Why ‘Duel Boot’?

An explanation of the moniker I wrote to a contact who asked about my name:

Duel Boot is a play on words. Instead of Dual (meaning 2) I use Duel as in a fight of honour. I adopted the name after I started training in dojo with my daughters. It’s supposed to reflect that I have some facility with computers. I have been building my own for over 20 yrs now, and actually started a small revamping and recycling program to give computers away to people who couldn’t otherwise afford them. We took parts that large corporations would dump when they upgraded and assembled “new” machines. I’ve always figured why let a small thing like money get in the way of living or having an equal voice in society.

I try to use my skills to equalize the inequities where I see them. Same goes for training in dojo, I improve my self to better serve and protect my family, friends and society. Like I tell my dojo mates “use your skills not to be the bully (which unfortunately some people are inclined to do), but to eat the bullies” which presents a much larger challenge in life.

However, I digress. The “boot” part is also because a person makes a conscious decision to start training and sets their foot on the path to seeing it through but also because I truely like working on the kicking shield in class (especially when the person moves several feet from a good yoko or mae washi geri!)

We haven’t had the chance to compete yet but our Shihan is considering it for next year. He was the one who brought us to watch our first WKA event in Longueuil, QC this year, which is where I got the footage that I posted. I’m still waiting on about 6 more clips that are stored on one of the Sempei’s cameras, and as soon as I get him to come over to the house, I’ll post it.

I think the best part of the competitions though is when it’s hard fought and at the end the two opponents have enough respect for each other to truly congratulate each other for a good performance. A struggle is never worth more than when fought against a worthy opponent. Perhaps not as flashy as MMA, but more true to the spirit of martial arts in my opinion.

Some of the videos from the competition mentioned above have already been posted. If you’d like to take a look you can see them on my YouTube page. Please also take a look at videos posted by my Shihan, Charles Bedard Jr.

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And now, intoducing Toni – not the Award, but the ongoing experience! Toni is a peer at Blogalogues. Her blog talks about her current viewing pleasure. Here’s a little more about her:

ToniTV is all about me, Toni, and what I like to watch on TV. So you can see how clever the title really is. Hopefully, you’ll like watching the same shows I like watching. You can read what I have to say about them and then you can comment on my posts with your opinions. You can tell me how wrong you think I am, I can tell you how ridiculous I think you’re being, and then other people can jump in to tell us how we’re both idiots and the whole thing can degenerate into a name calling match.

Toni’s blog is ToniTV. You can find it at http://www.tonitv.blogalogues.com/. Recent posts include discussion of the TV shows Toni is planning to watch this fall, and highlights of the primetime listings for major US networks.

Living in Canada, CBC is one of the most played television networks in our home. We watch Coronation Street and Jeopardy most weeknights. Little Mosque on the Prairie is always good for a laugh.

Unfortunately for my girls who loved watching it, Sophie, a half-hour sitcom about a single mom trying to balance family life with her career as a talent agent, will not be returning to either CBC or ABC this fall. It’s a shame. We like supporting homegrown shows, and with the production office right up the street from our dojo it’s about as homegrown as you can get. Sophie was one of the shows I had worked on, back in its early days. Gave the kids a bit of a thrill, watching one of the programs that Daddy helped to make happen. Most of the other projects I’ve worked on have been a little too grown-up for the girls – for now, anyway.

On CTV, we’ve enjoyed Flashpoint which features Enrico Colantoni (the father from Veronica Mars) who was also really interesting on Zones of Separation, a Movie Network miniseries about UN Peacekeepers in the Balkans. This guy is a very versatile actor. If you haven’t seen Flashpoint yet, you can pick it up on CBS.

Enough of my opinions, though! If you’d like to discuss your TV viewing preferences or learn more about the fall viewing season, head on over to ToniTV where you can get all the latest news. Toni invites you to email her your feedback at Toni (at) blogalogues (dot) com. If you want to follow her at Twitter, her ID is @buffygroupie.

I buried my cat not long ago. Baphy lived an awfully long time for a cat who wasn’t supposed to. Eighteen years.

There I was, busy getting a tattoo and watching Star Trek TNG when an acquaintance’s cat went into labour. He didn’t have any idea what to do. There was six of them born that day.

I had already had experience birthing puppies so I figured, how much harder could it be for kittens? The thing is, he was the last one born. The mother was licking and taking care of the first five. He wasn’t moving, and she didn’t show much of an interest in licking him. She was probably exhausted from birthing the rest of them.

