Well, I’ve returned from Istanbul, Turkey and, as expected, my altered sleep patters have given me the “opportunity” to get some stuff done around the site. I’ve managed to add a bunch of new images. As far as the tournaments go, I’m mostly caught up, and even have pictures from Istanbul up. I’ll be working on posting the wrestling videos as soon as I figure out how I want to do it. I’m trying to decide between making a highlight video (more exciting in my opinion) or just put the raw footage up (probably only exciting for other wrestlers). Either way, I should hopefully have something posted sometime in the near future.

Also on my mind is the inauguration, which has now come and gone. Besides a slip up by a certain justice that shall remain nameless in this post, everything went off without a hitch. I wasn’t stateside when everything went down so I caught everything on BBC. For anyone who cares about such things I would highly recommend getting a copy (you can probably get it off their site or youtube.com or something) and checking it out. It’s interesting how the views of people in different countries differs from our own. One of the things to pay attention to (if you decide to re-watch it) is their commentary on who built the White House (very interesting indeed).

Lastly for this evening/morning/who know what the heck it is, are my comments on the first seven days with the new president. I’ve been following some of the news and the moves being made and all I can say is well done sir, well done. It’s pretty cool to be in a foreign country, surrounded by people who can barely speak English, knowing only a handful of their language, and being able to say two words to anyone and have it universally understood as a brighter future: “Go Obama!”

I thought I’d make note of two additional things for today, this day I leave for a wrestling trip to Turkey:

1) It’s MLK day and I think that anyone who has yet to hear the ‘I have a dream’ speech should first slap them self, twice, and then go download/purchase/borrow/find the speech and listen to/watch it. It’s not his only great speech, but what a speech it was. And while listening to it, take a moment to think about days gone by and days yet to come. It might just help some of you, you know who you are, put things in the proper perspective.

2) The inauguration of Barak Obama is tomorrow. After two score and three presidents we’re finally ready, as a country, to break from the status quo. This means a lot in terms of where we’ve come, as a nation, in recent years. The man himself is not a miracle worker, he’s no savior, and I’m sure he’s done a thing or two in his life that he’s not proud of, but what he represents is something much larger than himself. The ‘change’ he spoke of during his campaign, in my opinion, represents a breaking of the status quo, not only in the political views he says he has, but in the self image of the country.

Just some food for thought…