The Perpetual Beginner

Perfumery and other stuff

2012-01-31T01:35:00.003-05:00

Actually, let's start with the other stuff, because by golly, I'm proud of this:

This is a piece of needlepoint I've been working on for over two years. I finished it this afternoon, and will be taking it to the framer tomorrow. I may even keep it. (I generally give my needlework away as gifts.) The kanji under the butterfly reads "Beautiful" - I will note that doing needlework of a kanji certainly ingrains it to your memory. I may have only a couple dozen kanji memorized, but "beautiful" is definitely one of them.

Next up is a counted cross-stitch peacock. I have no idea how long it's liable to take me.

Karate continues pretty well. We'll be shifting over to a new room next class because the Jazzercise studio is switching rooms. We've gotten a look at the new place, and as long as they finish by tomorrow night, it should be quite nice (they were still painting, and there were finishing nails all over the floor as of Thursday). I may bring a broom to class just in case, since a tetanus shot is not on my agenda for the evening. We had a good sparring night this last Tuesday, the first in quite a while. Once again, I wonder why defense is always the first thing to go when I'm not getting in good practice. Sensei D says he's almost back in decent enough shape to start sparring again, which would be awesome - it's been over a year since he had to stop, and as small as we are, it makes a big difference. We're also supposed to get two "new" students this week, which is even better. "New" is in quotes because one is a returnee - she trained with us three years ago, and then got into soccer. Now she's back, and with a good bit more maturity than before (8 to 11 makes a huge difference). The other is a TKD black belt who wishes to do Isshinryu. I haven't met him before, but Sensei TJ has. If both of them really join up and keep coming, it will make a huuuge difference to our classes, which would be wonderful.

And last, though not least, the perfumes. Explanation first: Rob got me a sampler set of perfumes from ZOMG Smells! for Christmas. Through the month of January, I was trying one a day and posting the results on Facebook. Then it occurred to me that I really needed to keep my opinions on the perfumes somewhere where I could find them again, for future orders and the like. So I thought I'd post them here. Plus a lot of the people on FB got a kick out of the reviews, because the sampler set in question is ZOMG Smells! "You're wearing WHAT?!!" - a set of their weirdest named perfumes. So for my records and your amusement, a list of perfumes and my opinions on them - keep in mind that perfumes can smell very different on different people, so what I love, you might hate and vice versa. I do recommend their sampler kits though, great fun!

In rough order from most loved to least:

Five Stars:

Sugar Dragon: Sweet and smoky - the site says sugared almonds, but to me this smells like rose incense. My runaway favorite out of this set, and the one I'm wearing daily now. When wearing it, I keep running my nose up my wrist, it just smells that good.

Kudzu Doom: Goes on as resinous pine, turns mellow and flowery over the course of the day. Another one that makes me look like I'm longing to eat my arms.

Four and a Half Stars:

Kuiper Belt Objects Unite in Vengeance: Dark cherry and smoke. Similar in kind to Sugar Dragon, and I like it very nearly as well.

Four Stars:

Seagull Eating a Starfish: Light, dry and gingery. (Described as beach and sea scents with a gingery whiff of starfish terror.) The lightest of the scents that I really like. I tend to use it on karate days, where I don't want to knock people over with a stronger scent.

Coronal Mass Ejection: Vanilla and orange on first application, turns into warm, sweet amber.

That Dream You Have Where You're Naked at School: Sharp citrus/green scent that turns to vanilla/orange as it settles. For some reason I rather liked this citrus when I didn't care for most of the others.

Three and a Half Stars:

Sexy Giant Isopod: Starts as a powder and incense smell and ends up as warm amber. I like the final scent much more than the beginning, but don't find the initial smells offensive. This is an experimental scent, and not part of the standard ZOMG offerings.

Pirate Queen (off duty): Smoke and burnt wood which mellows into cloves and incense.

Deified: A quite sweet scent, mostly vanilla notes. I found it pleasant, but uninteresting on me.

Brontosaurus Loves Triceratops: Not sweet at all - warm, grassy and dry start to finish. Would make a nice guy's scent, I think.

Three Stars:

Four Seasons in Mighty Contention over Trivial Matters: Starts off with a kick of anise, then for me mellows out into sweet amber. I gather this one is particularly sensitive to personal chemistry, smelling very different on different people. I rather liked the smell after about two hours, but knocked a point off the score for the strong anise at the start, which I didn't like at all.

Snail Fur: A light and woody scent going on which becomes a light, warm amber, which somehow smells fuzzy. Pleasant and light.

Swift-Tuttle's Shiny Butt: Light woods and resins. Nice enough scent, but it had no staying power on me - it was gone within a couple of hours.

Wrestling Tigers While Calling Your Mum Long Distance: Complex and powdery. It was hard for me to discern individual notes in this one. Okay, but unremarkable.

Two and a half Stars:

Lemonbomb: Pretty well as one would expect. Strong lemon to start with, with a slightly astringent smell in the background. It fades to a citrusy amber. Not horrible, just not my scent at all.

Soft Lavender Cake: Strong cake batter smell, fades in to the more herbal lavender scent. Really, really smells like baking cake - to the point where Aaron wandered through the room and wanted to know what was in the oven.

The Triumph of Direct Current over the Peril of Alternating Current: Starts as orange and pepper and mellows into a citrus/incense scent. I would have thought I'd like citrus scents (I love them in the house), but I just didn't care for most of them on me.

Smoky Black Chai: As advertised, strong spicy tea/chai smell. I like it once it fades a little, but there's a very strong initial kick of anise that I didn't care for at all.

Two Stars:

Requiem for the Juan de Fuca Plate: Minty! Starts as chocolate mint. Over time the chocolate fades out, leaving mint and incense. Apparently I just don't care for mint in my perfumes.

One and a half Stars:

Candy Mechanic: Chocolate with a whiff of machine oil. Oddly enough it's the chocolate I object to. It really does smell like fudge sauce, and I don't want to smell like an ice-cream sundae. If you do, this might be the scent for you.

Giant Robot Birthday Party: Coconut, vanilla, cake - and a metallic tinge, like a cake that's been baked in an old, scratched aluminum pan. Didn't care for this at all, the metallic tinge is very slight, but enough to put me off, and the main perfume scent is too sweet for my taste.

- there was nothing rated under one-and-a-half stars. My rough divisions are:
5 - love, love, love: want to smell myself all day long
4.5 - like a lot, will happily wear, but just don't obsess over like the fives
4.0 - like a lot, will wear willingly, but isn't as much "me"
3.5 - like pretty well, willing to wear, but doesn't excite me at all
3.0 - okay, willing to wear, but has some note that bothers me
2.5 - ehh. Not objectionable, but not something I want to wear
2.0 - ehhh again. Don't care for it, but not awful.
1.5 - don't like at all - not terrible smelling, but not good either
1.0 - actively dislike
0.5 - this is perfume? Why would anyone wear this?

Welcome to 2012!

2012-01-19T01:42:00.003-05:00

Wow - has it really been Halloween since I last posted? I need to do better about updating here! It's really easy to get out of the habit, and the next thing you know it's months later and you haven'tput a thing on the blog. Oops!

Life has actually been fairly busy over here. Karate continues apace. All three of our white belts have passed their yellow belt tests within the last month, so congratulations to all of them! It's very nice to look at the class and see all that color. Now I just want to see a little less color again - a few new white belts, and our brown making the leap to black would make the winter just perfect.

I, personally, appear to be on a serious learning binge. Given that I'm always learning something (hence the name of the blog) this translates into a serious amount of new stuff coming down the pike. In karate, I'm plugging away at Urashi Bo, the longest of our kata, and my second-to-last 1-person kata to learn. I seem to be about a third of the way through right now, which means about the length of one of our normal kata. In karate-related, I'm plugging away at learning Japanese. This is seriously fascinating, and the more I learn, the more interesting it gets. It's very, very different from English, and it's probably going to take a while to achieve any fluency. Right now I can form and parse simple sentences. I can (for example) Ask how much something is, where something is, order food, introduce people, or discuss the weather (and have some prayer of understanding answers). We'll see how all this holds up the next time it gets put to use (2013 at the next World Tournament at the earliest).

In addition, somewhat inspired by the Japanese, I've been brushing up on my French, at which I used to be fairly fluent, but which I let lapse after never really having a real-life use for it. I may never speak French real-time, real-life to a French person, but at least I can read my Tintin and Asterx le Gaul books in the original (OMG there are soo many puns in the Asterix in French. It's awesome!)

We have a new choir director at church now, and he's exercising me pretty thoroughly too. Whereas the previous choir director seemed to be a little reluctant to have me sing, and would often only decide to have me do something reluctantly and at the last moment, the new guy seems to be more than eager to have me do solo work. Unfortunately the first thintg he's pulled out for me is gospel. I love good gospel, but I have never trained or sung gospel (unless you count two songs sung as part of my HS choir), and my usual style of presentation runs to the formal and somewhat stiff. I'm very afraid that me attempting gospel may be more pathetic than inspiring. Or possibly inspiring of laughter! I'll give it my best, but we'll have to see how it goes down. I'm very hopeful, though, that once he runs me through my paces on a couple of his choices, he might let me choose to sing something of my choosing, which would be really awesome. (Also something that's never happened at this church. I tend to do solo work when it's down to "We want to do this piece, and Cindy's the only one who can (hit the high B, handle that run, learn it that fast, etc.) which means I do a decent amount of solo work, but almost never stuff I love.)

In a complete aside, I did not, despite pre-planning for almost an entire year, get to do a duet of "Oh, Holy Night" at Christmas. For some reason I did not quite fathom, the Music Committee decided that the ladies who did the piece three years ago should repeat this year - and then those ladies decided, when it got to be the week before Christmas and they were still having serious performing problems, that they would bow out and not sing. At which point it was too late for Cindy and Cindy to get back in. So bummer, I still didn't get my shot, but at least we broke the standing tradition of "It's not Christmas until somebody mangles "Oh, Holy Night"! Seriously, if after this much effort I had had to listen to a bad rendition, I think I would have burst into tears.

And the last bit of new learning for the new year, and my favorite of all? The flute! My wonderful sons, with their father's collaboration, got me a flute of my very own for Christmas. (My precioussssss!) Despite various family medical emergencies (now over, thank goodness), I have practiced every single day since. I'm up to about an octave-and-a-half of range, though I still have some problems with flipping registers unintentionally. Recognizable (if breathy) music can be heard! I've wanted to play the flute since middle school, and it would never have occurred to me to ask for one for Christmas, but I really, really love it it pieces.

Per Request

2011-11-01T00:44:00.003-04:00

Robbie as Colonel Roy Mustang. I may be biased, but I think he is rather frighteningly good looking in a uniform.

Good looks were obviously not relevant to Aaron's Xenomorph costume. He had literally not an inch of skin showing. Unfortunately, he also couldn't see all that well, since the eye holes are little vertical slits beside the internal mouth. The tail didn't last the evening either, it ripped off its mounting and had to be left home - which was probably just as well, because with the lack of peripheral vision, Aaron couldn't see what was beside or behind him, and kept whapping things with it. He did get a lot of compliments, though several people thought he was a Predator rather than an Alien. Light trick-or-treating this year for some reason - we still have about half of our candy, and usually we get cleaned out.

Seminar

2011-10-30T22:08:00.003-04:00

Sensei and I spent most of Saturday at a pressure point seminar given by Will Higginbotham. This is the second time we've gone (he apparently does one in this area every year around Halloween), and as it was last year, it was really interesting. This year's seminar was a bit more focused than last year's, primarily because we had half-a-dozen police officers attending, and Sensei Higginbotham concentrated heavily on things they would find practical: control grips, come-alongs, ways to safely intervene in a third-party assault - that sort of thing. (Several wrist and finger-locks, Bill!}

I find pressure points fascinating, but they remind me of my father's description of neuroanatomy. You need a certain (large) amount of base knowledge to sink in before you can start putting things into a framework that makes sense. Right now these seminars feel like standing in a rainstorm with a teaspoon trying to collect the water. I come away with a few specific things that work (or not to do), and a broader fact or two, and try to remember them without having much of a knowledge structure to hang them on. I know the structure exists, but I haven't got it straight in my head yet, so things don't stick all that well. But each time, a little more makes sense, and I trust that one day, if I keep working on it, it will start fitting together sensibly.

It turned out to be a good thing that I was scheduled to conduct the choir instead of sing this Sunday, though, as I turned out to be the victim of choice when it was time to practice peeling off a guy who's trying to choke someone. So I got choked, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, by about eight people, several times each. My neck is still feeling it today, though not too badly.

The conducting went pretty well - especially for my first time ever. The choir was very kind to me, and paid excellent attention. If I'm going to do this again, I need to work on keeping my beat pattern while also giving cues, though. I know how to sketch time, and I know how to do entrances and cut-offs, but I tend to lose my pattern (though fortunately not my beat) when trying to combine the two. This might have something to do with it having been 23 years since my one semester of conducting class. (If you ever read this Constance, THANK YOU for being so stringent that most of what you taught has stuck. It saved my butt.) We're currently auditioning candidates for a new organist/choir director, and with any luck we should get one before Advent.

I'm also supposed to be playing my first full church service on the 13th of November. This is our Kirkin' of the Tartans service, with bagpipes and drums, in addition to the organ. I'm nervous (it's a lot of music), but I think it's mostly in hand - except possibly for the bagpipe bit. The piper said something to our priest about organ music to play with the pipes, but hasn't provided any - and if she doesn't get it to me within the next 2-3 days, there's no way I'm playing it. My biggest failing as an organist at this point is the sheer amount of time it takes me to get new pieces under my fingers. E.g., I should play this service fine, but it's been two months of prep work to get here.

For tonight, I'm working on Halloween costumes. Sewing for Robbie's costume (Colonel Mustang from Full Metal Alchemist), and somewhat more engineering like stuff for Aaron's (the Xenomorph monster from Alien). My children don't believe in easy Halloween costumes. Actually, if they keep this up, I'm going to have to teach them how to sew, so they can do these themselves.

Dare

2011-10-23T21:27:00.000-04:00

Blog note

2011-10-17T10:24:00.002-04:00

Pictures from our home tournament, the Southern Indiana Open can be found here.

There's quite a few of them. I think the photographer was on a personal mission to get at least half-a-dozen shots of every competitor there.

New Kata!

2011-10-16T21:04:00.003-04:00

I'm not going to be able to say that too many more times. It's a little sad, but I'm getting close to the end of the Isshinryu set of kata. As a style we don't have all that many - eight empty hand kata (Seisan, Seiuchin, Naihanchi, Wansu, Chinto, Kusanku, Sunsu, and Sanchin), and six weapons kata (Tokemine no Kun, Urashi Bo, Shishi no Kun no Dai, Kusanku Sai, Chatanyara no Sai, Higa no Tuifa - aka Hamahiga). There are also two unofficial two person katas, bo-bo, and bo-sai.

As of right now, I have two of the official kata left to learn, Shishi and Hamahiga. I know that Shishi is part of what I learn at nidan (not least because Sensei started teaching it to me on Thursday). I suspect I'll also learn Hamahiga in here somewhere - which should be interesting, since I've never even seen Sensei bring tonfa to class. But I'm feeling a little sad that I'm getting so close to the end of my kata set. I love deepening kata I already know, learning more applications, more bunkai, other ways of looking at things - but I also love digging into new kata, and there's just not that much more to go!

On the plus side, Shishi looks like it will take me a while. It's the longest Isshinryu kata by a fair margin. It's about twice as long as Urashi, which is itself a fairly long kata. It's got a lot of familiar moves, but also several new sequences and different strikes than the other two bo kata. If I'm seeing it correctly, it shouldn't be as prone to leaking into the other kata as Urashi was for Tokemine (they share several very similar sequences).

As part of the effort to deepen my other kata, I'm currently working on mirror-image Seisan. It wasn't as difficult to figure out as I had feared. It took about 2-3 good working sessions, and the left-right switch clicked. I still have to watch the first 5-6 moves carefully to make sure I'm not doing it the normal way, but once I make the first turn, all is good. I'm hoping to find a partner to do the Lennox Legacy team kata with, since I think a pair of us acting as mirrors for each other would look very cool. Maybe I can talk Robbie into it, since he's planning on coming and competing this year (kata only).

About that announcement...

2011-10-11T16:25:00.004-04:00

(Photo description: close up of my nidan certificate, newly arrived from Okinawa.)

I'll also note that it's a nice validation of my growing Japanese skills that I can actually read about 30% of this certificate, including my name, rank, and date of issuance.

I haven't been on-line a lot lately, because my computer is having issues. We managed to do a defrag last night, and have been trying to do a full virus check, which is giving us problems for unknown reasons, but we'll get there. At least it's telling us we can't do stuff in about half the time it was before.

School's In!

2011-08-28T21:13:00.004-04:00

Summer's over and the boys are back in school, which means I can go back to having a regularly scheduled life. I'm hoping to get back to updating here regularly.

This is Robbie's last year of middle school and Aaron's last of elementary, so next year is going to bring some big changes. This year though, is pretty standard. About the only really new thing is that Robbie has algebra, so is bringing home lots of math homework.

Our dojo's annual tournament is upcoming next month. It's an open tournament, September 24th, at the Sports Center of Southern Indiana University in New Albany. $25 if you register by Sept. 18th, $35 at the door - contact Sensei TJ through the Kentuckiana Isshinryu Karate link in the right side bar. Last year I judged rather than competing. I'm hoping I can both compete and judge this year, but if push comes to shove, I'll probably go for judging, since I need more experience there. I'm practicing for the Lennox Legacy Challenge, just to make sure though. It's a new division, and one I love. Isshinryu only, though. Essentially, all the empty hand Isshinryu kata names are put into a hat. Each competitor pulls a kata out of the hat, and competes using it. It's a lot of fun, and it avoids the problem of having people who only practice the kata they're intending to compete with.

Another announcement should be coming up soon, but I'll save that one for when I have photographic proof to show you.

World has been survived.

2011-07-01T20:25:00.002-04:00

The World Tournament is over for another two years. It was a wonderful time - I took five mini-seminars, three full seminars (oh my aching legs!), and competed in four divisions. I didn't place in anything (the closest was a 4th in kumite), but Ian, our brown belt and the only other competitor from our dojo, came home with a 1st in weapons. That's the trophy he's holding in the photo - pretty, isn't it?

Unfortunately, he's also holding his ribs, which is also in the photo, but less obvious. There were no other 16-17 year old brown belts at World's (which is puzzling, it's usually a large division) so they tossed him in the 18-29 ring, and the much larger 23 year old he was pitted against beat him up pretty thoroughly. First time I've had a paramedic called to the ring for a student, and I wouldn't care to repeat the experience. Ian is fine, but he'll be nursing sore ribs and a nice lump beside his right eye for a while. He's taking it in good part though, and not at all discouraged from going to the next World, which is good.

Now it's time for us to start getting ready for our own tournament. It's an open tournament, Sept. 24th, just outside of Louisville, KY. Last year's was a great time, and I hope this year goes as well or better. We'll certainly be in a better location, since Sensei has managed to secure us the IUS Athletic Center. I'm planning on competing this year and not just judging the way I did last year - we'll see how I do with trying to do both and tracking our students.

Judging a Test

2011-05-15T21:49:00.002-04:00

Saturday was a lot of fun. Sensei Johnson is my Sensei's first black belt, and who runs his own dojo about 90 minutes from here. Saturday he had his first green belt grading, and Sensei and I went down to act as judges and testers. This was my first stint acting as a judge outside of my home dojo, and it was an interesting experience.

First and foremost, it was very weird having a bunch of people act like I was somebody important. We're a tiny, informal dojo, and I'm definitely not used to having people bow to me aside from just bowing in and out of class. My friend Beth, who's a chaplain, compared it to what happened to her the first time she went to work after being ordained - suddenly she was someone to be deferred to, and it threw her for a while.

The test itself went very well. Sensei Johnson's student was definitely nervous and tense, but exceptionally well prepared. Sensei had been concerned that the test requirements were too much for a green belt test, but they turned out to be about perfect for this candidate, and Sensei Johnson himself commented that he probably needed to tone them down a notch or two before finalizing them as the general green belt requirements. (6'2" adults with significant prior martial arts experience probably shouldn't be your measuring line for all students!) His kata were excellent, though the nervousness was definitely showing in tenseness which was slowing down some techniques. His knowledge levels were also excellent, which was good to see - so many big, strong guys are so focused on the physical that they barely notice the knowledge end of things. Breaking went smoothly, though the break that was listed as a shuto was much closer to a shotai.

Then it was on to sparring. Sensei Johnson put me up first - I'll have to remember to thank him for that! Stepping up to spar this guy who's so much bigger than I am, when I've never seen him spar before was a definite gulp moment, but he had excellent control - if anything he was nervous to hit me hard enough. I held up my end well, which was also a point of concern, since I get so little sparring practice these days (Sensei and Sensei D are both out of commission right now, and Sensei's daughter has gotten busy again, so it me and Ian, and Ian and me, and me and Ian...). I managed to stay mostly inside of his kicks, and he wasn't used to dealing with small people at arm's length going for his ribs, so I definitely got my licks in. In his second fight, he was hitting Sensei Johnson a lot harder than he was hitting me, about which I am half happy, and half disappointed. I'm just as glad not to be all bruised up today, but I never really mind it in a good cause, and it's been a long time since I've had to go all out against somebody new.

So congratulations to Nate, and may he wear his new, and well-deserved green belt in health and happiness.

Meet the new car, rather different from the old car.

2011-04-29T23:59:00.003-04:00

Meet the new car! Rob called me Wednesday and announced that he was in love. Since his new love has four wheels, I think I can live with it.

For the curious who aren't sufficiently car buffs to ID this on sight, this is a 1989 Porsche 944. The body is in prime condition, with not a speck of rust on it. It runs, and is in generally excellent shape, with one major caveat - it's also in many, many pieces. The seats, hatchback, inside door panels, instruments, and almost everything else but the engine currently reside not in the car, but in the back of our pick-up. Rob estimates six months or more to get her back together and on the road.

Fortunately, since Rob loves working on cars and is quite good at it, this was more of an incentive than not. Especially since the whole "the car is in pieces" thing brought the price down a lot. Lots and lots. Which has the added benefit that if, after he gets her together, he decides he really didn't want a Porsche after all, he should be able to sell it for at least 4x what he paid for it.

I'm not a car buff myself, but it's fun to watch him light up over this car. Plus it's rather cool to say we have a Porsche in our garage.

Cars and Japanese

2011-04-26T09:48:00.002-04:00

Rob's bonus came in. For the first time in his working history, this does not mean "Woot! Let's take the family out for pizza and blow it all!", but actually involves a noticeable amount of money. He's hoping to replace his current car with a nicer, newer, though still well-used one. Right now he's having an absolute blast looking through all the local cars for sale and deciding what he actually wants. - shopping is always his favorite part of buying a car. We'll see what he finally settles on, but right now he's just loving the drooling. For example, he will be looking today at a Porsche 944 that was new when he was in high school (theoretically in running condition - once it's put back together). I doubt he'll bring it home, but he's getting an enormous kick out of the idea that he could. It's the first time he's been able to buy a car without the entire consideration being "how cheap can I get something that I can keep on the road myself?" I'm having a lot of fun watching him enjoy himself, and for the fact that the cars that he's most enjoying drooling over look like the epitome of a mid-life crisis (the Porsche, an Eclipse, a GT). No mid-life crisis involved, he's always loved roadster-type cars, but that doesn't stop me from snickering.

I'm back to working seriously on my Japanese. I've almost got my hiragana down (and my friend Chia says my handwriting is pretty decent). My ability to use the language is still down at the "Would you like to eat? Nice weather, isn't it?" level, but seems to be coming along fairly quickly. I'm not sure if working Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur simultaneously is better or worse than either separately, but it's certainly less frustrating than either alone. Pimsleur gives you longish phrases without a lot of understanding of why they mean what they mean, and it easily turns into boatloads of mass memorization if you can't break it down, while Rosetta Stone teaches you using no English at all, which can mean the breakthrough of understanding what the heck you're saying can take a long time, when just a tiny hint would have made it clear. I went through the lesson on pronouns three times before I realized that the lesson was even about pronouns! Combining it with Pimsleur seems to give me the extra bit of explanation that lets me decipher what a given Rosetta Stone lesson is trying to show me.

Eight weeks and counting to the World Tournament. I've gotten in some good sessions with my sai, but it's been raining non-stop for the last week (and is supposed to keep doing so this week) which makes bo practice time hard to come by. In general I think it's probably time to ease up on the general conditioning and start hitting the specific conditioning harder.

Various and Sundry

2011-04-13T23:31:00.004-04:00

No karate tomorrow, as the Jazzercise people are taping for TV - something they do every couple of months. The weather is pretty, so I'm going to try to break out the weaponry and do some kata practice in the front yard. Also, a morning run would be good. Actually keeping busy in general would be good as I need to go back in the afternoon and have them redo the mammogram on one side with the radiologist present, and I'd rather not think about it until after I have something more concrete to worry about (or not) than I currently do.

Rob made it home safely, if with somewhat more excitement than necessary. He opines (and I thoroughly agree) that he could have lived very happily without finding out what a jumbo jet sounds like when being flown without engines. Fortunately after having an engine overheat and die, the pilots attempt to shut everything down and restart worked as intended and the plane landed safely back in Edinburgh under power. He got home about 18 hours later than intended, but all in one piece, which is how I like him. He brought birthday presents with him - a tartan shawl with brooch, a pair of gorgeous dragon-wing earrings, a butterfly pin from the Royal Botanical Gardens, a Hunting Ross tartan sash, and an assortment of lovely cheeses. The boys got Nessy stuff, which they're all excited about. Two books have also arrived from Bill (Thank you, Bill!), a book on designing knitwear, and a biography of Madeleine L'Engle. I'm already making inroads on both.

