Hello, my little Livejournal.  You have been so ignored over the past few months, partially because there hasn't been all that much interesting happening, and partially because I'm out of the habit of writing in anything but my personal journal.

Things that have happened in the past few months, some of which I didn't feel comfortable posting until it had happened:

• At the end of November, my manager left his position, and there was a lot of confusion as to whether or not I'd be taking his place.  The conclusion?  To half-promote me.  Now I'm in the awkward position of having to define what the difference is between a lead and a manager, and stick to it so that they can't take advantage of me being able to do the manager work (on a lead's salary).
• At the end of November, I squeaked by into 50,000 words in NaNoWriMo.  My goal this year is to get the novel at draft 0 in February, and begin an editing pass at that time.
• Took a class that began at the end of October on Project Management.  It was interesting; I might want to take another one, but the intensive nature of the course was a little much for me, especially given NaNoWriMo.
• My pastor's resigning after his term ends, and the youth pastor is being invited to take over the English congregation.  It's a bittersweet thing; I've been at this church for 15 years now, and I've known both for quite a while.  Thankfully, it's not something that is dividing the church.  Again, because of transition issues, I have a lot to do.
• The college fellowship is winding down for the fall.  There's been a lot going on, and the ministry is beginning to flourish again.  I'm glad to be a part of leading this ministry!
• Andy's new job - we made a decision to take the plunge, so to speak, and Andy's going solo with his career!  He's starting a new business, and has just received his paperwork formalizing it with the state (two months later...).  I'm happy to announce that Fortunate Bear, LLC, is on its feet and beginning to go.  Unfortunately, it means that we're down a salary, but we're thankful we can make it in the short term.
• Andy's new position at church - well, it had to happen sometime; I've been nominated as a deacon for something like five years running, and this year it just seemed like it was the right time to get involved.  Turns out, Andy was also nominated this year, so we talked about it and he's stepping up as a deacon.  We just had the confirmation vote last weekend, and it's likely he's been confirmed.
• Nothing yet on the kids front.  People have been asking, which spikes my anxiety and also makes me pretty frustrated.  It's like, "Just leave it alone, people - it'll happen at the right time!"  Everyone around me seems to be having kids, though, including two cousins who had kids a week apart in the last week and a half.  Every few months, I have to stop and reassure my dad that we're trying, because he has this whole "we're not pressuring you, BUT YOU'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME..." thing that will probably be really funny in retrospect, but is just annoying and anxiety-inducing now.  I'm surprised I'm not having more nightmares.

So that's the rest of the year in a nutshell.  I'll be doing my normal end-of-year recap in a few more days, but overall I feel blessed.  I have a lot of things that I didn't think I'd have a few years ago; I have lots of opportunities, I have a fantastic husband, I have my health, and I'm still clinging to my faith after 15 years.  I have a couple of strong, deep friendships with women I trust and with whom I can share my intimate thoughts and fears, I live in a beautiful house with two cuddly, snuggly kitties and food, water, and heat; I have things I don't even need, like the Internet, computers, and entertainment; I have purpose in life and a hope for the future.

I guess I just have to remember that all of these things have to be kept in perspective.  There is a time for everything, and all I can do is live each day and be thankful.

I'm going to be referencing a whole lot of people you all don't know, and that's okay.

So I just returned from a crazy (and I mean crazy) 36ish hour trip to Chicago to compete in the First US Yongmudo Championship, which is a big old name for "nationals." This might sound like it's important, but we were only bringing people who could afford to go, so seriously, it wasn't even like it was our best people, just the people who could a) afford the plane ticket and b) afford the time to go.
( (A lot) More about the tournament... )

So, it's the middle of July already.  It's been a crazy couple of months, mostly due to work pressures.  I'm writing this entry while running some tests in the background which are mostly but not completely automated.  This means that I can do any number of things, including journal, since the videos run about a minute, minute and a half, during which time I don't have to do anything... so hello there, Livejournal, I've missed you a lot.

