"Dad you're like Kung Fu Panda."

It has been a while since I have posted a blog, but life has been busy. The new dog needed to be spayed, the Tahoe had to go in to the body shop to be fixed, I spent a whole weekend in Afton and Rock Springs for work, I tolerated a 2 hour CES in-service and had my Institute class observed by the CES "dude" from Casper, and I tested for 2 martial art belts.
So today is Thanksgiving and at 5am, I woke Miller up to go hunting with me, he didn't want to get up. Melinda got very ill so I decided to stay home and get the food ready. Melinda wouldn't let me do the pies, she is considering letting me do the rolls. I did the turkey and stuffing and will almost certainly be able to peel the spuds without being challenged for the job.
I am looking forward to going hunting tomorrow, Sandi (the new dog) has recovered from her surgery and I hope we can find some pheasants to shoot. Miller and I have a couple of deer tags to fill so the weekend may shape up nicely as long as I don't get sick and provided Miller will get up at 5am.
Michael recently tested for and earned his red belt. In 6 months he can test for his black belt. I think it is pretty cool that he has stuck with it and has developed a pretty decent jump double kick. I have made it to green belt which is the fourth belt in rank in the long line road to black belt. I managed to do it in 6 months. Not too bad for a middle aged fat guy. I still haven't mastered the jump double kick yet, but the ground shakes when I do a back break fall and my bo staff skills are beginning to take shape. A couple of weeks ago at the end of a particularly long and strenuous practice as we were walking out to the car, Michael and Mary both said "Dad you're like Kung Fu Panda". I was not certain if this was meant to be a compliment or a gentle slap down. I asked what they meant by the comment, both answered in unison "I don't know". Normally I would take this to mean they didn't want to hurt my feelings and thus used the "I don't know" card to save their skins. I had not held out any delusion that I resemble a grey haired Jackie Chan or anything so on this occasion I allowed myself the luxury of thinking "Kung Fu Panda? Hummmm, well he did turn out to be pretty cool by the end of the movie". So now I am working on figuring out the "Wooshy finger hold" so I can impress the judges at the next test, and perhaps I'll use Micheal and Mary to it demonstrate on.
Have a good Thanksgiving everyone. Jim, I wish I could be at the Chili Bowl this year.

A Great Day

O.K. so the election is over. History has been made, let us just hope that President-Elect Obama is up to the task and will do no lasting damage to our freedoms. Having now covered this topic I would like to describe a great day I had. Melinda has a great gift for knowing what can make me happy. With a birthday coming up in a few days she recognized that I might be happy with a new dog. I believe that this idea came after she read my last blog about dogs. A few days ago an opportunity came for me to get a rescue dog from Cheyenne. Not just any dog but a 5 month old registered Brittany Spaniel named Sandi. On Saturday Miller, Mary and I drove to Douglas and met the people who were giving up Sandi. After some tears by those saying goodbye to Sandi, we loaded her into the Tahoe and headed for home. All and all she has settled in pretty well, she is not as well trained as we were led to believe. The up side of this is that we can train her as we want to. I have been interested to see if Sandi had any hunting instincts, this morning as I was following her on her morning walk she came to point and flushed a pheasant, then flushed three more. I was pretty excited, this dog can hunt. I waited until about 9am and called an old hunting buddy to see if he was doing anything today and if he knew of a good place to hunt pheasants. He said well you got a new dog and I got a new shotgun sounds like a deal. We met at 10am and within 30 minutes were hunting. To make a potentially long story short, Sandi did pretty well for her first day hunting. I got to shoot my gun several times, I was able to spend time with a good friend I haven’t hunted with for years and we got our limit of pheasants. My back hurts, I’m tired but I can’t stop smiling, I called Melinda and said “I had a great day”! I hope to have more great days recognizing of course that there will be some crap days mixed in। I hope you had a great day and if not I hope you have one real soon.