The other things I'm reading are a pair of books I found while down with my parents. They're quite similar in concept - study books on karate from an older well-regarded Japanese instructor. One is based in Shotokan, and one in Gojo-ryu, so neither is completely applicable to Isshinryu, but I'm finding a lot of useful exercises and technique tips. After all, just because we punch differently doesn't mean that I can't learn more about a roundhouse kick from a Shotokan instructor. Part of the difficulty of being in such a small and isolated dojo is that comparative to Isshinryu students in areas with several dojos, we end up with a much less broad range of experience. Sensei TJ tries to travel to outside seminars and broaden his experience as much as possible, but most of the time I can't do that, so I'm aiming for the written word. (Shocking, I know)

Boys and dogs are all doing well, as is Aoi (the lizard), but I managed to kill off most of the population of Rob's smaller salt-water tank, by not figuring out that there was a short in the filter on the tank next door that kept throwing the breaker. There are half-a dozen survivors, but one of the puffers and the beautiful giant batfish both died, along with a bunch of other fish. Fortunately I did manage to keep the freshwater tank oxygenated enough for all the fish to survive until the electrics got sorted out, even if they weren't exactly happy.

Gearing Up

2011-04-12T01:58:00.001-04:00

Wow. I can't believe it's been four months since I wrote in here. I have been doing some blogging, but it's all been over at sparkpeople.com. I need to get back to writing here.

It's just barely over two months until the IWKA (Isshinryu World Karate Association) World Tournament. I'm registered and paid for, though I haven't made hotel reservations yet. Robbie is undecided about competing - but if he doesn't make up his mind soon, the indecisiveness is going to have made it up for him.

It's a mixed bag at the dojo these days. On the good side, two of our white belts are almost ready to test for yellow, and we've added a new student - an eleven-year-old girl, who thus far seems quite avid. On the bad side, two students, one of the aforementioned ready-to-test-for-yellow whites, and his mother, currently our only adult beginner, look like they're dropping out. If they do drop out, we'll have passed below the income threshold where we can pay for our space at the Jazzercise studio each month, which will leave us with a choice of cutting back to one class a week, moving to the local park, or some combination of the two. Summer attendance is always dicey anyway, and with only four students it's just not enough to rent a space.

The hopeful side of things is that my church has expressed interest in hosting a self-defense seminar. I'm currently working on a blurb for the newsletter to gauge interest, but an informal talking around looks like there should be more than enough people to put together a women's self-defense class, and possibly a second co-ed one for kids. Seminars like this tend to pull in new people, so if we can get a seminar put together in the next couple of months, we may get enough new students to keep our current place.

On the personal side of things, I'm kicking the prep for the World Tournament up into high gear. I'm not where I hoped to be fitness and weight-wise, but I am running three miles at a stretch without much difficulty, and I've lost about thirty pounds. Adding weight training has put some pop in my punches, which is welcome (and unusual). I've chosen my kata for the tournament and the weather has gotten nice enough for me to get some weapons training done in my yard - so now I just have to train the kata and do as much training for the sparring as possible. We still have a serious shortage of high level fighters - more so than usual, actually. There's me, there's T, our teenaged brown belt, and most days that's it. Sensei is fighting only rarely, because his knee is not recovering from his ACL surgery as well as he had hoped, and Sensei D is not sparring at all as he's having medical problems of his own. Every once in a while Sensei's daughter J will show up, and that's a blast - she's lightning fast and quite strong, though a little out of practice. I think I'm glad that the senior women's section is often loaded with people who don't spar much. I'd get killed in a hurry in the younger rings as little high-level practice as I generally get.

Rob is getting home tomorrow night after a sixteen day run to the UK and Finland. He's only home a few days before heading out again for a quickie trip, but when he gets back, he should be home for a whole 3-4 weeks! That's getting to be a rarity around here. Robbie is still aiming for a blue belt, but his progress on Seiuchin is very slow, mostly due to lack of home practice. He's finally made the connection between how much he practices and how good he gets at something. The differences between his drawing and flute skills (both practiced regularly) vs. his guitar and singing skills (both practiced sporadically) have become too great for him to ignore. Now we'll see which things he chooses to step up and practice, which should be instructive for all.

In Short

2010-12-08T18:03:00.001-05:00

From John Scalzi - accurate but misleading synopses of various Fantasy Movies. A surprising number of which can be summarized as "young girl meets older man with skin condition. Complications ensue."

Creepy Crawlies!

2010-11-14T22:13:00.004-05:00

We have acquired a new pet.

Meet Ao!

She arrived about three weeks ago (so she's hardly news to some of you), but I thought I should bring it up here.

Ao is a Northern blue-tongue skink. She's about 18" long, extremely omnivorous, and pretty friendly as reptiles go. She's Aaron's first reptile acquisition (he's been agitating for a snake for years). He's in love. The first couple of days he barely came out of his room, instead hauling everything he wanted to do up there, so he could watch her.

Working with Ao has been a process of discovery for all of us. Rob discovered that even toothless reptiles will bite when frightened (and can bite quite hard). Mommy has discovered that skinks like earthworms - and toes look like earthworms - shoes are now mandatory when the skink is roaming! Aaron has been enjoying feeding her various foods to see which she likes - so far everything but bok choy, but she has a strong preference for moving food. He has discovered that live crickets do not make good sleeping companions (even when appropriately contained), so the live cricket portions of Ao's diet may be limited in the future.

After a couple weeks of being shy and scared, Ao has definitely gotten used to me (I can now pick her up and put her on my forearm without her hissing or trying to escape at all), and is getting more used to Aaron. I think his smaller shakier hands are a little more scary to her, and since I have to pick her up to give her to him, she automatically gets contact with me every time she gets contact with him. Blue-tongues are supposed to be able to distinguish people, and Ao's behavior so far bears that out - she still gets alarmed fairly easily by Rob and Robbie.

All in all, having a reptile in the house has been a lot more fascinating than I had thought it would be. I'm getting fond of Ao pretty fast, and while I was expecting Aaron to love her, I wasn't expecting to be getting attached myself. I may be sad if he takes her with him when he goes off to college in another eight years or so (skink lifespan 20-30 years!).

Tournament Photos!

2010-10-10T17:35:00.002-04:00

I won't try to post them here - there are a lot! - but we have the photos from the Southern Indiana Open Tournament - they can be found here. Just click on the link to be taken to the whole set.

I Like Taxes

2010-10-04T22:24:00.003-04:00

Why do I like taxes? Because with them I help buy civilization.

So we don't have this. Or this. Or this.

Does no one remember how London happened to burn down - while private fire companies fought in the street?

That Went Well

2010-09-18T23:52:00.002-04:00

And out the other side of the first Southern Indiana Open Karate Tournament. It went really well, and people seemed to have a lot of fun. We had good participation - I counted 36 kyu ranks and more than 20 black belts at bow in. The rings all ran smoothly - at least everything I saw did, and I haven't heard any rumors of other problems.

We owe a ton of thanks to Sensei Heidi Gauntner, who brought her own team of people, and organized this thing on the ground. From registration to ring assignments to sparring rules, they were all over it, and I don't know that we could have done it at all without them. It certainly wouldn't have run a tenth as smoothly.

I did my first stint as a judge. It was shockingly tiring. At the end of the day I was more beat than if I'd competed. On the other hand, I had fun doing it, and I'm much less nervous now about being asked to judge at another tournament. Our ring started with the 6-10 novice, then had the 10-12 novice, and finished up with the 12-16 advanced. Three of our students (one of them being Robbie) ended up in our ring. Robbie did better than I expected, but not very well, given that he hasn't actually practiced the kata he did more than twice in the last two weeks. He finished nowhere and was pretty upset about it (and it really sucks to have to give your own kid a low score). One of our brand new white belts was in the same division, and he also finished nowhere, but was much happier about it, given that he's only been in karate about six weeks, and only finished learning his kata last week. He was thrilled just to get through it solidly.

The last competitor from our dojo in my ring was our teenaged brown belt, T. He did fabulous - the best I've ever seen him do either his empty hand or his weapons kata. He very nearly took weapons, but was done in by his own legs when he clipped himself in the calf with his bo. He also needs to adjust for his sudden additional inches of height. He stands like he's 5'4", when he's a good 3-4" taller now and still growing. He finished second to one of Sensei Heidi's students in both weapons and kata, but took first in kumite, 3-2.

We had one other competitor (12-16 novice), but I haven't found out how he did yet - probably in Tuesday's class.

Anyway - I'm happy, Sensei's happy, the competitors seemed happy with the competition. A good day's work all around. Topped off with Robbie and Aaron going off to an overnight stay with their friend, leading to dinner, a movie, and a nice lengthy visit to a bookstore for their parents. First overnight without kids ever! Woohoo!

One Week and Counting

2010-09-11T15:33:00.002-04:00

Next Saturday is our dojo's first tournament. We have 19 competitors pre-registered (not counting our own students), and the estimate is for 30-40 total on the day. I probably won't be competing, but will be using the tournament for my first attempt at judging instead. I'm rather nervous about this, because I really don't want to screw something up and make someone's tournament an annoying experience (I've had a few tournaments marred by inexperienced, inattentive, or biased judges). Unfortunately, the only way to become an experienced judge is by being an inexperienced one, so onward we go!

How many competitors from our own dojo is very much an open question right now. There are two who are definite (our teen brown belt, and teen white belts), but we have a half-dozen new white belts, none with more than two months experience, who are excited about the idea of a tournament, but uncertain if they're ready to compete. They should all be there at least to observe, but I wouldn't blame them if they decided to sit it out just yet. Robbie hasn't made up his mind whether he wants to compete or not. Most likely he'll go for only kata, if he competes at all. He's having an awkward phase in his sparring right now, where he's finally starting to think about what to do instead of just flailing - but he's thinking too hard and freezing up.

The white belt kids are loving sparring, thus far. We have the usual white belt woes - control, hesitations and fear - but nothing that's scared any of them off yet.

In even better news, one of the kids has a mother who just started. It's an adult female student - Yay!!! She's hesitant, but liking it so far, and survived her first sparring night without incident. She's also a professional organizer, and she and I are now working together to put together Dad Wood's old room as my new sewing/knitting and karate room (yes, it's a sizeable room). I wouldn't have believed that everything could be fit into that room with enough space left over for kata practice, but it was. At this rate she may have a job with me for the next year or so, putting the rest of the house together, since my organizing skills are close to non-existent. I'll have to post some before/after pictures, but the difference in the room in incredible.

Tomorrow night is Sensei's meeting for the local black belts who are volunteering as judges. It'll be the first time I've seen a lot of these guys since we left KMA, so it should be a fun evening. Though I'll probably bring along a notepad, just to make sure I don't miss anything important.

Awesome. Axis of Awesome.

2010-09-04T19:01:00.001-04:00

Everything you ever needed to know about hit pop songs.

Southern Indiana Open Karate Tournament

2010-08-24T23:06:00.003-04:00

My dojo is hosting its first ever karate tournament! As the name implies, it's open to any style, though the majority of competitors will likely be Isshinryu. We just started getting our very first pre-registrations, and it's beginning to feel real. New Albany, IN is in south-central Indiana, just over the river from Louisville, KY. We're a touch over three hours north of Nashville, about 90 minutes south of Indianapolis or 2 hours west of Cincinnati. Anybody who can make it, please let me know - I'd love to meet you.

Information as follows:

Date: Saturday, Sept. 18, 2010

Location: Griffin Street Recreation Center
1140 Griffin St.
New Albany, IN 47150-4872

Tournament Fees:

Pre-registration: $25
Walk-in registration: $35
Specator fee at door: $5 (5 & under free)

Schedule of events:

Check-in/registration: 8:30-9:40 AM
Black Belt Meeting: 9:40 AM
Tournament Bow-In 10:00 AM

Pre-registrations must be received by Sept. 10, 2010

Hosted by TJ Rodeghier
Kentuckiana Isshinryu Karate
(502)554-8552 or (812)285-8951

This is an IWKA National Title tournament, meaning that IWKA members may earn title points - you must provide your IWKA# with your registration. You do not need to be a member of the IWKA to compete.

Divisions will be by rank and age with competition in Kata, Kumite, and Weapons. Team Kata diviions will be created the day of the tournament depending on the age, rank, & number of competitors.

Questions, call TJ Sensei, or email at senseitj@insightbb.com

If you want some registration forms, let me know or e-mail Sensei, and we will get some out to you ASAP.

On Breathing (#3)

2010-08-16T16:51:00.005-04:00

If you've read my first two posts on breathing, you've probably noticed something missing in the connection between martial arts and proper breathing. Relaxation gets mentioned repeatedly - yet total relaxation is not exactly helpful in the martial arts. Getting hit in the stomach with relaxed abs is not so much fun - as anyone who's had it happen to them can tell you.

So once you have some idea of what good, relaxed abdominal breathing feels like, the next thing to work on is appropriate tension.

Tension serves several purposes. Supportive tension helps us to move most efficiently - like the tension one uses to stay in good posture - without the support the skeleton slumps, and movement (and breathing) becomes more difficult. Supportive tension is described well here - and the Alexander Technique, as well as yoga, Pilates, or the Feldenkrais system can all help to teach good general body mechanics. My go to book for working on my own posture is an odd little book called The Vance Stance. There are plenty of other posture and body mechanics books out there, but this one seems to be particularly helpful from a self-help standpoint.

The other major tension, and the one more specific to the martial arts is protective tension. Protective tension is why you tense your abdomen before a blow to the belly. You're protecting the vulnerable organs underneath by hardening the surface above them.

The tricky part is allowing for functional tension without interfering with the proper flow of breath. This is where you want to go back to the wall. Take a front stance with your arms slightly bent, and really push into the wall. Push it like you want to push it down! Yes - this is the same drill to use for making sure you're not breathing with your chest muscles. This time you want to pay attention more precisely to what your abdominal muscles are doing. It's possible to push into the wall with just your chest muscles, but for a really hard push you're going to be engaging your abs too - what you're watching for is how it feels to tighten your abs and still breathe by moving your abdomen in and out. To me it feels like I'm holding the very front sheet of muscles taut while deeper muscles move that sheet in and out - but that's not how it feels for everyone. Play around with it and see how it feels for you.

In singing this abdominal tension is called breath support, and it allows for precise breath control both in and out. One place where singing support differs from what you want in a martial arts setting is that in singing using every last dreg of air is not particularly avoided. In fact deliberately getting rid of all your air so you can pull in an entirely fresh lungful is common. After all, you may have to stretch that lungful out over a very long phrase, so you want as much oxygen as possible. In martial arts - particularly in sparring - you never want to be completely out of air. Blow out to take air in, yes - that avoids breath holding - but only blow out about 60-80% of your air. Two reasons for this: 1) In sparring, you can't control your opponent, so you never want to be locked into having to breathe right now or else. That might be the very moment your opponent attacks. 2) When your air is blown completely out, your organs are maximally compressed and your abdominal wall is sitting right against them. There's no cushioning for a blow except the strength of the abdominal wall itself. Contrariwise, a slight blowing out of air (under tension) while being hit can function a little like a floor slap in a fall - it takes up some of the force of the blow.

The other major difference is that in singing, dropping belly tension entirely in order to suck in breath as quickly as possible is downright common. You may have only a split second in between phrases to get in a bellyfull, so you need to be quick about it. This is obviously a bad idea in a sparring situation. No abdominal tension is a big vulnerability in sparring, no matter how brief, nor does kumite have the kind of pre-planned breaks that you can build into even a rapid song. In kata it is possible to grab breath this way, but I think it's a bad idea to establish the habit of ever dropping protective tension. Better to build in the exhales and work on learning a rapid but controlled intake. Any situation where your abs are engaged is a good opportunity to play around with breath control - see what it feels like to inhale at various places in your push-ups (you are holding your core during push-ups, right?), or during crunches. The more you know about what good breath control feels like for you, the better you will be at maintaining it in sparring when a thousand other things are happening.

Updatery

2010-08-08T21:30:00.003-04:00

Woof - that turned out to be a much longer hiatus than I intended! Since the last time I posted here we've finished redoing the family room, spent a couple of weeks in the vicinity of Boston, done a mad cleaning of the house top-to-bottom, for a visit of Rob's boss from the west coast, had Aaron's birthday party (a visit to the local amusement park), registered the kids for the new school year, and are now in the throws of buying school supplies, getting haircuts, and otherwise prepping for school to start in about ten days.

We have a whole passel of new students at the dojo, and it looks like several of them are likely to stay on. They're a fairly homogenous group - all between ten and thirteen years old, all but one boys, three are related, and three of them are in the same school (two of them are in the same school, grade, and section as Robbie - if they stay, the seventh grade of RVMS will be providing about a third of our students!). Robbie seems to like the idea of being senior to other kids his age, and Sensei and I are hoping that realizing they will be looking to him for how they should do things will keep him on his toes - so far so good on that score.

I've gotten quite obsessed with the show Criminal Minds over the last few weeks. We just got a DVR, and suddenly I can watch shows without having to fight for time on the TV. At the rate I'm going, I'll probably catch up with watching the episodes in another 3-4 weeks. The show analysis over at matociquala's livejournal is really addictive - the show does quite a lot of good character development and overarching narrative, without losing the episodic nature (I.e. it doesn't turn into a soap opera).

I've also decided that instead of Nanowrimo this year, I'm going to try Novel_in_90. I've done Nano for years, but this year there's just too much going on in November to make writing 50,000 words feasible. Spreading it out over three months in the fall, on the other hand, sounds like something I can do.

And last, but not least, I haven't forgotten the next post on breathing. I'll get that up in the next day or so.

Temporarily Off-line

2010-06-28T11:58:00.002-04:00

We're redoing the floor and repainting the walls in the living room, which involves disconnecting the computers. So I'll be gone for the next couple of days. I'll have the next breathing post when I come back.

Ouch.

2010-06-24T03:03:00.003-04:00

Just a little hint for those who go to other people's houses. When working in a client's home and trying to establish a friendly relationship, the proper reaction to seeing the client's wedding portrait is not to exclaim "Wow! You were pretty!" in tones of utter astonishment.

On Breathing (#2)

2010-06-19T17:00:00.004-04:00

Last post, we established that belly breathing is essential. It provides the most air movement for the least effort, and avoids using muscles needed for other aspects of your martial art. In this post, we're going to cover some refinements for that essential belly breathing.

The relaxation of your abdomen isn't the only relaxation that ought to be going on in proper breathing. Much like in strikes, the secret of efficiency is to only use the muscles required, and only for as long as necessary. When students are struggling to control their breathing, it's very common to see tension in the shoulders, chest and throat, even if they've gotten the hang of belly breathing. They're trying to control the flow of air, and haven't got the hang of using their abdominals for all aspects of the task.

For our students, I'll often have them face the wall and lean in as if doing a wall push-up, but maintaining tension, pushing against the wall for all they're worth - then have them sing an even note. (Yes, I make karate students sing, and yes, they protest.) With the chest and shoulders muscles fully engaged, you are forced to control the flow of air from your abdomen. The sung note makes it easier to tell if the air stream is well controlled. If raised shoulders are a problem, the same trick can be used by pulling up against a heavy object with both arms. My college voice teacher would use a pair of chairs with other students sitting in them.

Another useful exercise is to have students (this works well with a class as a whole, if they're receptive) lie on the floor on their backs. Dim the lights if possible. They should be in a classic yoga savasana position (corpse pose - see the picture at the top), legs apart about shoulder width, arms slightly away from the body, palms up, chin just barely tucked towards the chest to ensure the back of the neck isn't tight. Starting at the feet, talk them through tightening each part of their body on an inhale, drawing it tighter and tighter, and then releasing on the exhale. How slow or fast you do this can be varied depending on how much time you have, and how relaxed the students are at the beginning, but in general at least a breath each for feet & lower legs, thighs & butt, back & abdomen, arms & hands, chest & shoulders, and head & face. Then let them breathe for a little bit, imagining tension flowing out of their body and into the floor.

Once they seem well and truly relaxed, there are a number of different things you can start doing. Even simply lying there observing the breath without interference is helpful (and meditative). My first voice teacher would have us blow all the air out, imagining air coming up all the way from our toes, and blowing it out to the last dregs, and then filling up again, just as full as we had been empty, until our lungs couldn't possibly hold any more (do this very slowly to avoid hyperventilation).

My favorite is to start concentrating on the exhale. When someone has trouble getting enough air the impulse is always to worry about the inhale, which makes sense - too little air, so try to get more. Unfortunately it's exactly the wrong way around. Inhalation is pretty automatic - provided there's room in the lungs. Most people run out of breath because they haven't emptied their lungs sufficiently to bring in enough fresh air to meet their needs. A student will hold their breath, feel oxygen deprived, and try to suck in more air without ever having truly exhaled what was already in there. The result is a lot of shallow gasping. Contrariwise, if they concentrate on blowing out, the body will automatically suck in fresh air once they're done - problem solved.

Within the context of the savasana exercise, I have people start thinking of the breath as starting with the exhale. Counting each breath, starting with "one" on the exhale, "and" on the inhale, "two" on the next exhale, etc. can get the point across. Have them put all the effort of the breath into the exhale, the inhale should float into their lungs with no effort on their part at all. (It does take a while for most people to achieve. Thinking of the breath as starting with the inhale, and putting the effort on the inhale is fairly universal, at least around here.)

In general about 5-15 minutes (total, including the initial tensing and relaxing) is a good length for this exercise. Too long and you may find that people have fallen asleep.

Effort on the exhale can also be programmed into kata practice. With students who have problems holding their breath when doing kata under stress (I.e. those who forget to breathe, rather than those with structural breathing problems), I'll help them look for places to build in exhalation to their kata. If certain techniques are always accompanied by a pronounced exhale, the inhale will follow behind automatically. Most times I find that building in the exhales through the whole kata is unnecessary, a few strategically placed exhales will prompt the student and act as a vaccine against holding the breath throughout.

Pronounced exhaling can also be a stress-management technique during performance. In my brown belt test video, one of the things I noticed was how audible my exhales were in almost all the katas. Not ideal perhaps, but distinctly better than either hyperventilating or forgetting to breathe. Likewise, a pronounced exhale followed by a deep inhale has a distinct relaxing effect on the muscles, which is useful before things like board breaks, when you need the starting relaxation to get the necessary speed and power.

Belly breathing, relaxation, and effort on the exhale so far. Next time I'll get into appropriate, supportive tension.

On Breathing (#1)

2010-06-18T10:08:00.003-04:00

This is funny. After commenting at Kick-ass Sue's blog about cross-training, and mentioning that singing had been surprisingly helpful in my journey with karate, I had decided to write a post on breathing. I had the title up, and hadn't really gotten going yet on it when I left for class. And this turned out to be a class that put me on notice that breathing is going to take on a whole new importance in my karate teaching. And then when I checked back in this morning, prior to starting to write, Sue had requested a breathing post! So I think a breathing post is definitely in order.

What I know about breathing comes primarily from voice training. While not everything from singing applies directly to martial arts (Shocker, I know!), good voice training will teach you tremendous amounts about the mechanics of breathing, how you do it, why you do it, when you should do it.

Breathing is foundational to any movement discipline. If you're not breathing correctly, you're not doing any of the rest of it right. Good breathing is as fundamental to a proper strike as a good stance. You can get a long ways, covering for poor breathing technique with power and endurance, but sooner or later a lack will trip you up. If you're breathing with the wrong muscles, then those muscles aren't available for the strike - or if you use them for the strike, then you can't breathe through it.

Unfortunately, vast numbers of people wander through their lives breathing all wrong. The majority of adults I've ever seen come into the dojo, and a substantial number of the kids, need to be retaught how to breathe. Some instructors are really good about this, some aren't - possibly because they may not know how to teach breathing. Most people will improve their technique through sheer necessity as they progress through the ranks; it's physically exhausting to breathe wrong in sparring! But actually teaching breathing technique could save a lot of time and windedness.

So - the fundamentals of a good breath.

First, and most important. A good breath comes from low in your body - down in the bottom of your abdomen. Chest muscles are not much involved. With every breath, your belly (and back!) should expand. For learning purposes, this means a loose belly (protective tension comes later). If you stand and put one hand flat on your belly, just below your navel, and the other flat in the small of your back, a good deep breath should push outwards against both hands. The hand in front should actually move out several good inches. Your shoulders, on the other hand, shouldn't budge. The fastest thing to look for in a student is the shoulders. If they go up and down with each breath, they're not belly breathing.

"But, but..." many people will protest, "my lungs are in my chest, not my abdomen. How can I even do that?"

It's all in the diaphragm. You breathe by creating extra space in your chest cavity, creating lower pressure, which air surges into your lungs to equalize. You can do this by raising your shoulders and expanding your ribs - but that's not really how it's designed to work. Instead there's this nifty muscle call the diaphragm that sits like a membrane between your chest cavity and your abdominal cavity. When at rest it arches upward like a shallow dome. When it tenses, it flattens, creating more space in the chest cavity above it. But the abdominal cavity isn't exactly empty. Intestines, the liver, the spleen - there's a lot of stuff in there. So unless you relax your belly to allow more wiggle room, the diaphragm has a hard time flattening so your lungs can expand. If you look at the image above, notice how even though it shows the chest expanding and contracting, there's a lot more volume change caused by the movement of the diaphragm - but to get that movement, everything below the diaphragm has to move out of the way.

So - why wouldn't you do both, to get the maximum air change? Because the rib cage is bone, and fairly rigid. Expanding and contracting your chest is a lot of work, as compared to relaxing your abs. You can maximally expand your chest to get in the last little bit of air when necessary. But that's usually not going to be in the middle of a kata or a match. It's the sort of thing a singer does in the break before a very long passage, or a swimmer does just before heading underwater for a while. For most exertions, even high level ones, it's simply not necessary. Your diaphragm is capable of pulling enough air into your lungs for dynamic purposes. You're far better off holding your chest in a fairly expanded position (however much is comfortable), and leaving it there while your diaphragm does the work of moving the air.

