Today

I wish that I could have gone to the top secret event today! I missed you guys. I am in Denver for Compassion First and am really overwhelmed with what lies ahead. I have had the opportunity to meet some amazing people who are doing awesome things in our world. They are the force that creates change, people dedicated to their cause and truly living it out in their lives. Let us all hope that we can find our cause and be the change we wish to see in the world!

Quality

I was thinking about quality recently, and I just wanted to say this:

It is important to have good quality in your forms, no matter what kind of condition you're in. Does anyone remember the day when we did a Demo Team performance last school year, and the sun was in our eyes? Does anyone also remember the day when we did forms on that mat that was burning hot? It was a challenge. But, the longer we faced those challenges, the more we got used to it. (Or we just found a way to cool our feet) So, we need to be able to do good quality things in different conditions, or at least be DECENT in them.

Thoughts

Just got home tonight from going to see a client that passed away. It is such a sad event and yet an amazing thing to see what a supportive family we have at the Edwards Center. It reminds me how blessed I am in this life and how many truly amazing people I interact with on daily basis. While there are many things that this lady taught me the one that stands out most is the importance of appreciating what you have. She was so excited about the little things in life that no matter what was going on she could always make me smile. Just wanted this to be a reminder to all of us to appreciate the little things and the moments because those are really the big things in life!

Saturday Workout

Steven Cason Forged 1st degree Black Belt Candidate 2012.

I would like to thank KJN for the cinder block workout today.  It was pretty fun.  Can't wait to see what he has planned for us next week!

I don't know about the adult Forged testers but I can feel some aches coming on tonight.  For me shoulders, upper back, etc.  I thought the walking on water routine was a good team building exercise I thought it was about pace and timing to alternate who picked the cinder block next and still keep from being warned not to slack by our coaches.

After the workout I went to Hales to have one of their omelets.  I felt like I needed protein today.

The art museum.

Hello again team sorry if i am responding really late to this blog but i wanted to redo my other museum blog. So last weemend the first degree juniors went to the portland art museum including me. So what we did is look around in the museum we visited japanese art paintings sculptures etc. But our main goal was to find the purpose and understand the word of martial arts. So we looked around and saw some pretty interesting pictures but the one that stood out most to me was the tortise its like a symbol of immortality and no matter how slow or how far the turtle has to trvel it wont stop until it gets there. Also we learned what martial and arts mean martial means like war or fighting and then arts means skill beauty. So if you put that all together that that is the skill of defending or fighting. Overall i really enjoyed my time with my team at the portland art museum i learned so much at my time there. Also when we first came up to the museum we smelled some really good flowers! Bye have a nice day! :D Sincerly,Clark.Ahrendt

Menucha 9/4-6

Hi everyone! Sorry this journal entry is so late
 I was at a retreat/conference for OCCSA ( Oregon Community College Student Association.)  I was one of the students representing PCC Rock Creek . There were a bunch of student leaders from all these community college, going to workshops about leadership, political, enviromental, and social issues that might be facing us this year. After going, I feel much better going into my job as events coordinator. Hearing comedian Debbie Wooten speak was definitely a highlight. Debbie Wooten  is an African American who was diagnosed with polio at just five months old. She told us about some of the struggles she had growing up in the sixties. The way she got through all of this was cracking jokes and being funny. Life happens, and some things may bring you down. \ She said that scoliosis didn't cripple her, the word can't did. Her talk was very motivational and reminded me that it's all about attitude.

Travel for business updated

Steven Cason Forged 1st Degree Black Belt Candidate 2012

Looks like I got a stay of execution from half of my planned business travel.

Turns out I will be going to Nashville, Tn the week of October 8th and Middlebury, In the week of October 15th returning Thursday October 18th.  My thanks to the staff at AimHigh for working through this travel issue so close to the testing date.

The work out was fun last night but I am very disappointed that I had to stand down due to bleeding elbows.  BSBN Corey gave me some good pointers on breaking guard which made a lot more sense than the way I was approaching it before.

I am starting to get keyed up for the final test and am trying to keep busy recovering my lost word documents after our PC blurped at home.  I should have it done in a couple of days more.

Steven Cason

No excuses

Sorry everyone I have fallen behind on my blogs again!!!! I have been keeping up on everything else but they got lost in the mix. So onto a new blogging commitment for me, at least twice a week until the test! I have also committed to eating no added sugar until then as well. This has been an extremely difficult challenge, but I am hoping it will be a little bit of a lifestyle change for my eating. I am learning that there is added sugar in sooooooo many things. I am extra appreciative of the fruits that I eat, and have been feeling better after just a couple weeks!

climb and run for the cure!