So, things of interest:

• New mentee - took on a new mentee, a high school student with mild cerebral palsy.  She's a sweet kid I've known since she was in kindergarten, and it's been great working with her and seeing the great gains she's making.
• White belts - Somehow I managed to bring in four new white belts, so everyone thinks I'm rocking the whole recruiting thing.  No, what happened was I talked to a youth group kid, who managed to bring along three other people.  It's been so much fun getting to know all of them better, particularly since I've known some of them for quite a while now.  It's also fun to see my worlds collide, as the kids make friends with some of the other kids I've seen growing up.
• Missions trip prep - Yep, heading out on missions again, back to the Shoshone tribe to help the church out there.  I'm excited about getting to see my new friends again.
• Yongmudo hike - Helped to organize a hike in Oakland on the 3rd of July - it was great fun to see people outside of the mat.  I never realized Dr. Link was such a Boy Scout... until he started picking up slugs and stuff.  Yep, Boy Scout.
• Work, work, and more work.  We're coming close to our feature complete date, so it's crunch time right now.  I'm sure I'll be in crunch time for another couple of months or so until we ship.  I'm looking forward to our vacations this year.
• A lot of sadness... some of my friends have been dealing with pretty heavy issues, mostly the three Ds - death, depression, and divorce.
• A lot of joy... at the same time, there are a passel of new babies and weddings, and so many good things that have happened.  There's also some job losses, people in transition, anxiety, and more.  A lot of chaos, I guess.
• Crossroads - I've stepped up into an adviser role for our college ministry, and it's been a complete blast.  I was a part of this ministry in 94-99, and it's great to be able to give back and enable the leaders to do a great job.  I'm also learning a lot about being an adviser and what it means to counsel people.  (It's exhausting!)
• Being creative.  This is probably the most exciting of it all, just being able to write code and write other things.  I haven't written much music lately, but mostly it's been writing stories and writing code.
• Working out.  Mostly martial arts, yoga, and Pilates.  My back has been really tight lately, and I'm dealing with a number of sports injuries, including a damaged toenail, an inflamed base of the big toe, a pulled glute, and a wonky knee.  And of course, my ankles are as always pretty wobbly.  All in all, it's pretty ugly, but for all of that I've been still keeping active and having fun.
• BBQs - smoked some meat for our couples' ministry joint meeting with the family fellowship at our church, and then smoked more meat and provided a lot of food for the people who helped with my belt test.  Thankfully I doubled up with another friend of mine who tested at the same time, and we just had 10 people over and hung out and ate really good food.

That's more or less it... lots of chaos,

Many of you haven't seen a post from me in a couple of months.  Some of you haven't seen a post from me since April 25.  And here we are, already in June, and I am finally... going... to post.

I have been twittering a fair bit, mostly minutiae from daily life, little irritations and cute moments that aren't really worth posting into my blog.  It's been an exciting couple of months, but on paper (or electronically), it seems like it's fairly boring.  For instance, I've been trying to maintain my six day a week workout schedule.  But who really wants to hear about that?

The highlight of the past couple of months has been preparing for and taking my third degree black belt test.  There were many ups and downs - one of my testing partners hurt his knee about three weeks before the test, but it healed quickly; my dan paperwork got eaten up on my jump drive, but I had a backup at home; I wasn't sure if I was going to test in the spring, but I did... all of these things got rolled up into one promotion ceremony about a week ago, where I got minted a third degree black belt.

The test itself was interesting; I bailed on the first half but progressively got stronger, and felt like I ended on a good note.  However, I had some form of amnesia and couldn't remember for the life of me if I had done all of my forms or not, leading to a minor panic attack.  Turns out I did okay, though.

Being a third degree black belt is odd - not only do the colored belts look up to me, something I'm fairly used to, but now I have black belts also looking up to me.  Less than one percent of people who walk through the doors make it to third dan; even less make it further.  I'm at the adolescence of being black belt, the point where I hit my growth spurt and the younger ones look at me with respect, and the older ones start to consider me an adult.  It's an odd feeling.

Otherwise, things are settling down after the dan test.  After the pressure is off, now it's a question of how to allocate my time.  I've been spending a lot of time writing recently, digging myself into a new novel.  At least, I think it's a novel.  It could be a lot less.  It's a frustrating but rewarding process, and I'm fairly sure it'll never see print.  I'm in love with the characters, but I'm still working on fleshing them out.  But just getting something down, making progress almost every day - that's enough for me right now.  I'm writing.