A second reason is because you use many of those same chest and rib muscles in tzuki waza (striking techniques). We had one brown belt (who ended up dropping out for other reasons), who absolutely could not make it through more than two kata back-to-back without pausing to gasp for breath, and the whole reason was that she was breathing with her rib cage so every time she would punch or block, her breath would pause until she was done with the move. She was never fully oxygenated, and she was having to rely almost entirely on her anaerobic fitness to get her through. This was a lady who ran for aerobic conditioning, and couldn't understand why she could run for miles, but be gasping and winded in minutes in a kata.

This is probably long enough for a first installment, but I'm seeing at least two more entries on this. Be warned, I can talk breathing for an entire two hour class. I don't want to think how many posts I can get out of it!

Two Tests

2010-06-14T09:27:00.003-04:00

I had a workout with Sensei at his house yesterday. It was really nice to get a chance to just work on my own kata. These days, most of my time in the dojo is spent teaching, though Sensei has made a real effort to give me instruction time as well. I've just finished learning Urashi Bo, which means I've actually learned all the stuff I need to know for my 2nd dan. I can't test until August 2011, though, so I have the unbridled luxury of a year-plus to tease apart all my forms and really work on the details.

When I headed home after the workout, Sensei sent me off with a DVD of two promotion tests. The first is Sensei L's shodan test - Sensei L was Sensei's first promotion to black, and an awesome karateka. The second test was my own brown belt test. I remember both of these tests vividly, and seeing them on video was interesting.

Sensei L's test was from three years ago, back when I was still a 3rd kyu. I remember that at the time his kata just looked awesome and unapproachably perfect. I was quite intimidated, because I was certain I would never reach that level of awesome with my own kata.

That test looks really remarkably different, three years later, and nearly a year after my own black belt test. Sensei L's kata still look awesome, don't get me wrong. He has an intensity and focus that is just mesmerizing. But - he doesn't look unapproachably perfect any more. I can see where he's nervous and tight, where he's rushing too much and sometimes scanting on the technique because of it. All these things that I didn't see at the time. There are plenty of things in his kata that are marvelous, and I would be a happy woman if I could develop half of his kime. But at the same time, I can see places where my technique actually comes closer to that elusive ideal. It made me feel less like I'm not holding up the standard for Sensei's black belts.

My own brown belt test was similarly enlightening. Given that I was front and center in the audience at Sensei L's test (and participated at a couple points), between the two videos I had almost two hours worth of seeing myself on video, where I don't think I've ever seen myself for more than a couple of minutes before. I think I begin to understand why a lot of people seem to automatically assume competence from me. I remember being nervous enough for my test that I had to use every trick I have ever learned to keep from freezing up altogether, or possibly hyperventilating. My knees were shaking, my hands were sweating, the whole nine yards - but I didn't look it at all on the video, just focused. In both tests, I was always watching what was happening, responded immediately to anything said or done that involved me, and just generally looked a lot more clueful than I felt in either situation. I also looked more like a big, strong woman than the merely fat one I generally feel like.

That interesting observation aside, I do hope that my kata have improved significantly since brown (I think they have). My techniques were generally good, but I didn't have enough kime, and my speed and flow were lacking. Where Sensei L was rushing and skimping technique, I was getting in the technique properly, but the kata looked - chunky - for lack of a better term. My straight punches and side kicks were awkward looking enough for it to seem a little surprising when I went straight through the breaks with no trouble at all. The difference, for example, between how awkward I look punching vs. how I look with a hammer fist is striking (sorry!). It looked natural that I should hammer fist straight through the concrete, but surprising that I could punch through wood or put out a candle.

That video is going to give me a lot to chew on as I try to notch my karate up to a higher standard. I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or grateful that the video camera ate the file of my black belt test.

Back again

2010-06-13T14:52:00.002-04:00

Hello!

First, let me start by saying "Thank you" to everyone who has been so loving and supportive during Dad W's decline and death. I'm very glad I have wonderful friends, even if I've never met many of them IRL.

Second, yes I'm fine. I pretty much dropped off the internet because my computer caught a nasty virus and is defunct. I now have a shiny new computer, but it took a while to get it set up. We're still trying to see if we can recover my files from my old hard drive. We probably can, but nonetheless, if any of you have files of my writing on your computers (particularly the most recent renditions of Ghost Dancer and Riptide), I would be very relieved to have them.

Life is beginning to return to normal. We're still dealing with the estate lawyer and trying to convince Dad's various creditors that they need to deal with her, and not with us. They keep trying to convince us that we want to take responsibility for his debts, which is a big, fat "No!" This is somewhat complicated because when Dad bought his house from us (it's complicated) about eleven years ago, he apparently never bothered to change over the utilities - he and Rob had the same name, after all. But that means that his utilities are genuinely all in our name. Ack!

The boys have one week left of school. Aaron is pretty much done with school work, while Robbie is being inundated with make-up work as his teachers try to pull up his grades to levels to warrant all the advanced classes they recommended him for for next year. Robbie has been very willing to work, but his organizational skills are so abysmal, that he has a lot of zeros for simply failing to turn in work that he did do. He can lose things between packing his backpack at night and his locker the next morning. It's fortunate that he's both engaging and very bright, because his teachers like him, and are willing to work with him to get the grades up and keep him in the advanced classes (boredom only exacerbates the organizational problems, because then he's disorganized and he's not paying attention because he's bored). I wish organization were something I was any good at, but frankly I had exactly the same problems when I was his age, and never have really gotten better organized - I just got better at keeping track of a couple specific kinds of things, like school papers. It's the main reason I've never attempted to home school Robbie or Aaron. They both need significant help learning to organize, and I am not the person who can give it to them. Heck, I'd love to sit in on the sessions Aaron gets as part of Special Ed. I could use them.

Rob is on the grand European tour. Nine cities in fourteen days, all the best chemical plants and conference rooms. It means he'll be away for Robbie's birthday, which he hates, but Robbie seems to be taking it in stride.

And last, but not least - we're down to two dogs! It's absolute heaven. The barking has dropped enormously, and there's almost no peeing in the house any more. I feel safe walking around in my bare feet again. Without the dachshunds harassing him and peeing on things, Toby has calmed down even more, and stopped peeing on top of the things they've marked. It's definite that we're keeping him now. So have a look at our new permanent basset - Toby the very sweet doofus. That's him at the top of the post.

I've been avoiding this post

2010-04-24T00:49:00.002-04:00

Those of you who know me IRL, or on Facebook already know most of this post, but it's taken me a while to get it up here. Partially lack of time and tiredness, partially not wanting to say all the same things one more time.

Dad W. died early Monday morning.

The last few days, he went down incredibly fast. We moved him into the nursing home around the corner from us Wed. night. Thursday we had the Hospice intake interview. Friday we had the lawyer in and Dad signed all the various necessary paperwork (Will, PoA, Living Will, etc.), and we had the intake interview with the Hospice chaplain. By Saturday, he could not have managed the signings, as his lucid intervals weren't long enough (I took his smallest dog by to see him, and in the 90 minutes we were there, he said two comprehensible sentences, one of which seemed hallucinatory.) Sunday he wasn't lucid at all, and was no longer interested in food or fluids at all. At that point we knew it wouldn't be long, but were still expecting that he would last another day or two. Instead we got a 2am call from the nursing home.

It's been a whirlwind since then. Monday was funeral homes and calling what felt like 90 million people to tell them the news, all while staggering around like zombies on about 2 hours of sleep. Tuesday I took Dad's eldest dog to the vet and had him put to sleep (this is the 15-year-old, blind, deaf, paralyzed, arthritic dachshund that probably has cancer of his own). It wasn't really what I needed to deal with that day, but since I felt that Rascal should have been put to sleep about three months ago, I couldn't see dragging him out until I had a "better" time. Wednesday I and the boys drove down to Tennessee, where we were going to hold the funeral. Also, Aaron got sent home from school sick (throwing up), which complicated things in a couple of directions - not least being that I wasn't entirely sure I'd be able to go until an hour or so before we left. Thursday was the funeral, followed by driving back up. Today was starting to deal with Dad's personal effects, collecting the death certificate, and generally trying to sort out what needs doing from here.

The actual funeral went pretty well. It was small (about nine people, including us), and fairly short, but nice, except for a somewhat gratuitous jab by the presiding minister. Pastor Bobby seems like a generally nice fellow, but he's Pentecostal, and by his lights neither Rob nor Doug are properly saved - so him making much of Dad having a "proper" baptism done by him about two years back didn't exactly go over well. Otherwise, he did all right, mainly sticking to Dad anecdotes and scripture. Doug spoke and read the Serenity Prayer, Rob opted not to speak (probably wise, as he was still seething over the baptism thing), and I opted to sing instead of speak - How Lovely Are Thy Dwellings - which came out somewhat wobbly, but in tune (the people who hadn't heard me sing before just thought I had a moderate vibrato). The service ended up with Robbie and Aaron tossing the first few shovelfulls of dirt into the grave.

This weekend I'm mainly planning on staying home and being comatose. I don't think I've been this tired since the time in college I stayed up for five days straight. I'm still debating whether to go to church Sunday and face the inundation of shocked sympathetic people (Based on sympathy card arrival, it looks like the news started spreading there right after I talked to my organ teacher Thursday morning), or to skip a week.

Oh - and in random silliness, it looks like somebody needs to talk to HR at Rob's workplace about the florist they use for these occasions. Because the giant calladium with big fake purple roses staked in it was a real WTF? moment.

Quickie

2010-04-17T00:44:00.004-04:00

Having just realized I haven't updated in a while...

First off - Bill, I know you're trying to get hold of me. I've been scrambling around like a madwoman this week. I should be mostly available Sunday, except for possibly needing to be at the airport from about 2-3:30pm EST.

Yikes! Checking back for the last entry, so much has happened it feels like a whole different life.

The big changes:

1) PET scan results came back. The primary tumor is bigger - much bigger (it was about the size of an orange to start with). Worse, it's metastasized into the lungs, and possibly the brain - though we have no proof of the latter.

2) His doctors universally agree that there's nothing left they can do for the cancer. The remaining prognosis is a few days to a few weeks.

3) Dad W. spent most of the last week in the hospital with aspiration pneumonia - he had a crash of his condition that had to be seen to be believed. He is now recovering from that, but nobody is sure where the improvement of the departing pneumonia will meet the decline from the progressing cancer. He's currently sleeping about 22 hours a day, and is only intermittently coherent when awake.

4) We did (finally!) manage to get the various useful end-of-life legal documents done, signed, and attested to. This was, in fact, almost two full days of work, due to the intermittent coherency. It takes an unbelievably long time to read twenty pages of legal documentation to someone, and make sure they understand it, when their coherent periods are about five minutes long.

5) Dad W. has been moved to a nursing facility around the corner from our house (literally less than 2 minutes away). We had to ditch his supplemental insurance to do it, but heck - it's not like he has other things to spend his retirement fund on, right? There was no way he could come back home - not without completely renovating our downstairs - and he didn't want to stay in the hospital until he died. Plus, the new place allows me to bring the dogs to visit (one at a time).

6) We've called in Hospice, and they sent their first evaluator today. It was a little surreal, but I did like the guy. I had to grind my teeth a couple of times - such as when he asked Dad if he'd discussed end-of-life issues with his family, and Dad replied "I've tried, but they don't listen!" As if he hasn't been dodging that subject with all the agility of a fencer for the last six months. Or likewise, when they asked about problematic issues, and he said he had a problem with how dependent he's become. This from the man who will ask me to push the nurses' call button for him, because it's too much trouble. (It's strapped to the bed about 2" from his left hand.) Dad finds it disturbing when he can't do something - but he sure as hell has no problem with me doing stuff for him if it's even a tiny bit difficult.

And now the dilemma of the week. As of this morning, I have legal authority to take Rascal to the vet and have him put down. I feel, very strongly, that I ought to do this. In my opinion Rascal should have been put down three months ago. The poor dog has no quality of life left. On the other hand, there's no doubt at all that Dad W. would disapprove of this decision wildly - and what the Power of Attorney is for is letting me make the decisions I believe Dad W. would want.

On the gripping hand - Dad W. is so turned inwards by this point that he doesn't talk about the dogs or ask about them at all - ever. If I bring Scooter by to visit, he enjoys the visit, but unless I bring up the dogs, he doesn't ask after them. Am I obligated to keep this poor, ancient, decrepit dog alive because Dad W. would want me to, even though he doesn't seem to care, wouldn't ever know, and chose freely to give me the legal power to do otherwise?

I guess that wasn't such a quickie after all. Posting will probably be uneven for the next little bit, for obvious reasons.

The Cry of "Wolf"

2010-04-04T08:45:00.002-04:00

I had a few thoughts last night about The Boy Who Cried "Wolf!" - ways in which I hadn't considered the story before. Not surprising, since I don't usually engage in deep analysis of fairy tales unless required to by a teacher.

The story is told from the point of view of the boy. Makes sense, since the moral and warning are intended for people who would yell alarms too soon. But that means that the other dilemma in the story isn't addressed. After all, the villagers in the story probably don't want their shepherd eaten, even if he is an idiot from time to time, and they definitely don't want to lose their sheep - that's the whole point of putting a shepherd out there in the first place!

So what are the poor villagers to do when wolves are a real danger, but their only warning system gives them way too many false positives. How do you tell when the wolf really is among the sheep?

This is part of the dilemma we've been having with Dad W. He does have cancer; it's definitely life-threatening; it can cause a lot of symptoms, many of which aren't obviously cancer-related. But he's also a man who has trouble distinguishing annoying things one can and should push through from the medically dangerous. Up until just recently most of his symptoms have been the result of his poor condition and debilitation, rather than from the cancer. I've spent months muttering under my breath about the idiots down in the hospital in TN (the same ones who were treating Mom W. - isn't that reassuring?), who let him stay in bed for five days right after his biopsy. He lost huge amounts of mobility and muscle tone in those five days, and he never got them back. But instead of realizing how his lack of activity was contributing to his debilitation and pushing to get it back, Dad attributed it to the cancer, and his response to getting fatigued doing simple things was to rest more: which led to a downhill spiral of doing less and less as he lost the ability to do the things he had stopped doing because they were tiring.

So how do Rob and I as his caregivers figure out when his fatigue and immobility is self-induced, and we should push him to do more, and when it's really a sign of cancer progression, and we should drag him back to the oncologist?

This last couple of weeks, I think I'm seeing a cancer decline. Dad is deeply fatigued - he can spend 18-20 hours a day sleeping, not just sitting or lying down as he used to, but actually asleep. His skin tone is awful - a yellow/gray shade that makes him look like a walking corpse. He's running low-grade fevers more nights than not, sometimes with accompanying vomiting - and he doesn't wake up when he starts throwing up. He's nearly choked to death in the middle of the night twice in the last week. He's started hiccuping several hours out of every day.

Rob still thinks most of this is a continuation of his inactivity decline (except the fevers, but he thinks the failure to wake up, and inability to roll over when he's woken up are inactivity). He and Dad are still optimistic about what yesterday's PET scan will show. (Dad doesn't remember the night-time vomiting, and is having serious trouble tracking time, so he's not aware of just how much time he's spending asleep.) I'm not. I think we've finally hit the point, where if we hadn't tripped over Dad W's cancer back in the fall; if he had never had those five days of bed rest, and had maintained his mobility - we would be looking for and finding the cancer.

I think this time, the cry of "wolf!" is real. And with cancer in the liver, it's not usually long from a genuine cry of "wolf!" until there's not much left to do.

Woot! And Stuff

2010-03-31T00:26:00.004-04:00

Robbie is now an orange belt! He did great on his test, a couple of minor hesitations in his first kata, all successfully negotiated, and other than that did everything within his belt requirements, and several things that aren't. There've been a lot of times I thought he'd never get here - especially when he decided to drop karate a couple of months after getting his yellow belt, but since he came back this fall, he's been putting in the effort, and it really shows. Congratulations, Robbie!

In other news, I'm still planning on going to the Nashville Isshinryu black belt only tournament, but I'm going to observe, not compete. I haven't sparred in a couple of months, my weapon katas are a mess (learning Urashi Bo has screwed up Tokumine, and Urashi itself isn't secure enough yet to be reliable, Chatanyara no Sai is nowhere near tournament condition), and regular kata is usually my worst venue. So rather than put the extra pressure on, I'm just going to go and hope to run into some of the people I trained with way back when.

Dad W. had a fall Sunday night. No serious injury, but he bruised up his side fairly well. My big concern is that he's wanting/needing (it's hard to tell with him) a boost to sit up on the edge of his bed now, and I'm worried that by the time the bruises aren't hurting him, he'll have lost the necessary muscle tone to sit up on his own. Experience with Dad says that once a piece of functionality is lost, he doesn't get it back. Plus, if he needs that much extra boosting, we'll probably have to ask for a different aide. Barb is lovely, but she's also 70 and barely over five feet tall - she can give him an extra boost, but she can't support any significant percentage of his weight - and for him to get up today required some serious heft.

Mom has an appointment with a local oncologist on Friday. She should find out then about probable chemo/radiation plans. For the moment she's continuing to heal well from the mastectomy.

Finally, anybody whose visited our house in the past will be happy to hear that Rob managed to fix the leaky tub faucet. It's been leaky since we moved in five years ago, but after trying to fix it, our plumber declared that it was sealed too tightly, and that fixing it would take $800 and breaking into the wall behind it. So we just lived with it. But this last week it finally got too bad to be ignored, and it turns out that the 6'6" guy who figures that he's got nothing to lose and possibly $800 to save, when working with a really big honking wrench, could knock the faucet loose and get in to repair it. I kept waking up last night wondering what was wrong, and then realizing that the house was silent, and I wasn't hearing the continual drip. Ahhhhh.

Where We Stand

2010-03-26T11:19:00.002-04:00

First off, thanks to everyone for the well wishes and support. They are all much appreciated. I'm down at my parents' house right now, but will be heading back home tomorrow.

In good news, Mom is recovering well from her mastectomy. She should be able to get the drain out in a couple of days, which I'm sure will be a relief. Also, Dad W. likes the aide we found to help him while I was gone (I like her too). She's an older woman, but very bubbly and active (and likes dogs - a must around our place). Having her available should give me significantly msore flexibility for when responsabilities conflict.

The bad news is that several of Mom's sentinel nodes (5 of 11) showed positive, so there's chemo and radiation in her future. The exact plan hasn't been decided upon yet (we're awaiting a call from the oncologist), but regardless, it's not the news we were hoping for.

Bits and Pieces

2010-03-17T00:47:00.002-04:00

Mom is scheduled for a mastectomy on Friday. It looks promising that she may not need chemo, but we won't find out until they dissect the sentinel nodes during the surgery. The current plans are somewhat fluid, but most likely I'm going to be driving up to pick her up and bring her back here initially, and then either I'll drive her back home (she's having surgery three states over from her home, but only one from me), or Dad will come up and get her. She and Dad are sounding much more like themselves now that there's a plan of action. My father does not like having a medical crisis that he can't do anything about, and I think that was a lot of why he sounded so anxious when I first spoke to him - they got the biopsy results late on a Friday, cancer is out of his expertise, and he couldn't really do anything until the following Monday - cue an anxious, out-of-sorts guy.

Dad W's oncologist has decided she's unhappy with how fast he's rebounding from his anemia (I.e. very slowly), and has decided to add an additional treatment to the Procrit injections he currently gets once a week. The new treatment will mean going to the hospital twice a week. I hope I can talk them into making one of the visits concurrent with his Procrit, or that's going to be an awful lot of time eaten up - getting Dad W ready to go out, out the door, to the hospital, treated, and then back home and settled takes about two hours, even though the hospital is ten minutes away.

I learned the end of Urashi Bo tonight. I'm liking this one quite a lot, but it's going to cause problems for the April 10 tournament I mentioned last time. Urashi Bo is too new for me to do a really good job with it - but I went back and practiced Tokumine no Kun today, and Urashi has also done a good job of making me hesitant with Tokumine - they're so similar in spots that it's confusing my muscle memory. So now I have to decide (and quickly!) whether to work hard on bringing Urashi up to snuff, go back to drilling Tokumine, or try to work up Chatanyara no Sai, which has languished the last month and is nowhere near ready. Great - fried brain is in no condition to make decisions! Don't make me make decisions!

In kidlet news, Robbie continues to do well with his flute, having put his sights on third chair (he started at sixth and is currently at fourth). If he gets up to second chair he's going to have a dilemma, because first chair is the girl he's had a crush on for the last three years. To celebrate his increased flute facility, I got him a book of flute and piano songs, with the promise (reinforced by my organ teacher) that if he learns one well, we can play it together for the offertory at church sometime.

Aaron is still running straight A's for the year (and is adoring having better grades than his brother). We should get the results back on his ISTEP tests in about a month, but everyone including his teacher and him thinks that he likely did very well.

Unfortunately, Aaron is very grumpy with lots of semi-meltdowns today because his shoulder started hurting him over the weekend and it's still bothering him. We took him to his pediatrician just as a precaution (mainly because he didn't do anything obvious to injure it, so we're a little mystified), and she gave us the expected advice - ibuprofen, heat, rest. Aaron is quite put-out. He expected the doctor to be able to fix his shoulder, isn't that what doctors are for?

And I decided a bad week and no husband deserved a small treat. So I bought myself a shawl pattern - Heere be Dragones. The same seller makes several other equally stunning shawls, including patterns of a Chinese Dragon of Happiness, a Pegasus, a Celtic Dragon, and a bird in a bamboo forest. However, I'm not a huge shawl knitter, so I restrained myself.

And that's the news down in Wood territory.

Dates

2010-03-10T23:43:00.002-05:00

March 30th is going to be Robbie's orange belt test. Both Sensei and I have been very impressed by the way he's buckled downa and worked lately, and he's more than ready.

April 3rd is Dad W's next set of scans (at least the first bit - there are several scans involved). We'll see how much the two rounds on chemo/radiation have done. These are the scans that determine how we're going forward.

April 10 is a black belt only Isshinryu tournament in Nashville. Both Sensei & I are planning on going - and because he's still active and in the area, there's a reasonable chance that my first sensei will be there, and a near certainty that some of the local black belts that I knew from back then will attend. It would be very cool to be able to introduce my two sensei.

March 15th - my mom's first appointment with a breast cancer specialist, as she just had a biopsy come back showing two kinds of cancer. Fortunately neither is very advanced, but really the odds of two in the same place at the same time have got to be long. Weird versions of Doublemint gum commercials keep floating through my brain.

Those are the biggies for right now. I'm using a bit of freeware called Chaos Manager to keep track of various appointments now. It's a very apt name.

Money, money, money

2010-02-27T14:14:00.003-05:00

I've been earning money this month. Weird that it should happen just when I'm already running in three other directions, but that's the way life is. Suddenly all of my potential income streams started producing small amounts at once. I got a paycheck for playing the funeral (which I hadn't asked for, nor expected), I've been commissioned to do some knitting, and I've got my first paying editing job. I'm most excited about the editing job, as editing is something I've always done for friends and family for free, not for pay.

I've been hired by a grad student whose first language is not English to edit her papers from now until through her dissertation. The rate isn't high, as she doesn't have a lot of money and I don't feel right about charging full professional rates my first time out the gate, but it's not rock bottom either, and it should be a small but steady income stream. Judging by the first paper, it should be rather fun too. She's a good writer with interesting ideas, but some significant English grammar problems. As opposed to the last friend I helped with editing, who was perfectly fine with grammar, but unfortunately just wasn't a particularly good or interesting writer. It's a lot harder to make a blah idea sound interesting than to clean up tense agreement.

Dad W's problems with fatigue are continuing. The weekly Procrit injection check showed a low-grade fever, low blood pressure, and his lowest CBC yet. His temperature is back to normal today though, so we may be over the hump. Radiation is Thursday, and I have no idea if they're going to keep him overnight or not. Unfortunately there's no telling until we see how he reacts to the procedure on the day. I'm beginning to wonder how much the radiation specialist is paying attention to Dad's actual condition, though. According to Rob, the doctor told him Dad should be walking a mile a day, which just is not going to happen any time soon. I would consider getting him to go once around the block a miracle. Up three houses and back is a good day. Fortunately his oncologist and the chemo guy both seem to be paying a little more attention. The oncologist started him on the Procrit, and I'm going to see if she's willing to send Dad to a PT the next time we see her.

Robbie may be having his orange belt test here fairly soon. Sensei started pretesting him last week, and says that if he can do a good run-through the next time they're both in class, then he'll schedule in the test. One of our older boys is getting ready for his green belt test, and the two of them may well test on the same day. L will be thrilled if he gets to test soon, as this will leap him ahead of his older brother and mother - up until now they've all tested simultaneously, but L has been here at least once a week since the beginning of the year, while the rest of the family has been skipping more often than not. They have good reason, but good reasons don't make up for missed class time.

Round Two!

2010-02-21T01:26:00.003-05:00

Yesterday started Dad W's second round of chemo/radiation. They put in the chemo beads yesterday morning. They'll sit around and do their job for about two weeks, whereupon we go back and toss in the radiation beads.

This round is looking like it's going to be rougher than round 1. First of all, Dad W's condition has slipped somewhat since the first round, primarily due to being snowed in a lot, and a subsequent lack of motion on his part. If the weather is nice, I can sometimes get him to go out to the Y, or to walk a few hundred yards up and down the street (It really doesn't take much to count as "exercise" for him right now. Taking a shower is downright aerobic.), but if the weather is bad, getting him to move inside the house is pretty much a write off. Secondly, he's reacting more badly to both the procedure (they kept him overnight this time as he was vomiting and nearly aspirated a couple of times), and then to the chemo itself - he's been on pain medication most of today, when last time he needed barely any.

In ways both funny and alarming, Dad is also showing signs of intermittent confusion. Most of the time he's perfectly well oriented, but sometimes not so much. For example, earlier in the week he woke me up at 5am, demanding to know when I was going to start cooking dinner. He had woken up, and thought it was 5pm. I got him oriented and back to sleep, only to have him repeat the scene almost exactly twice more in the next two hours. I'm not sure if this is a reaction to the treatment, to the cancer, or something else (I know the procrit he's on can cause TIA's for example).

