As planned, we left this morning on our roadtrip. We are now in Seattle, Washington, USA, staying with our friend Mike. We are all still fighting colds and pretty tired from a day of traveling, but it's nice to be on our way.
« August 2006 | Main | November 2006 »
Sick, tournament result
Like many mom-dad-kids families I know, ours doesn't have much of a safety net in place in the event that mom gets sick. And that's where we're at right now. It started yesterday. It's nothing too serious, just a head cold, but I feel the urge to knock myself in the head with a sledgehammer just to get some rest.
M'hijo did take a 2-hr nap yesterday, while Sahsez played at a friend's house, so that was a blessing. He's down right now and as soon as I finish this post, my morning pages, a neo-citran, and a bowl of chicken soup, I'm going to try to sleep again myself. He'll probably cry for me just as I finally drift off!
This is a particularly bad time for me to be ill because I am supposed to be getting things ready for our trip. We leave on Saturday morning, theoretically. Possibly Sunday.
Oh, the tournament. It started badly, with us arriving late due to very slow service at the cafe we'd gone to for breakfast. My fault for not really taking the 10:30 start time seriously and showing up at eleven, betting on none of my divisions being called that early. Well, guess what? I missed my patterns division by ten minutes. So I was upset, but actually, the other people in my division were all in my club (three others) and they all got a medal, so it worked out well. I do regret that I wasn't able to perform my pattern in the tournament environment, because that is a bit scary to me and I wanted to get over my fear. I'll have to wait a few months now until I get another chance to do that.
Then, we had four or five glorious hours or waiting! "Hurry up and wait!" is how one of the competitors put it. It was a bit tricky having both of my kids there, and being all antsy about competing, and also not wanting to get worn out amusing them and carrying M'hijo around and stuff. I ended up relying on Tobias even more than I thought I would. He was a good sport though, chatting with all the people from the club, even though he doesn't know most of them very well, and taking M'hijo for little walks and keeping Sahsez from going ballistic. Still, I won't put them through that again. It's just too long and boring a day for them. This may mean no off-Island tournaments for me until M'hijo weans, but oh well.
Finally, I got to fight. Only first, I had to receive a medal. See, it turned out that at my rank (beginner) there was no one else signed up for sparring. So I won a gold medal by default. Not exactly what I had hoped, but what can you do? I'll just assume that if there were any other competitors at my level, I would have beat them.
Luckily, there were three other competitors one level up, so I got to fight. I lost a fight and won a fight and this gave me a bronze. Then, because I was a "gold-medallist" I qualified for the women's sparring grand championship round, where I lost again. But hey, I got three fights! That's pretty good. It seems that most people's main goal with the tournaments is not necessarily to win a medal, but to get as many fights as they can. Of course, you are more likely to get more fights if you win a fight, but in my case, I lucked out with getting three.
I expected to be nervous of fighting in front of so many people. I wasn't. I really hardly even noticed the people around me, just my opponent. I think my coach probably had to call me over three times before I noticed that he had called a timeout to talk to me, because I was just so engaged in the fight.
I expected the fights to be of moderate or low difficulty. They weren't! They were so much harder ! What really surprised me was how poorly my cardiovascular held up. I think I'm in pretty good shape right now but man, halfway through each match, I was breathing very heavily and wondered if I'd be able to continue. But there's something about the ref saying "FIGHT!" that has the effect of turning off my tiredness. One second, I'd be thinking "Naptime" the next, I'd be on fire again, trying to score like my life depended on it.
I expected the fights to be about as fun as sparring class at the club. THEY WERE SO MUCH FUNNER. Even when I was losing badly, it was just so neat. I get almost as much pleasure out of someone else getting an awesome point on me as I do getting an awesome point on them, so the only really bad thing about my sucking was that the matches were over more quickly.
That said, all I can think about is the opponent that beat me (I fought her twice, she won twice) and how I'm going to beat her next time. Unfortunately, I won't be training for the entire month of October, and then there's NaNoWriMo in November, and then Christmas, etc. etc., but my club is hosting a tournament in February, and man she'd better be there. I may not beat her in February (after all she'll be training too, it's not like I can expect her to take a break and let me catch up) but I do intend to get a few more points on her.
