Saturday was a good, if long, day. I worked the desk at the dojo from 9-1, ran errands during the afternoon, and then Wrenn and I went to the dojo's 20th anniversary party.

The party was fantastic. Well over a hundred people were crammed into our dojo, with lots of food and drink (we provided pasta with my homemade sauce and Wrenn's apple cobbler), and the festivities commenced with a nice speech by Senpai Joel, then the Taikoza drummers gave a phenomenal performance. After that, the kids and then the black-belt adults each performed. The kids did kicks, punches, katas, and jumping side kick breaks. Many of us black belts did katas: I and three other shodans did Seiunchin, three nidans did Koryugojushiho, four sandans did Kankedai, and Sensei Clai did Kanku. Four of our female black belts did a kicking and breaking demo, and four of our male black belts did power breaks of boards.

And then, finally, Shihan Paul did the most amazing break I've ever seen in person: three huge blocks of ice (three feet across, about a foot thick) with a single strike. It was amazing.

After that, there was a slideshow, more celebrating, some gifts presented to Shihan, and the painting of the second eye on the Dharuma (the Buddhist doll that watches over the dojo; it had no eyes to start, and Shihan painted the first eye in at the tenth anniversary). Sensei Clai also presented Shihan with two gifts, a Taiko drum and a framed illustration of the Japanese words for "Always go down fighting."

We hung around for quite some time after that, carousing and celebrating and reminiscing and socializing. Several folks were there whom we hadn't seen in a while, and a good time was had by all.

Today, I helped teach the white-belt class at 10, and then took Dale to his MRI (he's having some issues with his foot that may require surgery). We thought about going to see Taken 2, but the movie theatres around here all closed down early in preparation for Hurricane Sandy's imminent arrival.

So we came home, and have been hanging out watching stuff on the DVR that's been collecting for a while, like the season premiere of Nikita and many many episodes of BBC America's Copper (which is excellent -- it's so nice to see Homicide's Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson together again). Wrenn's office is already closed for the next two days, the hatches are as battened down as they can be, and the car is parked not near a tree (Irene taught us the danger of parking too close to a tree last year). Wrenn has an editing job to keep her busy, and I've got the final Tales from Dragon Precinct story to write, as well as some other stuff, so we'll be well occupied.

Hope everyone else on the east coast is being smart and keeping safe....