Day 348 - OM NOM NOM.

Today was our karate dinner!! We went out to Vanilla... which was very very very nice! Very posh too... they take their presentation of food very seriously. I had this amazing fish pie type thing with spinach and egg, it was pure beaut! I wish I had brought my camera with me, otherwise I would have got a photo of it, but I didn't. Instead, you can make do with this picture - it's of my sister, she's cute!!

Day 313 - "Oushaaaa!!!!"

I was at karate tonight, taking some pictures for my art. This is one of Booms which I have converted to black and white and boosted the contrast. I'm planning to do some fun things with Photoshop with these!! :DHere's a joke for ya - How many black belts does it take to change a light bulb?

10 - one to change it and 9 to say "that's not how my Sensei taught me!"

Being a black belt... I find this to be hilarious and totally true!!

Day 292 - I THINK SO.

This is a picture of Michelle making friends with a ghost. Taken on my phone, yeah I'm lazy.Tonight we were doing a theory part of a course for Karate - our Level One Junior Coach award. Soon to be more qualified than the coach of our rival club? I THINK SO.

Day 276 - SPOON

More cutlery today! Yeah, I'm feeling unoriginal. LOL SPOON.

I remember for our first year art exam we had to draw ourselves in the reflection of a spoon. I remember enjoying it, I wonder where that drawing is, it would be interesting to see it again! Speaking of art, I should probably do some. We got to pick our own themes this year, so I picked karate. Not sure whether I'm regretting that decision or not yet...

So today was one of those days I hate myself for not bringing a camera out everywhere. I went for a walk today with some good friends of mine, and at one point Patrick and I raced to the top of this hill. At the top there was a fantastic sunset and some deer and it would have made an AMAZING photo. For now however, you're gonna have to put up with a spoon. Good day though. I love my best friends :)

Day 268 - Best Day EVER!!!

It's true... BEST DAY EVER!! The day started off with waking up tired, groggy in a tent in Anna's back garden, grabbing a quick breakfast and then jumping in the car to head to Newcastle. Now the roadtrip to Newcastle from Crossgar direction with Michelle and Leahy was fun enough, but the day was only to get better!

We arrived in Newcastle just on time for Mich, Matthew and I to do our long awaited FINAL KARATE DEMONSTRATION. *tear ... our last ever demo, and it was the best one. To watch the highlights of the karate demo click here to watch us on Youtube. Hope you like! We are such violent children. We were watched by our good friends Leahy, Jamie and Patrick.

After the, quite frankly, awesome demo, we jumped back into the cars and headed to Tollymore, the local forest park. The journey there was freaking hilarious, and we got up to some antics. Best car journey ever? Hmmm... possibly second to that one time we glowstick raved to Defying Gravity at full blast over FUSED. Funny, it was the same road!

ANYWAYS... we arrived at Tollymore after an epic car chase to begin filming for our next SU video! It's an epic story of good versus evil... in seven minutes. It has also been uploaded to our Youtube site, so you can watch it here. Oh this is such a Youtubey post.
This is Leahy dressed up in his cowboy attire. I would talk about how awesome the video is, but you'll just have to watch it instead, I couldn't possibly give anything away! Okay maybe one thing... DUR DUR DUR DUR DUR. There. Done.

Day 257 - Happy :)

Been getting some pictures of karate for my art... I kinda like this one!I've had an awesome day today. Okay, school was average, but then we had SU. It was so encouraging to see so many people there!! It made me sooo happy! God is working, I can see that. :) Another reason why I'm kinda happy right now, is I just got asked to the formal. :) Cool. :)

Day 247 - Epic Just Like The Matrix!

I am soo soooo sooooooo excited for our karate demo at the end of the month!! We're gonna be doing something truly EPIC, in the style of the Matrix :D It better be good, as this is gonna be our last demo. Sad times, but it means we're gonna make this one amazing!This is a picture of my sister Katie sitting on a table. I kinda like the lighting in it!

Day 236 - Lens Flare... How Amusing!

Sometimes lens flare amuses me!

Was back at Tuesday night karate tonight... I suck at fighting, I really do want to get better, it would be nice to win more. I know it's not the winning that counts, but losing all the time doesn't always feel good haha!

Day 233 - Nostalgia.