I've been puzzled about something I've seen in sparring: it's the hug at the end. A hug with a stranger that you've just been pummeling for two minutes. What is the deal with the hug? I wouldn't hug a stranger who hadn't just been trying to kill me, so why would I hug one that had? The kids sometimes do it, the men usually do it, and the women ALWAYS do it. But why, I've wondered. Surely a bow and a handshake or a high-five suffice to show "No hard feelings, good fight". The hug seems like taking it a bit far.
I now have the answer to this mystery! The answer (for me, anyway) is that during the fight (presuming no one's fighting dirty), paradoxically, you actually build up good feelings for your opponent, so that by the end of it, you like them so much you can't help hugging them. It's such a strange thing. It feels like when you hug a boy after you dance with him, even if you don't really know him. It's like "We've done this thing together, and it was good, and I want to thank you for that and show you that I appreciate you and like you".
Or the hug could also mean, "Oh thank you so much for not breaking my nose!" Which no one did. Thank God.
Take a good look at this nose, it may be the last time
Tobias asked me last night, "So are you going to get your nose broken at this thing?"
I said, "Maybe. Hope not."
I REALLY hope not. My nose is not perfect, but I love it. It's been with me since I was a baby. It is very, very unlikely that anything will happen to it tomorrow at the tournament, but it's always a possibility. Let me tell you though, if someone does break my nose? Protocol, etiquette, and honour may just fly out the window quite quickly and I may have to lay the smack down. But seriously, this is next to impossible, so no worries! No worries!
Yes, I am nervous.
Pre-tournament confession
Friends, this weekend, a very exciting thing will happen: I will participate in my first Tae Kwon-Do tournament. I am nervous and thrilled in a ratio of about 3:5. Mostly I am really, really excited to get in the ring with some people outside of my own club. I am competing in both point sparring and forms. Forms, I don't really care about, but I'm doing it to be a good sport and to try to challenge myself to improve my pattern (a beginner's pattern called Dan Gun for those who care) but sparring...ah, sparring is my true love. We'll see if I can still claim that after Saturday.
I want to say that this is my first tournament and as such, I will be satisfied if I do my best and get oh, a couple of points on each opponent I spar, and all I'm really doing is competing against myself and trying to show good sportswomanship and blah blah blah blah blah, and all of this is true, BUT I'm doing the Artist's Way and Julia would say that you should SAY WHAT YOU REALLY WANT and TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN DESIRES. So, I admit it: I want a fucking gold medal! Sorry, but I do. I just do. If I don't get it, I will not cry, but I want it. Yup.
On the Move
This weekend, M'hijo really started moving in earnest. Before, he could move across a room, sure, if you gave him half an hour to do it. But on Saturday morning, he saw something he wanted on the other side of the living room, and was there in about fifteen seconds. He doesn't crawl exactly, but instead uses a foot and two arms to push himself along. The other leg stays folded underneath him. Bit of a burden really; he'd do better with just the one leg.
So, Saturday afternoon we went out and got a gate for the stairs, and on Sunday we did a good clean of most of the house. Still, there are a few things we didn't count on. For example, we didn't count on him scooting across the kitchen floor while no one was watching and downing half a bowl of Friskas before I found him.
Still, I think if I remember to close the doors to the bedrooms, the study and the bathroom, and start putting the cat's bowl on top of the dishwasher when she's not actually eating, and remember to replace the outlet covers when I unplug something from an electrical socket, and hound Sahsez to pick up all the little tiny pieces of Playmobil after she plays, and keep the baby gate intact, and close all the kitchen cupboards firmly, we should be okay.
What makes it so worth it is seeing how proud he is of himself. He's been even more cheerful than usual since he became his own man.
New Recipes Numbers 71-75
Number 71: Creamy Stuffed Figs - I got these from a wonderful blog called The Weekly Dish. Whenever I get my act together (maybe when M'hijo starts preschool) I am going to do a little weekly menu like the Culinary Bookworm does. It's so neat, and so were the figs.
