My capoeira instructor is looking at starting a new group in East Boston. This is kind of neat as Eastie is much closer to my home in Salem. Currently we train in Chinatown. The space is a really nice martial arts-focused gym, and I'm glad we aren't leaving. However, my instructor would much rather be able to live off the money he makes by teaching capoeira than making his living doing landscaping and private security. He is also looking at renting a different space in Marlborough. Currently his Marlborough classes are in a franchised karate dojo. It's got a nice padded floor, but it's way too small for capoeira. He's looking to go in with a BJJ instructor and a boxing instructor. The only thing wrong with this picture is me not living anywhere close.

As part of his expansion plans, he needs a professional looking website. He pays for hosting and the domain name. I put up a WordPress site with a boring old theme. I keep everything as up-to-date as I can, but I don't have the time nor the skill to put together a graphically nice website, however capable I might be at administering it. I am a programmer, not a designer.

I haven't really been on e2 in a while.

On paper, my life sucks. I'm broke most of the time due to working a menial job I had to take since no one is really hiring any recently graduated Museum Studies majors. I hate it and I want to stab my boss, who's younger than me, parties all the time and smells like marijuana. My significant other works too much for me to ever spend time with him and is always tired and cranky. My friends are drunks and flakes. My parents are rude, make my cry on the phone all the time and constantly asking when I will find a decent job. I feel as though my life is falling apart and it's a struggle to keep my head up.

But lately... today especially.... I have realized I am happy. After spending a great deal of my life being sad and upset with everything, it's weird to see that my life is pretty much crap and I am somehow able to enjoy the fact that I am alive and life is beautiful.

I got in something close to a "real" fight today, something that happens to me somewhere between very rarely and almost never. The story starts with me walking down the street in Downtown Portland, Oregon, carrying a bag of groceries on my head, which is how I always carry my groceries. This usually gets some reaction from a few people, mostly complimentary. Today, someone said "nice hat" which is a common enough joke, and then tried to push it off my head. I caught them and turned around very quickly, getting into a fighting stance and probably cursing. (If you are ever in one of these situations, you will find that your memory of what exactly happens and what was said becomes very blurry quickly). The friends of the young man, (who was probably in his early 20s) apologized for his drunkenness. I also apologized for overreacting, but tried to get in a word about what happens when you attack people walking down the streets.

I am glad to see that I react very quickly to a perceived threat, with what seemed to be just the right amount of anger.

Even though I don't actually know the person's life story, as such, I am still going to make some guesses. My own experience of living in the city is that people in the city are fairly polite, but there are some suburban youth who have seen too much television, and feel that once they go downtown, they are in CYBERPUNK DRUNKEN NIHILIST ORGY land, and can get away with anything. Of course, once they slink back to Beaverton, they will probably have to be polite for their parents and their boss at the grocery store. That is speculation, but I think it might have been the case in this case.