I spent a second day with Barry Schlueter, the hibiscus hybriizer, learning more about hibiscus, not only for Ya Kwan Jang Nim, but now for Clara, who is going to do a science experiement with them.  He is fun to be with and learn from. 

Today, the new direction that this new flower project "Kuk Sool's Iron Butterfly" is going, is that it is now going to be commercially available.  For a couple of years, at least, a grower in Florida is going to graft them and have them on his web site so that anyone, including Kuk Soolin and hibiscus lovers around the world, can order "Kuk Sool's Iron Butterfly." The price will be modest, well under $20 including shipping, possibly as low as $10 including shipping.

I also learned more about Clara's science project, and go a lot of supplies from him, including seeds from six hybrids.  We could well have 150 new beautiful varieties of hibiscus in a year!

I didn't get to clone/graft the Kuk Sool's Iron Butterfly today.  The hybredizer wsa busy, so I'll do it tomorrow.  TOday, I worked on hemming up PSBNs unifrom so he will look sharper at tourny.  This is the best job I have ever done on those cuff hems.  I should do the same on my new uniform.  I have to mend the appliques anyway.

I want to have lunch at Korea BBQ, even if I have to eat alone.  I want to get a copy of the Korean newspaper they have there.

YKJN pulled me aside at the end of the advanced class to show me the program bookfor world Tournament.  It is nice!  Julianne JKN pointed out to me the picutres of her and Mike Whatley JKN in a montage in the back.  Way cool!  The school has 153 people signed up, an all time record for one school bringing to tourney!

Tomorrow I bring her back a much smaller plant.  One flower is blossoming.  I think we may cut that branch down to make graftings.  I'm thinking about pressing that flower. I'll have to think about my technique.  The base of the flower is rather thick.  I should cut it off, or at least in two so it can lay flatter.

I don't think I mentioned "Kuk Sool's Iron Butterfly" here.  Peter and I got Ya Kwan Jang Nim a special present for her promotion: a new variety of hibiscus named after her.  She loves it.  She loves it so much she won't leave it at the do-jang for fear that someone will steal it!  The hybridizer and I made six little graftings of it last week when I went to pick it up, and YKJN is so impressed with the plant she wants as many as I, we, can make.  She wants it planted everywhere, and to give it to all her family and friends.  I've taken the plant back to go back to the hybridizer with it, to make more graftings.  She got to enjoy it over the weekend, now a day or two back with me,  The hybribizer thought he might be able to graft a dozen plants off the original.  He also showed me how to fertilize the plants, so maybe we can grow more from the seeds.

Love that she loved the plant, but now I have a new hobby just to help her out, grafting, fetilizing, and growing hibiscus!  Like I didn't have enough interests.

Last Saturday I took the opportunity to mention to Terry KJN what I thought was my weakest part of staff form, the fall.  She gave me some pointers that really helped my fall a LOT.  I may have heard these before, and just my increased experience has made them more useful to me, and if so I am grateful to hear them again. 

I've been crumpling on the fall, tucking the staff in as much as I can, and I'm always off balance and having to let go of the staff to help myself get straight. 

Terry KJN told me to look up, not down, and to fall out, not down, and to remember to kick.  Those three things helps a LOT.  I think part of the reason I couldn't go OUT was the fear of hitting my head.  With 45 pounds off, I'm a little less terrified of the impact I might accidently make.

Doing it over and over on the do-jang floor, and maybe just once at tournament, still makes my shoulder hurt, but I have high hopes of that getting better in the future.

355 missing, and at least 31 dead.  Who knows how many people are homeless or have lost everything they own?  I've read that this is the greatest disaster in history as far as people having lost power, all the way from Galveston to Michigan, millions have lost power, probably over 200 million just in Houston.

A few trees, a fridge a food,  maybe $600 in gas and $300 in clean up costs for us, 12 days of missed school and work, a bit of damage to the house that may cost $500 to fix, a couple weeks missed training right before tournament.  Not really much in comparison.

We were very lucky.

Spent four FULL days clearing out the lawn debris, and hired four people to help.  Got the last big stuff out last night.  Our wall was so big you couldn't see our house from the street.  FEMA came while we were at church, and we didn't get to see it.  Bummer.

I did get pictures, but we cut down another tree after they were taken, so the pile was actually higher.  And the tree guys put their trimmings in another pile. 

Crap.  Myspace ate my blog. 

Life is very hectic. 

We came home last Saturday.  We took our time driving back, because I kept stopping to collect boxes for my frined who lost everything.  Peter always said I deserved a black belt in packing.  Around all our belongings, four people, three cats, a dog and bird, I managed to fit over 50 boxes, along with bozing supplies like tape, rags, cleaner, and a dozen rolls of bubble wrap.

It was eerie driving into Houston.  Most people still didn't have lights. We'd heard some food were difficult to find, so we stopped at the first Walmart to get milk.  No eggs.  :-(  In the parking lot was the first FEMA relief station.  Eveidently, they were everywhere, giving people water, helping them find recources. We still got home before curfew, and Peter didn't think we'd make it.  North Houston stinks of burning houses.  There must have been a lot of fires the firefighters couldn't get to.

The week since them has been very busy.  I have a friend who lost everything and I've been helping her salvage a few things from her house, her horse riding trophies, a few books, some clothes.  She is going batty with everything going on. 

