Fun weekend

This was an awesome weekend.  Started out good and just got progressively better.

First, a new Magic: the Gathering set was released.  Conspiracy, Take the Crown.  A set designed for drafting, which is my favorite way to play.  I went to the midnight release, then a noon draft on Friday.  They were fun games.  I ended up playing three group games.  Came in second every game, but was not able to knock a single other player out of the matches.

So what could be more fun than playing lots of Magic?  Saturday, Tabby & I went to a Tae Kwon Do Summer day camp.  So much fun.  Seminars on how to improve our form learning & execution, better breaking techniques, self defense, pressure points, sparring and exciting kicks.

All were informative.  The sparring seminar, taught by Jim Counter (Tabby & my instructor) was probably where I had the most fun.  I got paired up with a young brown belt named Eston who proceeded to kick my butt.  Oh man!  It was fun.  Probably the best seminar, though was amazing kicks.  Bob Smoot taught the techniques behind flying, jumping and spin kicks and had us all practice kicking shields.  Then we got to break boards.

This is what made his seminar so good.  Tabby was very nervous about breaking her board, "I don't think I can do it, it's going to hurt my foot, I don't think I should try."  Mr. Smoot was such a great motivator, though.  "Tabby," I said, "if Mr. Smoot thinks you can do it, then at least try."  Flying side kick right through her board.  It was cool to see and oh!  was she ever excited about.  "I broke a board with a flying side kick!  That's, like, a black belt move!  If I can do that, maybe I can do all the white belt things.  Maybe I can even pass my test for yellow belt."

I am beat up and sore, but it was such an awesome confidence builder. I am glad we went.

What can possibly top that?!

Sunday afternoon our exchange student from Spain, Santi, arrived.  He is such a nice young man. Polite, friendly, excited to be here.  And we are sooo excited to have him here.  His English is a little rough, but it's there. He has a foundation.  I think he'll learn quickly and be fluent before he knows it.

We have some pictures. I'll eventually get around to posting them.

Movie Review: Suicide Squad

Tuesdays are $5.00 movie days at Bay Park Cinema just a couple miles up the road from us. So Ben & I went to see Suicide Squad after he was done at work. If I had been smart, I'd have stopped to buy tickets on my way to pick him up. Both the 9:50 and the 10:15 showings were sold out when we showed up about 9:40. We got tickets to the 10:45 show and went home for a bit.

Suicide Squad was all right. It was exciting. There was some really cool imagery. A few laughs. The soundtrack was awesome. Unfortunately, there were too many main characters and not enough story to go around. It would probably have been great as a series. You know, spend an hour or two fleshing out each character's story with a common thread pulling them all to the final epic confrontation. As is, there were some characters that just seemed extraneous. Some story elements that, because they were never developed well and didn't add anything to the climax, could have been skipped altogether. Such as Captain Boomerang or the whole Joker story line. They could have taken those out, used the time to develop other characters and made it a better movie.

If you're looking for some mindless action ... well, you could probably find better. But if you're running out of movies that got good reviews, this one isn't all bad.

Catching up with July

Tabby turned 9!  She had a fun birthday party with Amber & Ella.  Becky took them to Ashwaubomay Park, they came home and played some party games, did some crafting, ate burgers & hot dogs and choreographed some dances with sparklers.  Oh, and played with Tabby's mice.

Mice!?  That's right, Tabby's fish died.  Tabby asked if she could replace him with mice for a pet.  So we got two, Cornflower and Springald, named after mice from Brian Jacques Redwall stories.  We quickly figured out that mice are messy.  Unsanitary.  But they are adorable.  We just keep a bottle of hand sanitizer around all the time.

Ben took a week long kayaking trip up by the Apostle Islands with the young men from church.  They had a great time.

We spent last Saturday at Eau Claire Dells for Ryan Chadderdon's graduation party.

We have some cool news.  This school year we will be hosting a foreign exchange student from Spain.  His name is Santiago and he'll be senior at Ashwaubenon High School.  He actually lives in Paris, has for a few years, but was born in Barcelona.  His father's career took them to Paris.  We are really excited.  Should be a fantastic experience for our family and, I hope, for Santiago as well.

Other than that it's just been entertaining watching the election.  I have stopped being shocked by what Donald Trump says.  It's just too absurd.  I tell myself he's too much a buffoon to win.  Then I remember that after watching GWB be a bad president for four years, we still reelected him.  I guess maybe we get the president we deserve.  I just hope we're not so debased that we deserve a Trump presidency.

The only thing that's really driving me nuts is Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson trying to pass himself off as some sort of centrist alternative for both disaffected Republicans and Democrats.  His line is that, "If everyone who says he doesn't like the major party candidates voted for me, I'd win."  Which may be true, but makes the pretty big assumption that everyone who doesn't like Trump or Clinton would like him.  Which is not true. Disaffected Democrats would find themselves very unhappy with a Libertarian President.

His social policy isn't liberal, it's laissez-faire.  His foreign policy isn't liberal, it's isolationist.  His most convincing argument to attract disaffected Democrats is "Dude, we'll let you smoke weed!"  I'm not even sure that's really a liberal issue anymore and I kinda' hope my fellow Democrats want more from their president.

I do think Johnson is a good, viable alternative to Donald Trump for disaffected Republicans.  Johnson's view on the proper size and role of government jives really well with theirs. Which shouldn't be a surprise. Johnson is a Republican, just running as a Libertarian after running as a Republican didn't work out for him.

I like Hillary Clinton for President.  She's just a very capable politician.  I think she'd do the job well.  I'm a Democrat because I like the Democratic view on the role of government and that means electing Clinton.  Tabby is thrilled that a woman might get elected president and I think that's pretty awesome, too. That shouldn't be THE factor in electing her, but it could certainly be A factor. During the last school year on a bad homework day, Tabby actually told me she didn't have to worry about her math homework because "Math is for boys.  Art is for girls."  I guess that's the societal stereotype.  Unintentionally, we reinforce that in our home and it is so limiting for Tabby to really believe that.  It struck me how important social role models are.  I want so badly for Tabby to see strong, successful women in every field.

I started reading Brandon Sanderson's second Mistborn trilogy.  Finished Shadows of Self and The Bands of Mourning.  I really like them.  I'm looking forward to book 3 as soon as he writes it.  They read like noir detective novels with steampunk elements.  And the heroes and villains have superpowers. They're fun.  And well written.  With cool characters.  This trilogy takes the same characters from Sanderson's Alloy of Law, a book he wrote because he wanted to write a Western.  But he brings the characters out of the wild frontier and into an industrial revolution age city setting.

Pictures will be forthcoming.