So I rubbed his chest, and squeezed him a little bit. I put my mouth over his muzzle – if that’s the correct term for a cat – and gave a couple little puffs. He started to move. Then I gave him back to his mother.

I hadn’t thought about taking a cat at that point. I watched them all fight for the teats, kind of squirming their way up. He didn’t seem to be taking it, so I put him where the teat was and he took to it. When I left that night my acquaintance was asking if I wanted a cat. I said I wanted the littlest one. About six weeks later he came home with me.

Even at six weeks I couldn’t tell if he was a boy or a girl (ever seen the organs on a baby cat? Very small…..) I called him Baphy. Safe enough name, I guess. It was only when I took him to the vet that I found out he was a boy.

His favourite word was broooooooup, which could mean just about anything. It could be, “Hi, what are you doing?” “What are you eating?” It was very much contextual. He never really meowed.

He was a big suck. It didn’t matter what kind of a bad mood you were in, he was always a source of comfort. Most cats hide. He didn’t – unless of course there was a drunken party going on. In which case he’d find the smallest, darkest, best hidden place because he didn’t like getting stepped on.

He was always coughing up fur balls. Sometimes in my shoe. Kind of like Bill the Cat, for people who remember that comic strip.

One of the funniest things he ever did was void his bladder on a friend’s lap. In a U-Haul truck, on day three of me moving said friend’s house almost single-handedly (because everybody else had passed out.) The guy was holding the cat in his lap and couldn’t figure out what to do with him. Gives a whole new meaning to lap dance! I mean, I’ve heard of acid wash jeans. But never cat spray…..

He did a lot of things he shouldn’t have been able to, I suppose. One time I had a friend climb up on the roof of my building. Baphy climbed up a drainpipe after him. With no claws. My friend is still amazed Baphy got up there. I don’t know if it was teleportation or sheer determination. One to broooup up, Scotty…..

So much for his kittenhood. His cathood was pretty unremarkable, really. Until my wife’s cat came along. Then came the kids. Unfortunately, the children turned my brave Baphy into a scaredy-cat chasing him all over the house. So I gave him to my mother, thinking that he’d be well taken care of and her cats would be good company for him. He had many good years after that.

He got old, started losing teeth. One day he crawled into the office, laid down and never woke up. He was headed for the closet, but never quite made it. He was about two feet from the closet when he died.

He probably wasn’t feeling well. He hadn’t been eating much for the last six months. He was very skinny. Just fur and bones at the end, but he was always happy to see me when I went to visit. He used to come and sit on my lap when I went over. He’d fluff up my chest with his paws, kind of the way you’d fluff up a pillow. It’s funny how cats are. I guess he always considered me his mother.

We buried him out in the country, in the yard of a friend. I think I lost more blood doing it – damned mosquitoes! We wanted to make sure the hole was deep enough. There were a lot of rocks, so it wasn’t easy. I didn’t like the idea of burying him on his back. Didn’t want his paws sticking up. It would be the ultimate insult having the birds perch on them. Either that, or the church mice setting up a safety net for a trapeze.

We managed to dig a good three feet deep, and about two feet wide. The problem with the land out there is that it’s Shield country. The rocks you get are big.

So I guess that’s the end of Baphy’s story. I brought him into this world, and to paraphrase Bill Cosby I took him out too. In the movie Old Yeller there’s a line about it being a man’s job to put his own dog down. In my case it was a man’s job to bury his own cat.

Goodbye, old friend.
Oz

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- or email me: Oz (at) blogalogues (dot) com

Thank-you Ruby for that outstanding introduction.  I just hope I can live up to the billing.

So as some of you may have gathered, this is my very first time blogging. Now I’m not a writer, but I am an individual with various and sundry opinions which I will share from the wee space  that is my blog.

By all means feel free to comment, leave food for thought, or answers to the mysteries of Life, The Universe and Everything! Yes I know (for you Douglas Adams fans) 42. 

You can leave a comment here, use this form to submit content, or contact me on Twitter or by email – Oz (at) blogalogues (dot) com.

I’ve been blogging for a couple of years now, and writing pretty much all my life. I have to warn you, my husband has not.

In fact, I think he may be a little less than sure of himself at the moment, as he prepares to lose his blog-ginity. Not a state I’m used to seeing in my man, who ordinarily projects an air of confidence – no matter what is going on and how nervous he might be about something on the inside.