Happy birthday Granma!! It's my Granma's birthday soon, so we had a big surprise birthday party at her house today! It was kinda fun, although, it was my family and a bunch of older people.

There was a lot of -

"oh you look just like your mummy!"

"haven't you grown?"

"auk, I haven't seen you since you were a wee tote!"

Naturally my brother and I spent a lot of the evening in the study, playing my grandfather's awesome keyboard -

I am excited though, because karate has now started again. I was there this morning, and was helping some of the wee kids with their demo stuff. It reminded me of FUSED... helping out with kids, and they were the same age...

*reminisces*

Day 219 - Empi

This doesn't look like a great photograph... and that's because it isn't a great photograph. It's a piece of wood, split in two. Because that's what I did today. I elbowed a piece of wood in order to break it in two.Remember how I said about the Karate Kid movie and how we were gonna do a demonstration, and then I said that it was postponed to a later date? Well today was that later date. It meant we couldn't go up to the North Coast with the rest of the FUSED team which was a bit disappointing, but we did end up having fun! The demo went well, I thought. And it was fun!

We watched the Karate Kid, it was good I thought! Afterwards, Mich and I really didn't want to go back home (to our own houses, so we figured we may as well stay in town and watch another movie (we got into Karate Kid free). We ended up watching the A-Team, which I liked better than the Karate Kid. It was good! :)

One last day as a team tomorrow...

Day 196 - Like A Fish.

My mum made this cake... it's pretty cool, isn't it? :) But the only cake I can think of now is RAGE CAKE.Right now I feel like a fish... gutted. Remember I wrote about the Karate Kid premiere that we were performing at that's happening this weekend? It's been postponed. To the 6th and 7th of August. This is quite problematic, as we (me, Mich and Matthew) know for sure we can't do the 6th, but we're hoping that we'll be able to do the 7th. It's a bit annoying, I was really looking forward to it. Ah well, I'll just spend the weekend chilling now!

Day 189 - Black Belt Frisbee - The New Xtreme Frisbee!

"Black Belts do not whine, they simply raise the pitch of their voices in an annoyed fashion."

Check out the epic flying kick! ^

Tonight I had my three fellow black belts round for the evening, for a "very serious black belt conference". This involved hardcore training like playing Frisbee and standing at the side of the main road, doing the crane to see how many cars would honk. Yes, I feel it was a very worthwhile training session. This is the four of us, doing our famous black belt pose. :) From left to right, me, Conor (aka Booms), Mich and Matthew.

I had an awesome night, I love my karate buddies, and I hope there's more of these to come! :)

Next Friday and Saturday we will be doing some karate at the premiere of the new Karate Kid movie... I'm uber excited!!!

Day 180 - Upon Rediscovering Fish Eye...

So you may remember that post I had, "Upon Rediscovering Macro..." in which I had taken pictures with my macro lens, rediscovering my love for it. Today I rediscovered my fish eye lens! I realized (facepalm for not realizing this before) that you didn't have to have it fully zoomed out to get a distorted picture. Half way between actually works really well!

Here's some pics I got of my sister... oh how she loves the attention! She's always happy to post for the camera, but will rarely do what you ask her too haha!

The one above makes me laugh :D and so does the one below actually... I'll tell you why. So Katie often asks me to show her some karate. One of the katas I often show her is Bassai. So I asked Katie to stick her hand towards the camera so that I could make a wide angle distortion, and she did this - which is actually the exact hand position for the opening of Bassai. This kid picks up things quick!!

Speaking of karate, tonight I'm going out to dinner with the karate gang! :) Should be bant!

Day 121 - Kumite

Today I was coaching at a karate competition, and I was able to get a pass to be able to take pictures so that made the day a whole lot more interesting! Here are some photographs of the fights... some of these were very painful to watch - watching your friend get beaten up or beat up someone else or even another friend isn't the easiest thing to do in the world... especially as we have to encourage them to keep on fighting. Ah well, I guess I'm just being a girl, that's karate for ya!

What was also rather annoying was the uselessness of some of the referees, Mich and I were screaming "JOGAI!!" (meaning 'Area', as many times people illegally stepped off the area) before some of them noticed. Plus there were times that they wouldn't realise that they needed to stop the fight as someone had already won... grr. I could have done a better job.
So we had an interesting experience in Lisburn today, the Translink website lied to us, so our planned bus home was non-existent! That was fun... lol!

