"I am so
tickled and excited by Jack's first day at karate I can't tell you! So too
are all these SF [Special Forces] guys, who are all some kind of black belt
in some form of martial arts or other. They all insist that you should
immediately switch him to their particular discipline, and have a dozen
excellent reasons why that is so. However, I did get all kinds of good
advice, like class size, making sure that their are no contact kicks and
punches during sparring until they [the students] are about 12-13 years old,
that you shouldn't be paying any more than 50 bucks a month for lessons unless
it's an extremely small class, to check on their accreditation to teach from the
American Karate council or some such org. . . . In short they are all as
excited about it as I am and want regular reports from me after each
lesson."
"We have
taken over a looted out house for ourselves, the team from 10th group, and any
visiting firemen who need a place to sleep for short duration. We are boarding
up the broken out windows, and have contracted a local HVAC guy to look at the
ripped up HVAC system and see if it can be fixed and how much. This house is
also on the lake, right across from the one that will be the VIP house, and
since they gave it to us, you can bet it's torn up, must be the first one the
looters hit. But I went through all the wiring where the lights, outlets and
switches were and tied them off, and we put in a circuit box which I tied to our
generator. So basically I have the entire house wired up to the
generator. Now on patrols, we will be hitting hardware stores looking for
outlets and switches as well as lights, and eventually will have all the
electrical mod cons! [modern conveniences?] We could have the ac working
in a week, which in these temps would be a godsend.
"