We've also been trying to clean up our house and grounds.  We had only very minor damage to the house, but the yard is taking a lot of time to clean up.  One of our back trees is badly damaged, may not survive.  We all four spent all Wednesday afternoon and much of the evening trying to get the debris by the curb.  FEMA will come by ONCE to get debris, and it needn't be cut into four foot lengths or bundled, so I want to trim some trees and over-grown bushes while we have this boon.  That is at least another day cleaning, after today. 

The kids will have missed twelve days of school.  The electricity goes on and off.  There are shortages of common food in the stores, but food and water is readily available.  There are still FEMA rescue camps everywhere.  At one WalMart in Kemah Verizon WIreless has a huge trailor with free pay phones for people to use.  At the WalMart in Friendswood, an insurance company has a trailor.  Many people are homeless.  I feel extremly lucky to merely have aching muscles from dragging branches to the street and helping others.  Many have lost so much. I feel a bit guilty for missing the fun so many people had in sitting out the storm.  I also feel like I'm a week behind since we were goin for a week.  I'm so tired after Wednesday I skipped Kuk Sool. 

I spent Peter's birthday in San Leon salvaging with my friend.  We had fun talking, and I had fun making friends with her horses, i.e. feeding them carrots.  I've met many of them before, but it was a while time ago.  Peter had to remind me it was his birthday when he called to see when I would be home.  ACK!  I'd bought him a DVD for his birthday, which he already received.  (Ten hours of Milton Friendman explaining econmic theory.  The real present he says is making us watch it!)  All he wanted now on his birthday, besides me home, was grapefruits.  Well the Wal-Mart in Kemah near my friend's house had no Grapefruit. (That is the one with the Verizon wireless trailer with free phones.  I thought about using it just because I could, but I knew if I called Peter just to tell him that the WalMart had no grapefruit, he woudl tell me to come home rather than try somewhere else, and I wanted to bring him grapefruit like he asked, so I didn't.  I told the family why I didn't use the phone, and PEter said "Stop reading my mind!") The Kroger's in League City on the way home had them, but it all cost me another hour before I got home.  He was asleep before I got home, but he woke up to grapefruit and some obscure dark chocolates.

I took breaks from dragging branches Wednesday to wash some of her clothes.  She wants to just walk away form them, she is so depressed.  I think I'm having good luck with them.  It is a wonder she isn't hospitalized from the stress, and yet her boss doesn't want her to take time off work to talk to FEMA or the Emergency aid councelors, whatever their alphabet soup acronym is.  Grrr.  She's staying with friends and eating MREs, and she isn't supposed to seek help?

We went out to eat Wednesday.  Partly to celebrate Peter's birthday, and partly because I was too tired to cook.  Since we lost all of our contents of our fridge in the power outage, food is a little boring right now.  We went to the Korean restaurant.  I really like the food, and the sides are yummy.  The kids ate a little BBQ beef and a lot of plain white rice.  Since both Peter and I are on the same low carb diet (I've lost 40 pounds!) we ate a lot of BBQ beef (in his case) and BBQ pork (in my case) and lots of the little sides.  I can take spicy food better than everyone else, so I think I enjoyed it the most.  I should have let Peter choose the restaurant, in retrospect and with a full belly, but when I was hot and tired, I didn't think about that, and he wasn't making suggestions.  Peter mostly wants to go where the kids won't complain.  I'd managed to buy him a birthday card from each of us.  Clara picked out both Keegan's and hers.  They both had lapel buttons on them, Keegan's said something like "Because I'm the DAD, that's way!" and Clara's said "World's Best Dad". Mine was mushy about how wonderful he is. 

Just over two weeks to tournament, and instead of going to class every night, I've taking vacations, doing voluneteer work and gardening.  Geeze.  I need to get caught up on sleep for that marathon weekend as well as find time to get more practice in!

I went to watch class last night.  I only knew they were there because mom's next door neighbor came over a few days ago to watch when Peter and I were practicing our weapon's forms.  I asked last night to go with him and watch, and it turns out that he is no longer active.  So I went by myself.

I happened in on the Black Belt Class.  The head instructor was standing where I couldn't see him, and calling out directions in Korean. I did recognise most of the words, but his accent was different, so it took some time.  They do more complicated warm ups, instead of ten kicks each leg, each kick, stuff like that, they did something we would call short forms: a block kick block punch, lots of different combinations. They are much harder than we are, and they start from a long cat stance rather than a guarding stance.  They they did what they call "One steps" which are what we would call techniques.  I recognised many, even if hte grab was different. They they did double short staffs.  Their staffs were longer than ours, maybe two feet.  They struck at each other in combinations, very like staff sparring number one, hitting in and out, top and bottom.  It was very rythmic, something like I imagine they do in Brazillian stick fighting. 

They call eh dan rankings by the old style numbering system, so I am Il Dahn, and a candidate for Ee Dahn.  A parent near me verified that one of the high ranking instructors is Sam Dahn. THe head instructor was a visiting instructor, the master was gone, and I'm not sure what rank he was.

All in all, a really neat experience.  Was hoping they would ask me to join them.  My belief that would happen wasn't strong enough for me to actually take a do-bokwith me!