Tag Archives: Aikido

Bruce Cockburn at Kate Wolf — tomorrow

HOT!!
Right now it is 102.9 and rising in the shade!! (make that 103.3 !!!)
Yikes.. and it’s been like this for a few days with more to come..
yea right – there is no global warming. It is quite scarey though..fire danger just from walking on the parched earth!!

The heat will keep me from going to Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival early in the day… just won’t be able to handle the heat.

We will get there later in the day… it still will be hot, but coming down.. Bruce doesn’t come on until 8:30.

Bruce Cockburn ticket for Kate Wolf festival

CockburnProject in anticipation of the new cd release to happen in a couple of weeks. The tour has already started, I will be writing a review of the show, if I get it together. I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new CD –
Life Short Call Now, which should be here any day, to write a review and well just to hear it!!

Still not operating at 100%, but getting better, the tonsillectomy kicked my ass for sure.

Russel went to the bay area for a few days for Aikido, he really needed to do that, as he missed his annual Aikido retreat here with his teacher Frank Doran Sensei, while I was recovering from the surgery.

We have full week ahead of different projects to do here. And I need to focus back in on www.seinensilk.com.

Tonsillectomy May 9

I am finally going to do this. Months of sore throat and pain and tonsil stones and I believe toxins entering my body. Wish me well and a fast recovery. I won’t be able to talk for awhile, and the pain I hear is just dreadful.

Nothing like having a full plate, I am in the middle of a website build, with at least many hours to go. We are in the last phases of moving from the little town house to here… Russel may have to do the rest by himself, as I may be down for anywhere from 10 days to a month (yikes!).

Russel is at the end of the school year with spring fever kids and lots of demonstrations to get together. His Aikido teacher, Frank Doran Sensei will be here for a weekend training May 20-21, which is always fun, but lots to prepare for as well.

And it went from rain rain rain 2 weeks ago, to 90’s last week…mud to dust just like that. We haven’t got the garden in, but the beds are mostly ready.

We took some big trees that were dying out and the back yard is full of timber and debris. Russel has started the firewood cutting, but there is a ton to do. And so many other things here, boxes are starting to pile up, water system needs work.. the list is endless.

So for the few of you who come here, that’s what I have been up too. I hope when I recover from this surgery and Russel is done with school and we are out of the town house, that all our energy and time will be here, either on the homestead or for me, on the web doing all the things I said i wanted to do last year.

Oh, and my camera is in the shop..in New Jersey of all places, at MackCamera, who i had an extended warranty with. It had developed dead pixels in the center of the ccd and it was very hard to even photoshop them out.

Oh, and Bruce Cockburn has a new cd [Life Short Call Now ] coming out in July and he starts touring in June…we have tickets for the Kate Wolf Festival June 25, more on that later.

Fall is in the air …

School is starting here, Russel hasn’t lined up all his jobs yet, (teaching Aikido to kids in the local schools) but we know they are there for him. Hurricane Katrina is barreling through the south.

This past month went by in a blur. I made it to Reggae, but only Friday for Michael Franti and Sat late afternoon for Prezident Brown. Why? Well I woke up Sat morning with vertigo! Never had it before and don’t want to again, very nauseated, light headed, couldn’t walk.. just awful. It let up enough for me to go down a bit on Sat, but I came right home and didn’t go on Sunday at all. For a $150 ticket, that’s not much fun time.

We did get the floor painted, 3 coats and Russel wanted to do 2 more, but I said no! It will do for now. I brought in and cleaned a lot of the flea market furniture, dressers, kitchen hutch, bar and stools, and got them in place. Then unpacked all that was packed out and put most of that away, still have some to do. But the painted floor really helps the house feel bigger and cleaner and brighter.

Russel split and stacked about 4 cords of wood..we borrowed a log splitter and hired a high schooler (that would be Issac) to help 2 days. So with what we had, we have about 2 years worth of wood unless the winter is really cold.

The hot hot weather has finally broke to mid 80s and looks like that will be the trend this week, nights are getting into the 40s so it cools way down.

Kaya had to go to vet this morning for annual and a worming (yuck), she handles it pretty well.

I nixed Dish .. what a hassle it was just trying to get an installation, imagine what would happen if we needed service? Seeings how we will be keeping the town house office for at least several more months, I can just tape off TV like I did last year, the new fall schedule will start soon.

Good news is that finally G4 has brought back LEO Laporte and CALL FOR HELP!! for all us in the US. I am taping that too, as it’s on here at 8am.

Ok, gotta run..more later 🙂

May Aikido Retreat

Russel’s Aikido school, Mateel Aikido, had a retreat a few weeks ago. During that time several of his students tested for black belt ranks. I have several shots, most I am saving for their website (not quite ready for prime time yet, but soon).
This is one of my favorites:

Dragonfly

I still have my head in Gallery, won’t have anything to show for some time.

While working, a dragonfly perched on my neighbors antenna. This is something they do often, I have tried to get good shots before, with no luck. Today was different! I actually got 20 or more great shots!

I am quite pleased with myself 😉 This camera is a year old, it’s about time I took a decent shot. Once my Gallery is open, there will be an album of these keepers. I have one where he/she? is looking at me!

Other news, just work at the house, on the land, keeping the town house yard sort of up. Russel is leaving for Aikido retreat for a week in the bay on Sunday..so, you guessed it… I will be working online a lot. No meal times, bed times…. just my time 😉

Growing & Changing

I just made a whole long post with pictures and all… and lost it 🙁

This will be the quick and dirty style: – still learning the new system,printer,scanner tons of software, learning new work flows, ps7, and so much more:

On another note, Frank Doran Sensei, Russel’s Aikido teacher from the bay area was here for an Aikido retreat.

