Lots of stuff has been going on in my world recently. To summarize, I quit my job after my trip to Brazil in November and I enrolled in massage school and started in January. It has been a great adventure. Before I left for Brazil, I had already been enrolled in school and I had been planning on working through school for as long as I could. But something happened in Brazil and I realized when I got back that I no longer wanted to work the 9-5 grind, so I stopped. Turns out that has been one of the best decisions of my life up to this point. I started at the Brian Utting School of Massage (Cortiva Institute) and I’ve been able to focus and dedicate my time and energy to my education and it feels really good. My grades are good, I’ve gotten positive feedback about my bodywork, and I’m more and more fascinated with the human body. Another perk is that I’ve been able to dedicate more energy to my aikido training which has helped me to lose weight and feel more healthy (not sitting for 8 hours/day and getting sugar out of my diet is probably helping with the weight thing too). I was able to test for 1st kyu last month and passed.

My first quarter in school went very well and I’ve been on break for the last 2 1/2 weeks. I started itching to go back to school already last week. Can’t escape the nerddom. The upshot of having a good long break is that my dad was able to visit with us last week. I’ve lived in Seattle for almost 8 years and it was the first time he has made it out here. Over the last few years he’s been dealing with some heart problems, culminating in a valve replacement and bypass surgery a few years ago. It was great to have him. We did some sightseeing, visiting the Ballard Locks, Golden Gardens, the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, had dinner with friends at Pasta Freska and Ray’s Boathouse, and drove up to the Tulalip Casino (dad likes to gamble a bit). He got a chance to watch me take an aikido class so hopefully he won’t say anymore that he can still kick my ass.

Another thing I was able to do while on break was to take a motorcycle safety training course and get my endoresement. I had a blast learning to ride. And so yesterday, I was kicked out of the house for a couple hours because Lauren was having a clothing swap, so I thought I would just end up going to test ride some bikes at the local dealership, but I ended up buying a great used bike for a great price. It’s a ‘96 Suzuki LS650 Savage. I don’t have a photo of my own yet, but here’s the dealer’s listing photo. It’s got about 33k miles, a couple of dings and scratches, and a new engine. It’s a perfect starter bike in my opinion. Now I don’t know if this is good luck or bad, but while I was signing the papers, the weather had gone from perfect to downpours. I obviously don’t have riding gear for the rain, so I figured I’d hang out at the dealership for a while until it stopped. It ended up stopping just as they finished putting the temp plate on the bike. I rode it home and jumped in the car to go watch 300 with my friend. Then we came home and a group of us went to see the Red Elvises at the Tractor. They fucking rocked! Then we drove down to Randy’s for our traditional late night hang and it was great. Now I’m awake and heading down to the banya to meet my friend for a schwitz.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 10:53 am and is filed under Seattle, aikido, life, massage, motorcycle, photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.