Ninjas are everywhere.

Happy New Year! We entered the new year peacefully, and relatively quietly. I say relatively, because people here in Texas like to shoot fireworks off on New Year's Eve, so it can get pretty loud. I could probably sleep through it, but for the crazy dog that lives in our house. He can't stand loud noises. Makes him vibrate and pant. Tries to climb in bed with you. That kind of thing. Sonya and I took turns keeping him quiet and off the girls beds. That lasted about 2 hours. That and watching a DVD was the extent of our celebrations.

Sonya and I started training again. We have our little family dojo now, and are teaching the girls taijutsu. The saw a karate demonstration at school and got excited about it. Sonya said, 'Heck, we can train them ourselves.' And so we are. Its all starting to come back to me. It feels good to train again. Sonya and I hadn't trained for about 5 years.

In other martial (sort of) news - I went deer hunting last weekend with an acquaintance from church. We saw a young buck, but decided not to shoot him. If he makes it another couple of years, he'll be really nice. We were hunting on a private ranch, and they try to actively manage the deer, so it could be that he'll make it.

A friend sent us this a while back, and I just found it. It makes me smile. (The picture is of Ogata Shuma Hiroyuki later known as Jiraiya, a ninja in a Japanese folk tale, with a heavy gun, overcoming a huge Snake which has preyed on his friends the Toads):

Ninjas are everywhere. Ninjas are in movies, ninjas are on TV, there is probably a ninja clinging to the bottom of your desk right now. With their roots in the battlefields of 14th century Japan, ninjas were assassins who practiced the are of ... oh, who cares? It doesn't matter where ninjas came from. All you need to know is that ninjas can totally kill you without even thinking about it. In fact, ninjas are so lethal that it takes an enormous effort of will for them not to kill you. YOU are only alive because a ninja is trying very hard not to shoot a blow dart through your neck right this minute. Ninjas are being kind to us and yet we haven't returned the favor. Even so, ninjas have stealthily taken over the planet in the last few years and no one over 30 saw it coming.