Poor Rob is a wreck right now. He flew in from his month out of country (he worked 24 of the 28 days he was down there, averaging 12 hour days), and arrived Thursday afternoon, only to have to get up at 4:30am to get Dad off to the hospital. Now the plant here is having internecine wars over who gets first dibs on him to fix their stuff. The curse of competency strikes again. OTOH, unless the plant is threatening to blow up, they will leave him alone tomorrow, or I will have something to say about it (to them, not to him). They lived without him for 28 days, they can survive long enough for him to have a day off.

I have survived my six weeks of being acting organist at church. R is back now, which is good, since I've blown straight through my entire repertoire. Last week we had a short notice (though not exactly unexpected, the lady was triple digits old) funeral, and I had to figure out how to hack my way through Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring in four days. I am quite possibly prouder of making it through that piece acceptably, if not exactly in grand style, than I am of the other six weeks. I put in more than twenty hours of practice in four days, very nearly getting snowed in at church one night, when it started snowing just as I arrived to start practice - which would have been a rude shock to Dad and the kids when they woke up in the morning. When R gave me my assignments for my next lesson, he handed me a new piece with the following comment "Don't expect to have this down in a week, or even a month. This will be about a year-long project - it's about as hard as Jesu, Joy." Which just made my jaw hit the floor. Jesu, Joy is a year long project piece? And I just played it from scratch in four days? Holy crap!

In karate news, I'm finally getting back to practice regularly - between the snow and the family obligations, I didn't get in much in January. I've passed Chatanyara no Sai to Sensei's satisfaction (if not mine, it still feels very choppy to me), and he's started teaching me Urashi Bo. I have very mixed feelings about Urashi - on the one hand, it's a bo kata and I do love my bo. It's also got a lot of cat stance with a forward block, and that's one of my best stance/move combinations, making this an potentially excellent competition kata for me. On the other hand, it's an inherently choppy kata, without a smooth flow even when performed by the people who are acknowledged to be great at it, which I don't much care for. We'll have to see how I feel about it when I'm not stopping every other move to remember what comes next.

Also congratulations, Bill, on your orange belt in jiu-jitsu! I know I already told you on the phone, but thought it deserved reiterating here.

Updatery

2010-01-27T00:34:00.003-05:00

Updating all around.

1. Due to annoying conflicts, illness, weather, etc. I have thus far only been to ONE!!! karate class in all of January. This is clearly not on. I need to hit things more. Also my Chatanyara no Sai desperately needs more practice to iron out those awkward "What am I supposed to do next? Oh, right." pauses in the middle. I really, really want to learn Urashi Bo, but can't (and shouldn't), until Chatanyara is well settled.

2. Dad W. results - extremely mixed. He's tolerating the chemo and radiation exceptionally well, with virtually no side effects - mild anemia (just started treatment), and some nausea immediately post-chemo and that's it. OTOH, his habit of staying well within his comfort zone physically is coming back to bite him big-time. He won't walk or exercise unless I both drill sergeant him into it and then stay right beside him the whole time (and even then not hard or far), and rarely bothers to eat unless I make it up and plonk it in front of him (for a man with a week's supply of convenience food in his bedroom, this strikes me as weird). As a consequence he's steadily losing both weight and muscle mass, and a lot of physical capability as well. I'm trying to be as patient about this as I can, but it makes me want to shake him. He knows that he needs to move more (every doctor he has has said so multiple times), he knows he needs to eat - but he keeps waiting for me to tell him what to do every time.

Aaargh!! I'm willing to fight this cancer with him every step of the way, but I can't fight it for him, and that's what he seems to want me to do.

3. We had a lovely bout of stomach virus run through the whole family last week. Kids and Rob over the weekend (that would be weekend before last), Dad W. mid-week, and then me right after Rob left the country - naturally. Then I caught something else intestinal again over the weekend. Had to cancel out on church (which I felt guilty as heck about, but I didn't think the service would be enhanced by having the organist sprint madly for the bathroom in mid-ceremony). By Sunday afternoon, I was feeling better, but had lost 4 and a half pounds from Saturday evening. So far nobody else seems to have caught my second whatsit. Cross your fingers.

As a side note - grocery shopping on Sunday certainly produced a healthier cart than usual. Snack foods and the like had absolutely no temptation for me - the bedding section on the other hand... Ah the joys of being the only able-bodied adult in the house.

4. Aaron is continuing his run of straight A report cards. He may be enjoying this a little bit too much, as it's the first time in his life he's had better grades than his brother. Robbie's grades are improving (he got his first middle school A, in band, this time around), but he's still having to work hard at remembering to do and turn in all the work middle school expects of him. His test grades remain straight A's, balanced out by intermittent zeroes for homework.

5. Dad W. is finally inching towards letting Rascal go. I suspect it will be a while yet, but he at least had me get information from the vet about cremation/burial services and costs. If he doesn't do something soon, though, he won't get the choice, as Rascal has dropped something like a third of his body weight in the last two months, even though he's eating like a pig. He's starvingly hungry all the time (he's bitten me twice snapping for treats I'm handing him), but losing weight steadily despite being fed. So there's likely something else wrong besides the known list. (Blind, deaf, arthritic, heart murmur, paralyzed) It just kills me to see this skeleton covered in black fur dragging around the house, knowing he needs to be put down, and I can't do it because I'm not his owner.

And that's the state of things since my last post. Rob is off on another continent for the next three weeks. He'll be back the day before Dad W. starts his next round of chemo.

OMG/110

2010-01-07T20:52:00.002-05:00

We've survived Dad W's first chemo procedure. Actually, he tolerated the procedure really, really well, without any of the pain and nausea we were told to expect. The side effects from the chemo itself have just started cropping up today (48 hours later), and thus far aren't too horrible - some abdominal pain, some nausea - both controllable with medication - and a lot of fatigue.

In another eight days we do the same thing again (1-day admit for a procedure, then home) only this time the microspheres will be radioactive instead of impregnated with chemotherapy drugs.

Yesterday, naturally, the hospital released Dad W at exactly the wrong moment for our schedules. I had Dad-sitting duties until 2, when I was supposed to leave to go to my annual gyne visit, and then pick up the boys. If he was released before 2, then I would take him home. If he was released after 2, then Rob would get off work early and come get him ASAP - which would be 3:30, approximately. Well, they told me at 1 that they were releasing Dad W. By the time they got the paperwork processed, walked us through the release orders, got him dressed and all his stuff together, and got the wheelchair transport, it was 2:05 - and instead of going straight to my appointment, I had to go home and get him settled first. I showed up 15 minutes late, and with an absolutely sky-high blood pressure - 185/110. My blood-pressure occasionally runs the high side of normal, but nothing like this. But half an hour later it had only dropped to 172/105, still waaay too high. So now I'm under instructions to take my BP daily for the next week and go see my PCP with the results (had an appointment with her before I left the building).

Why do I feel like my BP would have been better if I had been able to make karate class on Tuesday night? But that was the procedure day, and it just wasn't happening. And tonight class is cancelled because of snow. Only two classes missed so far, and I'm already feeling a bit bereft. And I'm likely to miss Thursday of next week because of that procedure. Glah - I need to go hit stuff! This no yoga, no karate thing that's been happening for the last month is just not on.

In good news, Sensei is supposed to be starting back at work in about 2 weeks. His knee is apparently healing well from his surgery. Missing this much work has been a big concern for him, so I'm glad he's getting back to it.

A Deep Breath

2009-12-22T01:38:00.003-05:00

Some good news - Dad W has no metastases. We have only the primary tumor to deal with. The oncologist sounded downright optimistic at the latest visit. Granted, we still have a big honking, fast-growing liver tumor, but we have a plan of action and some hope.

I just realized I was talking about Dad W's cancer the way some husbands talk about pregnancies - as "our" tumor. It's really feeling that way. I track the appointments, take Dad W to them, and provide doctor interface and translation when he gets confused. Though I feel a little guilty because along with everything else I feel, I'm also absolutely fascinated with the actual treatments being planned.

We'll be starting targeted chemo and radiation therapy in January, both supplied through polymer microspheres fed directly into the artery that supplies the tumor. Between now and then our instructions are to feed him up, and chase him out of the house to get some exercise - basically to try to build him up both physically and mentally before treatments actually begin. So for now, it's time to catch our breath, enjoy the holidays and get ready to hit the ground running.

Other news: The Saturn having been successfully turned into a large paperweight (cracked engine block), I now have a 1997 Nissan Maxima to play with. It's a year older, but with 100,000 fewer miles than the Saturn. We now look like a family of government agents, with two black cars with black interiors and tinted windows.

Our church organist is taking a leave of absence for January and February, so I will be sharing duties with one of the other choir members (a composer and phenomenal pianist) to provide coverage. Eeep! That's a lot of playing given the size (miniscule) of my organ repertoire. Also, said composer has written a duet for two sopranos and has asked me if I would debut it, singing with M (a professional singer/voice teacher), which is terribly flattering. I've heard M sing, and she's got a fabulous voice, though very different from mine. To have a professional composer think I'm a good match for a duet with her just made my whole day.

Full speed ahead!

2009-12-08T00:38:00.003-05:00

My crystal ball is broken, because treatment for Dad W. will be proceeding under full steam. Apparently we're dealing with a cancer originating in the common bile duct (surprise, surprise, the doctors here are better at identifying odd cancers). This is good, in that it means that this is the primary tumor we're dealing with, bad inasmuch as it's a notably aggressive form of cancer.

Targeted chemotherapy with supplemental radiation will be commencing practically immediately - they literally wouldn't let us out of the exam room until they had lined up Dad W's appointments with the radio-therapy people and the chemo specialist.

All the knitting stuff I got will definitely come in handy. I got 2" done on a leg warmer this afternoon alone, and this was a relatively short appointment.

It feels really weird, though. I'm getting all but blasted with approval from my in-laws (all three), all for doing stuff it would never occur to me not to do. What, am I going to tell Dad to get his own butt to and from appointments? Leave him to flounder through the medical explanations, when I have the training to understand them and he doesn't? Yell at him for being lazy because he's anemic and depressed? This is all stuff I would do for my next-door neighbor, did he need it, doing it for my father-in-law seems like no special merit. I wonder why it seems to look so different to them.

In other news, the car is good - it was just suffering from excessive cold (like my younger son, who had much to say about walking to school in the snow because the car wouldn't start).

I'm cantoring for church this coming Sunday, which will be a new experience. The singing itself is easy-peasy, but leading the congregation through the psalm is new for me. The week after is Mary's Sunday, and I'm doing a solo bit. It was originally supposed to be all the women, but apparently it's too high for even the other sopranos to sing. So, naturally if you want someone to sing in the stratosphere, I'm your girl.

Robbie has his first band concert this Thursday. He's really happy right now, because the conductor has moved him up from last chair to 4th chair within his section. He's been practicing assiduously, and is amazingly good for having been at it such a short time. Unfortunately his Dad will still be in Brazil, but Grandpa and I will be there to cheer him on.

Last but not least, Sensei's knee surgery appears to have gone well. He should start PT sometime this week, though I haven't heard exactly when. He's bored with sitting around, though - I should make him learn to knit!

ps - happy 50th Robert! I hope your party was a blast!

Where we stand

2009-12-06T20:13:00.002-05:00

'Cause God knows we're not driving - the car broke down this morning.

Tomorrow is a day for finding out things. In the morning our neighbor will take a look at the car and see if it's worth fixing (at 223,000 miles, it may just be a lost cause). In the afternoon, we have Dad W's first appointment with an oncologist, assuming I can fill in the somewhat sketchy information I have about who he's supposed to be seeing, where and when. Somewhere in the middle, Rob should get some information as to whether they're still looking for someone to fill an open technical position at the Louisville plant. Because today they asked him to stay in Brazil through Christmas - he's said no so far, but if his bosses insist it may become a case of stay or quit.

We finally got Dad W a local PCP this last week. He's a quiet sort, doesn't give you a lot of idea about what's going on in his head, but I think I like him. He seems to ask the right sort of questions, and he certainly moved fast enough on the oncology referral. His nurse was calling the clinic before we got out of the office, and they called us back to give us an appointment before dinnertime. Unfortunately it was Dad W who took the call, and he got a time and some confusing directions about getting paperwork from the PCP without getting a doctor's name, the address, or even the name of the place we were to go. All I got was "The Cancer Clinic, 1:45 Monday - oh and we should stop by the PCP half an hour earlier to fill out paperwork." So the first thing tomorrow is to get on the phone and get things straight.

The pathology report from Tennessee says metastasis, but just to be extra confusing it appears to be gall bladder or pancreas, not prostate. Nobody's seen any sign of a tumor on the pancreas, and Dad W hasn't had a gall bladder in about 12 years. My crystal ball says we're in for some more tests before the oncologist settles on a course of treatment.

Rascal the dachshund is pretty much as he was, except for the addition of dragging, licking and nibbling sores all over his rear. These have started to improve though, since we realized that it wasn't Rascal that was the problem, but rather that the other dachshund was gnawing on him when nobody was looking. Once we started keeping them separated the sore started to heal up. Poor dog, he's 14 - mostly deaf, mostly blind, arthritic and paralyzed with a heart murmur. He's not having a fun time of it. My choice would be euthanasia, but he's not my dog, so it's not my call to make. Though it is apparently my pee and poop to clean up, and for one little dog he can sure produce amazing quantities.

In some happier thoughts, I took some time Saturday to set myself up for the waiting room time I see in my future. I hit my favorite yarn store and bought yarn for five different projects: Some gorgeous stuff called Mesmerize for a Christmas top; lilac cotton for a summer T, cotton/linen for a knitted oxford shirt, black/gray merino for a hat for Robbie, and some really lovely garnet laceweight lambswool that I don't have a plan for yet - but I'll think of something. *rubs hands* Oh yes, my precious I'll think of something.

Notes

2009-11-22T17:30:00.002-05:00

Sensei's ACL tear is confirmed. He's got surgery scheduled for Dec. 1. In a bit of serendipity, dojo classes were already canceled for December so he'll have some recovery time before even needing to teach from a bar-stool.

Dad W. made a stab at church today, but his stamina wasn't quite up to the task. Once he made it up the stairs to the communion rail (which took help), he couldn't make it back down without a rest, and ended up sitting with the choir until the end of service. We went straight home afterward and he took a 2-3 hour nap before rejoining the world. We have found a PCP here, and managed to move the transfer date for his insurance from Jan. 1 to Dec. 1, so we should be able to get things moving on getting him treatment that isn't two states away.

Rascal has recovered some feeling in his rear legs, but still has no voluntary motion and has now developed a significant diarrhea. You do not wish to know what the house currently smells like - and just before the family arrives for Thanksgiving!

On that note, I'm cleaning like a mad-woman this week. I had been intending to do this more slowly over the course of November, but I think I can reasonably claim that other things took priority. But it can't be put off any longer. The best I'm hoping for is somewhere above "hovel".

And if anybody was wondering, no, I'm not participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I had been intending to, but it became obvious within the first few days of November that it just wasn't in the cards for 2009. Next year perhaps.

This month keeps getting better and better.

2009-11-18T16:32:00.002-05:00

Take previous week, add Sensei blowing out his knee at the tournament this weekend (possible ACL tear, we'll find out more soon), and an elderly dachshund with a slipped disc (to add to his blindness, arthritis, and heart murmur). Shake vigorously. Can we skip to the next month yet?

Needfull Things

2009-11-07T23:43:00.002-05:00

It's been a week. I could really have lived without this one.

The first and more minor news is that both boys and I have bronchitis. Dad, when he heard me coughing on the phone this afternoon, asked me if I was sure it wasn't pneumonia, so now I'm thinking I should probably haul the lot of us down to the doctor on Monday just to be on the safe side. Even if it's not, it's miserable. No other symptoms, just this hacking cough that produces gobs of phlegm and won't go away for anything. Yesterday I was coughing so much and so hard I was starting to get streaks of blood from my lovely raw throat. Neither Robbie or Aaron has gotten that bad yet, but they're certainly not happy campers.

In more major news, Dad W. apparently has liver cancer. Whether it's primary liver cancer or metastasized from elsewhere is unknown yet. Neither is exactly a good option. To make things even better, he's down at his old house by himself right now because his insurance doesn't switch up to this state until Jan. 1 - until then, everything but ER care has to be down there. After Jan. 1, of course, everything except ER care has to be up here. Which is going to be interesting to manage in the middle of cancer treatment. Right now we're trying to figure out how to get him back up here, since he drove down, but post-biopsy isn't in good shape for driving back up. We were going to go get him this weekend, but he hasn't been released yet, and Monday Rob leaves for Brazil. At this point we're thinking we'll have him fly up, and we can retrieve his truck at a later point. My Brother-in-law may fly down to escort him, which would be welcome. I think Dad W. can probably use all the support and family contact he can get right now. Once he's here, I can provide attention and care, but with no extended family here, there's simply no way I can drive down and collect him by myself.

I hope to God Rob doesn't catch this bronchitis just as he's traveling, or Dad W. once he's back up here. That would be all either one of them would need.

Busy Signal

2009-10-24T12:31:00.002-04:00

Wow - I looked, and can't believe it's been a solid month since I last posted.

As one might surmise, life has been busy this last little bit. Rob has been alternating his time between out of state and out of country, with only little bits of time - never more than a week, usually about three days - at home in between trips. It looks to continue this way until mid-December. Whereupon, he's planning to take off the entire latter half of the month. We will note that when he's on the road, he works seven days a week, no weekends or days off - and on his last stop home, he worked two of the three days he was home. They'd better give him that two weeks off, or he's going to fall over soon.

I'm playing organ Sunday, my third time doing so. This time it's just prelude (Finlandia by Sebelius) and postlude (Toccata in E-minor by Pachelbel). I have started working on hymns, though, so I will probably start doing some of those sometime soon. I was going to do the entrance hymn this Sunday, but it simply isn't ready. At best the pace could be described as funereal. I was shocked by how difficult is was to play a hymn "properly" on the organ, as opposed to simply playing it as if I were at a piano. The sound is very different - and like anything when you dissect it to improve it, it falls apart in the middle. Suddenly I can't even play the hymn pianistically anymore, even though I could sight-read it pretty well a week ago. Roger has told me to pick out five hymns I want to learn to start with, and start playing around with them to get the hang of organ distribution (S in right hand, AT in left, B in foot). Give me a month or two, and I might get somewhere.

Somewhere, Karen (my piano teacher of ten years as a kid) would be laughing herself sick at me right now. She was continuously frustrated because my practicing was so sporadic. I would practice when I had a piece I really wanted to learn, and just do enough to get by the rest of the time. Now I'm putting in 90 minutes to three hours every day and it's not enough! I'm not getting this down fast enough. If I could revert to the schedule I had as a kid, I'd probably be putting in 4 or more hours a day.

On the karate front, the Lennox Legacy tournament is getting close. I'm brushing up Chinto and Tokumine no kun for my kata, and we're doing a lot more sparring practice. This year, all of our teenaged boys have suddenly shot up, so that while I still outmass them all, suddenly there are two more people in the dojo who have height and reach on me, and another who's close to my height. Fortunately for me, if not for them, they haven't quite figured out what to do with the extra leg and arm length yet.

I'm a little nervous that I may end up as a ring judge at Lennox. Based on past years, it's fairly likely that if I'm at all willing, I'll be used. I can handle judging sparring as a corner judge, but the idea of judging katas makes me uneasy. I know what I tend to look for in a good kata, but converting that into a number score? Not a clue.

Dad Wood heads off back to TN next week, and Rob is out until Halloween, so it's a week of just me and the boys coming up. No guarantees on posting.

New kata

2009-09-24T17:13:00.003-04:00

Well, well. I was expecting, post shodan test, to be left alone to process for a while and not have any new kata thrown at me. Instead, Sensei has launched right off into showing me a new sai kata. I can't complain. I always love learning new things, and I'm liking this kata a lot, but I am rather surprised.

Chatanyara no sai is what I'm working on. It's easy to see why this one is a black belt kata. It has what appears to be a lot of repetition, but in the performance no two repetitions are the same. Not just the right-left-right changes of previous kata, but significant alterations more like a Bach theme-and-variations than a repetition. The linked video doesn't show this terribly clearly, due to the horrible quality, but unfortunately that's rather more the rule than not with footage of Master Shimabuku.

I seem to be picking up Chatanyara fairly quickly, but I can already tell what my big issue is going to be. It's supposed to be an aggressive, forward moving, fast kata. Sensei is already after me for my overly restrained motion. Much like Kusanku, which was good for teaching me to take up space (still working on that), this is going to be good for teaching me to show aggression and dominance. (Stop that Bill, I can hear you laughing from here!) I'm looking forward to getting the kata down so I can work on the style of it with some level of confidence and comfort.

In related news, Robbie has set his sights on the Lennox Legacy Tournament in Akron, OH the second weekend of November. It will be his first ever competition. Mommy will be going and competing also, as I do every year. I need to decide which empty hand kata I want to compete with and get cracking on dissecting it and putting it back together. Wansu, Sunsu, and Chinto would be the primary candidates. Wansu is my favorite, but also the earliest/least advanced of the katas. Sunsu I like very well, but it's also the one that gets used as a tie-breaker, so I'm not certain about using it for the primary competition (I.e. having never competed in the black belt rings before, I'm a little jittery about what's approved of vs. what's allowed). Chinto seems the most likely candidate.

Robbie will of course be competing with Seisan, the only kata he's going to have done by then. We also need to get him more comfortable with sparring. He's a bit prone to being either on full defense, warding off shots without making any himself, or full offense, throwing poorly aimed punches and kicks without any regard for whether he's opening himself up.

He's doing much better with his math now. We just got the next report, and he hasn't had any completely missed assignments since we talked to his teacher about his forgetfulness. I'm picking him up from school for this month, and making sure he has everything he needs before we leave school grounds. Once he gets reliable about packing his backpack correctly (right now he's getting it right about 2/3's of the time), he can go back to riding the bus. But at least now he's out of danger of getting himself booted from the advanced math class (You have to turn in 90% of your work with at least an 85% average to stay in.)

Aaron is dealing with a low-grade bug this week. We'll find out tonight if he can go back to school. He was running a fever last night, and the district rule is no fever for 24 hours without drugs, so while he seems to be feeling much better, if he shows any fever tonight, no school tomorrow. Fortunately, his grades are thus far ridonkulously high, so missing work isn't exactly an issue.

How do you tell?

2009-09-17T06:01:00.003-04:00

We had a visitor to the dojo the other day. Without having seen him do anything but talk, I'm strongly inclined to write him off as a poseur - you know, the kind of dude who's convinced he's death on the hoof, but can be demolished by a 12-year old orange belt?

As it happens, there's some reasons I can pin down why I think that this time. The offers to show my sensei "some stuff he can probably use", when Sensei has been a black belt about five times longer than this guy has been in martial arts. The excessive, and somewhat random qualifications of the dude he claims as his teacher. And the fact that the last student from this particular teacher we had show up of an evening was exactly that sort of dude.

He's supposed to be coming by again, and we'll see if he lives down to my expectations, but I'm wondering why I'm quite so certain. Certainly there are teachers who have both good and bad students. Some of the cocky people convinced of their own deadliness are actually reasonably skilled - if not as skilled as they think they are, because nobody could be.

So, I guess my question of the evening (or early morning as the case may be) is this: Have you run into this sort of martial arts guy? What signs and symptoms did you notice?

Push/Throw

2009-09-09T01:04:00.003-04:00

I got to spend a couple hours at Sensei's basement dojo this weekend, getting in some learning time after spending the last couple of weeks teaching. He taught me the beginning of Chatan yara no Sai (which I am loving), and then we worked bunkai for the basics, using more variations in more depth than we have before. It was a nice mix of mental learning and physical practice, after the several months of almost straight physical drill running up to my shodan test.

Sensei had a DVD by an Isshinryu/Dillman karateka named Chris Thomas, and we worked those applications, seeing what worked for us, and what didn't (things like relative height were very relevant for some applications). We spend a good half-hour just on one five minute segment, so the DVD seemed very worthwhile, and I've put it on my Amazon wishlist, though it's a little outside my budget right this moment.

The title for this post though, comes from one of those enlightening moments when an explanation clicks and something finally makes sense. Sensei Thomas was showing a technique that included an extremely short range punch, and started talking about the difference between a push and a throw.

The human upper body is well put together for both throwing and pushing, but mechanically the two actions are quite distinct, even though they use the same body parts. To throw, the movement starts with the hips or with the feet, and travels up and out to the hands, almost like the crack of a whip. Pushing, however is almost the opposite motion. You don't start pushing a piece of furniture by throwing your hips into the action before your upper body is set. Instead, the upper body gets into frame (like a ballroom dancer's frame), and then the lower body and hips kick in to add the power.

*Ding!!*

Pretty much every hand technique we use boils down to an essential pushing movement, or an essential throwing movement. I knew that I had a much easier time making the connections from core to hand with some techniques than with others, but it hadn't hit me that it might be because things actually needed to happen in a different order. 'Throwing' motions have worked well for me for a while - I'm dangerous with a downward tetsui - but how often does one use that outside of board breaking? - while 'pushing' techniques have lacked that connected feeling more often than not.

So I've been having fun the last couple of days playing around with various techniques and the feel of pushing vs. throwing. It's already giving me a better feel for when to engage the hips - if only by giving me more notions on how to vary things when experimenting. If the advanced sessions continue this enlightening, it's going to be a fascinating year!

Four Lies and One Martial Arts Fact

2009-09-06T21:02:00.000-04:00

Blame Martial Arts Mom for this one. One of the following is true. I will not be telling you which one.

1. My first sensei was Steven Seagal's bodyguard.

2. I once roomed with Michelle Yeoh at a national tournament - and I had no idea who she was until after I was back home.

3. My father once treated Chuck Norris after a drinking binge (when they were both in the Air Force).

4. I and my friend Chia were back-up singers for Jackie Chan on his album "Shangrila".

5. One episode of "Spencer for Hire" had several scenes located in my dorm room.

I'm not going to tag people, partially because I generally don't like to, and partially because virtually everybody I know in the martial arts blogs has already been tagged - but if you want to try this one, consider yourself tagged!

