My road to bronze—once again, with feeling

It’s at the end of a very long and crazy* day that I’m writing this entry (although I’m posting one day later, because I don’t have free internet here at my fancy hotel). Although my result this year was the same as last year—a loss in my only match, meaning a bronze medal—I feel differently about it this year. A lot of things were the same: I didn’t sleep well the night before, I felt nervous going in, I had trouble with my asthma during the match. But a lot of things were different, too.

Last year I didn’t start training in earnest until January; this year I trained from the beginning of the year, starting in September. Last year I didn’t spar at any other tournament except States; this year I fought at three other competitions. Last year I weighed in at 142 pounds and change; this year I weighed in at just under 126 pounds.** Last year I obsessed about the draw and how many people I might spar, and when I went from getting a bye into the gold-medal round to gaining an opponent, it freaked me out a little bit. This year I tried not to obsess, and just told myself to worry about winning the first match. It turned out I had a bad draw—I was in a group of three and didn’t get the bye, and I’m sure I could have beat the girl who did get it, since I managed at least four points on the gold-medal winner, and she got a big zero—but them’s the breaks.

It’s been hot and rainy here in Fort Lauderdale, so when I woke up feeling a bit wheezy, I knew it didn’t bode well for my match. I was sluggish and I couldn’t move out of the way of the other girl, who left me with some really nasty bruises. (I’m icing the one on my elbow as I type.) Still, I made it into the second round, and scored a really wicked crescent kick to her face, knocking her back. (“You rocked her world!” Miss Laura said.) I just didn’t have the energy to follow up, despite the last few weeks of practicing two-minute rounds on my sparring bag. Result: a repeat bronze medal.

So while last year I had trouble sleeping the night following the match, going over in my head what I could have done differently, this year I think I’ll sleep fine. (For one thing, all the hotel shenanigans have left me exhausted.) I couldn’t help the draw, and I couldn’t help the wheezing. I trained as hard as I could, and I don’t have any regrets.

Besides, I still have forms competition on Friday, and I’m still aiming for gold.

*The craziness involved switching hotels; telling myself that grown women don’t cry in hotel lobbies when the room they reserved isn’t ready, even after an hour of waiting when all you want is a shower, some ice, and a nap; and getting sent to a third and upgraded hotel for free ...

**Since January, I’ve put in the time and effort to lose over 15 pounds, mainly by exercising every day (yay for indoor exercise bikes that let you read while your work) and eating more fruits and vegetables, especially spinach. I could go on and on about the whole weight loss aspect, but it’s not the main story, I don’t think.

Photo of the Week--6/29/09 (special TKD edition)

So I've been in Fort Lauderdale for over 24 hours now, and I've been sprinkled on four or five times as I've been walking around the Convention Center area. As you can see from the photo of the fountain near the center, the clouds keep coming through this area, bringing occasional showers. The forecast for the rest of the week is much of the same: highs around 90 with occasional thunderstorms. So much for "sunny Florida." I actually don't mind; if there's going to be high heat and humidity, some cool raindrops and 10 mph winds make it tolerable.

The convention center is air-conditioned, of course. That should make my match or matches tomorrow tolerable. My part of the competition should be over 18 hours from now. I checked in early today and got weighed in; I was well within my weight class, as the official, calibrated scales seem to show everyone a couple pounds lighter than they thought. (It's a conspiracy between the diet companies and the scale companies, I bet.) They called me back for a re-check at 3 pm, to make sure that my division—which is one of those with fewer than 4 competitors—wasn't decimated by people failing to make weight. It turns out I do have competitors, but I don't know whether there are one or two other people besides me. One other person means one fight, winner takes gold. Two people means someone gets a bye ... I'm not going to worry about it this year, I decided I'm just going to show up, fight the first match (and win), and then worry about what might happen next. Still, I have to admit the stomach is feeling a little twitchy.

So right now I'm just chilling, watching Wimbledon and surfing, before venturing out to find someplace with a decent salad bar. I'll have another report tomorrow night, hopefully with a picture of a nice shiny medal.

Not my job....

