whole night going around trying to correct them. At the end of the night I am talking to The Doc about what I had observed. Eventually the conversation turned to the pain in my lower back.

*DING* *DING* *DING*

Yes, these two events are connected.

They do it because they see me do it. I do it because I am seriously top heavy and have unusually short yet amazingly sexy legs.

My work is cut out for me. I must add specific drills to the mix that keep me upright, and make everyone do them so everyone gets back upright together. Plus, no one will know that I am to blame!

Whoops, I guess the cat is out of the bag now huh?

Posted by at 3:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The List:
1. Owners = None
2. Managers = None
3. Publicist = None
4. Coaches = 2
5. Name = None
6. Team = 14
7. Game = Orlando Florida
8. Coaches who went to game = 1
9. Players who went to game = 14
10. Players well enough to play at game time = 12
11. Equipment = Borrowed
12. Uniforms = Borrowed
13. Departure time = 11pm Friday Night
14. Drive time = 10 hours
15. Kick off time = 7pm Saturday
16. Rented 15 passenger Van due back in GSO = 6pm Sunday
17. Previous games played = None
18. Previous practice scrimages played = None
19. Wins = None
20. Value of team who plays despites all of the overwelming odds against them = Absolutely Priceless

After all of that above and now the mad rush back to GSO to drop off the rented 15 passenger van the spirits of the team are high. If they can play a game with so much against them just imagine how they will be with a year of practice and organizing behind them. A couple of fund raisers and maybe a newspaper article wouldn't hurt either. It is my understanding that the league is allowing them to have homegames next year because they are going out understaffed, underfunded, and under equipped to the four corners of the IWFL this year. I do believe we are going to see some football next season!!!!

Maybe its my theatre background but all I can think of are the greek plays where the wives stayed behind while the men went off to fight wars in strange countries. That reminds me, I had better stop blogging via modem, get the groceries bought and put away, and clean house. My hero is returning and I need to plan something special. Heck, I might even have to put on pants to mark the occasion of her safe return! Come to think of it perhaps a chiton would be more appropriate.

Posted by at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

People make decisions every day. Each decision, each choice, is based on an analysis of all possible outcomes and the decisions one makes usually have to do with what is safest. This isn't always true, but it is the minority that choose for other reasons. I myself have only made a few small decisions that require bravery. I chose to blog using my own name. I chose to remove the "costume" I refer to as "phycho repellent". I choose to refresh my gear, and begin competing again. Most of my very difficult decisions are all based "safe", and really they come down to the dumbest reasons you can imagine. I don't kill that idiot who just cut me off in traffic because I promised my mother I would never do anything that would get me on the six oclock news. Huh? Come to think of it, every decision I make revolves around that promise to my mom. Kind of silly when you put it like that, living every day in a state of denial like some sort of cloistered priest. But it is my decision and for whatever reason, I stick by my guns and live my life The Cowboy Way, or if you haven't seen that movie, I choose to live my life modeled after the teachings of Dr. Buckaroo Banzai.

But in so much as I can possible write about anything that isn't "about me", this blog isn't about me. It is about decision, risk and the people that make those decisions in the face of risk and failure. These people are the heros, and they come in all sizes. Running into a burning building to save a life is a heroic action. Facing the unknown against adversity to attempt a feat knowing that each step of the way is an uphill battle is heroic too. The top of this might be the person who fights for their lives against an overwelming enemy like cancer, where every day you fight is harder than the last and in the end you may still not win. That is a powerful and brave decision indeed. But let us not forget the smaller acts of bravery that should not be taken for granted. A child who learns to walk, or ride a bicycle. A senior citizen who embraces the internet. Fourteen women, abandonded together who pull themselves up by their bootstraps, beg and borrow, risk time, money, injury and possible failure to get into a van at 11pm drive through the night to Orlando Florida, sleep for a few restless hours to get up again, put on that begged and borrowed equipment to go out on the field and play football.

Lets forget a minute the fact that they were abandoned, lets forget the fact that they had to beg and borrow equipment enough to play, lets forget the fact that they had to pile into vans and drive themselves in the middle of the night to a strange city four states away. Take all of that adversity away and what do you have left? You have fourteen women who made the decision each and every one to play a sport that since its inception has been "men only". Forget golf, sure it has always been a male dominated sport, but golf is and never has been a collision sport between armored individuals played as a strategy game on a field of battle.

At this moment my dear wife is in Orlando Florida. She made the decision to risk convention by playing a male dominated sport. She made the decision to risk doing it even after their leader left. She made the decision to spend good money for shoes, pads, travel, hotel, and league membership to put on uniforms borrowed from here there and everywhere. She made the decision to face off against inerta and go from zero to athelete in a matter of a few short weeks. As I write this, I hope she is sleeping, probably in the floor of a hotel room. In eight hours she is going to be in a strange place, on a strange field, wearing strange cloths, surrounded by the screaming fans of the other team to play for the first time in her life the game of football. It isn't a burning building or a deadly disease, but the emotional and physical risk is great, and you know what? That makes her a hero to me. And I couldnt be more proud of her.

Posted by at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The other night the Vermin Robinson camp struck again with terrorist 1/2 messages on my answering machine. This racest tirade has got to end. (And I KNOW tirades) Now he's going after the Mexicans, how soon before he comes after me. As an person of Irish decent and a Caomhánach to boot I take offense in a big old historical way. If I called your house playing "Mammy", talking up grape soda and fried pork you'd chase me up a tree and set fire to it (and you would be well within your rights to do so).

Will the Vermin Robinson representitive whose autodialer uses the number 336-499-6570 Stop calling me and harassing me or I will take legal action! You have no right to terrorize me in this way! I'm not even in your stupid district. Come to thing of it, YOU aren't in your stupid district! You are as bad as the blog spammer who is leaving the message "You have a great site, but I'm so sorry you have a lot of spam :-(" on my blog. Also a slanderous lie by the way. My blog is spam free thanks to dilagence and hard work.

Of course, on the other hand we haven't heard much out of Ashton Kutcher lately. Perhaps he is shooting the movie Punk'd America, and the joke (Vermin Robinson) is on America. Why else would this cross between Boss Hogg, Hitler, and a professional wrestler be in my voicemail spewing hot molten crazy all over the place.

Posted by at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)