Karate Tournament

This past Sunday Nov. 21 I attended and worked the Karate Tournament. As can be seen below, at the end of the day I took home 4 first place trophies and two 4th place trophies.
While all those first looks suitably impressive... it is really easy to get "1st" in board breaking, as a whole group of us ended up tieing. For example breaking 4 boards on Standing and Stepping palm strike. I did though manage to break 6 boards with my side kick, and there was only one other person that I tied with there. So that one at least was pretty exciting! The 4th first place trophy I am quite proud of and was for my spear weapons form which I made sure to get a video of.


The fourth place trophies were for regular forms (which I really honestly felt I should have placed higher with.. but oh well) and sparring. Overall I was very happy with my performance and on the whole I was in a very competitive divisions and feel lucky I was able to place at all.

There was a professional photographer at the event Cascades Photography. They should be posting pictures pretty soon, so if anyone is interested you can look at all the photos for the day, and then you can order pictures as well if you so desire. Once they go live, I might add some of them to this blog if possible otherwise.

*UPDATE*

All the pictures of the tournament have now been posted. I hope you all enjoy them for those of you took the time to look through them.

Skydiving

As promised, I was looking for new and exciting ways to make Mom and Grandma worry. I think Skydiving counts!
And here is a quick video of us landing.

Dancing and Signing

This past weekend Rachel and I went to a dinner dance sponsored through my work. There was a amazing dinner buffet as well as an open bar, followed by a couple hours of dancing. It was quite nice, and I managed to snap a picture.
This picture has the benefit of us not being sweaty in it like the one from old rag lol.

Then on Saturday we managed to head over to a local Border's Bookstore to catch Brandon Sanderson and Harriet McDougal at a book signing. In this case they were signing "Towers of Midnight" the 13 and penultimate book in the Wheel of Time Series. A series of books I have read since I was in Junior High. The original author Robert Jordan died about three years ago and his widow and editor Harriet McDougal chose Brandon Sanderson for his replacement for the last book (or as it turned out three books) of the series. At the signing both Brandon and Harriet signed my book. Harriet along with discovering and editing all of the Wheel of Time books is also known as the editor on another somewhat known book called "Ender's Game". Anyways it was great meeting them, and I got a signed book out of it!

As an extra bonus can you find waldo?