A sense of achievement
After nearly 2 years of training with MAI, I got my first belt 
Its yellow and quite possibly goes with nothing in my wardrobe but I love it! The kid calls it gammy yellow, as if there was any other kind?! At the start of the new year I set myself a few goals, not new year’s resolutions cause I hate them. One of them was to get my first belt. Its so strange, because every week I would use most of the stuff I had to do, I have been doing it all the time. Yet when it came to the time I was so nervous. I had some idea of what was involved, but standing in front of everyone including the higher belts and doing the most basic of kicks was incredibly daunting. Mammy2 and the kid came down to watch me. I messed up a couple of things due to pure nerves but redid them and got it in the end and have a lovely yellow belt to show for it. The support from the instructors was great and really helped. We were all done and dusted by 4.30 which was just in time to leg it back to the apartment to catch the second half of the rugby match between Ireland and England.
Saturday was hectic, once the match was over, it was up town for a meeting with my website team. Drinkies, food and then onto another website meeting in Pantibar. The adreneline had worn off at this stage so I was wrecked. But there was mingling to be done and pictures to be taken with a potato. Bella, the new small digital camera behaved herself thank god. Normally she has a hissy fit if the light is not right or its too dark or we don’t pay her enough attention and so on. You may say she’s an nanimate object but I know better. The meet was really good fun, I sometimes find them stressful but I think the team were doing most of the mingling so I sat and ordered people about 
They don’t take me seriously though so its fine. AND someone gave me a copy of Mr Tayto’s book. I can’t wait to delve into it. I’m currently doing my best to read Wicked. I had started one of Stig Larrson’s books on a recommendation from a mate, but gave it up as I couldn’t get into it. Its not my type of book so that’s gone to one side and am onto Wicked which I am also finding it hard to get into. It’s easy to read and you get stuck into the story and then he goes off on a political tangent which I don’t like. Its one of the reasons, years ago, I gave up reading Anne Rice. She stopped writing good stories and seemed to use her books to push her political thoughts onto us. If I want to read a book about politics I’d buy one. However I am sticking with Wicked because Mammy2 says its worth sticking with and we are going to see it on Broadway when we head to New York in May.