Number 72: Sauteed zucchini with tomatoes and basil - Three things came into place for this: beautiful organic basil and zucchini in my SPUD delivery, Tobias' cherry tomatoes ripening, and an article on sauteeing grated zucchini in Cook's Illustrated that described how to get a nice flavour and texture (read: not soggy) from zucchini. I'm making it again this week.
Number 73: Strawberry and chevre salad - For my "champagne" brunch. This was from The Best of the Best and would have been the best if I hadn't burnt the almonds. Even so, it was pretty scrumptious.
Number 74: Quiche Lorraine - From the Joy. I cheated and put some cheddar on the top. Quiche without cheese just feels wrong.
Number 75: Salmon salad - Another winner from The Weekly Dish. Can you believe I was pondering what to do with my leftover salmon for dinner when I happened upon this while going through my bloglines feeds? Fortuitous and delicious.
WBW 25: Champagne
This month's Wine Blogging Wednesday is being hosted by Sam of Becks and Posh, a San Francisco area food blog that I plan to spend a lot of time reading in the next couple of weeks before we leave for our USA roadtrip. Sam chose Champagne as the theme and I thought this was a great choice. There was one little problem, though. When I sent Tobias down to our wine shop to pick up a bottle to accompany our brunch this past Sunday, he came back with a California sparkling wine, rather than real Champagne. Apparently the cheapest bottle of real French Champagne at the store was 55 dollars. Yikes! I thought "Ohp, Sam is not going to go for this. She specifically stipulated real Champagne!" But I asked nicely and Sam has agreed to let me be an official WBW 25 participant, despite my shameless flouting of the rules.
So the bottle we ended up with was a Roederer Estate Brut from the Anderson Valley of California, which isn't a Champagne, of course, but it's pretty darn close. The Roederer winery was founded by the president of Champagne Roederer, the winery that makes Cristal (accusations of racism aside, I would love to try Cristal one day). The California branch of Roederer opened in the 80s and they've been making their Anderson Valley Brut since 1988.
There is a lot about how this wine is made on the Roederer website, but here are the salient points:
- made from pinot noir and chardonnay grapes
- made from grapes of multiple vintages
- aged in French oak
- a team from the Roederer winery in France comes over to help blend it. Fancy!
We tried the wine as part of a brunch and we invited Abu, my friend Ms. T, and her daughter to join us and give their perceptions of the wine as well. Everyone seemed to enjoy the wine, but I think Tobias and I were the most excited about it, being the most geeky.
This wine was full of surprises for me. The first surprise was how far the cork flew when Tobias opened the bottle. If only we'd been outside, I'm sure it would have gone into orbit. As it was, it hit the ceiling hard, flew across the room, and landed on the front porch of Sahsez' Playmobil Victorian mansion. The second surprise was the amount of bubbles. There were thousands of them! It was so much more bubbly than any other sparkling wine I've tried. I'm not sure if cork flying distance and number of bubbles are generally considered the marks of a good sparkling wine, but in this case, it seemed to be so.
More surprises: the gorgeous, delicate palate of this wine. Very minerally, not fruity, but so easy to drink and with a nice smooth mouthfeel. There was pineapple and citrus and melon on the nose, once the bubbles calmed down enough for people to stick their noses in there.
People seem to enjoy drinking sparkling wines more often alone than with food. I think I might enjoy this, especially the classic, romantic Champagne-for-two-in-a-fancy-hotel-room thing. But for my first foray into the world of really good sparkling wines, I wanted to try it with brunch. So, to start, we had a salad with a raspberry balsamic vinaigrette, strawberries, chevre and toasted almonds. With the strawberries, it was an obvious pairing choice, and I think it went beautifully. For a second course we had quiche lorraine, which was still good, but was slightly overpowering for the wine, because of the pancetta I put in it.
In future, I would definitely buy this wine again, and would probably pair it with the salad again as well. I'm also itching to try a real Champagne, and maybe pair it with a nice seafoody pasta. But mostly, I'm looking forward to February, when my wedding anniversary rolls around, and I have a good excuse to get a really nice bottle of Champagne, and have it with nothing but strawberries and a fine man.
