... I still bought SFIII: Third Strike on 360. I'm not anywhere near good enough as the experts, let alone have the time to train myself to compete in anything professional, but I can play these games for hours and the only thing that will stop me is the fighter's thumb. Mine manifests itself as a soreness under the fingernail though... really wish I could get a decent stick one of these days. Alas, I've been saying that for a decade. >_> Still, it says something in days where I don't really play that many video games, yet I can hop online with 2, 3, or 4 and just lose myself for hours playing against people in online matches, and I always find myself better at the end of the day (or night) than when I started. Dunno who my main for 3 will be yet; for 2 it's Honda and 4 it's Guy and Sakura. Makoto was always one of my favorites in 3 due to her Okinawan-type of Karate, but 4 didn't really treat her well... seems that she got buffed for AE though.

Speaking of Karate, I tested for my sho-dan (1st black belt) in Isshin-Ryu Karate a few weeks ago. After several hours of kata, bunkai, technique demonstration (which at one point they said was too flashy, so they gave me 10 minutes to take a break and start over with simpler, more efficient techniques and combs), being whacked with bamboo during a breathing kata where I was expected to keep going no matter how I got hit and punched in the stomach to make sure I'd exhaled all air at certain points (whole thing left me nice and bruised), I passed! So that's one of 4 major tests completed that I have to take before the end of 2011. The other 3 include my ni-dan (2nd black) test in Satori Ryu Iaido (the samurai swordsmanship style that I've been getting made fun of doing since 2004 ), the written comps for my Master's in Biblical Studies, and the oral comps for the same thing... which will result in me finally being done with grad school this December.

So it's been a pretty busy time. Many of you have noticed that I'm not a mod these days, and while I'm coming back, there's just been too much going on in life to devote the time to GS that I believe I'd need to be an effective mod, plus I kind of like the fact that I'm not getting blamed for anything and everything that people may not like in OT. :3 Not to mention there's a girl in my life these days that I've been spending a good deal of my free time (it happens somehow) with; hard to imagine that yes, I'm dating someone but despite my best efforts it's happening! Helps that we have a lot of common interests including martial arts; she's not too much of a gamer but likes them a lot and will at least try them out... she even started Mass Effect the other night. The best thing though, is that she accepts me for who I am. That, dear friends, is so hard to find, but worth it when you do.

Anyways, I'll try to keep blogging when I can, there are a lot of you that I miss, especially the ones I used to IM frequently.