Patrick

I'm not a huge horror fan so my knowledge is somewhat limited, but I'd say Scream or Friday the 13th. Those are popular answers, I know, so I guess I'll say Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan for a more unique one, haha.

Thank you to those who have nominated thus far. If you haven't done so yet, please take a moment! It's an amazing way to show appreciation for your fellow members. Thanks, Patrick

I did fantasy hockey for the first time this year. I found that playing fantasy baseball for the first time in a long time helped me to get a better sense on current players, and this would help me do the same with the NHL, a league I know even less about.

Hello, Welcome to the 22nd annual KarateForums.com Awards! Through these awards, we recognize just a few of the individuals who have made outstanding contributions to KarateForums.com in the past year. Over the last 21 years, we have honored 168 different members with a nomination and 68 with an award. Your participation is vital. It is the members of this community who select the nominees and vote for the winners. What You Should Know Before Nominating 1. Review the KarateForums.com Awards 2023 Nominations Guide, which can serve as a starting point in filling out your ballot. 2. These awards take into consideration all community activity between October 19, 2022 and October 18, 2023. Members must be nominated based upon their activity in this period. 2. To nominate, you must have a KarateForums.com account with at least 25 posts made on or before October 18, 2023. 3. Only one member can be nominated for each award. In other words, you cannot nominate two members for Member of the Year. You have to pick one person. One person can be nominated for more than one award, however. 4. A nominated member must have contributed to KarateForums.com or to the specific section recognized by an award within the above date period. 5. You cannot nominate yourself for any of the awards. 6. Your nominations will be kept private. We do not publicly reveal who nominated whom. 7. Please do not attempt to artificially inflate our nomination totals in any way. This includes, but is not limited to: Trading nominations, encouraging people to nominate indiscriminately (publicly or privately), sending spam and any other behavior that could lead to results being artificially skewed. Members found to be participating in these activities will be disqualified from nomination in any category. 8. Though it is unlikely to occur, a banned member cannot be nominated. 9. Please note that you do not have to nominate in every category. You can nominate for as many or as few as you would like. Please go for as many as you feel comfortable with. The more valid nominations we receive, the better! From these nominations, the ballot for each award will be chosen, consisting of the top 4 nominees plus ties. Through the poll system available on these forums, you will be able to vote for the winners! Categories Important note: All members (including Sempais and Senseis) are eligible for nomination in any category, except where otherwise noted. However, I (Patrick) am ineligible for nomination in any category. 1. Member of the Year This award is intended to acknowledge the member who you feel best exemplifies the qualities that KarateForums.com puts a premium on. Knowledge is valuable, but most valuable is a kind and helpful nature. You don't need to be a martial arts expert to be nominated for this award - you need to be someone who is kind and who shares what they know in a productive fashion that helps others. Current staff members (Sempais, Senseis, and Patrick) cannot be nominated for this award. 2. Community Spirit Award This award should go to a person whom you feel has a strong passion for this community. A person who is all about the home team - in this case, KarateForums.com. 3. Staff Member of the Year This award is the same as the Member of the Year award, except that this award is for current staff members only (except Patrick). If you are unsure of who is on staff, please visit http://www.karateforums.com/staff.php for a complete listing. 4. Funniest Member of the Year Humor is an important aspect of the forums, and this award recognizes the member who has brought a smile to your face many times. 5. Karate Contributor of the Year This award is for your favorite contributor within the Karate forum - a member who has added substantial value to that section in the past year. 6. Health and Fitness Contributor of the Year This award is for your favorite contributor within the Health and Fitness forum - a member who has added substantial value to that section in the past year. 7. Instructors and School Owners Contributor of the Year This award is for your favorite contributor within the Instructors and School Owners forum - a member who has added substantial value to that section in the past year. Note: We will not be awarding New Member of the Year, a category from last year, as there were not any members that qualified. But we hope to bring it back next year. Ready to Nominate? Please nominate. You will find a blank ballot at the bottom of this message that you can copy and paste. You nominate by sending a private message to the account with the username Awards through this link: http://www.karateforums.com/privmsg.php?mode=post&u=2715 - nominations will be closed on November 14, 2023 at 8pm Eastern. Please do not post your nominations publicly in this thread or elsewhere in the forums. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to private message me or reply here. Thank you for reading and for visiting KarateForums.com. Your participation in these awards is what makes them meaningful. I can't wait to see who you choose to honor this year. Here is a blank ballot that you can use:

