So another great Thanksgiving has come and gone. I saw the family, ate the food, whooped people in pool, and had a good time in general. This year after my father said the food blessing, some rules were read. I had actually seen these a few days before. They're hilarious.
10 RULES FOR THANKSGIVING DINNER AT MY HOUSE.
1. Don’t get in line asking questions about the food. “Who made the potato salad? Is it egg in there? Are the greens fresh? Is the meat in the greens turkey or pork? Who made the macaroni and cheese? What kind of pie is that? Who made it?" Ask one more question and I will punch you in your mouth, knocking out all your fronts so you won’t be able to eat anything.
2. If you can’t walk or are missing any limbs, sit your ass down until someone makes your plate for you. Dinner time is not the time for you to be independent. Nibble on them damn pecans and walnuts to hold you over until someone makes you a plate.
3. If you have kids under the age of twelve, I will escort their little asses to the basement and bring their food down to them. They are not gonna tear my d*mn house up this year. Tell them that they are not allowed upstairs until it’s time for Uncle Butchie to start telling family stories about their mommas and papas. If they come upstairs for any reason except for that they are bleeding to death, I will break a foot off in their asses!
4. There is going to be one prayer for Thanksgiving dinner! JUST ONE! We do not care that you are thankful that your 13 year old daughter gave birth to a healthy baby or your nephew just got out of jail. Save that talk for somebody who gives a damn. The time limit for the prayer is one minute. If you are still talking after that one minute is up, you will feel something hard come across your lips and they will be swollen for approximately 20 minutes.
5. Finish everything on your plate before you go up for seconds! If you don’t, you will be cursed out and asked to stay your greedy ass home next year!
6. BRING YOUR OWN TUPPERWARE!! Don’t let me catch you fixing yourself a plate in my good Tupperware knowing damn well that I will never see it again! Furthermore, if you didn’t bring anything over, don’t let me catch you making a plate period or it will be a misunderstanding.
7. What you came with is what you should leave with!! Do not leave my house with anything that doesn’t belong to you. EVERYBODY WILL BE SUBJECTED TO A BODY SEARCH COMING AND GOING OUT OF MY DOMAIN!!!
8. Do not leave your kids so you can go hopping from house to house. This is not a DAYCARE CENTER! There will be a kid-parent roll call every ten minutes. Any parent that is not present at the time of roll call, your child will be put outside until you come and get him or her. After 24 hours, I will call DHS on your ignorant ass!!
9. BOOK YOUR HOTEL ROOM BEFORE YOU COME INTO TOWN!! There will be no sleeping over at my house! You are to come and eat dinner and take your ass home or to your hotel room. EVERYBODY GETS KICKED THE HELL OUT AT 11:00 pm. You will get a 15 minute warning bell ring.
10. Last but not least! ONE PLATE PER PERSON!! This is not a soup kitchen. I am not trying to feed your family until Christmas dinner! You will be supervised when you fix your plate. Anything over the appropriate amount will be charged to you before you leave. There will be a cash register at the door. Thanks to Cousin Alfred and his greedy ass family, we now have a credit card machine! So VISA and MASTERCARD are now being accepted. NO FOOD STAMPS OR ACCESS CARDS.
These are so funny because they are so true. I'm guilty of doing number 1 every year, and I did bring my own tupperware. :)
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Kah-Rah-Tay...
I headed over to Pittsburgh this past weekend for a tournament. Good times. I consider a tournament trip personally successful when 1. regardless of the hardware I walk away with, I feel I did well, and 2. I get to enjoy time hanging out with people from my school. Both occured this past weekend.
To quickly summarize the competition and where I placed... I got 1st in breaking and 2nd in sparring. I am particularly happy with getting 1st in breaking considering the division was the largest and most competitive I've ever competed in. I remember last year the 16 year-old division was huge. Well, the 17-37 women's blackbelt division picked up all those 16-year-olds. My only regret in breaking is I didn't use more wood, but I was nervous after the last tournament. And the breaks I did proved to be plenty. I was the only one who did all my breaks cleanly on the first try and I heard a judge say "wow" when I set up my 2-board headbutt break. (Seeing a woman do that looks more impressive than it is and gets high points.) Grandmaster Byrne even came over after and complemented my breaks, which is pretty cool... I got 2nd in sparring. I was feeling pretty good too after I dominated my first match. I hopped out to a 4-0 lead and only eased up as not to beat her 5-0 (they stop you at 5). My first match tends to set the tone; if I feel good then, I'm pretty golden for my other matches. The woman I had to spar for 1st I've been sparring since orange belt. She's got a few inches on me in height, which makes it hard but I had a strategy: don't let her extend her legs and go in for punches. Well, this all fell apart because when I went in, she'd hook me to the back of the head. As far as I've ever seen, hits to the back of the head aren't points, but the judge's saw differently. She did it twice and it completely threw me. A schoolmate on the sidelines even sarcastically yelled out, "watch out for those hook kicks to the back of the head..." also not getting why points were awarded. But anyway, end of the day, I felt good about how I sparred and I'll get her next time.
There was also a demo at the tournament. Coolest part was seeing some of the best sword people in the world perform. I recorded some of the cutting but the coolest part was the advanced masters form. They used these light blades that whistled in the air... some of the coolest stuff I've ever seen. Blew me away. Here's a little bit I got from the bamboo cutting... (when I get it to load)
There was also this little yellow belt sparring. She didn't look taller than 2 feet, and looked no older than 3 and she had on these big glasses. It was the most adorable thing. It took the judges 20 minutes to let her spar though; I think they were making up rules as to ensure she not get killed. It ended up beign the cutest match ever, with a crowd around just going "awww".