Whoa! Teaching!

2009-09-05T19:43:00.002-04:00

Well, it turns out that I've only even seen Sensei once since my test. Except for that once, I've either taught or co-taught (with Sensei D) every class. Four so far, with one more to go, since Tuesday is a scheduled night off for Sensei. In penance/reparation for this, Sensei is having me over for a private session tomorrow, so I get some learning time this week.

Not that teaching hasn't been its own learning experience. Trying to find things to keep our very mixed, but very small group occupied is rather entertaining. We've been doing a lot of creative sparring and some kata work, not as much drill as usual. Sensei D did a highly informative session on the details of kicking technique for roundhouse and front kicks, though I suspect a lot of it was lost on the yellow belts. Sensei D was taught in a very analytical dojo and it's always fascinating listening to him dissect out the details of any given technique. With any luck, though, Sensei should be back to teaching most classes after next week.

School is going well so far. Aaron's teacher is a sweetheart, and he likes her an awful lot. He's having his usual adjustment troubles - every year it takes him a few weeks to get back into school mode. Robbie is also doing well, except for band which has been a rough start. He was absent the day they distributed instruments, and when he came back on Monday, the band director thought he didn't have a flute. In fact, the band director had tucked Robbie's flute (rented through the school) into a locker and forgotten about it. So he's three days behind in learning how to get a note out of his flute. Topped off with talking in class (he spent most of one class sitting in the hall), and forgetting to bring me the paperwork to sign for two days - I don't think the director thinks very highly of Robbie right now. Robbie is practicing diligently, though, and doesn't seem to be holding a grudge (which is a relief, Robbie can be very unforgiving of adults he thinks are being unfair). With any luck, their relationship should improve as Robbie catches up with his bandmates.

Sensei Cindy

2009-08-28T14:09:00.003-04:00

Rob took some pictures of my black belt test - mostly at the end. Apparently phone cameras aren't too good at action shots so there's a lot of blurring, but several of them are fun anyway. This one is from the self-defense portion of the night. Mike, a very sweet TKD black belt is the guy going for a roll.

Last night was my first night teaching as a black belt. Sensei called (a whole five minutes before I headed out the door for class) to say he would be late, and possibly might not make it at all. Sensei D wasn't there when class time rolled around, so I was on.

I was surprised how much difference a week and a change of belt color made. I've taught classes now and then ever since I was a blue belt (and taught one as an orange belt, but that was special circumstances), so I wasn't expecting a change from prior experience. Instead, the students (all three of them, but still), treated me perceptibly differently, and perhaps in response I was a lot more confident. I tried several exercises I've known about for a while, but had never tried in class before. All of the kids seemed to be enjoying themselves and were learning things at the same time. I even got our teen brown belt guy to do a little bit of grappling and enjoy it - normally he responds to any teaching of joint locks, grappling, or escapes with barely concealed boredom.

Sensei D showed up very late in the class (last 20 minutes), but didn't join in. Instead he watched and took some photos with his phone, which he e-mailed to me later. He had no commentary on the class at all, which I will chose to interpret positively.

School started Wednesday. Both kids like their teachers thus far. Robbie had a bit of a bus disaster on day 1. He had never ridden a school bus before, so he hadn't realized he needed to remember the bus number (even though I told it to him at least three separate times). When he couldn't find his bus after school, he nerved himself up to ask the principal, but spoke so quietly that the man misheard him and put him on the wrong bus - not even one going to another part of our neighborhood, but one going to a completely different town. It took us about 90 minutes to retrieve him, during which both Robbie and Mommy were fairly upset. His bus number is written down in his school planner now, and day two went smoothly.

Aaron is trying out for the school cross-country team next week. I'll be flabbergasted, but extremely proud if he makes it on (endurance is a continuing problem for him). The elementary school open house is next Tues., but we haven't had any information about the middle school OH yet.

Shodan!

2009-08-22T00:27:00.002-04:00

I made it! I'm both wired and limp with relief right now, so excuse any babbling.

The test went very smoothly. The only kata I blipped on was Wansu, which seems ironic since it's my favorite kata and usually my best. I think because it is my favorite I wasn't worried about it and thereby didn't drill it as obsessively as the rest. Basically I put in double nukite instead of the empi (knife hands instead of an elbow strike), which is a move from Sunsu. I knew I had flubbed, but didn't interrupt the flow of the kata, and when Sensei asked at the end of the kata, I knew right where I had screwed up, so he seemed all right (other than teasing me about my nerves).

Self defense went very well. Rob got some good shots, so I'll put them up if he ever gets around to e-mailing them to me (camera phone). Oddly enough I did several notches better at self defense when paired with Mike (who is substantially bigger than me) than against smaller opponents. I did okay with everyone, but Mike went down clean and hard every time. I think when I'm dealing with somebody big, I don't waste any effort muscling through the technique, which is a definite fault of mine when dealing with smaller people (which is most of the other people in our dojo right now). Poor Mike! At least twice I took him down too fast for him to get his arm around and fall properly, so he was a little battered by the end of the evening. Fortunately he's a good sport.

Afterwards we trooped over to Sensei's for pizza, soda, and caipirinhas (an interesting drink involving lime juice, sugar, and cachacas - a Brazilian liquor Rob brought back from his last trip). We watched videos from the World Tournament - I really have gotten faster with my bo since then! I don't feel faster vs. my memory, but I look really slow to myself now. Watching me and the woman who took 2nd (I was 4th), I was struck that the difference all seemed to be speed and conviction. She did a lot more things wrong than I did, but she was fast and confident doing them, while I was hesitant looking, even as I was doing things correctly. It was interesting watching.

It's late, and I should head off for bed, but I'll leave you with the essay that I turned in last week. Some of it may seem familiar, as I borrowed ideas heavily from the essays I have put up here. Enjoy!

If I have sen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants. – Sir Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was onto something. All of us, every last one, owe much to the generations that have come before us. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the martial arts, none of which would exist without the masters who came before, who developed their arts, refined them, and passed them on.

Less obviously, we are equally dependent on those who came before who are not giants. For every giant of the past, there are dozens, hundreds, even thousands, who while not great themselves nonetheless learn and transmit, passing the martial arts on to their students who in their turn become teachers again. Not every martial art great began their learning at the feet of another giant – if only the giants taught, martial arts would have died out many times over.

Nor does every martial arts giant start out knowing what they will become (few of us ever do). Some never think of themselves as giants at all, but simply as a sensei, as any martial artist can be a sensei if they have the will to be so, a solid foundation to teach from, and a concern for the learning of those following after them.

I wasn't thinking of any of this when I walked into my first dojo in September of 1996. I had never heard of Isshinryu, or Tatsuo Shimabuku, or even Okinawan karate as distinct from other forms of karate. I barely knew there was a difference between karate, judo, aikido, and "all that other stuff"; it was all just martial arts to me. I went because my neighbor wanted to go and because I was curious, as I am curious about everything. If Trish had wanted to try a local pottery class, or ballroom dancing, or learning Latin, I would probably have gone along just as readily.

The first evening was stunning, in a more literal sense than that phrase is usually meant. Trish and I were given what amounted to a two hour intensive self-defense class. It didn't have a lot to do with the system of Isshinryu, except that like our style it was practical, direct, and occasionally brutal. By the end of the night I was probably two or three times more capable of defending myself against an attack than I had been when I walked in. I was also covered in bruises, and by the next morning so sore I could barely move.

It was when I came back the next night that I began to learn something of Isshinryu – how to chamber a kick, how to make a proper fist – all the minutiae that make up the letters of the Isshinryu alphabet. But over the next year and a half, the most important things I learned at Mr. Gabbard's dojo had to do with what I wasn't.

Firstly, I learned I wasn't a coward. I had always been afraid – not of pain, per se, but of my potential reaction to pain. That I would retreat, collapse, or otherwise behave shamefully in the face of it. At Gabbard's I learned that I could be hit and hit hard, and still come back fighting.

Secondly, I learned I wasn't very good at karate. That the analytical mind and sharp memory that carried me through school and in the work place was helpful, but not sufficient for karate. Regardless of how well my mind understood what I ought to be doing, it didn't mean that my body would follow through. It still took repetition, and drill, and getting it wrong many, many times before I could get it right. Isshinryu was hard. It didn't come naturally, and that wasn't something I was used to. Weirdly enough, this made it all the more interesting to me. Every step of improvement I had to earn and it felt like an accomplishment in a way that academics never had. Not being intrinsically good at karate didn't mean I had to be bad at it forever. It just meant that I had to work that much harder to become good.

Those lessons were the ones that stuck when I left the dojo. I got pregnant; we moved across the country, and I couldn't seem to find the opportunity to start at another dojo. My fitness levels dropped, I slowly forgot my hard-earned sparring skills, eventually I forgot how to do most of the kata, but I remembered what I could do when I put my time, effort and energy into it. Mr. Gabbard had given me my first view of a wider world of martial arts by letting me stand on the shoulders of his experience.

It was six years before I would restart my training in Isshinryu with a teacher quite different from Mr. Gabbard, and in a very different dojo. I started as a white belt again, which was appropriate given how much I had forgotten. Yet the white belt sat a little oddly, because I did still have those lessons from my first go-around that I had never lost.

As I began my karate journey again, the oddly sitting white belt began to teach me something itself. In my first incarnation as a karateka, I had not cared particularly about rank (or at least believed that I did not care). But as I began to dig my skills out of my rusty memory, I noticed something. I wasn't a white belt anymore, even though I wore one. It felt like I was playing pretend to wear it when I came to class, and I began to realize that I wanted my belt to reflect what I could do. That was when I realized that I did, after all, want a black belt. Not because I cared what color I had tied around my waist, but because I coveted the skills and mind-set that would make any other color seem as bad a fit as the white belt was at that moment.

So I began my climb back up, learning karate the same way one gets to Carnegie Hall – practice, practice, practice. But this time, I had a more specific goal. If I wanted to be a black belt, rather than simply have one, what did that mean? What made someone a black belt?

Here, I ran into Mr. Rodeghier's oft repeated maxim "Black belt means sensei." He says it often enough that it clearly resonates with him, yet looking around the larger martial arts world it's easy to find people with black belts who are clearly not sensei. Some of them have formidable skills, far beyond what I have, yet those skills are not transmitted. Others, not always the most skilled themselves, are clearly fabulous sensei with a gift for teaching and transmitting the essence of their art. So, if black belt means sensei, and yet the two categories don't completely overlap, then what is the difference between them?

The difference is in the orientation. A black belt is a symbol of the skills acquired in your journey as a karateka. Not that it's the endpoint - far from it. But it symbolizes that you know the basics of your art; you are a serious student. To use an analogy, it symbolizes that you know your ABC's and have learned your spelling, and now you're ready to start writing. A sensei needs to know these things, but being a sensei has very little to do with what you actually know, and everything to do with who you feel responsible for. If black belt means sensei, it's because a sensei is a black belt who has looked beyond him or her self outwards to the students coming along behind and decided to take responsibility for helping them along the way. They put their students up on their shoulders and let them see further than would be possible otherwise.

I stand where I stand on my Isshinryu journey because of my sensei. Regardless of where my journey takes me from here I want to emulate them, to boost the people who come after me along their own ways. Because even if we are not all giants, it is still a worthy goal to have shoulders strong enough to stand on.

One Week And Counting

2009-08-15T01:35:00.002-04:00

We're getting close. Very, very close. I turned in my black belt essay Thursday evening, and am holding my breath waiting for Sensei's opinion on it. I'll post it up here once the test is over, but if anyone would like an advance peek, just let me know, and I can probably e-mail you a copy. I've now gone over all the required bits for my test with Sensei privately on about four separate occasions, so it's pretty clear that I know what to do. The only thing left is to practice, practice, and then practice some more.

I've done three rounds of Sanchin with beatings thus far, and so far so good. Sensei and the other testers have not been hitting as hard as they will on the test (I have no idea who will be beating on me at the test.), but I've also had at least a little room for harder hits in all the rounds so far. I definitely got some interesting looks and questions this last Sunday at church when I wore a sleeveless blouse without thinking much of it, and there were clear fist imprints on both arms. Oops!

I don't know how many people will be there at all. At a minimum we'll have the current students (about eight all told), Rob, Dad Wood & the boys. At a max, we could be adding several people from the TKD studio we shared space with before (they've got the time & place, and several people have said they wanted to come), some of the previous students who know me, and possibly some non-karate friends as well. So it could be a tiny little group, or a fair shindig. We'll be putting down the padded floor, which is good, both for my knees sake, and for the people I'll be dumping on it during the self-defense test. I've long noticed that when I strain my knees doing Kusanku, it's invariably when I'm working on a surface I'm afraid to come down on. So for practice purposes, I currently only go all the way down kneeling when I'm on a soft floor, or when I'm outside - this seems to be working well so far. I haven't had any knee twinges in a couple of months.

The upcoming test is rather eating my life right now. Everything I plan to do seems to start with "After the 21st..." Fortunately the boys don't go back to school until the 26th, so I'll have five days to get them situated for supplies afterwards. Registration is this coming week, though, so I'll have to deal with that.

Robbie earned back his right to wear his yellow belt on Tuesday, and is (rightfully) pleased with himself. He forgot remarkably little for almost three years off. Sensei says he can start on Seisan on Tuesday, which is good, because he's quite bored with the Taikyoko's at this point, and Robbie bored is never good for discipline.

If I remember correctly, though, my brown belt test got almost two months of extra good behavior out of the boys (something about Mommy smashing through concrete). I wonder if this test will have any similar salutory effects?

It's Official

2009-07-28T22:18:00.002-04:00

August 21, 2009

That's my test date for my black belt. Sensei and I have been talking about the end of August for a couple of months now, but last week he finally said that August 21 was the date. For the last several weeks (barring the family reunion, when my cousin took over duties (Thanks, Jim!)), I've been having a extra private session each week with Sensei. He seems very confident for me - which is good, because my confidence seemed to fly out the window as soon as he gave a specific date.

This last session we started the stress testing of Sanchin kata. Just Sensei, thumping me at about 2/3 power right now (as opposed to the four people who get to have at during the test). I'm middling pleased with how I did - no faltering or loss of concentration - but I did get rocked back on my heels with a couple of the ab punches, so that's something to work on.

That was yesterday. Today was regular class which was primarily sparring. This was fairly painful, since I had plenty of nice fresh bruises to get re-thumped. And of course, I had given my e-balm to Sensei D some time ago, to see if it would work on his burn scars, which react badly to most moisturizers. E-balm, is short for Everything Balm, which comes from Goodies Unlimited, and is absolutely wonderful stuff. Works on most skin problems, non-toxic enough you can even use it on canker sores inside your mouth, and the best stuff I've ever found for bruises. Takes a lot of the tenderness away, and seems to speed up the healing process. Since I'll be adding new bruises to these this weekend, I think ordering more balm was warranted.

So for the next three weeks - lots of practice, lots of getting thumped, more practice. My neighbors are getting so used to seeing me waving weapons around in the front yard that they've stopped even noticing.

In other news, Nicky's hind end paralysis, after a brief rally, seems to be here to stay. Other than the dragging rear he seems to be fairly happy, so we've ordered a doggy cart to see if he'll deal with being a wheeled critter. If it works, he should have several more years. The cart was shipped today, and should arrive sometime next week.

Organ is going well - I played half the service on Sunday (and received half the pay, my first organ paycheck!), which went quite well. The painist who played the other half (who is an intimidatingly awesome player) was quite complimentary, as was pretty much everyone in the congregation. Now I get to ease off until after Labor Day, which is good because, you know, there's enough on my plate just this second. I'll still put in my daily practice, but I'll back down to an hour, instead of two or three. More practice time for kata!

Three and a half weeks - Eeeeek!

2009-07-13T00:04:00.003-04:00

I'm going to hate Sensei in the morning.

Sensei has set up a training space in his basement. Today I went over for a little under two hours to go over my katas. Plus a little heavy bag training, mostly to see if I get faster when I'm tired (answer: no - but I don't get slower either). I feel like we accomplished a lot, but I am completely wrung. There's a huge difference between two hours in the dojo with all the other students, usually with some teaching intersperced, and two hours directly under Sensei.

Overall both I and Sensei are reasonably pleased. My kicks seem to have achieved a good speed (I was getting audible snap from my yoga pants, which seems a fair accomplishment). My hands are still lagging. They seem to move faster in combinations, but still not fast enough even then. Outside of that, most of the corrections are minor - improvements rather than corrections per se. The only kata he really panned was Kusanku Sai, panned for lack of energy (it was the very last kata we worked on). It suffered for it's position, but also just for sheer lack of confidence in it. I know the kata, but my gut doesn't believe that I know the kata, so I hesitate, and it shows.

Tomorrow we head off for the family reunion. I'm bringing my weaponry, and I'm afraid my various relations are just going to have to put up with me doing my practice. It's looking like the end of August (somewhere between the 21st and the 30th) is it, and I can't afford to miss the days.

Unfortunately the reunion does not come with available organ. My teacher (and our church organist) will be out of town the Sunday following the reunion (I.e. in two weeks). Since neither of us reserve organists is quite up to the job right now, we're splitting duties. The other guy is playing the hymns and service music, and I'm playing prelude, offertory, and postlude. Which is great, except that only one of those (the prelude) is in decent shape to play right now. The offertory is rough and slow, though coming along. The postlude is in lousy shape (Hey, I've only been working on it for a week!), fortunately, it's only got three measures that are truly problematical. If I had the full two weeks to practice, I'd be pretty confidant. Unfortunately, I'm only going to get six days from now, and that's much less confidence-inspiring.

Deep breath. For the reunion itself, I'm going to try not to worry - or at least only worry about karate, since I can do something about that. I'll just have to practice my fingers off once I'm back. It's only four pages of music. I can perfect four pages of music in a week, right?

I'll see everyone (in a manner of speaking) in a week!

World Tournament AAR

2009-07-08T22:46:00.002-04:00

Hey look! I said I'd post, and this time I'm actually posting again in a reasonable time-frame. Go me!

Since it's about the furthest thing back on my list, I should probably start with the Isshinryu World Tournament rundown - before I forget what happened.

Most of our dojo went to the World Tournament this time around, which was really nice. The only people missing were A, who only just got his yellow belt and has never been to a tournament, and Sensei D, who was planning on going (he was actually the first of us to register), but cancelled at the last moment due to unspecified conflicts. As a group, we did well - everybody brought home at least one earned souvenir. I'm especially proud of our teenaged brown belt guy. The tournament folks screwed up his registration (there was a lot of that going around), and he ended up being the first to go in his division, which seemed to throw him off his game. His kata wasn't half as good as I've seen him do it, and his weapons work wasn't stellar either - but when kumite came around he really pulled himself together. I had been worried about T in kumite. He's only in his division by about a month, and he's not generally an aggressive fighter. So, pretty much every other competitor was bigger and more aggressive than he was (advanced 15-16 boys is usually one of the most aggressive divisions going). Instead of being intimidated, he kept his head, played it strategically, and came home with a third place.

I don't remember everyone's placements, but J (brown belt girl) brought home a second (or possibly third) place in kata, and one of our kids came in fourth in kata using Naihanchi!

R (the other adult woman) and I were both in the same ring in sequential divisions. I'm not sure what was going on with our judges, but something was funky. We started with four judges (for those not familiar, a standard panel is five), and then they found another black belt they wanted to be on the panel, and tried to boot one of the four existing judges to put him on. It was strange. Sensei comments that the panel was pretty much entirely novice judges, and it certainly felt that way. During R's kumite, the center judge was making some very odd calls (failing to count his own opinion towards the three necessary for a point, for instance), and R reports the same for my rounds of kumite (When I'm in the ring all I pay attention to is whether I'm fighting or stopping; everything else is distraction). Sensei commented (with apologies, since he was doing the same thing) that as the day wound down, more and more of the experienced judges were deciding that they'd done their bit and calling it a day. Intermediate and advanced senior women were two of the last groups to go, so apparently we were down to the more eager but very inexperienced for our panel.

As I noted in the last entry, besides the third in kumite, I was fourth in weapons, and probably fourth in kata (I didn't check the recorder's entries, but that's where my informal score reading would have put me.). So first - NOT LAST in kata!!!! Wooot! (For those of you who haven't been reading since forever, I've finished last in kata in any Isshinryu-only tournament I enter for something like the last four years.) I talked to a couple of my judges afterwards, and what they said pretty much reflected the scores - middle of the pack. One particularly helpful judge noted that I was past the point of doing things wrong that had to be fixed, instead there are right things that I'm failing to do which could make my kata better.

In weapons, Sensei did peek over the recorder's shoulder and says I was .025 out of the medals. He was very happy with my weapons performance (says that if it were up to him, I'd have placed second), so I'm pretty happy myself.

I attended two seminars the day before the competition. One was by Hanchi Duessel, which was informative, as always. We covered Seiuchin and Sanchin katas, with a particular emphasis on "thumbs down" - meaning the extra torque to the hand that can lock in some techniques. The second seminar had been scheduled to be taught by Master Shimabuku, but he had cancelled due to concerns with his wife's health and the Swine Flu epidemic (which seems a hell of a lot more real since one of Rob's co-workers died (in Brazil) a couple of weeks ago). The seminar was taught instead by Kyoshi Wallace. I've seen Kyoshi Wallace before, assisting at Hanchi Duessel's seminars, but never seen him teach. He gave an excellent seminar - more listening and less physical than Duessel's, but highly informative. He covered quite a bit, what I remember most was about the mechanics of proper breathing (something I think is far too often ignored, possibly because of my own background in singing).

Kyoshi Wallace turned out to be staying on my floor in the hotel (unnerving to discover at 7:30am with your arms full of donuts). I saw him several times as we both popped in and out, and then I went and told him how much I had enjoyed his seminar during the after party. He was very gracious, and talked to me for quite a little while.

The hotel was nice, but a bit disappointing as the promised pool was still under construction, and as the parking added quite a bit to the final bill ($27/day for the parking), without being noted anywhere I saw beforehand. The boys were exceptionally good, and Robbie came down to see the Grand Champion portion of the competition, which seems to have cemented his desire to come back to class. When we checked out, I left him and Aaron guarding the luggage while I went to the front desk, and came back to find him deep in conversation with Hanchi Duessel, who was waiting for his daughter to pick him up.

In general, a good time was had by all. The 2011 World Tournament will be in Indianapolis, which is only about 90 minutes from here, and I'll definitely be going. Here's hoping that Master Shimabuku can make it this time!

Massive Updatery

2009-07-05T21:10:00.002-04:00

Okay, I've been seriously lax, for which I apologize. My excuse is that about three million things have happened since my last post and I've been running around like a mad thing. My computer is beginning to make sad, forlorn noises at me, probably from the sheer neglect. I'll give the overview here, and then try to make more specific posts on each topic over the next few days - it should provide enough material for some time.

In roughly chronological order:

Nicky is not doing very well. He took a turn for the worse just before I left for my trip, and had slid even more by the time I got home. At this point he has no use of his hind legs, and frequently doesn't even twitch them when walking with his hind end supported. He's got some bad sores from scraping skin off dragging himself around the house (They're healing since I got home, and I'm not terribly pleased with my cadre of doggie watchers for letting them get so bad.) A lot of his fate is going to depend on if and how much he recovers, especially since is front end is so deformed (puppy-ricketts) that I doubt it will hold up for very long under the extra strain.

The World Tournament, on the other hand, went very well indeed. I brought home one very large trophy (3rd place kumite), and am generally pleased with how things went both for me, and for our dojo. Sensei appears to concur.

Visits went quite well, despite (and occasionally because of) their whirlwind nature. We got to spend another overnight in the Boston Museum of Science, which is all kind of cool, and was much more comfortable for Mommy this time, with a sleeping bag and a mat - bare floors with no pillow or covers was not a winner the previous time. I got to see my friend Beth preach, which I had not gotten to see before (she was ordained last spring). That woman can preach! I can safely say she's gotten over her fear of public speaking.

Our church organist's father died while I was gone. This was not unexpected. The timing was absolutely horrible for him, but actually pretty good for me (which makes me feel rather guilty). Because I wasn't there, I didn't have to do an emergency service - which I am not ready for - and because he is moving right now, he is in town more than he was intending to be in the aftermath, and therefore I'm not having to half-ass my way through any services, but will just be playing some individual pieces, which is not a problem. I expect it will be another six months to a year before I really feel comfortable taking over a series of services - I.e. able to play all relevant service music, and learn a service's worth of hymns in one week, plus enough of a repertoire of pre- and postludes to last several weeks.

The family reunion starts a week from tomorrow, and Rob did no laundry while I was gone, so I'm in a mad scramble to catch up from the trip and then get us ready to go again. I'll get to see both brothers, which is awesome, and I should get to go over my katas with my cousin Jim (a black belt in two different disciplines), which I'm much looking forward to.

And last, but definitely not least THE BOOK IS OUT!!!!!! Alien Hand Syndrome and Other Too-Weird-Not-To-Be-True Stories has hit the bookshelves. My mother reports that Borders (at least in her area) has it in stock. I have two articles, my first ever paid & published articles, in it. It's fun stuff so you should all run out and buy yourselves copies!

And that's the current rundown. I'll give each of these the full post it deserves over the next few days, but at least now you know what's going on.

Crossing Fingers

2009-06-10T11:02:00.003-04:00

Well, yesterday was more interesting than we bargained for. At suppertime Monday, Nicky wouldn't come down the stairs, so Dad Wood put on his leash and dragged him down (I wasn't home, and I'm a bit ticked at him for this). That night, Nicky was more restless than usual, not moving around, but shifting and whining softly. In the morning, he couldn't get his hind feet under him, and if I lifted him onto his feet, he would sag sideways. Testing him at the vets shows that while he still has muscle control, he's lost proprioception - the ability to tell where his hind feet are. Without that, he can't place his feet properly or make corrections to keep himself upright.