Hello, Thank you for your interest in participating in the 2023 edition of the KarateForums.com Awards! To aide you in doing so, we publish this guide, where we list members who have made the most posts in the sections that are represented within our KarateForums.com Awards categories. We recognize that it can sometimes be difficult to choose nominees and hope that this guide will be helpful. How to Use This Guide Post count is not necessarily what you should look at when deciding who should be honored. Perhaps someone doesn't post as much as others, but when they do, their posts are amazing. Maybe they made a post this year that really stood out to you, and you want to recognize them for it. Maybe someone makes a lot of short posts in that section. For this reason, we are going to list the top 10 posting members from the last 12 months, plus ties, but without the actual number of posts and in alphabetical order. Our goal here is to provide a useful guide, but also to not prejudice the nominations toward only those with the highest quantities of posts. We hope this will provide you with a reasonable starting point for your nominations. However, you can nominate members who are not listed here at all, and I encourage you to conduct your own research by viewing and thinking about a member's posts within a given section as you put together your ballot. Nominations Guide With that said, here are the top 10 contributors to award-eligible forums, plus ties, in alphabetical order: Karate Contributor of the Year aurik bushido_man96 DarthPenguin Montana R5ky Sailor Sindbad sensei8 Wastelander Wayofaswede Zaine Health and Fitness Contributor of the Year bushido_man96 DarthPenguin Fat Cobra KarateKen Nidan Melbourne R5ky scohen0300 sensei8 Wastelander Zaine Instructors and School Owners Contributor of the Year aurik bushido_man96 DarthPenguin DWx Nevinyrral Nidan Melbourne R5ky scohen0300 sensei8 Wastelander Zaine For the full details on submitting your nominations, please see our nominations announcement. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly or ask in that thread. Thanks, Patrick

Would love to see it if you do it, John!

Yeah, it's a bit of a smaller audience for that one.

Thanks for bringing this up, KarateKen. We've decided on Jack Skellington for my 1-year-old son and then for my wife and I, we are leaning toward being his reindeer (just skeleton costumes). He'll also have an alternate costume of Richter Belmont from Castlevania.

Nocturne was awesome! Nice build-up.

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. We recognize one member every month as the KarateForums.com Member of the Month for their positive contributions to this community. Our honoree for August is... DWx for the second time! Congrats Danielle! We talked about what makes you so special as a member when you left the staff last year, and I'm so glad to still see you here. Thank you for all of your contributions over the years. Thanks, Patrick

Sorry to hear that you are going through this, Danielle. Very frustrating to read.

I do a similar thing. My life is great. Having 1-year-old has challenges, but we are healthy and able to take care of ourselves, so the rest is just about navigation. But I guess to Zaine's point, too, I just try to take a moment, take a breath, and decide how best to tackle a particular moment or issue. Not always a quick fix.

Welcome jiiigdagger! Good timing, too, as Castlevania: Nocturne is dropping on September 28! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevania:_Nocturne

Thanks KarateKen. We've seen some improvements over the last week, so we'll see!

That's awesome! Thanks for sharing.

That's super annoying. Sorry Bob.

Definitely have done some Tabata-style workouts if that qualifies. Anecdotally, I find them helpful. I use a site called Fitness Blender to find routines.

Good to hear. The 1-year-old's sleep hasn't sorted itself, but things are pretty good. My brother just booked a trip to come and visit next month, so that'll be fun, too.

Do you avoid artificial sweeteners and natural sugar alternatives (e.g. Stevia) or just don't like them? (I personally don't like them, haha). One other thought, if you like lemonade and don't really care for artificial sweeteners is that Trader Joe's (if you have one) has this great low calorie lemonade that comes in a normal and pink variety. It has some sugar, but less and is partially sweetened with Stevia, which I usually don't like but I can't taste it here. It has 40 calories and 8g of sugar per 8 oz. But I usually add seltzer to it, which adjusts the flavor making it an X lemonade, like a watermelon seltzer makes it watermelon lemonade, etc. So, it's diluted further because of that.

Hey BtK. Glad to have you. Patrick

We were not. He was not a good sleeper until he turned 1 (3.5 months ago). He's been pretty solid since then, even sleeping through the night most of the time. When I posted that last message, it set off a rough few days, and then the last 2 days haven't been bad. So, we'll see.

If you drink seltzer, that was what I was going to say. But there is a whole world of seltzer flavors out there that was fun to explore (for me) after giving up soda years ago.

+1 to this. I didn't go to therapy, but it really makes you question a lot about yourself. Thanks for sharing JazzKicker - and Ashley, and everyone.

Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. I was already cooking a fair amount of our meals, but I am sure it helped me to expand my horizon a little. Sounds good, Bob!

Thanks for asking this question, KarateKen. We're doing well. Last night was one of the weirdest nights of sleep for the one year old yet, as he went down at 7, but was up at 10:30 and stayed up until like 3:30, with my wife and I trading off, but her having to work in the morning.