Retired

Earlier this week, I decided to retire from my hobby of training to be Jason
Bourne / fighting in the Ultimate Fighting Championship - after a whole two
classes of jiu jitsu. There were several reasons for this. First of all I just
signed a one-year contract for the gym at $50 per month. The additional jiu
jitsu class would cost me an additional $129 per month. Since my gym doesn't
open until November, I thought I'd go to jiu jitsu for this month and if I can
make it worth the money by going to class Sunday mornings (ouch) and Tuesday
nights, then I would consider sticking with it. But in order to go to the
Sunday classes, I would need to buy a Gi (the fighting suit) which would cost
me another $100, so that wasn't worth buying just for a month. Also, I
initially thought this, like the name of the class indicates, would be a "Self
Defense" style class, teaching you things that would help out in the street or
in other practical situations. I found it to be more training for competitions,
which I would be unlikely to enter in the future. Finally, I think that my
chiropractor bill would increase because of getting slammed into the floor on
my shoulders and back so many times, despite it not being a contact martial
art! I am looking forward to going to the gym, however, since both of my
roommates also signed up and we're all amped. Jonathon is quite a weight
lifter, so that should be encouraging for me hitting them as well.

I received some discouraging news from my orthodontist who said that I had "an
aggressive tongue" (insert tongue-joke here) that was wreaking havoc on my
front teeth. I've been told I have a tongue-thrusting speaking and swallowing
style before, which is why I got a new retainer that has a piece of metal
straight across in front of my front teeth. I only wear this at night since I
can't exactly speak with it in. But he said that I need to start wearing it
basically full-time because my front teeth are getting more and more out of
position, which should make talking at work interesting. I made a
tongue-in-cheek (pun intended) joke that "I hope I don't have to get braces
again" to my orthodontist and he just kinda said "well......we'll see" :-|.
Would have been nice to have this addressed while my mouth was already being
destructed and reconstructed the first time around...

In other Justin-is-30-and-physically-rapidly-deteriorating news, I am having
problems with controlling my hands. Allow me to explain - about a month and a
half ago (around the time I moved, around the time I stopped running and doing
push-ups), I started noticing that whenever I grip something hard with *either
hand*, I actually have problems getting my hands to open up again for about 30
seconds. The muscles in my arms get really tense while this is happening and I
can't figure out why this would start all the sudden. My chiropractor thinks
it's something with my spine (yea, imagine that - rolling my eyes slightly)
which is why it's happening in both arms. He also mentioned it could be
something like tendinitis, which I know nothing about. But he said it wouldn't
be carpel-tunnel because that usually causes pain and it wouldn't happen in
both hands at the same time. Before I go to a occupational therapist to have it
checked out, does anyone else have an opinion?

J. Riley, time to check webmd.com