The vet say he has a bulging disc and has put him on Prednisone. If it's going to help, then he should show improvement in the next 48 hours. If it doesn't help, then we start discussing whether we have the money for back surgery for a basset. Cross your fingers, please!

It's Summertime, Summertime, Sum-sum-summertime!

2009-06-08T00:56:00.003-04:00

Well, after being put off for a week to make up for excessive snow days, the boys had their official last day of school on Thursday. Rob was unable to make Robbie's elementary school graduation (helpfully held in the middle of the morning), but Dad W. and I were there. Robbie received the Presidential Award for Academic Excellence, which came with a certificate and a letter from the President. He was amazingly excited about this, and we go looking tomorrow for an appropriate frame to stick them in. The award is pretty stringent - A's in all subject all year (not the average, no B's allowed), and a Pass-plus in both segments of the ISTEP, which is the Indiana standardized testing protocol. The girl who lives behind us is the only other student to be both a member of the Gifted & Talented group, and to receive the award. She might as well have just stood up for the entire ceremony, as she received just about every award the school had to offer except the sports awards.

Aaron had a rougher ending of the school year, by being out sick from the second to last Friday, straight through until the last four days. He rounded out the last four days by being sent home both Monday and Tuesday for throwing up, as the sore throat he had all the previous week seemed to have left his gag reflex in hyper mode. He's a pretty gaggy kid anyway, and this last week, pretty much anything would make him gag and throw up. So his last complete day was Wed., because then we had a doctor's appointment on Thursday. Ironically, it was nothing to do with his week of being sick, being a well-child check-up to follow up on his occupational therapy. When we made the appointment, the last day of school was still the week before, and the boys' pediatrician has a 2-3 month lead time on well-child visits, so rescheduling wasn't really optimal.

So Aaron was feeling pretty grumpy about his last week of school, and who could blame him? This all changed Saturday when we got a letter from the school telling us that his teacher had recommend him to the Gifted & Talented program. This doesn't mean automatic entry, but it's a big vote of confidence from his teacher (she didn't recommend Robbie when he was in her class, interestingly enough). He'll be tested in depth at the beginning of the school year and if he does well enough, then he'll be put in the G&T group. I hope he does get in. It's been a great experience for Robbie, once he was put in by his fourth grade teacher (who snuck him into the sessions on the side while pushing for him to be tested for entry). Aaron's so used to having more trouble in school than Robbie, because of his difficulties with writing and coordination, that to be put forward on his own merits earlier than his brother was is just the coolest thing he can imagine.

It's going to be a busy summer with the boys. In about two weeks (EEEK!!), we leave for the Isshinryu World Tournament. This will be followed by a whirlwind trip up to Boston and NYC, and back home for about three weeks, then over to the family reunion in TN, and another couple weeks after that, they'll be done with the summer. During the time we're actually home, the plan is piano for Aaron, guitar for Robbie, swimming and bowling for both kids, and karate, karate, karate for Mommy - with sides of organ. It's looking like my black belt test will probably be in mid-late August, to give things time to settle down after the mad running around. This gives me 11-12 weeks to get ready, which terrifies me just slightly. I know all the things I need to know. Sensei has seen and passed everything I need to do at least once. I have at least first drafts of all my three essay topics - except that Sensei just told me he only wants one paper, so now I have to figure out how to combine them!

In some ways, it's the nebulousness of the progress I need to make by August that's scaring me. There are very few specifics that everyone agrees need work (except the omnipresent "More speed!"), more that everything needs to be smoother, sharper, more focused - more something. There's nothing left to learn that's so specific that I can point to it and say, "okay, I've got that down, show me something else." It's all incremental improvement from here.

For example, speed is about the most concrete thing I have left to work on. It's universally agreed to be one of my weakest points. The other day, both black belts watched me do Tokumine no Kun for the first time in a couple of weeks, and both looked at each other and told me "Hey, that was faster! Good job!" Which was great, except that I had had no perception that I was any faster than I had been before. I had been working on the kata, and working on my speed generally, and working on my speed in the kata, but I had no inkling that I had actually gotten faster with my bo until someone outside told me so. I feel like I'm fumbling in the dark, just trusting that if I work on what I'm being told to work on, I will improve as a result.

I really hate not being able to guage my progress, and I hate even more the panicky feeling that stems from coming up on being tested on exactly that progress I can't guage. But there's not much help for it unless I decide to stay a brown belt forever, and Sensei just might have to shoot me if I did that.

Expect some amount of grumbling and panic on this front for the next twelve-or-so weeks.

That Was Satisfying

2009-05-19T00:12:00.002-04:00

I jumped the gun on my family today, and went to see the new Star Trek movie. Rob was not all that interested in seeing it in the theater and was waiting until his father got it on video (as he inevitably will), while Dad W. desperately wants to see the movie - preferably with P (the previously temporary neighbor), but with me if P is not available.

Perhaps because my days of Trekkie-hood stem from high school and before I met Rob, let alone his father, I really wanted to savor the movie by myself first, though. I kept intending to see it last week, but the kids were sick in sequence (they're fine now), and movie-going just wasn't happening. So this morning I played hooky on my organ practice and went off to see the earliest Trek showing.

The movie has it's faults, and I'm not blind to them. Nonetheless, it was a very satisfying Trek experience. They captured the flavor of the original series (TOS) extremely well. Sure, there were plot holes and some very transparent techno-babble, but heck, TOS frequently had plot holes you could drive whole fleets through, and the term "techno-babble" largely originated with TOS, where the writers would simply write what they needed to have happen, and the actors would insert whatever sciency-sounding gobbledygook would sound good.

(spoilerish stuff ahead) One of the things I'm finding amusing is that the Mark 2 history for James T. Kirk actually fits with the behavior of Captain Kirk in TOS better than the official history of Captain Kirk in the Mark 1 universe. Captain Kirk TOS, was very much a maverick, feeling free to ignore orders and directives pretty much at his whim, though he was good enough at pulling it off to get away with it. Yet the Mark 1 history for Captain Kirk shows him as a pretty conventional kid - entered Star Fleet Academy at normal times, and with a few exceptions (Kobiyashi Maru, anyone?), having a stellar, yet not particularly mavericky career as a student. The Mark 2 universe makes Kirk much more of a rebel from the get-go, and one who makes Captain by breaking practically every rule Star Fleet ever wrote (in his first three days in space, no less), but making it pay off in a big way. A Captain who gains his place by making those sorts of gambles in the first place is much more likely to continue to make them later in his career, than one who was promoted up through the ranks in more normal fashion - however fast he managed it.

A minor kudo to the make-up people for the movie. It's darned refreshing to see people who get beat up in a movie still sporting bruises, cuts, and black eyes 2-3 days later in the movie time-frame. This movie didn't suffer from the Kevin Costner effect, wherein all damage inflicted is magically removed by the next scene - so named for the Kevin Costner Robin Hood movie, wherein three seconds after a dunking him in a river, dear Mr. Hood's hair is dry and styled.

All-in-all, if you liked TOS, and aren't either so wedded to it that you find the making of a reboot an offense, or such a fan of the offshoots like DS9, that you're annoyed they'd waste time on a TOS reboot, this is probably worth watching. I was smiling for the rest of the afternoon - and I'll go watch it again when Dad W. goes without the least problem.

New Skills Abound

2009-05-09T15:13:00.002-04:00

Life has gotten pretty busy lately. Adding in a 90 minute daily stint on the organ (with a 15 minute drive there and back again) has definitely put a dent in my daily available time. It's fun to be practicing with a purpose again, though.

I find the timing interesting, though. My keyboard skills had largely stagnated for about five years. I would sit down and play now and again. Once or twice I tried to work up my skills, but the effort always floundered within a few weeks. Then, a little before Christmas, Rob found an on-line music shop with sheet music for some of my favorite pieces, and got me two books of New Age piano music as one of my presents. When I pulled out Christofori's Dream, I was startled to find that it was actually a fairly simple piece - one I would have not bothered with under other circumstances, because I always felt I was required in some way to push my skill level. But it was a present, and it was (and is) perhaps my favorite piece of piano music of all time. So I gave myself permission to put in the time to practice it.

And then I realized what I had been doing. Every time I would try to "work up my skills" I would ignore the music I actually loved in favor of doing the music I "ought" to do. No wonder I was getting bored and wandering off within a few weeks! So I started playing what I wanted to, and I started playing every day. And my skills started improving again, despite my not working on 'challenging' pieces. And a few months later, I was offered the chance to become the reserve organist at my church with free organ lessons thrown in the bargain.

Ironically, this means I'm back to doing a lot of obligation music, but when it's to a specific purpose (if you're playing for an Episcopal mass, you had better know "Let Us Break Bread Together), it's a bit different than playing stuff simply because I "ought" to.

It'll be a few weeks at the very least before I'm up for playing a full service, even with plenty of lead time, but it's good to be back and playing again.

Also on the music front, Robbie's guitar lessons continue to go well. He sometimes needs reminding to practice, but I've never had to twist his arm. A reminder is sufficient. We're considering starting Aaron on keyboard this summer while his OT is off on maternity leave. I'm not certain he's ready yet, but a three month trial should be sufficient to find out, and it will give him something to do that's also good for his finger strength and coordination. And if he is ready, then it's worth a little scrimping to keep him going when his OT gets back (we'll pay for the initial set of lessons with the money that would have gone to the OT co-pay).

M has been back to class at the dojo about 4-5 times so far. It's a little strange, because he doesn't really join in much. If we ask, he'll teach - usually something from jujitsu, rather than Isshinryu, but if we don't ask, then he usually goes off to the side and does his own practice rather than joining in the class activity, whatever it happens to be. I'd still like it if he became a regular, but I'm wondering if he really has any intention of really joining in, or if he's just out to use the space. He does teach readily if asked, though, and he chock-full of interesting, useful stuff to learn, so I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt unless he starts becoming detrimental to the class at large.

Only a little over a month to go to the World Tournament now. Apparently the state of the economy is really hurting attendance, which is a shame, but I'm still really looking forward to it. Now if I can only achieve my standing ambition of not finishing dead last in kata. I have a video of myself performing Sunsu, which is my intended kata for the tournament. If I can figure out how to put it up, I will.

Kiss of Death

2009-04-18T16:16:00.003-04:00

That's what my father-in-law has taken to calling me lately, and rather what it feels like to me.

For some reason a lot of people I know peripherally are either getting sick or dying. None of them are close friends, no relatives, nothing terribly traumatic for me (as opposed to their friends and family, some of these are major tragedies), but the aggregate of sheer numbers is starting to get to me.

To stick to this week alone: Sunday, my FIL's lady friend landed in the ICU with congestive heart failure and is now scheduled for a valve replacement. Tuesday my yoga teacher's father (met once) died. And Friday our neighbor across the street died. None of these people had known problems a week ago. Our neighbor is particularly shocking. He was only five years or so older than Rob & I, and while he was on disability for a bad back, there was nothing known wrong that should have caused a sudden death. Rob & I are trying to figure out what we can do for his wife & kid (he had a 14-year old boy). Offers of "anything we can do" all to often turn out to mean nothing because people don't want to impose, so we're trying to think of something more concrete we can offer.

I was very glad to get to a particularly vigorous karate class last night, I needed the sheer physical work to shake my head clear. M was back again, and Sensei had him teach part of the class, which became a quickie primer on jiu-jitsu style ground work. Fascinating and vigorous, even if it gives me a somewhat sore neck this morning, due to working on fending off a full-speed/force choke attempt.

Other random news - Robbie is signed up for band in middle school next year. He'll be playing flute. Rob has started adding fish to his salt water tank: chromis, clownfish, niger, and a white-tail angel fish. And Dad W. has got to get a hobby or something, because I'm starting to feel like I have a retired husband - but I never married this guy!

Return of the Routine

2009-04-11T18:28:00.004-04:00

This is the first week in a month where I've actually managed to get back into my usual exercise routine, and it felt really good - sore muscles and all. Between Dad W. moving in, straining the tendon in my foot, having Aaron come down with strep, vacation, and other general life stuff, the morning couple of hours at the gym just hasn't been happening.

Most especially it's been an excellent week for karate. Tuesday was a straight up fight night, and I found a new strategy that's working nicely for the moment. We'll see how long it takes my fellow karateka to figure out what I'm doing. Essentially, I've been a consistent left-sided fighter for the last several years. I much prefer to kick left-footed, and in keeping that side forward, I've become more comfortable with my left hand than with my right as well (I'm ambidextrous in the rest of my life). Which has led to not using my right side adequately, and in particular never throwing my otherwise good reverse punch.

Well, in trying to even up and keep the right side forward, I discovered that precisely because I'm more comfortable and quick with my left, if my right side is forward, I do use my left reverse punch. Sensei is thrilled (he's been yelling at me to use my reverse for ages now), but hasn't yet realized why I've suddenly gotten the hint. Even better, because he's used to my left side being my preferred side, he keeps maneuvering around to my right and setting himself up *evil grin*.

We've switched from a Thursday to a Friday class, and not everybody has made the schedule switch yet. So we were missing several people Friday, and as it shook out, we had a brown belt only class - which meant we went over in detail exactly everything I've been needing to go over. I polished up the last little bit of both Kusanku and Kusanku Sai that I was dicey on (different spots, oddly enough), got a good viewing and critique of Tokumine no Kun (Bo kata) and Sunsu, and got to practice the last three self-defense sequences - which until Friday I could only practice with Sensei because the other brown belts hadn't been taught them yet.

Generally, I'm extremely pleased with how my kata are shaping up. I need to be careful on Tokumine no Kun - apparently my jo-length practice staff (for indoor practice) is giving me bad habits, like a too narrow grip - but my memory of it is solid. Everything I need to know is in there solidly now, it's just polish, polish, polish. Plus working on speed and snap.

I will say that ending up back where I started with Sunsu is driving me a little crazy though. It seems like 90% of the kata is spent moving forward, with very little backward motion, yet somehow I need to end up exactly where I bowed in. I've improved over the last couple of weeks, going from ending up five feet forward and three right to only two feet forward and one right, but it's still not close enough. That I get 1-2 practice sessions a week where I can accurately track my starting and finishing positions isn't helping any - but I'll get there. Thank God ending where I started isn't a requirement for the weapons katas.

In other news, Robbie is doing extremely well with his guitar lessons this time around. What a difference a year makes! Last year he had to be threatened or bribed into practicing and just never developed much forward momentum, so after six months we gave up. This year he wanted to start again. We told him that if we were going to pay, he needed to practice. Well, he's holding to his side of the bargain. He's missed maybe three days of practice in the last six weeks, and he's improving by leaps and bounds. His teacher is telling me pretty much weekly what a wonderful memory Robbie has, and how amazingly fast he's progressing. Even more interesting, the middle school where he'll go next year has free music lessons for band instruments. Robbie wants to take percussion and seems completely unfazed by the idea that this means practicing two kinds of instrument each day. I'm crossing my fingers that this works out - especially as rhythm is the one thing Robbie is having consistent trouble with (in the more problematic "can't hear what he's doing wrong" mode, rather than the "can hear the problem but can't seem to fix it") Percussion training could do wonders for him in short order if things go right.

The dogs are settling into their new pack order. Unexpectedly, Nicky (up until now known as the world's most submissive dog), has stepped up and started enforcing his standards of behavior. This has resulted in a blissfully quick drop in the amount of barking around here, as Nicky *does not approve* of random noise for no good reason. The ultimate shake out seems to be that Rascal (henceforth known as the WLD or Wee Little Doggie for his unfortunate attitude towards house-breaking and marking) is technically alpha dog, but largely ignored by the others because he's elderly and simply doesn't get around much. The WLD still barks the house down regularly, but as Nicky steps up as the de facto pack leader, the other two are starting to walk away when the WLD gets going instead of joining him.

There's no two ways about it, though. We're going to have to replace the carpets in this house when the dog situation is history. They're already past salvage (not that they were in great shape before), and we've only had the full pack for a month.

Random musings

2009-04-03T22:31:00.002-04:00

I'm still here. I'm not quite sure why I haven't been posting these last few weeks (except for the week I wasn't home, that was obvious), but coming here and writing a blog post has just not tended to even occur to me while I'm sitting at the computer this last little bit.

It might have something to do with there being simultaneously too much and too little going on. I.e. there's a lot of stuff that keeps me busy, but it's all stuff that either makes for boring blog entries (like the various complications of getting my FIL stashed up here with us from TN), or I've discussed before.

Today's my fortieth birthday, and it feels like that ought to mean something. Like I should have my life together by now, or at least have a firm direction. I mean a 40-year-old ought to know what she wants to be when she grows up, right? But like topics for blog posts, there's simultaneously too much and too little. Many, many things I would love to do or be, but none that has that deep drive that would compel me in that one direction.

Maybe it's my mid-life crisis - in which case a month of dithering in a circle instead of blog posting is probably getting off easy.

The actual day today has been pretty nice. I made pumpkin scones in the morning to take to Aaron's class fiesta in the afternoon, then spent the afternoon first at the fiesta, then taking the boys out for ice cream. When Rob came home we went out to Erika's Restaurant (excellent German food) for dinner, though we decided to take a rain check on the planned movie - a combination of tired, full, and lack of enthusiasm for the current available set of movies. He gave me a gift card for some new clothes and a Wavemaster freestanding heavy bag for my presents. Tomorrow we juggle some of the basement furnishings to give me a place to set it up (right next to the giant fish tanks somehow seems like a bad idea...).

No karate this week, which makes two weeks running (drat!). Tuesday Aaron came down with strep and Rob had to work late, so that was a no-go. Thursday, Sensei called at nearly the last minute to cancel class due to an unspecified family problem combined with awful weather (thunderstorms). Between that and last week I'm feeling seriously under-exercised and under-practiced. I've gone through my katas a few times, but not the kind of concentrated practice I can get in when I go to the Y or to the dojo. I am hoping that if we can set up a corner of the basement for me, I'll be able to improve the quality of my at-home workouts. Though I have yet to convince Rob to let me practice my self-defense sequences on him. He just doesn't trust that I won't misjudge the hip throw and actually slam him on his back on the concrete.

Anyway, presuming that nobody comes down with strep next week, I should be back to a more normal schedule next week. I'll try to ensure more normal posting to go with it!

Memory and Deference

2009-03-18T01:24:00.002-04:00

First off, I want to say "thanks" to those who've expressed sympathy about the sore neck. It's fine now - it was sore for about three days. Fortunately for me, the kick that got my neck was aimed for my headgear, and therefore was already largely pulled. I am still somewhat on the injured list, not for the neck, but for the strained tendon in my right foot that got me the sore neck by impairing my fighting mobility.

Painful though it was, I learned an awful lot from that particular fighting class. An awful lot of my tactics in sparring revolve around literally throwing my weight around. I love to pursue and jam people up, and this class I simply couldn't do that, and it got me hit a lot more than I'm used to. I think J. missed her kick largely because I simply wasn't where her experience told her I would be.

We didn't spar tonight because our gear was inaccessible to us - being upstairs, past a patch of tile floor that was being redone. We'll probably spar again Thursday, assuming the floor is done. Instead it was a heavy kata night, dominated more by talking than actual practice. We had a guest black belt (second time in a week, with two different guys!), who may choose to join us permanently, which would be lovely. The guest is a student of A.J. Advincula's, who has been out for several years due to a traumatic injury, and would like to get back in shape, though he has ongoing problems.

Sensei D and the guest had a couple of extensive conversations which got me thinking afterwards. If our guest (I'll call him M) joins, then that means that two of the three people ranked above me in the dojo will have memory problems, and the third will simply have a lousy memory.

This is not to speak against the guys above me. Sensei D and M both, even in short conversations, know a ton more martial arts than I currently do, or even than I'm likely to for another decade or so. Sensei, likewise, though he's a bit quieter about it most of the time. But all of these guys have really crappy memories. Really, really crappy memories. Sensei just lands on the lower end of the spectrum, but both Sensei D and M have actual brain damage leading to striking difficulties with laying new memories and with longer recall.

This can (and has) led to some tongue-biting moments for me already, and I'm thinking I should probably try to come up with some more thought out specific strategies for dealing with it. The problem being that all three of these guys will contradict each other, or even contradict themselves of a few days, weeks, or months ago with no realization that they're doing so, because they don't remember what originally happened. Sensei D will remember incorrectly something that Sensei showed us two months ago, and insist on doing it that way because that's what makes sense to him. Sensei will show me something, and six months later show the next student something different. This sort of thing happens all the time - literally constantly - and it's going to happen more if M joins up (which, just to be clear, I really hope he does. Frustrations aside, he'd be a great asset to us, and I think we'd be good for him too.).

It does get frustrating for me, though. Easily my strongest asset in the dojo is my brain and memory. I can nail down kata sequences in about half the time it takes the other students, and very rarely forget anything that's been explicitly shown me. But I feel like that sharpness is a hindrance in dealing well with this particular set of men. I feel reasonably comfortable in questioning Sensei when he changes something he's previously told me. We've been together long enough now (5 years), and he treats me enough as if I were already a black belt, that I feel like I have standing to do so. But I've found that I'm very leery of questioning Sensei D if I think he's got something wrong. For some reason, even if I'm very deferential, it feels like I'm questioning his authority in a way it just doesn't with Sensei. Though I've only met him for the one class so far, M feels a lot more like Sensei D than like Sensei to deal with. Maybe it's the mutual military background, or the fact that they're both big men (Sensei is not), or that they're both more forward personalities than either Sensei or I. I had been with Sensei for quite a while before I realized just how long he'd been studying Isshinryu. With both Sensei D and M, I had learned much of their background within thirty minutes of being introduced.

This post is turning out a good deal more mushy than it started in my head, for which I apologize. Basically, I'm seeing a possible future where I will either have to bite my tongue and let gaffes go by repeatedly, or I'm going to have to find effective ways to correct for the phenomenon - preferably without pointing up the memory problems themselves, since all that effectively does is make the guys feel bad about something that isn't their fault. Correcting a superior is always tricky, no matter the circumstance, and the idea of having to do it all the time is giving me serious pause.

And all of this is complicated by having all three men come from slightly different Isshinryu lineages, and thereby also having legitimate differences in how they do stuff. I think if they were consistent about it, I could get it sorted out (this is how Sensei D does stuff, this is how Sensei does stuff, etc.), but when they're trying to learn each others methods and getting stuff wrong, both in how they do their own stuff, and in how they remember the others, it all turns into a big mushy, confusing mess. One I need to figure out how to deal with, because they don't even realize they're doing it.

Quickie Note

2009-03-13T18:09:00.004-04:00

a) I'm not dead. In fact I'm pretty much fine. It's just that with the new living arrangements, I'm almost never alone in the house, which is when I usually write blog posts. They will probably come back as I get used to the new way of things.

b) I have a post on essay number three cooking in the back of my brain, so that should show up sometime.

c) The caveat on the "pretty much fine" thing. Getting kicked in the neck sucks. And hurts.

Essays

2009-02-20T17:16:00.003-05:00

Well, I finally got a look at the essay topics for my black belt. I knew I had to write three, but I could only remember two of the topics: What in your opinion, is a black belt? and What does karate mean to you? I couldn't remember the third topic for anything. So once I got a look, I figured I'd come talk about it here a bit, which should serve the dual purpose of grinding it into my memory a bit, and providing a written record in case it does slide out again.

The third question, being much of a kind with the previous two, is: What, in your opinion, is a sensei?

This could conceivably provide some serious overlap, since to my mind, one of the meanings of a black belt is that the wearer is a teacher. And since what karate means to me also has bearing on the meaning of a black belt, it would almost be easier to address all three questions in one giant essay. I wonder if Sensei would go for that?

So on to the pondering. I've been pondering the other two questions for nearly a year at this point. Time to let the hindbrain cook on the third one.

In other news, Sensei has the death flu that's roaming around town right now. Sensei D. and I taught class Tuesday, and I had it by myself Thursday, since Sensei D. is now down in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Tuesday was very casual, with only two students. Last night, however, was pretty successful. I tried a couple of new drills garnered from my book on developing speed (Loren Christensen), and both were fairly well recieved. One drill was highly revealing, at least for my and my partner - and I suspect for the other pairs as well. The drill consists of circling one another as if fighting, up to and including fakes (which should be responded to as if in a fight), but no real thrown techniques. At random points, the designated person yells "Freeze!" and then "A" or "B" (each team as an A and B partner). The pair freezes, and then the designated person has 1 second to throw a technique to tap an open area. For me and my partner (Sensei's daughter), the opening for her was almost always a roundhouse to the chest - which is a kick she very rarely uses in an actual fight, and you could see the gears in her head turning as she noticed this. For me, I was nearly always slightly out of position. Never badly, but enough that I had to make an additional move to make a technique connect. Step forward, step sideways, turn - I was always just slightly off kilter or out of range for an effective technique. Which - duh! - of course I'm going to be slow on the attack if once I see an opening I have to both shift and throw the technique. I suspect it's my subconcious trying to slow the fight down, but its result is only to slow me down, not my opponent. Not exactly effective technique there.

Score! Something specific I can work on that should increase my effective speed. I'll have to tell Sensei about the drill when he gets better and comes back. I think he'll like this one.

Slight Postponment

2009-02-14T14:47:00.002-05:00

I got to have a private lesson with my Sensei this last weekend, which was quite a treat. I always feel like I learn so much when I get one-on-one time. We went through the ends of Kusanku Sai, and Sanchin, which means I officially know all the kata I need for my black belt test.

Afterwards we had a talk about my black belt test, and decided to postpone it from its original tentative early April date to this summer. He feels (and I agree) that while I could probably pass a test in April, it would be a cram and a struggle to be ready. In addition, he would rather send me off to Worlds in June as a really prepared brown belt, than a shiny new black belt. While it would have been awesome to test for black at my fortieth birthday, I agree with his reasoning. In fact it will be good to be able to settle down into steady practice of my new katas, and to be able to pull them apart and polish the dickens out of them, instead of having the pressure of needing them ready NOW!