Hello once again team so today i wanted to talk about the events that i participated in over the wekend.Just what the title says i did two things a ran and climbed for the cure so first i did something called climb for the cure its a project put together by the fire department. Its were the fire fighters go to the saturday market and bring a staircase machine and train to climb the stairs of a big building. And for every floor you can pay x amount of money to that fire fighter in the end the money is donated to help fight cysticfibrosis which is a mucus that builds up around you're lungs which makes it hard for you to breath. Alright moving on so i also did the 5K run for... Run for the cure its a program set up by a group of women to help cure breast cancer you have to pay money to get into the run and once you are done running you are given T-shirts and all that fun stuff. And all the money that they make at the run is all donated to help fight breast cancer. I ran the run non-stop because i wanted to help those in need who are currently suffering from breast cancer. Have a nice day see you in class! :D sincerly,Clark.Ahrendt

Art Museum (and flowers!)

Hey team!  BKGN Danny took the younger Black Belt Testers to the Art Museum.  I haven't been there in a really long time, and it was fun looking at all different kinds of art there. The one piece of art that stood out to me (besides the really bright one in the middle of the hall upstairs), was this thing made out of bark shaped like a bird. If you looked close enough, you could see the feathers in it's "wings". The way I interpreted that piece of art was that something extraordinary can be made out of something you see everyday. (Which means that we can be turned into something amazing if we really tried) There was also this weird structure by the entrance, and everyone thought it was a chair so some of them sat on it. Apparently, it was a sculpture, and we were all laughing when we found out. Lesson here, don't judge a book by it's cover, or just don't judge anyone at all. We were also surprised to see some simple paintings. We even saw one that was just a blue background and 3 strokes of a brush in different colors. What I learned from that one is that good basics are important. Some of the stuff we saw looked kind of creepy, like portraits with red eyes, and paintings that seem to watch you no matter where you walk. There were even some of those accordion-type curtains that can fold and unfold themselves. They even had some cool stories written on them too. (To me, that meant everybody has a story, and that makes everyone unique) My other favorites were the Cherokee masks. Some were bears, or sad faces, or a face inside a bear mask called "Transformation" or something like that. The art museum was pretty awesome (at least to me it was), and I'm sure there's going to be a lot more stuff when I come back.

P.S. We got to smell some flowers!!!

Well we are finally getting there

Steven Cason Forged black belt team 1st Degree Candidate.

I find it hard to believe we are almost finished with the testing process.  It seems to me that we just started a couple of weeks ago!  Time flies by.

My thanks go to Cyrus this week for giving me some good tips on executing the OxJaw breaking technique.  I hope everyone is in good shape with their non technical assignments.  Today I took the day off from the dojo and focused on memorizing the knowledgebase.  I am still recovering from the crash of our computer this week but I should be able to get everything caught up for our October 15th deadline for having the written part of our test completed.

All of you guys on the 1st Degree team don't forget the IOU we discussed Wednesday after training you have for me for Monday.

Hopefully we are all in the process of dotting our I's and crossing our T's at this stage of the test (you know cleaning up loose ends).

Also my thanks to Chris (my wife) for repairing my shin guards.

Steven Cason

MUTE!

Hello once again black belt team so i am very very sorry today because i am blogging a little late about this so please forgive me for that but yes i went mute for 24 hours straight in a row and it was super hard because you know me im a big talker and i love to talk but it was hard not to comunicate with my words but i did try a little sign language but i wasnt all that good at that.... so i ended up starting at 6 in the morning but i talked and then i talked again! so over all i made it on the last try and in the end i am really proud of myself because that was a really hard thing to do! but im glad that i just sucked it up and did it. sincerly,Clark Ahrendt have a awesome day!

How I will break my boards

Hey team. For those of you who weren't during the Board/Brick breaking event, I had 2 boards. I chose elbow and axe kick to break them, but they didn't break. They way I will make sure I will break those boards when the special day comes, is that I will go to Home Depot when we can, and I will buy my self some boards and cut them to the same size. That way, I could practice breaking the boards in those ways. I'm really excited for the day to break those 2 boards from that day, and I would like to say THANK YOU TO THOSE WHO GAVE ME SUPPORT DURING THAT TIME, and I will break those boards! (It is my destiny, literally)

Travel for business

Steven Cason 1st Degree Black Belt candidate Forged 2012.


A  week or so ago I was notified at work I will be traveling on business for 4 consecutive weeks beginning Monday September 24th.

I talked to KJN and BKJN about this and they have agreed to let me work out on Fridays, Saturdays morning and afternoon, and Sundays at the Dojo.  I should be able to work my travel arrangements out so I can make the Friday appointments for the fist two trips I am flying to Hayden Lake Idaho so Friday will be a travel day (hmm maybe I can come back late Thursday evening) but when I am traveling to Nashville the last two weeks of the scheduled travel it may not be possible to make the Friday appointments.

I will be able to make the Saturday special trainings and the physical and technical tests.  Anyways point of this is beginning September 24th you won't see me weekdays only on weekends.  I haven't quit I just need to modify my schedule a bit.

Steven Cason