The potluck was held at a truly beautiful home, this is a shot of the stairway leading to the house:

And in case you were wondering, the Agave , is starting to open up:

I need to take some pictures again soon, more is happening. I noticed today when we drove by after coming down from Eureka. We saw “The Day Before Tomorrow”. Great special effects, ok story, not as sappy as it could of been and not as good as it should of been. The premise being greenhouse gases/ the Green house effect/ global warming / melting of polar ice caps/ super storms/ …all caused by ….. yep burning of fossil fuels, which they didn’t mention. Too bad. I read a book a few years ago about these storms, it doesn’t seem that unlikely to me. The way the weather has changed in just my 50 years is astonishing.

I also spent over a week at the land house without coming into town at all.
Testing the waters, seeing what I would need to make it really livable, if there was no town tiny house rental.

Yep, this is a long entry.
On a more personal note here, over the last month or so, I have seen bloggers disappears.. for some reason it tweaks me.

Then Movable Type did it’s new pay-for model and the forums over there really changed. A lot of long-time power users bailed. Some seem to have just gone away.

As I mentioned in this post,Tech Tv is gone. Call For Help is gone. Screensavers has become a gamers only show it seems. I learned a lot from these shows and miss them, especially Leo Laporte.

Now my favorite forum is blowing up it seems. This really bums me out. Some of my most favorite people are leaving. Even though I know these are just online ‘acquaintances’ – I have become attached.
So I guess the lesson here is letting go, growing with change, moving on.

But who will be there to help me on this road of web?
I would never be where I am today without this forum.

Yea! to the one that came back, she knows who she is!!

Health Updates – Russel

Russel has completed the Prednisone therapy, the first 2 days off it he seemed better, then he had a terrible ‘pain behind the sternun’ attack. We really got worried and depressed that it was all for nothing … which I had been afraid of since the beginning, after all the Prednisone is only covering a symptom, some kind of inflammation.

Well after that one really bad attack, there has been less pain, and some days no pain at all. The last couple of days he hasn’t felt anything like pain in that area.

That symptom, in Google, brings up ‘angina and heart attack’ and GERD, Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease, although he rarely has acid reflex or heart burn, he decided to stop eating some acid causing foods. That lasted about 2 days :), except for his black tea. Wouldn’t it be ironic if all this was caused by drinking 1 cup of China Black Tea (Good Earth Naturals) every day!!!

Any way he isn’t coughing, and not using the inhaler either. He is back at work and except for a very bruised rib from a student crunching him, he is in better shape than he has been for quite awhile. Frustrated though now as the rib is keeping him from his adult Aikido classes and he really misses that.

I walked Monday and Tuesday this week, we are having sunny warm (very warm (90’s) for this time of year) weather. Then I went to Curves on Monday, which I haven’t been too since May! But I did walk and swim almost daily this summer so I don’t feel to guilty. I have put on a few pounds though, stress related I am sure. Eating comfort food as we waited to see just what was happening with Russel.

Stress

Stress is ruling my life at the moment. The kind of not-knowing what is gonna happen kind of stress. I mentioned here that we had to go to SF. That was so my husband could get a CT scan of his chest. We still (one week later) don’t know what the CT scan found. I am not going to go into any more detail until we know what is really going on.

The trip to SF alone was grueling enough. It was a sunny bright day for the 5 hours down, then a motel, and wouldn’t ya know it? the pay-per-view was down!! Then 5 hours back into the light rain. I did get some photos on the way home of the Golden Gate and the bay, but haven’t even had time to upload them yet. I didn’t have the camera with me when we were waiting at Fort Miley – VA hospital, too bad as there is a beautiful view of the bay and Marin Headlands from there. I am sure there will be a next time. 🙁

Then we spent all day Thursday (the 11th- my birthday) in Eureka. We didn’t catch a movie but i did little shopping. We met with friends and had a wonderful Sushi dinner at Tomo’s in Arcata.

Friday i took more photos of the Catching Cactus display at the Farmers Market, again it will be awhile before these photos are uploaded, sorry.

Saturday was a Virgo-potluck at Benbow State Park, a nice gathering of folks. I only knew a handful of people there, but it was a good distraction.

Sunday found us once again at Benbow, this time at the Inn for a brunch with Russel’s Mateel Aikido school. The Benbow Inn is the ritsy-titsy place in these parts, as far as the brunch was concerned, i was not impressed. Again, lots of pics, to be posted later.

I think it was fortunate that there was so much going on last week, it helped to take the mind off all the ‘what ifs’ that are cropping up. Saturday somehow??? i strained the left hip muscle that rides over the top of the hip (I know i should look it up but hey, it hurts to just sit here and type this!). I am still in much pain. Pain killers don’t seem to have much effect, and they give me incredible indigestion which is almost worse than the pain.

I attempted to get in the truck today to go out to the land, but it hurts to sit more than to stand. 🙁
Russel isn’t sleeping well, had ‘pressure like a chest cold’ in his chest and a light cough (that is getting worse as time goes on). His doctor called yesterday to just say that the ‘ct report’ hasn’t been uploaded to the site, and he doesn’t know when it will be. He did say we may need to go down again, this time to see a chest specialist, if the CT scan doesn’t diagnois something.

Any way, I may not be here as much as I would like, for many reasons. There are still so many MT tweaks I want to do. And I want to get either Gallery or Mt photoblog going so there is some where to put all these pictures i am taking.

I find that when i haven’t visited the MT forums in 12 hours that I have pages and pages of threads to wade through! It is so busy over there! I like to keep up, it helps me learn, but I just don’t have the time right now. Just keeping the Cockburn Project caught up is about all I can muster at the moment.

On My Beat

Living in the hills of southern Humboldt