In the same vein, I got to go see the new digs of our old dojo mates this morning. They finally got into the new place about six months after we split off, but I hadn't had an excuse to go over there (they're two towns over from where I live). This morning, two of my friends tested for black, so Sensei and I went to watch the test. They both did very well - tested and passed without any problems, though Master B threw them a few curve balls. Everybody remembered not just Sensei, but me as well - and about eight people threatened to come kick my butt if I don't remember to tell them when I test, so it looks like I'll have a rooting section beyond just my kids and husband.

Now I just need to work, work, work to get ready for Worlds and the test following. Sensei is really riding me about increasing my hand speed, and following up in kumite to prove his point (I'm getting tired of the footprints on my ribs). If anyone out there has suggestions on how a strong, but not terribly fast girl can get faster, I'm open for any suggestions.

Interesting Site of the Day

2009-02-12T22:29:00.003-05:00

Save a word! Every year hundreds of words are excised from dictionaries for lack of use. Go adopt a word, add it to your vocabulary, and save it from extinction.

By popular demand, our families word is ichthyarchy (n.) The domain of fishes. - Don't tell the captain you fell overboard, tell him you wanted to explore the ichthyarchy!

Since we have four separate ichthyarchies in our house, it seemed like a natural one to all of us. We'll see what the boys' teachers think of it tomorrow.

Double-Barrelled Bassets

2009-02-11T20:04:00.003-05:00

As of a week and a half ago, we have two bassets in the house. This makes quite a change around here. Nicky, who I've talked about here before is a very quite, laid-back dog. Other than a bad garbage habit, he's about as low-maintenance a dog as can be imagined.

This is not Toby.

Nicky may bark once in a day - may, not will. If someone he doesn't know comes to the door, he'll probably bark. Other than that, no. Toby barks at the mailman, at the UPS dude, at our neighbors leaving for work, at our neighbors coming home, at the neighbors dog, at the squirrels, at people eating food and not supplying him with some. Barking is pretty much his default state. Ironically, the only time he doesn't bark is when he wants to be let in from the back yard. Then he stands at the door, completely silent, and attempts to get his wishes across via telepathy.

He's also a very nervous dog. Anything different will send him pacing and barking at best, and looking frantically for a place to hide at worst. And since he had never been further from Dad W's house than the vet until last week, pretty much everything around here is new to him.

Fortunately, as time goes on, Toby is gradually adjusting to the idea that this is his new home, and not everything is scary and dire. Some of the barking has even started to ease off as Nicky has decided he is senior dog, and is starting to enforce his standards. This is funny as heck to watch, as Nicky is also about the least dominant dog I've ever seen. However, Nicky knows full well that we don't hand out treats to barking dogs, so starting about two days ago, when Toby started barking at the dinner table, Nicky turned on him and drove him out of the dining room. Now Toby is only allowed near humans with food if Nicky deems him sufficiently quiet and meek.

With that in mind, I ponied Toby to Nicky the other day and took them both down to the school to pick up the boys. This was great fun, as half-a-dozen drivers slowed down to watch the paired bassets trotting along. Toby did pretty well up until we got to the school and he had to deal with actual children. Toby has only ever met four children in his life, and he really didn't know what to do with these small creatures - so he hid behind my legs and barked at them. The funny thing was that he was really curious about them, so if they ignored him, he would approach very cautiously, but if they looked at him, or (God forbid) tried to pat him, he would skitter back behind my legs in terror. Fortunately he shows no signs of being a fear snapper, just mashes himself harder into my legs if scared.

Based on his reactions to the house and neighbors, I think Toby may actually come to like these child-creatures, but it's going to take some time. Nicky is having a good effect on him generally, I think. It's hard for Toby to keep thinking the world is going to eat him when Nicky is so placid about everything.

Which is good, because my ears could really use the break about now.

Lights Out!

2009-01-31T16:14:00.002-05:00

Whee! Back again.

We had an interesting week. Monday evening it snowed. Tuesday it started in with a variety of stuff - sleet, freezing rain, ice pellets (noticing a theme here?). Wednesday was more of the same - only more so. Wednesday afternoon about 1, our lights went out. And stayed out. And stayed out some more. We lit a fire in the fireplace and huddled up as the house temp started sinking. Poor Rob hit the deck several times hauling firewood up to the back porch from our backyard stack.

No power also meant that the aerators in the fish tanks weren't working, so the fish were suffocating. So about every four hours, we would siphon out a bunch of water, and dump in new water so the fish could breathe, at least a little. Between the cold and the lack of oxygen, they were not happy fish.

Rob went in to work on Wed. - it turned out that outside of our immediate neighborhood, the streets were in decent shape, so we were able to go get battery-powered aerators for the tanks, and pick up some take-out food, but the power company was saying that we wouldn't get power back until 11pm Saturday, so we packed up and headed for Nashville, only to have Rob call us just as we hit the halfway point, and say the power was back on. So back we came.

Central heat feels unbelievably luxurious right now. And the effort with the fish tanks paid off - we only lost one fish (one of Aaron's pack of three silver dollars). Even the worst off of the rest (my iridescent shark, who was solidly upside-down and twitching), recovered rapidly once the tank systems came back on-line.

One good side effect, since it's a good low-light activity, I pulled out my spinning wheel and got it ready to roll again. I even got about half a spindle-full of soda bottle fiber spun (sock weight).

Right now we're waiting to see if the boys' school (which was being used as an emergency shelter), will be open on Monday, or if they get to stay home a little more. I hope they can go, they're getting a bit tired of each other right now.

Photo Meme

2009-01-27T16:30:00.003-05:00

Nicole tagged me for this, so blame her!

Rules are as follows:

1. Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures.
2. Go to the 6th Folder, then pick the 6th picture in that folder.
3. Post that picture on your blog and the story that goes along with the picture.
4. Tag 6 other people that you know or don’t know to do the same thing and leave a comment on their blog or an e-mail letting them know you chose them.

As anyone who knows the movie will know, the photo in question is a scene from The Princess Bride, in which the Man in Black fights Fezzick the giant. While I love the movie, that actually has nothing to do with why the screen shot is in my photo-file. Instead it stems from my days writing for Damn Interesting! My last article for them (to the best of my recollection, there may have been another one or two), was on acromegaly, giantism, and the pituitary gland. My sixth photo file is my collection of photos of various people mentioned in the article, Andre the Giant (who plays Fezzick) being one of them. This shot didn't end up being used for the article, but it still sits in my files, mostly because I'm really lazy about clearing them out. This gives me a very odd assortment of pictures - the series on how to sex a mouse probably being the one that would give the most people pause.

As for tagging people - hmm. Becky, Martial Arts Mom (at your convenience, don't stress about it), Bill, Michele, somaserious, and CrimsonPhoenix.

In other news, we're snowed in at the moment, and well on our way to being iced in. Sensei just called to call off class for tonight, as he may not even be able to make it home from work, let alone to class. No school today, no school tomorrow, and possibly not Thursday as well.

Toby is starting to settle in. He's actually curled up on the couch and gone to sleep a couple of times (though never for long). He's discovered the back yard, though he hasn't figured out how to ring the bell to be let out yet. I've started working on training him to bark on command, prepratory to trying to get him to bark less generally speaking, but as food motivated as he is, it's still going to be slow going. We've always referred to Nicky as a basset with the optional brains package, Toby is a good illustration of a basset without the package. Other than the scaredy cat behavior, he's a sweetheart, but a definite numbskull. It's taken most of the afternoon to teach him "Speak", and he's still not terribly reliable about it - and this is a behavior he does all the time spontaneously! Nicky learned "Speak" in about half the time, is quite reliable, and almost never barked on his own at the time I taught him - still doesn't for that matter.

The good part is that he, like Nicky, would stand on his head for a liver treat, if he could only figure out how. It's just that he's much slower about the figuring out.

I'd say I have a pretty good chance of doing enough with Toby that things may not devolve into total chaos when the dachshunds arrive in two weeks. He may be a doofus, but he is willing to work and learn.

Random Updating

2009-01-25T12:03:00.002-05:00

Today is the day my fil arrives with his basset in tow. Or actually in Rob's car, since there's no place to put Toby in the truck where he can't get in the driver's way if he gets nervous - and Toby is always nervous. You wouldn't think a basset, the world's most laid-back dog, could be a Nervous Nellie, but Toby has conniptions anytime things are the least little bit out of place. Lord only knows what he's going to think of living in our house. Eventually all three dogs will come up, but since DadW has to go back down for a doctor's appointment in a couple of weeks anyway, we thought we'd give Toby some extra time to adjust.

I'm about halfway through Kusanku Sai now. Now I have to work myself out of an unfortunate habit I've picked up with the new sais. For some reason I'm pushing my left index finger forward into the tines when I'm holding them by the hilt. I don't do it on the right, just the left. I think it's a stabilizing shift, because I have some trouble controlling the tip of my left sai. Sanchin is also about halfway through, but I'd better get a lot more material this week if I'm to stay on track.

My left knee is officially recovered from the sprain/strain thing this summer. Tuesday was thirty minutes of working on Kusanku Sai, followed by being the demonstration dummy as Sensei D illustrated how to trap and torque a kick. My right knee was annoyed at me for a couple of days, but my left knee was fine. Though why it didn't occur to me until after class was over that perhaps I should have bowed out of demonstrating the torques, I don't know. I'm usually Sensei D's choice of demo dummy, because I have the only reliable roll-out in the class other than him and Sensei, but using me for knee-straining stuff is probably not the best choice.

ChoreWars is coming along swimmingly. I added my friend L and her son to our group, which has given a shot of motivation to all concerned. We did have to explain to her son, though, that picking up books wasn't something you could get credit for six times a day. He picked up all the books in his room, and then every hour or so was wandering back in, looking around, and giving himself credit for having picked up all the books in the room, since there weren't any. If he'd done it once, he might have gotten away with it, but we got suspicious around the fourth reiteration. I've added some of the FlyLady stuff to the list as well, and our adventures are getting nicely personalized.

Off now to finish spiffing up the guest room for DadW's arrival.

Film List from Becky

2009-01-17T00:55:00.003-05:00

SUPPOSEDLY if you’ve seen over 85 films, you have no life.

There are 239 films on this list. Copy this list, go to your own blog, paste this . Then, put x’s next to the films you’ve seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click post at the bottom. Have fun.

(x ) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Grease
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest
( ) Boondock Saints
( ) Fight Club
( ) Starsky and Hutch
(x) Neverending Story
(x) Blazing Saddles
(x) Airplane
Total: 7

(x) The Princess Bride
( ) Anchorman
( ) Napoleon Dynamite
( ) Labyrinth
( ) Saw
( ) Saw II
( ) White Noise
( ) White Oleander
( ) Anger Management
() 50 First Dates
() The Princess Diaries
() The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Total so far: 8

() Scream
() Scream 2
() Scream 3
(x) Scary Movie
(x) Scary Movie 2
() Scary Movie 3
() Scary Movie 4
(x) American Pie
() American Pie 2
() American Wedding
() American Pie Band Camp
Total so far: 11

(x) Harry Potter 1
(x) Harry Potter 2
(x) Harry Potter 3
(x) Harry Potter 4
(x) Resident Evil 1
(x) Resident Evil 2
() The Wedding Singer
() Little Black Book
(x) The Village
(x) Lilo & Stitch
Total so far: 19

(x) Finding Nemo
() Finding Neverland
() Signs
(x) The Grinch
() Texas Chainsaw Massacre
() Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
() White Chicks
() Butterfly Effect
() 13 Going on 30
(x) I, Robot
(x) Robots
Total so far: 23

() Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
(x) Universal Soldier
(x) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
() Along Came Polly
(x) Deep Impact
() KingPin
() Never Been Kissed
(x) Meet The Parents
() Meet the Fockers
()Eight Crazy Nights
() Joe Dirt
() KING KONG (The Original)
Total so far: 27

(x) A Cinderella Story
() The Terminal
() The Lizzie McGuire Movie
() Passport to Paris
(x) Dumb & Dumber
(x) Dumber & Dumberer
() Final Destination
() Final Destination 2
() Final Destination 3
() Halloween
() The Ring
() The Ring 2
() Surviving X-MAS
() Flubber [the original]
Total so far: 30

() Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
() Practical Magic
() Chicago
() Ghost Ship
() From ***
(x) Hellboy
() Secret Window
() I Am Sam
() The Whole Nine Yards
() The Whole Ten Yards
Total so far: 31

(x) The Day After Tomorrow
() Child’s Play
() Seed of Chucky
() Bride of Chucky
(x) Ten Things I Hate About You
() Just Married
() Gothika
() Nightmare on Elm Street
() Sixteen Candles
() Remember the Titans
() Coach Carter
() The Grudge
() The Grudge 2
(x) The Mask
(x) Son Of The Mask
total so far: 34

() Bad Boys
() Bad Boys 2
() Joy Ride
() Lucky Number Slevin
(x) Ocean’s Eleven
() Ocean’s Twelve
(x) Bourne Identity
(x) Bourne Supremecy
() Lone Star
() Bedazzled
(x) Predator
() Predator II
( ) The Fog
(x) Ice Age
(x) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
() Curious George
Total so far: 39

(x) Independence Day
() Cujo
() A Bronx Tale
() Darkness Falls
() Christine
(x) ET
() Children of the Corn
() My Bosses Daughter
() Maid in Manhattan
(x) War of the Worlds
() Rush Hour
() Rush Hour 2
Total so far: 41

() Best Bet
() How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
() She’s All That
() Calendar Girls
() Sideways
(x) Mars Attacks
() Event Horizon
(x) Ever After
(x) Wizard of Oz
(x) Forrest Gump
() Big Trouble in Little China
(x) The Terminator
(x) The Terminator 2
(x) The Terminator 3
Total so far: 48

(x) X-Men
(x) X-2
(x) X-3
(x) Spider-Man
(x) Spider-Man 2
() Sky High
() Jeepers Creepers
() Jeepers Creepers 2
() Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Little Mermaid
(x) Freaky Friday (the original)
(x) Reign of Fire
() The Skulls
( ) Cruel Intentions
() Cruel Intentions 2
() The Hot Chick
(x) Shrek
(x) Shrek 2
Total so far: 57

() Swimfan
(x) Miracle on 34th street
() Old School
() The Notebook
() K-Pax
() Krippendorf’s Tribe
() A Walk to Remember
(x) Ice Castles
() Boogeyman
() The 40-year-old Virgin
Total so far: 59

(x) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring
(x) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
(x) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King
(x) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(x) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(x) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Total so far: 65

() Baseketball
() Hostel
() Waiting for Guffman
() House of 1000 Corpses
() Devils Rejects
() Elf
(x) Highlander
() Mothman Prophecies
() American History X
() Three
Total so Far: 66

() The Jacket
() Kung *** Hustle
() Shaolin Soccer
() Night Watch
(x) Monsters Inc.
() Titanic
(x) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(x) Shaun Of the Dead
() Willa74
Total so far: 69

() High Tension (Haute Tension)
() Club Dread
() Hulk
() Dawn Of the Dead
() Hook
(x) Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
() 28 days later
() Orgazmo
() Phantasm
(x) Waterworld
Total so far: 71

() Kill Bill vol 1
() Kill Bill vol 2
() Mortal Kombat
() Wolf Creek
(x) Kingdom of Heaven
() the Hills Have Eyes
() I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
() The Last House on the Left
() Re-Animator
() Army of Darkness
Total so far: 72

(x) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
(x) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
(x) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(x) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(x) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(x) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
() Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
() Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far: 78

(x) The Matrix
(x) The Matrix Reloaded
(x) The Matrix Revolutions
() Animatrix
() Evil Dead
() Evil Dead 2
() Team America: World Police
() Red Dragon
(x) Silence of the Lambs
() Hannibal
Total: 82

Hmm. I'm not too sure I agree with this evaluation, as I actually don't watch all that many movies at any given point in time, yet I'm awfully close to the 85 limit. I'm suspicious of how they're choosing which movies belong on here.

Forging Ahead

2009-01-16T17:28:00.002-05:00

Well, this last few days has brought some serious progress. My brand-new Shueido sais showed up this afternoon, and I've been spending the time since doing things one-handed, while playing with one of them. They're really nice - a bit smaller through the tines than I was expecting, but a nice weight and balance.

Last night's karate class was small, likely due to the abysmally cold weather that we (and nearly everyone else) seem to be having. I got to get Tokumine no Kun vetted by Sensei to make sure I really had it down, and then we went on to the beginning of Sanchin. I hadn't quite registered how darn short Sanchin is! I'm about 1/3 of the way through in one fairly short session. Which means that unless there are unexpected complications with either this or Kusanku Sai (which I can't wait to try with the new sais), I'm pretty well on track to have all my required material down by the end of the month. The muscle clenchng is going to take some getting used to. I keep remembering to tighten one part and then noticing I've let something else fall loose. Oh well, that is why I wanted to get it down now - so that I have time to ingrain all this before I have to perform it with people beating on me.

Out of the Depths

2009-01-11T21:00:00.002-05:00

Well, I survived the holidays! Actually, I had a lot of fun, even though it was a tremendous amount of work. One of the downsides of being fundamentally introverted is that even when you're having a good time with other people, you're still using energy being with them. Friday and yesterday were largely spent falling over and recovering. Today, Rob decided to do some furniture rearrangement. He cleared out his desk in the basement (which he hasn't used in about two years), and we brought it upstairs to be used as a computer/homework desk for the boys. With some luck, this will enable him to get his computer back (the boys have been using it quite a bit).

It may give you an idea of just how swamped I've been feeling if I note that in the first week of 2009, I read one, and only one, book. And I wouldn't have read that one, except that my temp. neighbor brought it over and handed it to me, having taken it out on his library card. The only other week in which I can remember not wanting to read at all was during a week-long whitewater kayaking class one summer almost two decades ago. Then it was up at dawn, eat, hit the river, work insanely hard until dark, eat, fall over until dawn. I was too tired to read.

Wait - that explains it.

'til Friday

2009-01-03T23:43:00.002-05:00

A and her husband arrived yesterday. I was somewhat hopeful that having her here would mean a less break-neck pace than when I visit her, but unless the first 24 hours was a quirk, no such luck. Don't expect to hear much from me until they leave on Friday - and possibly for a couple days after that, since hanging out with A is usually followed by a couple of days of falling over.

A is being really good about the state of the house (pretty good by my standards, cruddy by hers). Her husband, on the other hand, has named it "Cindy's Chemical Spill" on the GPS, and made some (mostly) good natured comments about people who don't know where everything they own is. Though if he makes any comments about it going downhill over the next few days (as they keep me running around 16 hours out of every 24), he's going to have to duck.

Books Read: July - December 2008

2009-01-01T15:00:00.002-05:00

This time I kept a running list, so it is both accurate and complete. I was so interested in the patterns showing in the first list that I thought I'd try it again. Rereads are marked with an (R). My personal impression is that I read somewhat less than average this last six months, due to spending a good deal of time working on writing instead. (If you count book-length things "I" wrote, then I also read through Ghost Dancer some unknown, but large, number of times, and this year's Nano some other large, unknown number of times.) If anyone wants my impression of any of these books, let me know in comments and I'll put up a review.

1. Jade Darcy and the Affair of Honor - Stephen Goldin & Mary Mason(R)
2. Eragon - Christopher Paolini
3. Magic Steps - Tamora Pierce(R)
4. Trickster Queen - Tamora Pierce
5. Eldest - Christopher Paolini
6. Mastery - George Leonard(R)
7. Jhereg - Stephen Brust(R)
8. White Knight - Jim Butcher
9. Small Favor - Jim Butcher
10. Best Karate: 2 Fundamentals - Nakayama
11. When the Air Hits Your Brain - Frank Vertosic (R)
12. Gaia & God - Rosemary Ruether
13. The Spriggan's Mirror - Lawrence Watt-Evans
14. Crystal Dragon - Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (R)
15. New Pathways for Sock Knitters: Book One - Cat Bordhi
16. Knitting Over the Edge - Nicky Epstein
17. Sister of the Dead - Barb & J.C. Hendee
18. Sliding Scales - Alan Dean Foster
19. The Lady on the Embankment (short story) - Lois McMaster Bujold
20. Wild Magic - Tamora Pierce (R)
21. Wolf-Speaker - Tamora Pierce (R)
22. Emperor Mage - Tamora Pierce (R)
23. The Realms of the Gods - Tamora Pierce (R)
24. Cry Wolf - Patricia Briggs (x2)
25. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert Heinlein (R)
26. Speed Training - Loren Christensen (R)
27. Night Life - Caitlyn Kittredge
28. Where We Stand - bell hooks
29. Dust - Elizabeth Bear (R)
30. Fledgling - Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (online- in draft form)
31. Saltation - Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (online - in draft)
32. Dzur - Steven Brust (R)
33. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (R)
34. Living the Martial Way - Forrest Morgan (R)
35. Life in Cold Blood - David Attenborough
36. Journey to the City of the Dead - Alan Dean Foster (R)
37. Fellowship of the Ring - JRR Tolkien (R)
38. The Gift of Fear - Gavin de Becker (R)
39. Iron Kissed - Patricia Briggs (R)
40. Ill Wind - Nevada Barr
41. The Mummy Case - Elizabeth Peters
42. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights - John Steinbeck
43. Reserved for the Cat - Mercedes Lackey
44. Yoga Body, Buddha Mind - Cyndi Lee
45. The Serpant in the Crown - Elizabeth Peters
46. Winter Study - Nevada Barr
47. The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold (R)
48. The Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold (R)
49. Low Port - Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
50. Balance of Trade - Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (R)
51. The White Dragon - Anne McCaffrey (R)
52. Backup - Jim Butcher (x 2)
53. Beyond Black Belt - Hanchi Duessel (R)
54. You Know You're A Writer When... - Adair Lara
55. Karate-do: My Way of Life - Gichin Funakoshi (R)
56. The Complete Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (R)
57. When Demons Walk - Patricia Briggs (R)
58. A Hole in Space - Larry Niven (R)
59. All the Weyrs of Pern - Anne McCaffrey (R)
60. Mister Monday - Garth Nix
61. Grim Tuesday - Garth Nix
62. Drowned Wednesday - Garth Nix
63. Making Money - Terry Pratchett
64. Storm Front - Jim Butcher (R)
65. The Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler
66. On Writing - Steven King
67. Good Omens -Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
68. My Son, The Wizard - Christopher Stasheff
69. On The Prowl - Patrica Briggs et al (novella compilation)
70. My Stroke of Insight - Jill Bolte Taylor
71. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
72. Magic or Madness - Justine Larbalestier
73. Crystal Rain - Tobias Buckell
74. Emotional Awareness - the Dalai Lama & Paul Ekman
75. The Miracle Workout - W. Jackson Davis, Ph. D.
76. Ragamuffin - Tobias Buckell
77. Cry Wolf - Patricia Briggs (R) (x2 - yes again)
78. Graceling - Kristi Cashor
79. Mr. Popper's Penguins - Richard & Florence Atwater

The stand-out book of this lot (non-fiction) was Outliers, which I mentioned in an earlier post. The fiction selection had a lot of good ones. Obviously by the repeats, I'm currently obsessed with Cry Wolf, but I'm not quite sure why. Don't get me wrong, it's good - very good - but not inherently more wonderful than several others on the list - I'd probably be rereading Graceling right now if I hadn't had to give it back to the library.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T21:40:00.003-05:00

I hope all have had wonderful Christmases! All three grandparents are here now, with my Mom & Dad arriving last night about fifteen minutes before we headed off for midnight mass.

I was polite this year. I asked permission from the choir director to sing descants to the congregation hymns, which she very graciously gave. Unfortunately "The First Noel" was not part of the line-up, which is my best hymn for singing descant. However, we led off with "Oh Come, All Ye Faithful" which has a lovely descant, and finished with "Silent Night" for which I do a descant that's all my own (and it came out pretty nice to, if I do say so myself).

The church choir is a decent choir, but I think (and Rob agrees) that I should not join. They're about a dozen people, mostly older, with mostly decent senses of pitch, and pretty good voices. They get a little wobbly when they're unsure, but straighten out nicely when they get to things they know well. They can do four part harmony credibly, if without much flair. In short, for a church choir at a small church, they're pretty darned good.

Unfortunately, if I joined them, it would be "Cindy and the Choir". My voice does not blend well with "average decent voice". I'd sound like the flute in the middle of the clarinet section - and my voice doesn't do clarinet - so I would either have to sing barely above a whisper at all times, or actually make the choir sound worse. I had rather suspected this - long experience tells me that I need to either be in a choir of more than forty people, or I need to be with people with a similar vocal quality to mine - but I didn't know for certain until I actually heard the entire choir.

Which leaves me with a little bit of a dilemma, because the choir is all but stalking me. The choir director and at least six other people are actively trying to recruit me every time I hold still long enough. They hear me sing, and nice voice = should be in the choir. I'm a bit at a loss as to how to decline without making it sound like I think they suck (they very much don't), or like I'm completely stuck on myself. "I'll overpower your entire choir, even if I'm trying not to" is not exactly a modest statement - but it's true nonetheless. Sigh.

At least I didn't have to listen to "Oh, Holy Night" being mangled this year. The choir director sang, and did a very respectable job of it. I was still champing the bit a little, because she's an alto and sensibly chose to avoid the high notes, but it certainly wasn't painful to listen to. (For those playing along, my particular Christmas doom appears to be being forced to listen to "Oh, Holy Night" be mangled over and over again, while I'm absolutely dying to sing it for somebody, sometime, and never get the chance.)

Christmas morning got a late start, due to our peculiar children, who view Christmas morning as a great chance to sleep in. Once we got going though, things went very well. The boys are delighted with their various presents (Wii games, science kits, Bakugan starter set, dinosaur stuff for Aaron, books for Robbie, clothes for both), and have been very hard to pry away from the Wii so far today. Rob's main present is the car (which he still adores), but he also a digital camara, a couple of books, some new kitchen knives, and Guitar Hero: World Tour. My main present is the laptop I've had since the beginning of Nano (and still adore), but I got my piano books (Cristofori's Dream is coming along nicely), some scented shower gel, a reed diffuser, and a couple of books. The grandparents got various and sundry goods - books, videos, a TomTom, clothing, etc.. Everyone seems quite happy with their gifts. Rob fed us prime rib and the adults settled in for a good evening of chit-chat, while the kids played Super Smash Bros.. A good day, and a very merry Christmas all around.