Work is putting on the pressure for our September release, and it's going okay.  I'm employed, I work hard and get my job done, and I still have time left over for other things.  It's a good feeling, even though I'm looking at giving up my week-long summer break to get more things done.  Hopefully I'll get comped for it and can take a couple of weeks off this fall to rest and relax.

Anyway, that's the not-so-brief update, one where I wax philosophical.

Oh yes, and the cats are still adorable and cuddly.  We definitely lucked out when it came to cats.

20 minutes weapons with Wellington
20 minutes 2 man ki form with Wellington and Brad, with Lily
Regular YMD workout - warm up
45 minutes weapons with Wellington and Lily
Another 20 minutes of 2 man ki form with Wellington, Brad, and Lily.

... was yesterday.  Woot for meeting all four of my goals in a day!

Now, time to treat myself... what to get, what to get...

After a successful first month, things have more or less been going downhill, particularly this past week or two, where I was battling a pretty heavy cough/cold. My points have been going downhill since I rewarded myself two or three weeks ago, but I am back on the bandwagon, and trying to make sure that I live guilt-free. I am not in this "system" to guilt trip myself into doing things, but instead to give myself positive incentive to do the right thing for myself.

The only thing I have been doing consistently is work out. I can't go to bed early worth beans, and it didn't help that I couldn't get really good sleep this past week. Cleaning comes in spurts - some days the kitchen is completely clean, some days it just piles up. I'm hoping that it'll even out at some point in time.

I've mostly felt it in my devotions, which I have been rocky on this past week. For some reason, not getting enough sleep has been equating to not being awake enough to be able to do devos. They're more or less rock solid on BART, non-existent if I stay at home, and I'm really hosed if I go down to SJ. Well, just another thing to work on.

So far, I have racked up around 28 points toward my next goal, which I still have to decide on. It may be my Scrivener purchase, which I will need to purchase before the coupon expires, or maybe the MacHeist nano bundle, even though I really don't need any of that.

In other news, I have been testing a super cool product that has nothing to do with work and will hopefully be released soon. It's been interesting to come home and then do more testing on another product, especially black box scenario testing.

Things that happened this past month:

• First week of the month (Feb), we were in England for a conference that Andy was speaking at.  Surprisingly enough, I got a lot done there at the conference, especially since I wasn't attending and had my new laptop.  I also managed to work out almost every single day, which was fantastic.
• Did not have fun coming home, but was very relieved to discover that our house was in one piece.
• Started a new mini sprint with the rest of my team, only to have half of the team disappear when it came to actually doing team.  We ended up folding into one big team, which is working better than I thought it would.
• Retreat.  Every year, Winter Retreat is interesting in different ways.  This time, it was surprisingly good - I felt well-balanced, if a bit short on sleep.  I played all five sets, and we made it work.  Every year (in the past few years), Andy and I have made it back from retreat and taken a 3 hour nap. This year was no different.
• The Monday of retreat, we discovered that Andy's grandmother had fallen.  A few hours later, we found out that she passed away, which was a great shock to the family, among other things.  We were scrambling but found a flight out and a cat sitter for the weekend, and I was lucky enough to get bereavement leave to go to TN to visit the family with Andy.  I had a nasty cold but got to meet Andy's aunt (by marriage), the one that no one ever sees because she lives in New Mexico.  We had a blast getting to know each other, and I know that Andy's uncle was pretty eager for her to meet me, quite possibly because I was the second Asian in the family.  In other news, it was the first time in a few years that both of Andy's siblings were in town at the same time as he was.  We have photos to prove it.
• And finally, the cold evolved after we got back, getting better and then lodging in my chest to develop into my standard chest cold + asthma = dry, hacking cough.  Kaiser rocks, and that's all I have to say.
• Lots of martial arts.  Things are settling back into a rhythm, I think, and there is a lot of martial arts in my future.