Someone once compared hubby to the man behind the curtain – you know, the Great and Powerful Oz from The Wizard of Oz? It wasn’t meant to be a compliment, of course. They were playing with his name and accusing him of some sort of imagined impotence – or was it that they thought he had delusions of grandeur? Anyway, what this person didn’t get was that he is the Great and Powerful Oz. I mean, this is a guy who can make the best out of just about any situation, and he’s wonderful at motivating people to be the best they can be. No, he doesn’t usually hide behind curtains pulling levers (well, at any rate, not unless he’s avoiding a blogosphere debut!) But what he does on a daily basis is nothing short of magical. It is one of the reasons I fell in love with him, some thirteen years ago. It’s also why I don’t mind so much today when he goes to the corner for bread, and spends half an hour talking eastern vs western philosophy and lifestyle with the owner of the dépanneur.

Oz is the guy in the JuJutsu class who is the first (and sometimes loudest!) to call out assent when the instructor gives an order. Our middle daughter, the youngest person in the dojo for the past two years now, takes after her Daddy. Sometimes our family ends up together in one corner of the dojo, and the noise level is significantly louder there every time the response of “Hai, Shihan!” is called out. Oz is also the guy who welcomes new students with a good dose of wit, but later takes them aside quietly and gives them some words of wisdom for succeeding in class. Generally the oldest student in the class by about fifteen to twenty years, he doesn’t take it at all personally if someone newer to the dojo surpasses him. He is only happy for their success, and congratulates them from the very bottom of his extra-large heart.

My husband has a unique outlook on life. He identifies strongly as a Canadian, having lived here pretty much all his life. But his family has been straddling the border for generations, and because he was in such a hurry get out into the world as an infant, he ended up being born in the United States himself. Being a dual citizen makes some of the paperwork in life more complicated. We ended up losing the date we’d originally chosen for our wedding, because a bureaucrat was sure his proof of Canadian citizenship was what was needed to accompany the forms. But it ended up that it was his American birth certificate, and because of that all our applications for a marriage permit were scrapped and we had to start all over again! Ordinarily, though, it’s a benefit. He has family living both here and in the United States, and when it comes to a lot of issues he has a special insight that allows him to view things from both sides.

Oz is descended from Scots and Irishmen, if you go back a few generations, and there’s definitely a Celt in my man! He can speak the brogue as well as any, and he is a wordsmith who has learned through growing up in Quebec to tell bilingual puns that leave a good many puzzled looks on faces. It’s fun to watch the understanding come over people: the smiles sort of creep across their faces, and sometimes they end up in great guffaws. He is a funny man who once performed in an improv troupe, but could never bring himself to take up comedy as a trade because it meant performing on command. He’d so much rather share his gift when the spirit moves him, and know that what he gives to the world is given freely – not prompted by the need to pay the rent. (Of course that doesn’t mean he doesn’t appreciate your libations, so if you’d care to buy him a Guiness or to click on any of the ads while you’re visiting, it would be most kindly appreciated!)

I don’t know how much I should tell you, and how much I should leave for him to reveal. Getting to know Oz is like peeling away the layers of an onion – only with him the crying is mixed with a good dose of laughter and a lot of quiet remarks that grab onto you, and make you think hard about a thing you thought you already knew. He’s been accused of thinking too much – even by me. He’s also been accused – again by me – of seeing things too much in black and white. But his frequent inability to see the possibilities of his own life in shades of grey, sure doesn’t keep him from seeing all the colours of the rainbow in the world outside him. He’s a history buff who will take a simple question about a figure of speech or a historical figure, and turn it into the most fascinating discussion about language, heritage and cultural attitudes.

As a husband and father, he’s fiercely loyal and he loves without reservation. Before we were married his mother told me that he would love me like no other man ever could. She was right. I thank her often for the gift of this beautiful boy she birthed and nurtured until he grew into my best friend, and the man I love.

All right, I’m going to stop now so I can leave Oz a few things to actually talk about himself. But if I could encourage everybody to Tweet him to show your interest, or if you like you can leave comments here. I’m sure he’ll set himself to writing soon, and the feedback will be encouraging!

Cheers!

Duel Boot at Blogalogues

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School’s Out at Blogalogues

He’s a dual Canadian-American citizen, whose family has lived with one foot on either side of the border for generations. History buff and martial arts student, teacher and storyteller. It’s all about attitude, honour, and respect for heritage. You can reach him at Oz (at) Blogalogues (dot) com.

Twitter ID: @Duelboot93