Green Belt!

I finished The Fountainhead almost 2 weeks ago and attempted a draft of a blog, but never finished it. So, here I am again typing another blog. I really enjoyed The Foutainhead. It turned out to be a fantastic story with intricate, but real characters. And the architecture wasn't too technical, but more philosophical. So, someone like me who doesn't really know much about architecture was still able to grasp all the nuances and the characters and their thoughts and motives. I thought it was a great take on society, capitalism, socialism, the concept of the individual versus a collective, the idea of being egotistical, the power of the media, etc. Very interesting and thought provoking.

Now, I'm reading The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. A true story of which, the movie Adaptation is based upon. It's really interesting. I didn't know that Darwin wrote a book or essays on the evolution of orchids. I really had no idea that they were such an evolved flower and that they have withstood time for so long and so well. Of course their biggest enemy seems to be man. They are a very smart plant. And Florida sounds to be a huge place for orchid fanatics. I also didn't realize that anything like "orchid fever" existed. Pretty crazy. Here's one of my favorite excerpts:

In a Florida newspaper, "April 21, 1994 -- Police saw a man pushing a shopping cart with a big palm tree in it about 10:45 P.M. Saturday. When they approached him the man abandoned the cart and tried to hide behind a van. When police found him, he told them he stole the palm tree from a house and was going to sell it to buy crack."

Yeah.

And now for some more fascinating stories about my fairly dull existence, or is it existanz? So, I got my green belt. Not sure if I have already said that. I went to the test for the last half hour. I made up some excuse as I don't like going to the tests. No adults go, and it's mainly kids who are about 7 years of age or younger. And as I'm sure most people could understand, even though I'm not much taller than them, I don't like being grouped with them. My teacher has me do my form, do some kicks, show some different defenses that I've learned, like how to get out of someone choking me from the front and then has me break a board with my side kick (yes, I'm still wearing the brace on my ankle to class). And then, he has me to do some kicks with this 6 year old girl. Yes, that's right, she's six. So, the deal is we face each other in fighting position and then one of us does 3 consecutive kicks, while the other moves back 3 steps as those kicks are being performed and then we switch and it goes on this way. Well, instead of just doing 3 kicks (so it's like taking 3 steps forward except you're doing different kicks) this little demon is running and kicking. No joke. Instead of stepping backward, I'm almost running from this kicking fiend. I think she got in about 9 kicks instead of 3 too. Yeah, it was funny to watch. But knowing I'm going for my green belt and having a six year old white belt chase me around kicking because she doesn't understand the concept, well...yeah...I'm still a bit embarrassed. And my boy wonders why I don't invite him to these things...sigh.

That's it. Send money. You can make the check out to Grr Pickles.