Victory!

Yes, yes, I’m aware. I haven’t had a blog posting in oh, about three months now. Frankly, with everything that has been going on, I’ve been more than a tad bit busy, so I’ll be brief. So far this year, I’ve:

• Attended the Monster Truck Nationals at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison;

• Did the Polar Plunge in Madison (which was pretty gross. Next year I’m back to jumping in Whitewater);

• Covered a bit of the craziness that went on at the Capitol the past five weeks;

• Learned one friend is moving. He has decided to be a deusche and deal with it by cutting me out of his life; and

• Learned another friend is going to be spending the next six years in prison;

Like I said, brief. Now, onto the main event!

On March 12, the UW-Whitewater Warhawk Karate Club traveled to Dubuque, Iowa (well technically Peosta, Iowa) for its annual martial arts tournament. I traveled with the team last year, but at the time decided to represent Halama’s Martial Arts. This year I have decided to cast off those shackles and consider myself dedicated to the Warhawk Karate Club.

Anyway, my weekend stared out crazy, as I worked until about 7 p.m. Friday and then picked up some chicken from Buck n’ Honey for supper before heading home to pack. I don’t know if it is because I am a woman or what, but it took forever to pack, and I actually wound up staying up until 12:45 a.m., and then waking up again at 2:30 a.m. Why, you may ask? Well, simple. Because we were leaving from Whitewater at 6 a.m. and I neede to be on the road by 4:30 a.m. in order to ensure I had enough time to get there, meet everyone and head out. Skipping ahead through the boring drive over details (I rode up in an actual former police car), we got there a little after 9 a.m. and the tournament began at 10.

I must admit, I didn’t get to watch my teammates a lot until the very end of the tournament, which was disappointing. Instead, I wound up helping out with tallying scoring in between my events. However, I did get to see some white belt sparring (good job Mike, Alex and Zach), the black belt sparring and Pete’s weapons form (the things that guy can do with a stick, lol).

Of course us Warhawks dominated, bringing home 16 trophies between 14 participants. Our own Laura Kiskunas walked away champion in the ladies forms and sparring. It was quite nervewracking in sparring as I wound up facing her in the championship match. Despite being up 4-0 at one point, I could not seem to clinche that last point and wound up losing 5-4. I think I got too caught up with “Oh my God! I’m beating Laura. Somebody call NASA because the Earth must be imploding!”

Anywho, Laura captured first in sparring and forms for the women (the division did not include red and black belts), and after sudden death in forms, I came in third.

After the competition (and after getting my butt spanked by David, along with half of the team) we hit up Buffalo Wild Wings for food before drinks at the hotel. Although not quite as many people as last year, we still had about 18 people squashed into two hotel rooms.

I could go into more detail about the goings-on at the hotel that night, because it definitely is a night that I’m going to remember, but I shan’t. The craziness stays within the group, lol.

Next blog: The growing disconnect in local government (hey, they can’t all be fun...but they are interesting.)