At the end of July, I’m going to a Chinese martial arts tournament in Dallas. I probably won’t compete unless they throw in a free competition event registration with my registration for seminars. That’s what I’m really interested in. The workshops.

Right now it looks like I’ll be taking in four classes:

• Damo Straight Sword
• Pa Kua as a Martial Art
• Wing Chun Combat Applications
• Xingyiquan

I’ve just emailed each of the guys teaching those workshops, just to make sure that they’ll be suitable for somebody at my level of training, and to try to weasel out more details on what they’ll cover. I have to mention that at no point in my life did I ever expect to email a 34th generation Shaolin monk.

On May 14th, Deirdra and I bought our first house, and after a week of sanding, priming, painting, raking, painting, shoveling, painting, mowing, mopping, unboxing, furniture moving, book shelving, touching up paint, picture hanging, vacuuming, and shopping (which isn’t as much fun as you might think), we finally had our housewarming party today.

In short, it was really great. My parents and grandmother came, Deirdra’s father and his girlfriend drove in from South Carolina, our friend Tim drove from Atlanta, and tons of our friends from nearby were here for the announcement.

I think that lots of people were expecting it, but I think it was a surprise to at least a few. Sometime next spring, Deirdra and I will be getting married.

Also, we got lots of phat lewt. I’m not going to try to list everything here for fear of forgetting something, but among the gifts were an ice cream maker, a propane deep-fryer, a hedge-trimmer, a weed-eater, some great glasses, lots of gift cards to Target and Home Depot, placemats, coasters, pitchers, towels, and lots of great food. We’re gonna try to get out thank-you cards to everybody, I think. Jeez, I hope we can remember everybody.