So after the tournament, we headed to Ruby Tuesdays and took over a backroom with over 20 people. Then some of us headed to the hotel bar which had a live band and packed dance floor. Then after that events included getting kicked out of the lobby, playing Uno in the stairwell, watching an oldman accidentally stumble on the fire alarm while playing Uno, watching half the hotel evacuate, telling them to go back into their room which the hotel didn't bother to do, continuing the Uno game with some random dude who came out during the fire alarm and didn't get the rules, ending the Uno game after hotel guests complained we were loud, and the next day somehow convincing them to give us a substantial room discount even though several noise complaints were listed as our room. It was a crazy night.
Anyway, the tourney and the overall trip were great. Good times.
To quickly summarize the competition and where I placed... I got 1st in breaking and 2nd in sparring. I am particularly happy with getting 1st in breaking considering the division was the largest and most competitive I've ever competed in. I remember last year the 16 year-old division was huge. Well, the 17-37 women's blackbelt division picked up all those 16-year-olds. My only regret in breaking is I didn't use more wood, but I was nervous after the last tournament. And the breaks I did proved to be plenty. I was the only one who did all my breaks cleanly on the first try and I heard a judge say "wow" when I set up my 2-board headbutt break. (Seeing a woman do that looks more impressive than it is and gets high points.) Grandmaster Byrne even came over after and complemented my breaks, which is pretty cool... I got 2nd in sparring. I was feeling pretty good too after I dominated my first match. I hopped out to a 4-0 lead and only eased up as not to beat her 5-0 (they stop you at 5). My first match tends to set the tone; if I feel good then, I'm pretty golden for my other matches. The woman I had to spar for 1st I've been sparring since orange belt. She's got a few inches on me in height, which makes it hard but I had a strategy: don't let her extend her legs and go in for punches. Well, this all fell apart because when I went in, she'd hook me to the back of the head. As far as I've ever seen, hits to the back of the head aren't points, but the judge's saw differently. She did it twice and it completely threw me. A schoolmate on the sidelines even sarcastically yelled out, "watch out for those hook kicks to the back of the head..." also not getting why points were awarded. But anyway, end of the day, I felt good about how I sparred and I'll get her next time.
There was also a demo at the tournament. Coolest part was seeing some of the best sword people in the world perform. I recorded some of the cutting but the coolest part was the advanced masters form. They used these light blades that whistled in the air... some of the coolest stuff I've ever seen. Blew me away. Here's a little bit I got from the bamboo cutting... (when I get it to load)
There was also this little yellow belt sparring. She didn't look taller than 2 feet, and looked no older than 3 and she had on these big glasses. It was the most adorable thing. It took the judges 20 minutes to let her spar though; I think they were making up rules as to ensure she not get killed. It ended up beign the cutest match ever, with a crowd around just going "awww".
So after the tournament, we headed to Ruby Tuesdays and took over a backroom with over 20 people. Then some of us headed to the hotel bar which had a live band and packed dance floor. Then after that events included getting kicked out of the lobby, playing Uno in the stairwell, watching an oldman accidentally stumble on the fire alarm while playing Uno, watching half the hotel evacuate, telling them to go back into their room which the hotel didn't bother to do, continuing the Uno game with some random dude who came out during the fire alarm and didn't get the rules, ending the Uno game after hotel guests complained we were loud, and the next day somehow convincing them to give us a substantial room discount even though several noise complaints were listed as our room. It was a crazy night.
Anyway, the tourney and the overall trip were great. Good times.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Tragic...
http://news14.com/content/local_news/589231/town-mourns-teens-killed-in-car-wreck/Default.aspx
The Jeffrey Alston Sr. interviewed in this article is my first cousin's son. As the article explains, Jeff's 16-year-old son was tragically killed along with 2 teenage friends in a car accident. Since their such a long distance away I don't get to visit with my (extremely large) family in North Carolina as much as I probably should, but of the times I've visited, Jeff is one of the relatives I've seen the most (especially when he still lived at his mom's and we stayed there on visits). I was even at his house on my last trip. He's a great guy, and I'm truly sad this happened.
Aside from the obvious sadness of any tragedy such as this, it inspires deep thought on other things. One thing is appreciation of the family and friends you have while they're here, because tomorrow is not promised. Having lost a parent at a relatively young age, I already had reality hit me over the head with that point, but other events continue to make that point. Putting off visits and words till next year assumes you know what's ahead and you don't.
Also, I'm wondering why the legal age to drink is 21 (which I think is actually a bit too high) but kids are driving without adult supervision at 16. A wrecklessly-driven vehicle has the power to do damage to everyone in the car AND those around them. And the tragic incident rate of young teenage drivers is really high. Maybe if there were more restrictions at a federal level more lives would be saved.
The Jeffrey Alston Sr. interviewed in this article is my first cousin's son. As the article explains, Jeff's 16-year-old son was tragically killed along with 2 teenage friends in a car accident. Since their such a long distance away I don't get to visit with my (extremely large) family in North Carolina as much as I probably should, but of the times I've visited, Jeff is one of the relatives I've seen the most (especially when he still lived at his mom's and we stayed there on visits). I was even at his house on my last trip. He's a great guy, and I'm truly sad this happened.
Aside from the obvious sadness of any tragedy such as this, it inspires deep thought on other things. One thing is appreciation of the family and friends you have while they're here, because tomorrow is not promised. Having lost a parent at a relatively young age, I already had reality hit me over the head with that point, but other events continue to make that point. Putting off visits and words till next year assumes you know what's ahead and you don't.
Also, I'm wondering why the legal age to drink is 21 (which I think is actually a bit too high) but kids are driving without adult supervision at 16. A wrecklessly-driven vehicle has the power to do damage to everyone in the car AND those around them. And the tragic incident rate of young teenage drivers is really high. Maybe if there were more restrictions at a federal level more lives would be saved.
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