Been looking at today’s date on the calendar for quite some time, as within this 30th day of May, I entered into my first karate competition.

More importantly, it was Adam’s second competition. He’s also a lot more fun to watch than myself.

Adam took first place (out of five) in point sparring for his age group. He also took fourth (out of nine) in continuous sparring, where most of the kids there are much older than him.

Adam’s best moment came in the title match of point sparring, when he unleashed a wondrous roundhouse kick to his opponent’s face. Unfortunately, face contact is not allowed, and he didn’t get any points for it. The kid went down hard, and was afraid for the remainder of the match. Adam won pretty easily.

I managed to win one match in point sparring, losing another, and took 2nd out of three. I amazed myself in the win, down 3-0, I made a comeback to tie it 3-3 at the bell, and scored the winning point in overtime for the win. Normally I fold under pressure, so I’m pretty happy with that result. I got smoked in the “title match” but was completely gassed from the previous match, so, whatever.

In continuous, there were only two competitors, including myself. These are two 30-second rounds of non-stop BATTLE ACTION. The first round, I didn’t know what to do, as this guy kept flying at me with some type of kick. By the second round, I finally figured out that I needed to simply side-step him, and attack. Too late, I lost 32-29. The head judge (who calls no points) thought I should have won. I’ll get the guy next time.

Fun day overall, I didn’t know what to expect, but it was quite a rush of adrenaline to be sure. I look forward to the next event in a few weeks.

Last night, Laura and I were up late and decided to give Wristcutters: A Love Story, a free on-demand movie on the Sundance channel.

I think we both had pretty low expectations for it, but we were both mightily impressed with how fun and original the movie was, particularly given the story revolves around the afterlife of people who have committed suicide. I have a hard time with labeling/genrecizing movies, but we both agreed it falled into the romantic comedy slot. And we both generally don’t like romantic comedies, so that says a lot.

We had a really fun evening last night. My favorite part was making mixed drinks with a very limited amount of ice. Creative rum and cokes, and vodka and cokes were consumed.

We also had another conversation on tipping poker dealers. It’s an interesting topic, especially since that’s what Laura does for a living. (And she’s really good at it!)

The HEATED DEBATE revolved around how much one should tip when playing in a 5-5 limit cash game at Blackhawk, and some of the pots get excessively large — often over $500. My position is that I should tip a fixed amount per hour, regardless of how many pots I win. Laura thinks that anyone who wins a huge pot should tip more than $1, which is what I would probably do, because I know that while I may have won the big pot there, I probably was involved in a lot of other pots that I didn’t win, and it’s just not cost-effective for me to toss $5 in.

I personally like the idea of setting aside $4 an hour for the dealers. It makes everything simpler.

Here’s some interesting articles on tipping:

http://cdn.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/14/NS7N17H9SL.DTL (nice piece written just last week)

“For dealers, gratuities should range from $1 for an average-size pot to $2 or $3 for larger ones. If you win a bad-beat jackpot or are dealt four-of-a-kind that pays a cash bonus, it’s a nice gesture to give the dealer a bit of a larger reward – usually somewhere around 5 percent of the take.”

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/24/home-poker/1-2-dealers-hourly-rate-home-game-464120/

I need to suggest to Laura that she should try to find some home games to deal. Profitz!!!

Here’s a typical fuckbag who has no idea:

http://mtdewvirus.com/archives/2004/07/02/to-tip-or-not-to-tipthe-dealer/?cp=2

“Dealers get paid wages and from the little bit that I’ve heard, it’s pretty decent money. I could be totally wrong on that though.”

Totally wrong, sir!

When the calendar flips to September this year, I’ll have lived in Broomfield for 10 years. TEN YEARS. It’s not a terrible place to live, but, it’s definitely not where I thought I would have spent the majority of my adult life.

I’d been thinking about moving, and with Adam’s progression into middle school this fall, it no longer seemed beneficial to stay in the nearby vicinity.

So, the first week of July is when I’m targeting moving somewhere closer to downtown Denver, preferably in the northwest part of town. It is coincidentally (or is it!) an area much closer to where Laura lives. Yeah, I want to live closer to her.

But I also want to live closer to downtown, so I might be more inclined to partake in downtown activities. A $10 cab ride to Coors Field is much more enticing than a $30 ride from here. I like eating out, and the options up here are mostly non-local chains.

At the very least, it’s something to keep my mind busy while I try and re-discover who I am and what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’m looking forward to this summer, whereas a few weeks ago, I didn’t give a shit what time of year it was.

Laura asked me last night:

“What makes you happy?”

The answer to this question ostensibly should give a lot of clues as to what has made me the person I am today. It was a really interesting question, as I’ve never given it much thought as to what truly makes me happy.

The one thing that really came to my mind was the concept of giving happiness to others that I love or care about. This has always been a big thing for me, to the point of making huge sacrifices on my part in order to attempt to make another person happy.

I spent 10 years in a relationship with my ex-wife, and the vast majority of those years were wasted trying to convince myself of something that wasn’t ever there. But, I fooled myself into thinking I loved her, and I tried really hard to make her happy.

For about a year during my relationship with Laura, I started to try something different, even though I had no great reason to. I tried to not focus so much on making her happy (even though I did in the beginning), and focused more on myself. It was not a conscious action on my part, but it’s definitely something that I did, mostly out of fear. Fear of going through another disastrous relationship where all I do is put things in and get nothing out. But I had nothing to be afraid of, since Laura was always great to me, we get along, and she’s just generally a great person.

Now, I don’t know what to do. Laura is now just a friend of mine, even though I want to eventually spend the rest of my life with her.

It’s extremely hard when I see so many of my friends are (seemingly) happily with their spouses and children and whatnot. I’m really happy for all of them, but it’s almost funny because it always seems like I’m doing something vastly different than what others are doing at any given point of one’s life. I’m almost 32 — this should be the best time of my life. Instead, I sit around wondering why I wasted a year of my life playing video games and not enjoying that time with someone I really love. It sucks. How do I come to terms with that? And how do I move forward? Knowing that I won’t ever have that precise kind of special love again? Fuck.

I’m not a huge Star Trek fan, but I appreciate what the franchise has brought to the entertainment industry for the past few decades, or however long it’s been around.

In what is now becoming a weekly tradition, Laura and I went to a late-night showing of a movie on its opening weekend. Last week, Wolverine. This week, Star Trek.

I had some relatively high expectations for Star Trek, as the previews actually looked good. And I was entertained quite nicely, albeit with a few gripes.

A common practice in action movies of late is to place the action scenes into close-up shots. I first noticed this in the Bourne Identity, and hated it. I can’t think of anything much worse than “hiding” the beauty of an action scene when all you can see are blurry, in-your-face jumpy camera movements.

I understand there is a reason for this, that since most action scenes involve a large amount of computer enhancements, and it’s obviously easier when there is less to show. I scoff at this, but whatever.

Other than a few shitty action sequences, I had fun with it. And I really enjoy hanging out at the theater on a late night with someone that I love dearly.

Next time…. Terminator? Yes. May 21.