As I was driving down Ford Road today, I was contemplating the usual Road Kill Rodeo: raccoons (they must be the stupidest of animals, they're the most frequent victims), deer, squirrels, possum, etc etc etc. I was also contemplating the bright, new, yellow stripes and rumble strips recently placed down the middle of the road.

I also contemplated how at least three or four of those unfortunate animals now had double yellow stripes painted down the middle of their remains. The road workers couldn't be bothered to nudge the little corpses out of the way before applying paint to the road. I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt; perhaps the painting is automated and they can't see the carcasses to move them. If that's the case, shouldn't someone invent a cowcatcher-type device to reduce interference? Otherwise, some time in the near future there will be little animal corpse-sized gaps in the yellow lines, and that can't be good.

Still, on a hot and humid day like today I am very glad that road-kill picker-upper is not my job. If your curious what that job is like, and you've never seen the awesome show that is Dirty Jobs on Discovery, take a look at the first half of this video, and be glad no one has yet perfected Smell-o-Vision:

Beat down by acronyms

I'm not going to be posting much over the next two weeks. Next week I'm going to be in Ft. Lauderdale at the AAU Taekwondo National Championships, trying not to vomit competing in sparring and forms with all the other ladies old enough to know better. I'll probably have internet access, but maybe not much free time, between the competing and coaching and cheering my teammates and moving hotels and lying by the pool. I will try to report results as I get them, though.

As for this week, I'm struggling to meet a deadline for a project, one completely different than what I'm used to doing. Give me a biography or a historical essay and I can bury myself in research and come up with something fairly literate. This time, though, I'm writing a biography of a company ... and it's a company that provides IT services, so I have absolutely no background on the subject. I know what VoIP means (voice over internet protocol, that Skype thing), but I keep having to look up dozens of other acronyms: SBX, SIP, LDAP, IVR, CPBA—the list goes on and on. What's worse, half the time I look up the acronym, change the letters into words, and still don't understand what the heck they're talking about.

So if there's nothing new here, it's because I'm either puzzling out acronyms or kicking my sparring bag, trying to be ready for the next two weeks. Hopefully when I return in July, I'll have my life back—unless my editor assigns me another company that loves acronyms.

Photo of the Week--6/15/09

It may be torture on your bottom, but you can't beat seeing the Grand Canyon by mule-back. From this angle, you may think the path looks way too small for a mule (which is taller than you'd think) to traverse. It wasn't, but it sure felt that way during the switchbacks. I just had to trust him to find his way; in the end, the view was worth the acrophobia and the chafing!

The Word Nerd Sez: N is for ...

nekton

It's taken me a while to get back to my Word Nerd feature. Frankly, I wasn't inspired by the letter "N." It seemed like most N words started with prefixes: neo-, neuro-, not to mention non-. Nertz*, I thought. All these N words are namby-pamby.** So I did what I usually do when I'm stuck for a word: I started browsing the dictionary.

First thing that struck me: there are only 28 pages under the letter N, and two of those are devoted to tables. That's not very many pages; even O has more (at 31), and it doesn't even approach M (75) or the monster S section (168). But I saw some promising candidates: nectary, which is the part of a plant which produces nectar (who knew it had a name?); and negatron, which we know better as the electron and which would have given me time to expound on science and names and things.

But then I saw this word nekton. First of all, it looks cool, with that k in the middle of the word, naked without an accompanying c. (Very Greek, which is its origin ... unlike naked, which is from Middle English.) And the definition: "Free swimming aquatic animals (as in whales or squid) essentially independent of wave and current action." I didn't even know there was a word for that. Actually there are several words to classify aquatic life by their methods of locomotion (or lack thereof). There's one we've all heard of, plankton, which are those life forms that drift within the water. There's also neuston, which are those life forms that float or move on top of the water (water striders, flying fish), and benthos, those that live on the seabed, at the bottom of the ocean (bivalves, coral, anemones).

So again I read the dictionary and learn something new; not just about words, but about scientific classification. And I just know I'm going to have to use benthos in a book sometime, when I get to the Atlantis analogue I've got tucked away for future use. Nifty!

*derived from nuts!
**An eponym taken from the nickname of an 18th-century English poet.

Kitten puddle!

Yes, it is possible to cuddle half a dozen kittens at once. All it requires is flexibility and no dignity.