Later in April, the 24th to be exact, a good buddy of mine had his PhD defense and I tell you what, this guy is good. I’ve always respected the work he does and am glad to know the kid. I think it was a good for me to have witnessed the defense, because when it’s my turn I’ll already have some sort of idea of the process (at least for the defense itself). Long story short, you write a book, give a lecture on your new stuff and then get peppered with questions from your committee members and the peanut gallery. Fun, fun, fun.

After that, there were good times and not so good times, lots of work on and off the mat in prep for trials, and other different events. One of the more interesting events involved the filing of a patent; the details of which are only really interesting to a few people at this point, but hopefully many more down the line. It was an interesting experience to file my first patent. The process is interesting in that you do all your research, pay a good lawyer to help you file, file, and then sit and wait (up to a couple years!) for someone to review it and finally start the dialogue (there’s apparently lots of back and forth communication involved once the process starts) for weather or not you can get it granted. It was entertaining and hopefully it won’t be the last one I work on.

Other than these two events, the time in between the two tournaments was spent finishing up my last semester of classes (ever, I do believe!) and working on improving myself as a wrestler. Something funny about that last part (improving myself) is that while I don’t like to comment about policies that have been implemented at certain places that I frequent, I feel it is necessary to say that removing key pieces of direct support does not improve a situation in which that support is crucial (speaking of past and present times) it only destabilizes it. But hey, champions persevere… right?

So there you have it, not much, and yet quite a bit, occurred in the time between Nationals and Trials.

Good times.

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!”