5/17/05--Because you asked

Andy fought on Sunday morning....and took home the gold baby!!  Ahem....he was the only participant in his weight class and belt catergory--but that's beside the point!
He fought an exhibition against a kid with the same degree belt, who weighed about 10 lbs less than him.  The match started....its two rounds of either one minute or a minute and a half....and the first round, I think Andy sort of underestimated the kid.
He was losing by 10-6.  He comes back over to his corner and sits down in the chair....his instructer...Master Timothy Baldwin.....got off a great line to shake him up.  The kid Andy was fighting....was named....no lie here......"Bonaparte".
Can't remember his last name....might have been Bonaparte Jones or something.
So Andy sits down...and proceeds to get his ass chewed by his instructer as we watched on.

"BOY!  What are doing out there?  What are you waiting for?  You need to quit fooling around and go out there and beat this kid....and win.  You are not going to come over to me at the end of this match and tell me....that you were beaten...by a kid named BONAPARTE.  Now get yer ass out there and win the match."

It was hilarious.  So Andy goes out and wins the 2nd round 11-3......and thus won the match by a total of 17-13.  He needed the experience and I was happy that he was able to at least compete.  The kids were both "technically" eligible to go to the junior Olympics by their showing...but I told Kim that I wanted them to...you know, do the old John Houseman thing...I want them to "EARN IT".  I just felt like, if they had been in a tournament and had gone against 5 opponents in a round robin thing, and had finished first or 2nd.....hell, I woulda drove them both to San Antonio for the junior Olympics.  But they qualified just by showing up.  That's not a qualification in my book.  So, maybe next year they'll come back and get to prove it to themselves and to me & Kim that they deserve to go.
We'll happily take them if they prove it.
Afterwards we did a little Sunday morning brunch down on the intracoastal, getting a bite to eat at the Bahia Cabana....where I ran into my old buddy Craig Hallick, who I hadn't seen in approximately 127 years.  Craiger was my contact at the courthouse when I first got hired there, but he's been at the Cabana for around 12 or 13 years now.  So we get home....and Kim's pretty wornout from the whole tournament deal and decides that the usual big Sunday dinner just isn't going to be happening.  She tells me that she's just going to head over to Publix and get some chicken from the deli or something.  I ask her to pick up a couple pieces of the delicious FRIED chicken that they offer there.....just cuz I got a hankerin.
So she comes home with the rotisserie kind....and about 8 pieces o' the fried.
And she puts both kind on the table.  Now mind you, our children.....fussbudgets about anything they don't knowingly recognize on the dinner table....eye the "new" chicken with object suspicion.  Finally, they both pick it up and begin taking ever so small bites out of it.....here's what follows.

"Ya know," Kellie says....."this isn't bad.  Not at all."
"Well there ya go," I said.
"As a matter of fact," Kellie says...."this is really good."
"Want me to tell you why its so good?"

(At this point she immediately drops the chicken and gets a horrible look on her face, as if I'm about to tell her that she's really eating--I dunno---possum or something)

"Wanna know why its so good?"
"Why?"
"Because its BAD for you.  Of course that's why you like it.  Its the worst kind of chicken you can eat!"
"Oh really?"

I'm gonna guess that the trips to KFC or gonna increase here real soon.

The good news is....that with the whole fried chicken thing....their finally beginning to show signs that they may actually be turning into MY kids.

Later,
Jeff