Quick Update

I managed to get through another successful weekend of taking care of dogs. When a friend is out of town, I go over to her house and let the dogs out thrice daily, but they don't listen very well, so if one goes running I end up chasing the dog down. (While it is a fenced in area, the enclosed area contains several blocks. After the second time the dogs got loose, I decided all future walks would be with a leash. Voila, problem solved!

Aikido is going pretty well. After my wrist injury in gymnastic years ago, it is nice to finally have flexibility back in my right wrist. Since I'm only planning to be in Florida a few more months, I went ahead and signed up for Tae Kwon Do classes at the same school I take Aikido. Tae Kwon Do (TKD) has a philosophy where your body is your tool, and practicing forms, kicks, punches, blocks are a part of developing that tool to respond to any action in a forceful and irresistible manner. Aikido has a more roundabout philosophy in that Aikido doesn't do blocks or punches to overpower the opponent. Aikido prefers to let the opponent do what he wants and then I redirect the motion into doing what I want. Aikido is very much a martial art of training fluid responses to an opponents aggression. Tae Kwon Do is very much a form for attacking and Aikido is very much for defending (or more accurately, Aikido is for avoiding the attack so there is no need to defend.)

My visit home went wonderfully well. I was definitely a help to Mom and Data at their craft show, and I was happy to help. I got to have long visits with Mom. During craft shows, Dat stays very busy in the back taking care of products or loading or preparing for the next show, so I didn't see as much of him as I would have liked this visit, but I still got to spend some time with him. Before I leave for Japan or Korea, I'll have a few months at home during the off season, and I'm looking forward to seeing dad more then and seeing what science projects he's been working on since I moved to Florida.

Margaret seems to be doing well. She seems happy at her job, although I do sense a certain slowness of reaction in dodging pokes. I guess Mom and Dad don't keep up her reflexes by poking and pushing as fast as her mostest favoritest brother does. ;-)

For work, I just finalized the installation of the Inventory module and updated the released ones. I think I just have to wait a week or so and see what happens in sales before I know if I'm going to be staying for the next three months (or so). Programming accounting software is fun, and there are always new problems that have to be solved, but I think I'm ready to see a new area of programming with a lot of new problems to solve. Even so, I hope the inventory module is a success!