Also! I'm gonna tick another one off my list!

#9. Meet someone new and make good friends with them

^Collin said he would be my friend if I bought him a donut. I did, but I ate it for him...

:)

Day 79 - Double Trouble!

I had a good day today! My eye is slightly better, although still pretty disgusting looking and sore! The funny thing was, in karate it got pretty bad and I got rather disorientated and was seeing double at some points. I was told I looked drunk... it was hilarious and worrying at the same time! Mich and I also convinced everyone at karate (including our coach) that she had punched me in the eye because I had insulted her religion. Now... either we're really good actresses or we have a reputation for being horrible and violent. Hmmm....

This is a photo of a water fountain in the town in which I live. It was a sunny enough day that I could use a really quick shutter speed and get good photos!

Day 68 - "Chukoku!" "Keikoku!" "Hansoku-Chui!"

Tonight I was at karate in Newcastle. There was an internal club competition and I got a silver medal woooooooooo! What's that you say? How many people were in my category, i.e. Girls? *cough* two. Haha! I hurt... I got kicked / punched in the face quite a few times and can feel bruises appearing on my arms! Well, in fairness, I did punch my partner in the face various times also ;)

Day 37 - Putting Your Behind In Your Past...?

Pumbaa - It's like my buddy Timon always says: you got to put your behind in your past.

(The Lion King is a great movie)

There's a time when we have to put your past behind you. In a wierd way I kinda did that today.

#12. Drink a can of Blue Bear.

Another thing on the Spade List that may seem completely stupid to those who don't know me. I'll put it simply - for a long time the energy drink Blue Bear represented everything I hated. I refused to drink it and sometimes even got annoyed when people drank it around me. Yeah, I'm wierd, I know. Recently, it hasn't bothered me though, and so I decided to finally drink a can. In a way, by doing this it felt like I was putting my past behind me, and forgetting it. It may seem irrelevant to a lot of you, but I guess this is just me. I'm surprised at how open I am on this thing!

As awesome as that photo may be... it's not my photo of the day... it's just a pic of me drinking a can of Blue Bear! This is my photo of the day -

It's a clock. Not my best picture ever, but I didn't have much time today to get a good one. I fear that my photos are just gonna get worse.. hopefully not! =]

Jo out.

Day 30 - Epic Ninja Rolls...

I know that this photograph is nothing to do with the title "Epic Ninja Rolls". This morning, I had awesome fun at karate. We were practicing our agility, and did these fights where you have to tap your opponent on the shoulder or below the knee to win. My good buddy Mich and I discovered the way to win is to epicly ninja roll. On realising this, we started planning our fights in advance - "Okay so you epicly ninja roll, I'll jump/somersault over you and we'll see who wins!" It was a lot of fun! =D

The picture is of the Victoria Square in Belfast. I was shopping today in the afternoon, buying clothes for Work Experience! I'M GOING TO A PHOTOGRAPHERS!!!!!
Wheeeeeeyyyyyyy!! Hopefully I'm gonna learn lotsa epicly cool photography stuff! I'm excited!

Now I shall epicly ninja roll away and sign out. Awesome.

Day 26 - Unimprovisedly Is Not A Word...

Well I guess I can cross one off my Spade List!

#13. Win a fight at karate.

I know what you're thinking... come on Jo... that's not at all ambitious, I thought the Spade List was about doing COOL stuff! Yeah, I agree, it wasn't ambitious. I did win a fight at karate, and it was only my second fight since writing that on my Spade List. I guess "win a fight at karate" is very vague. Maybe I should have written -

#13. a) Regularly win fights at karate.

and/or

#13. b) Fight at national level.

and/or

#13. c) Start fighting skillfully (i.e. use tactics rather than just improvise)

To be honest, I am never going to fight at national level this year, unless I do suddenly regularly win fights (in which I fight tactfully, skillfully and unimprovisedly) at karate. Next saturday (6th Feb) I am going to observe/help out at a national competition so that will be fun! I would also like to take this oppurtunity to wish my good buddy good luck for the European Championships he's fighting at next week - WE LOVE YOU BOOMS! GOOD LUCK!

A highly edited picture of some clouds.