In the ongoing healthy competition between Florida, Texas, and Kansas for Most Backwards State, Kansans have scored some prime points for their homeland by suspending a high school student for speaking Spanish. Jackanapes.

After aikido yesterday we were discussing the visceral truth of the bumper sticker "Old age and treachery easily beat out youth and vigor". This has occurred to me before, and it's even more true now I'm up a rank since then and the five months spent training for my 2nd kyu test in December are starting to have more of a lasting effect--I'm surprising more people of various ranks with how I do techniques and how I take falls (ukemi). The latter is especially cool, since good ukemi is harder in a lot of ways for those of us who often don't have to move if we don't want to.

JD and I may have found a place, this beautiful mostly-reasonably-priced house a little ways from here. It makes the train and associated restaurants into a bike ride instead of a walk, but it's worth it to find a place I actually want to live. It's got a lot of light, two decent-sized bedrooms, a little office space, a big living room, dining room, kitchen, really nice yard with a couple lemon trees and an orange tree, and a big garage. I imagine we'll get it, since both the landlady and her daughter seemed to like us (they've been living there for years and are going to rent a place a couple towns south for the better schools); and tonight when I dropped off my application they lit up smiling, so I think I got major "we're not flakes" points for having my shit together. It'd be $1200 a month for me, quite a hike from the $775 I'm paying now...but the minimum I'd be paying would be $900 for a crappy one-bedroom apartment somewhere, so all things considered, it's not really unreasonable, especially for what it is. And it'll just be for 6-12 months to start out with. For now, it's a nice way to solve my immediate problem of getting kicked out.