So I have set four goals for myself, some of which have been achieved and some of which haven't. As I alluded to earlier in the month, I have a chart which displays what I have accomplished and what I haven't. I get to celebrate my achievements now at the end of the month.

1. I have worked out 25 times this month, including today. A couple of weeks I have done 6 workouts a week, which is my maximum. This is fantastic, particularly since most of them alternated hard cardio workouts with hard physical workouts. I can't quite tell yet if I've lost weight, but I have weighed myself and the number's a little lower. (My water weight is generally ~5lbs, though, so anything <5lbs can be attributed to that.)

2. I have managed to clean my house for 30 minutes or more 23 days this month. This is not something I want to skip out on - 7 days a week would be great for keeping the house clean... and there are also the vacation/out of town days to keep in mind, but overall it's been an unparalleled success.

3. I have done my extended daily spiritual practices 15 times this month. I started out the goal by saying "before noon," but I realized that I was slowly losing motivation on this goal and had large, week-long gaps where I just gave up, even at all. This was rock solid late last year, so it made me rethink the goal altogether. I redefined it about a week ago to doing it at all and I've managed to get back on the bandwagon.

4. I have gone to bed before 11pm exactly once. I moved the deadline to midnight about a week ago and it hasn't really helped... hopefully I can get a little more disciplined on this front and then move it back slowly to 11pm.

It's kind of funny how much this reflects how important I think each one is. I have thought, "Workout or bedtime?" and chosen workout, because of my goal of testing for my third degree in May. And I've also thought, "cleaning or bedtime?" and I've chosen cleaning. I'm fairly sure I should choose bedtime in that case, but sometimes an easy point is an easy point.

So that's it for January. I'm hoping to keep this up in February and revisit these goals (and perhaps make new ones) mid-year to help me be disciplined about things I would like to do.

So far, I have managed to get 2-3 points a day on my behavior chart.  The one that's hardest to get is the 11pm bedtime... doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day to make it happen.  However, I have managed to bring lunch two times and have packed leftovers for a third.  (This, however, does not earn me a point.)  I have yet to achieve that 4th point in a day, which makes it difficult.

However, I have seen some amazing results with just 30 minutes of cleaning a day.  I've been breaking it up into two 15 minute chunks, and often find myself just finishing off a chore after the timer goes off.  I think if I get this really going on a regular basis, my trouble spots will actually be cleaned up.  Tonight I cleaned off my nightstand and one of the paper bags of random unpacked junk.

The only one that's been relatively easy has been the working out point.  I'm glad I have this system to get myself back to being motivated to work out.  I'm a little afraid to weigh myself on a regular basis, but I'm hoping that even a little something will affect my weight and bring it back to my base weight.  If I could, for some reason, bring it down to below my base weight... well, life would be fantastic.

I've been easing myself back into work - okay, perhaps I've been throwing myself back into work.  But that being said, I certainly appreciate my SF commute.  Next week is going to be painful - three SJ commutes in a row for a training.

Ugh.  I have nothing interesting to say.

Kabocha squashes are weird.

Well, I felt like I led a great set this morning.  Vocally, hit every note.  Went out to Barney's with a bunch of people, so that was fun... no martial arts and I'm starting to feel a little sick (yay for nasal rawness), so I did a light 20 minute cardio and called it a workout.  Barely broke a sweat, but at least I got the legs moving a bit.  Ev, one of our friends, stayed for dinner (leftover pulled pork that Andy had smoked on New Year's), and I made hamburger buns for the first time ever.

Andy: "What, did you put lard in it?"
Me: "Yeah."
Andy: "No, really?  I was kidding."
A few moments later, I corrected myself and reported that I had indeed used vegetable shortening, which was quite a bit different than lard.

http://www.recipesource.com/baked-goods/rolls/whole-wheat-hamburger-hot-dog-buns1.html

They were incredible.

In other news, I have followed along with Joy and have created a behavior chart for myself.  I just need to buy stars.  If I get all 4 in a day, I'll purchase an iTunes track.  If I get 20 in a week, I'll make a trip to the library.  And whenever I get 100 points, I will (for the first reward) add $25 to my Kiva account.  I really hope this works - I do want to make changes.