Wednesday, June 9, 2010

May 2010

I have a LOT of irons in the fire but will attempt to keep this update concise. House projects, my kids activities, MMA workouts, barbecues,....

Family
I celebrated my 18th year Anniversary with my delightful and lovely wife, Marisa. I owe the woman my life. I am a very fortunate guy to have her as mine.
We arranged for a sitter for 24 hours and booked us at the very hip and COOL Bryant Park Hotel. Suffice it to say we had an excellent time both outside and inside the hotel, I upgraded to a park view studio, which gave us an awesome view of Bryant Park. We had a great dinner at the outdoor restaurant in the park. Shopping on Park Avenue at night was great too.
Here's to another fabulous 18 years with Marisa!

My 8 year old twin girl's travel soccer team won their final game. Woot! I believe they clinched the 2010 record in their league. The whole team played with lotsa heart. My girls play outstanding defense but also play forward and scored some great goals throughout the season. Big thanks to Coaches Andy, Kyle and Tony for their time and commitment to the team.

Rocketry

Red Glare 8, Price, Maryland 4/09
My twins and I attended the FANTASTIC MDRA Red Glare 8 rocket Launch April 16-18, 2010 RG 8 photo's. There were some pretty awesome flights/projects there..from Burl Finkelstein's 450 pound @@ V2 rocket, BIG V2 on an O + two N class motors to the four-way Wildman drag race on N 10,000 CTI motors.

We flew the most of our fleet, the girls flying EVETHING in their arsenal. Even my brother and his delightful wife Pattie got into the action. We had given them kits for Christmas and they showed up at the launch with the rockets built and painted. Pattie flew her Binder Design Dragonfly and Dave did the Wildman Darkstar light. Both rockets looked great and flew well twice each.

Our crew had a nice honorable mention by the LCO, Neil McGilvray, as we managed to put together a 5 way Foberg drag race--



the twins with their Little Dogs, my brother with his Wildman, sister in-law with the DragonFly and my Smoke on the Water. Was a definitely a cool race and we were applauded by the enthusiatic crowd!

There was some erratic winds so we lost one lower power (Dr Zooch-Saturn V) two medium power and one minimum diameter high power carbon fiber rocket..who knows, maybe we'll find at Red Glare 9, if a tractor hasn't eaten them...


Upcoming we have a trip to Pine Island, NY for METRA's NERRF 6 rocket festival 2010 launch June 25-27, 2010. Our group will be my twin girls, my brother & sister in-law and some friends. Several MDRA members-The Wacky Corporal crew-will be attending. Possible guest of honor will be my wife on Saturday..she might even fly a rocket or two!

Level 3 Certification
I'm chugging along with my L3 certification scratch build rocket, Cerberus a fairly unique homebrew carbon fiber rocket with outrigger engine pods. The rocket is coming out nicely and I hope to fly it at MDRA's fall 2010 Red Glare 9 launch.

Mixed Martial Arts

I took Tiger Schulman karate course about 4 years ago but dropped out for various reasons. Well being at my my highest weight ever in January and encouragement from my wife, I decided to go back.
The Tiger Schulman's Hoboken school instructors, Sensei Diaz and Bonet, were very nice in that they honored my unused hours so it was easy to get restarted.
The major change was TSK has transitioned focus from karate to Mixed Martial Arts.
The uniform has also changed from a karate Gi to standard martial arts bottoms and a T-Shirt for core classes.

At first it was very tiring and training--I could barely breathe at the end of the class exercises. After five months, with 2 to 3 one hour core kickboxing classes per week I'm doing quite well. I feel much stronger, and my kicks are quite accurate and fast. My current schedule is two 9 PM core adult classes and one 9 PM intermediate Kick boxing class. Tough times to train, but I want to see the kids after work so after 9 PM works best.
Overall the Sensei's & joshu's are fantastic. They are great motivators and teachers. My fellow students are very friendly and helpful also.
I highly recommend Tiger Schulman's if you are looking to lose weight and get in shape. The claim is an 800 calorie workout which I feel is very accurate.

Science Fiction
Writing:: Finally got back into some books and writing. Skimmer is enroute to being completed.

Books: I just finished Neal Stephenson's Anathem. I enjoyed most of Neal's books, in the same league as William Gibson, father of post modern Sci-fi and cyber punk. Anathem is a little off the beaten track for a best selling science fiction work as it starts out with a laborately descriptive monastery setting. Neal's brilliant. 'nuff said.
Movies: Avatar was very fun to watch. Great job, ALMOST same league as Star War's although it got a little too cutesy at moments. Cameron also violates some basic technical rules as well, but it's easy to overlook. A lot of people are saying Avatar is Pocahanta's on another planet. I disagree and look forward to the next film.
Iron Man 2, what a disappointment. The first film was outstanding and kind of novel- so any sequel would have some difficulty in comparison. Iron Man 2, even taken on it's own, is flash and trash, full of inconsistencies & lazy writing.
The film is an obvious cash-in for furthering other Marvel properties. Too bad, the 'movie series' could have been great, but I highly doubt it