On a slightly different note - I have a website I have got to pass on. For the role-playing fans in your life who have trouble with housework, I present Chore Wars. Go on adventures! Make the bed while fighting off the fearsome bedbugs! Anoint the kitchen floors with holy cleaning fluid, to ward off the dust bunnies and earth elementals! Essentially, you create role-playing characters. Your dungeon master creates adventures (chores), which earn you experience and gold pieces. Various monsters can show up when you claim your chore at the website, and you try to defeat them. As you go up in experience, you get stronger and can defeat bigger monsters. (I'm not looking forward to the first day the red dragon shows up while I'm cooking dinner.) Is it cheesy? Sure! But anything that makes Robbie run off saying "I get to make the bed! Woohoo!" on Christmas, is worth a little cheese. And it wasn't even his bed, it was his brother's. Go, Chore Wars!

The State of the Holiday

2008-12-18T23:25:00.003-05:00

We had Aaron's school play today. He was very eager to get there, and afterwards was very enthusiastic, which seems odd, because during the show he looked like it was torture to be there. I suspect that while he likes singing and performing for us, the actual moments of being in a choir of enthusiastic 2nd graders is a little hard for a hearing-sensitive kid with good (likely perfect relative) pitch.

We have a new(er) car! Rob has been going to our county auto auction for the last several weeks, ever since we sold our minivan, looking for something younger and smaller to replace it with. Wed. night he found a good one at a good price and bid for it, won, and then had to negotiate with the seller because the reserve hadn't been met. He talked them into a price higher than his bid, but lower than their reserve, and Thursday we went to collect. So now we have a Nissan 200SX SE-R in gloss black sitting in the driveway. It's a pretty little thing. It needs a new muffler, and there's a small piece of rear bumper missing (which is odd, because the rest of the bumper is not just intact, but glossy-new), and the engine computer reports a knock (which we can't hear). Otherwise it seems to be in excellent condition. It's certainly got zip, as it was pulling away from the Saturn at every acceleration opportunity on the way home. Rob is over the moon about it - he's been grinning all day. He's got a temporary muffler solution he'll be putting in tomorrow to last until the title shows up (in the next three weeks).

In somewhat grimmer news (making the happy car thing very timely) Rob's new 90-gallon tank has developed an in-tank infection, which is devastating the fish. We've lost more than a dozen so far, including two large severums, one of which was more than two years old. The last four days have had multiple fish deaths per day. We're treating for everything we can think of and crossing our fingers. We still have a Red Devil, a Raphael, and a couple of Firemouths in there that we'd hate to lose. The Red Devil particularly has a lot of personality, and has been with us for quite a while now. The 75-gallon tank is going along great, but even if we could guarantee that she wouldn't bring the infection with her, we couldn't move her back, because she would tear into the Bala and Iridescent sharks that are in there now (never mind that they're more than twice her size - she's not the type to care).

Dad W. is up for the holidays now. He and the temporary neighbor are going out hunting a Barnes & Noble tomorrow. He'll be here through the New Year, and then he vacates the same day A comes in. A has torn her rotator cuff in her left shoulder, so unless something changes drastically between now and the New Year, she's going to need a lot more help than usual while she's here. With the torn muscles, she can't transfer (from her chair to a couch, or a toilet, or a car seat), and needs to be assisted heavily with things she normally manages herself. Nor can she use her crutches at all. She's likely to need surgery on the shoulder and I'm crossing my fingers that if she does, it can wait until March, because right now all her local support has gone south for the winter.

Progressing

2008-12-18T14:22:00.003-05:00

I had my last class of the year last night (there's another class tonight, but it conflicts with Aaron's school play). This was our first brown/black only class, and I loved it. I learned so much more than I usually can in a mixed class. To wit: I finished Tokumine no Kun, I finished Sunsu, and I started Kusanku Sai.

My promise to myself is that when we have our first class in 2009 (Jan. 6th), I will have retained and ingrained all the new stuff learned yesterday. Towards this end, I've started going to the Y about an hour before my class starts each day, when I can have the workout room with the nice big mirrors all to myself. As of this morning, everything vital is still in my brain, and has now been reinforced by going through it a half-dozen more times. Though my left-hand sai work needs some serious improvement -blech!

Sensei and I discussed testing plans. He says that if I have everything new I need to learn down by the end of January, he will consider me on track for testing late March-early April. As of right now, that means: finish Kusanku Sai, learn Sanchin, and learn the last three self -defense patterns. Kusanku Sai isn't a problem, since the patterns are (surprise!) virtually identical to Kusanku. Sanchin is a little more concerning, but I'm pretty capable of learning a kata in a month if I can get the time with Sensei - which he seems determined to make time for. He'll be here Saturday to discuss custom tonfa with Rob, and we're going to discuss doing some private lessons while he's here.

That leaves only the self-defense patterns, but the only reason I haven't gotten them down already was because I had nobody else to practice them with - no other brown belts, and Sensei D. isn't physically a good choice for praticing falls - his legs are in horrible shape. But as of last week, we now have two other brown belts, so drafting them for self-defense practice is emminently feasible.

Other than that it's all technique work - more speed, less telegraphing, better stances and transitions, etc. etc.. Getting from "I know all this stuff" to "I can do all this stuff well."

New Music

2008-12-09T01:58:00.002-05:00

Hee! Rob was poking around on the web last night, looking for some small gifts for people (including me), and stumbled upon piano music - lovely New Age style piano music that I've been looking for for about ten years now. Even as we speak, the music for Cristofori's Dream and The Gift among others have started wending their way in this direction. This will be the first new piano music I've had in ages - since my eldest brother and his wife got married to be precise (they asked me to play, and I felt justified in spending some money).

Another bonus, Rob really likes several of the pieces, which means he can stop nagging me to practice things he likes instead of the stuff I like. I generally gravitate to Debussy, Chopin, and Beethoven while Rob would really rather I played more rock and ragtime. We both love The Gift, however (sorry, I can't find a video or audio file of it), and the Windham Hills collections in general, so this should provide some good times.

Unfortunately, even once it arrives, I still have to wait until Christmas before I can take it to the keyboard!

And Away We Go!

2008-12-07T23:08:00.002-05:00

Or will in the spring. I just registered for the IWKA World Championship Tournament - June 18, 19, 20 in the Hilton in Pittsburgh, PA.

The IWKA WCT is held once every two years. The location varies, but Master Shimabuku comes and teaches a seminar or two - two this time, and I'm signed up for both. Hanshi Duessel also teaches a seminar, which I'm also signed up for. Honestly, given my chops as a competitor, I'm likely to get the most bang for my buck out of the seminars. My record at Isshinryu-only tournaments is abysmal. Though oddly enough, my record at open tournaments is quite good - the only actual trophy I have (Senior Women's Champion) was at a Louisville open tournament about three years ago - wherein I beat six other white/yellow/orange competitors in kata and kumite (I was orange), and then a purple belt in kumite.

Also, I've fought the woman who won the senior women's division last time. She's not far from here, so we hit some of the same area tournaments. She's ferociously good - a previous competitive body-builder, who turned to karate and brought along that same focused determination. As a white belt she came to the Lennox Legacy a few years back and got put in the intermediate women's division because her division was too small. She cleaned our clocks, defeating every single woman in the intermediate division handily (5-3 was the best score).

On the plus side, I cannot possibly do worse than the last time I went to a truly large tournament. In my first karate incarnation I went to the Hall of Fame tournament. I was young, fit, and in good training. I came in dead last in both divisions I entered. It was not a pretty sight, but it did teach me some humility.

However, I'd like to avoid that particular lesson again, so training, training, training!

Belt Musing #2

2008-12-06T01:19:00.003-05:00

For the first belt musing see here.

When it comes right down to it, a belt is a piece of fabric that holds your pants up, or your jacket together. In the case of a karate gi, it usually doesn't even do that, since the jackets and pants really don't need it. The function of a karate belt is symbolic. It functions as a visible sign of where you are in your karate journey.

So, given that, what does a black belt mean?

For some people it means the end of the journey. The first year as a shodan has a higher drop-out rate than practically any other part of a karate student's time - excepting the first few tenuous months. For those people, a black belt is their graduation certificate, the symbol of their having "learned" karate. If that is how one sees the black belt, then it's not at all surprising that people would drop out - after all, why would one keep going to school after graduating, unless you're one of the few inspired to become a teacher?

Even of those who stay, some feel the black belt symbolizes a graduation, the shift from student to teacher. A mark of "I know what I'm doing," in some essential way.

This isn't to say these people are wrong. A black belt often is a teacher - indeed I would think it difficult to become a black belt without doing at least some teaching, if only for the extraordinary amount of learning that occurs when one sets out to teach something you're sure you know - only to discover that the student will teach you far more than you teach them.

Yet that isn't how I feel about a black belt. Maybe it's because I've done at least a little teaching from fairly early in my karate career. Maybe it's because I know down to my bones that I will never be done learning about karate. Maybe it's because I've become aware of just how little I will know, when I become a black belt, standing there with my bucket beside the ocean of knowledge. But to me a black belt doesn't feel like a graduation certificate.

It feels like being handed my library card.

If the black belt certifies something about me, it certifies that I've learned my ABC's. I can write them, pronounce them, even sound out words with them. I'm making that phenomenal leap, from letters on a page to words, sentences, meaning.

The black belt means that I've mastered the fundamentals of my karate craft. That I have my understanding of stance, strikes, blocks, focus - all the vital minutiae - sufficiently for me to start seeing the meaning behind all this stuff. The katas become less about the individual steps and strikes and more about flow and bunkai (explanations of the purpose of the moves, for the non-karate readers). Fights become less about finding the target and hitting it - but not too hard! - and more about strategy and tactics.

It's a world away from "toes forward, heels out, knees bent," and yet it incorporates all that - just as someone writing a letter must still form their 'H's correctly, lest a shirt become a skirt. The letters must be correct, yet the letters become words, and the words become sentences that one could never imagine when still struggling to understand the individual letters.

And that is what a black belt means to me - the opening up of meaning from my letters of kicks and punches to the stories of karate.

Updatery

2008-12-05T01:06:00.003-05:00

Random things that have happened in the last few days:

The student whose house burned is generally doing well. Their insurance has come through in a big way, and they moved into an apartment less than a mile from their house today. On the down side, the dog definitely died in the fire, either by smoke inhalation or by having the roof collapse on him.

We are now officially in the market for a newer car (our youngest car being 10 years and 210,000 miles old). Rob is hanging out at the local auto auction to find our replacement. He is having so much fun doing this that he make take his own sweet time in actually purchasing said car.

The aforementioned youngest car has developed a large crack in the radiator - so there goes Rob's plans for the weekend.

I have a reader for Drowned Deep who has not previously read Ghost Dancer - which should allow a reasonable view of whether it stands alone decently or not. Now I'm just waiting on my new toner cartridge to arrive so I can print it out. I can't complain though, I have a draft printer Rob gave me for Christmas three years ago, and this is the first cartridge change despite heavy usage.

I've finished Sunsu kata. I love this kata, but it's seriously crazy-making. The patterns are so similar both to patterns in the other kata, and to other patterns within Sunsu, that it's incredibly easy to either slip into a different kata, or to accidently skip or repeat sections (or do them in the wrong order). You have to be present every moment in this kata in a way that just isn't necessary in any of the previous katas. It's wonderful - and crazy-making!

I'm also down to the last section or two of learning Tokumine No Kun. I would suspect two, just because I'm not getting many lengthy teaching times with Sensei, which means I'm getting the katas in smaller bits than I could actually handle. Which is all right, but is slower.

Our last karate class is the 18th. We resume on the Tuesday following New Year's. No sign of a Christmas party this year. Rob and I hosted one a couple of years ago, but with a houseful of guests, A. coming to visit after the New Year, and Dad Wood moving in after that, I'm just not feeling the impetus to step up and offer this year.

I'm freaking out bad about A. coming to visit. She and her husband have a neatness standard that is just insane - our house on its best day would be an utter disaster by their standards. Mom is offering to help me clean while she's here, but not to put too fine a point on it - her track record with such offers isn't great. Plus, even Mom & Dad's house on its best day, though much better than ours, would still be a hovel by A&M's standards - not that they'd make snide comments or look down at us, or make a fuss - it's the veiled pity and the offers of help that make me want to beat my head against a wall.

Deep breaths. A&M have a lovely apartment, lived in by two neat freaks, and maintained by a succession of aides and a once weekly cleaning team. I have a house double that size, lived in by four people, none of them dreadfully neat, and maintained by me (which should frighten anybody who's ever seen me clean or *god forbid* attempt to organize something). My inability to keep a house to A's standards is not an indictment of my worth as a person, wife or mother. Really. (If I keep repeating this maybe I'll start believing it?)

Oh - and I should have a new belt musing up in the next few days. It's cooking in the back of my brain quite noisily by now.

A Horrible Start to the Christmas Season

2008-12-02T23:57:00.003-05:00

T is one of our teenaged students. He's a recent brown belt, also bright, conscientious to a fault, and generally a great kid.

His house burned down yesterday - with his dog in it.

Leastwise, we believe the dog was in the house. T was at school and his parents were out looking for a Christmas tree when the house went up. A neighbor called 911 and their cell phone, but it was way too late for the house. The roof is in the basement, though the garage is apparently water-damaged but intact, and the (brand-new) deck is in reasonable condition. Their dog hasn't been seen, though it has been posited with more hope than anything that he may have escaped and run off in fright.

The loss of the dog is the worst of it, but besides that, they've lost pretty much everything - clothes, pictures, toiletries, the works. T is supposed to be back in class Thursday (he wasn't there tonight for obvious reasons), Sensei has a new gi and belt waiting for him - fortunately he had spares in his stash.

Poor kid - poor family. What an incredibly awful way to start the holidays.

Have a Novel - and a Basset

2008-11-30T21:06:00.002-05:00

Done! I'm done, done, done, done, done!

The novel, tentatively entitled Drowned Deep, is finished. The first draft stands at 50,646 which includes two (2!) prologues, an epilogue, and various other word boosters. As I noted before, I actually hit the end of the story at about 43,000 words, the epilogue, first prologue and a couple of internal scenes got it to 49,644 as of this morning. Whereupon we hit the road home, and between car troubles, dinner, and getting back in gear at home I didn't actually get back to the file until eight tonight. Fortunately, 300 something words is a cinch at this point - though figuring where to stick them was something of a problem. Hence the second prologue. One or both of them may eventually go away. One or both of them may eventually move into the body of the novel. But right now they're prologues. The epilogue is probably staying. I like it, and it matches the epilogue at the end of Ghost Dancer fairly nicely.

Now I'll ignore the file for a month or two, because if I go read it right now, I'll be convinced it's a pile of crap. Whereas if I wait until my memory has faded somewhat, I may be pleasantly surprised - or not - but at least it won't be certain that I'll hate it.

In the meanwhile, have a basset. Nicky is glad to be home. Being one of four dogs is exhausting. Unfortunately for him, he's going to have to get used to it, because sometime in January or February, my father-in-law is moving in with us (until we can get the house sold, and him into an apartment, which will probably take some time), complete with his three dogs. Rest up while you can, Nicky!

Two Second Update

2008-11-28T21:20:00.002-05:00

Posting from my FIL's computer with the wrong kind of keyboard, so this will be short.

I finished my Nano storyline today, which marks the first time I've ever completed a story, instead of just getting the 50,000 words. Unfortunately, the story as it stands clocks in at just over 43,000 words. When filled in it will definitely be over the mark, but that kind of filling in is generally slower than full-forward writing. So my task for the next two days is to find 7000 words worth of additional scenes, description, and anything else I can come up with.

The hopeful part is that since we're at my FIL's, I don't have too much else I need to do but write. And since I have my laptop with me (early Christmas present - thank you, Love!), I can write the whole four hours on the way back home Sunday.

Wish me luck!

Nano Notes

2008-11-25T01:13:00.004-05:00

A brief update from the throes of writing agony - which both is and isn't this year. As can be seen by my little sidebar widget, I'm definitely running behind at this point. I'm still within striking range - unless I get badly stuck, I should be able to pull it out - yet there's little doubt that I'm going to be writing long, hard hours every day between now and Nov. 1 if I'm going to pull the full 50,000 out of my hat.

On the good side though, the story is really running well now. I have a plot. I have decent characters. They're all hanging out and doing the things they're supposed to be doing. My prep level this year seems to have been just about right - enough pre-planning that I was rarely at a complete loss (thanks Bill and Leslie for the periodic brainstorming when things got clogged), but not so much that the characters felt constrained and wooden. It's even possible that I may finish this plot as part of the NaNo shot, which would be a first. Of my previous successful NaNo's my first -Ghost Dancer - is the only one that's complete at this point. My second is still stuck on the difficulty of a character who refuses to die, and my third, while it finally has an ending that I'm heading for, hasn't yet actually gotten there. Even Ghost Dancer was incomplete as a story at the end of NaNo; it didn't, in fact, acquire an ending for nearly four more years. Not until I started putting chapters up for my on-line writing group, and when I failed to put up new chapters, people would write me, write little ditties to post about me, or even contact my brother to tell him to tell me to get on the ball and write more, did I get down to business and finish out Ghost Dancer. So it feels a little weird to be 30,000 words in, and be fairly confident of where this book is going and how it's going to end. I may even wrap it up in the 50,000 words .

Which is not to say it will be a 50,000 word novel. As I've been speeding along, I'm discovering all sorts of side issues that will need to be retconned in once I hit the end (a little terraforming, anyone?). I'm estimating at least another 10-20,000 words just to put in the necessary additional information after I hit the end. We'll see when I get there - but it's feeling really good to actually feel like this is going to end in the first pass. A little less like writing the Neverending Story.

A Matter of Time

2008-11-21T00:14:00.002-05:00

I ran into this article in the Guardian on-line, thanks to Erin of A Dress A Day (excellent site for anyone interested in sewing).

It's a summation of the notions in a new book by Malcolm Gladwell called Outliers: The Story of Success. It was so fascinating that the book went on my Amazon wishlist before I'd even finished reading the article.

The summary of the summary would be essentially: there is no such thing as inherent genius. There are bright people, certainly, and talented people, but what makes a genius is opportunity, perseverance, and time - 10,000 hours of time, to be precise. And all of it boils down to that time.

The opportunity is what allows somebody to spend 10,000 hours perfecting a skill - that's not a trivial amount of time. Working eight hours a day, five days a week - I.e. making your desired skill your full time job - it would still take five years to put in 10,000 hours. And how many of us are truly working at improvement every minute for a whole work day, even if we're lucky enough to be making a living at our skill? A would-be designer working as a dressmaker or a writer actually having a day-job that requires writing would generally be considered exceptionally fortunate. Most genius comes from middle and upper classes, simply because people lower down the economic ladder don't have that kind of time to devote to perfecting skills - they're too busy keeping afloat.

Perseverance is the will and desire to keep pushing at your desired skill, to keep working at it and loving working at it for years.

Both of which add up to - more time spent learning, perfecting, and pushing the limits of your skill.

Apparently the thresholds run as follows: if you want to be better than average - but no great shakes - you need to spend about 4,000 hours perfecting your skill. For really good - but not genius - about 8,000. For genius - 10,000 and up.

This would jive with my experience of my skill levels in various things, thus far. My one, true, genius-level skill, would be my reading ability. I read fast, voraciously, and continuously. Hard reading material doesn't slow me down much - and I retain what I read, often to the point of being able to tell you position on a page for a given bit of information.

Timewise? Well, I learned to read independently somewhere between two and three. I puttered around in children's books until I hit five years old. I can still remember the day, a few days after the end of kindergarten, when I was bored silly. I was past the children's books and board books. I had read all the intermediate books we had (not many) to death , and Mom and Dad's books were still beyond me. I was kicking around the house, desperate for something to read, and my eyes lit on this row of blue hardback books in the den, just to the right of the fireplace. These were books my brothers read, and maybe, just maybe they weren't beyond me? So I pulled one down and looked. It was a Hardy Boys book, and it had pictures - not many, about six for the whole book, but enough to convince me it wasn't a scary adult book. So I took it off and read it. It took me a few hours, but I liked the story, and went straight into the next one.

Long story short - I read the entire set of Hardy Boys that my brothers possessed at that time (32 plus the dectectives handbook, and two random Nancy Drew books) in the summer between kindergarten and first grade. By the end of the summer it was taking me less than two hours to make it through a book, and I never looked back. In fourth grade at Christmas, my eldest brother gave me some Fantasy for Christmas (Dragonsong, Night Mare, and Ogre, Ogre). By middle school I was reading three or four hours a day every day - more on weekends. On one notable occassion, I killed off the entire Lord of the Rings set, plus The Hobbit in one 27 hour reading marathon. On another I checked 27 horticulture books out of the library on a Friday, and returned them, read, on Monday after school - though this was a bit of a cheat, since the material was often very similar book-to-book.

So I put in those 10,000 hours reading and then some. Small wonder I'm a bibliovore.

Singing on the other hand, I probably log in at the 4,000-6,000 mark - and indeed, I'm a good , strong singer. I stand out a mile in the average church choir - but I'm not even professional performer level, let alone a genius at it. And these days I don't push my skills singing. I just sing at the level I am and enjoy it - so I doubt the time I spend now accrues.

Which brings me to my current most desired skills - karate and writing, which is what I've been pondering since these links came my way. Here, I'm still short of even the 4,000 hour better-than-average range. My best figuring would put me at about 1,000 hours total practice in karate - perhaps bolstered somewhat by the sheer amount of time I spend visualizing and reading and thinking about karate. Still a long way to go. Years, most likely. Likewise for writing, where I come in slightly higher - but not very much - perhaps 2,000 hours.

Which is followed by the next thought - do I want these skills badly enough to put in the 10,000 hours required? Or, presuming I persist in both these pursuits over the years, how many years is it going to take me?

Writing seems more doable - more related to reading, perhaps. I can see myself spending multiple hours a day, every day, writing - even if that's a rarity right now (well, not right now, it is NaNo month, after all). I have trouble seeing myself putting in that kind of daily effort into karate - daily practice, yes, but not hours and hours of it.

On the other hand, it wasn't all that many years ago, I couldn't see myself doing karate at all. Only time will tell.

The To-Do List

2008-11-16T17:42:00.003-05:00

One of the most anxiety-inducing parts of knowing Sensei intends to test me soon, is that I don't actually know everything I need to know for the black belt test yet. I'm not down to polishing, I'm still actively learning new material. Now Sensei knows how fast I can learn (and so do I), but there's still that extra edge of "I don't even know this stuff!" So, I'm putting up a to-do list here, and going to try to make some sort of attempt to sort it out. Ideally, I'd like to have the new stuff down by early January, giving me at least a month, and more likely three months plus to give everything the appropriate polish.

Empty hand katas:
Sunsu - started, unfinished(1-2 classes to learn the remainder - I'm almost there)
Sanchin - not started

Weapons katas:
Tokumine no Kun (1 class to learn the very first bit (reverse-shaping kata), otherwise in excellent shape)
Kusanku Sai - I know the empty hand version, but only know the opening section with sais.

Self-defense
Still need to learn the last 3 patterns. First six in good shape.

Vocabulary is under control.

Essays still need to be written. I have posts on this blog that would do for first draft versions of two of the three essays (more coming soon).

Huh. I think I'm better off than I thought. Sanchin is really the only thing that really worries me on the list. Sunsu is going well (though I need to spend more time at home working it, it's still choppy - largely because I'm so in love with Tokumine no Kun that I spend most of my at-home kata practice working on that .) Kusanku Sai is going to be more a matter of getting reacquainted and comfortable with my sais (Please, Santa, can I have the Sureido sais for Christmas? I've been a very good girl!) than of memory, since I already have the patterns. The self-defense patterns are short and sweet - the main concern is that the people testing them on me really will be trying to deck me, and so far nobody in the dojo has been willing to practice with me full-tilt. I'd hate to get my nose broken at my own black belt test!

But all-in-all, I think that's a pretty doable to-do list for two months.

Yeep!

2008-11-14T12:06:00.002-05:00

Official confirmation from Sensei. He expects (hear this word with a heavy layer of emphasis) that I will be ready to test for my shodan before my birthday (early April), and that he will test me by that point.

I had had an inkling of this from Sensei D a few weeks ago, but when he realized that Sensei had not said anything to me yet, he shut up abruptly.

Bringing up promotion expectations with Sensei is a big no-no with him, you wait until he brings it up, so I've been twitchy about this - wanting to know more, but not daring to ask. (Sensei wouldn't spring a black belt test on me on short notice, would he?)

Though honestly, I can't say I'm less twitchy know that I know. Just twitchy in a slightly more focused way.

Lennox et al.

2008-11-03T19:33:00.002-05:00

I'm back again from the Lennox Legacy tournament. I had an absolute blast this year - the best time I've ever had at the Lennox, and I usually enjoy this tournament.

This year I was able to go up to Akron Friday night, arriving about midnight (as opposed to last year where I left at 2am and arrived 5 minutes after the start). I got up in good time to get to the tournament and change into my gi. One advantage of going to this same tournament every year, is that by now I'm familiar with where everything is, so there's no wasting time thrashing about looking for the Tadmor Shrine, or my hotel, or the local grocery store.

This tournament always starts with a seminar by Hanchi Duessel. Duessel is the highest ranked American in the IWKA (Isshinryu World Karate Association). He's a ninth dan, an elderly but still very fit man who is a vertible font of karate knowledge. If you ever get the chance to pick up a copy of his book Beyond Black Belt, I would recommend it.

This year's seminar started with retraction - the pulling back of the opposing hand as you strike. We covered four different types of retraction (to hip, to solar plexus, to neck, and to the rear) and practiced all of them, with some explication of possible applications for each one. From there we moved into stances, covering Seuichin (horseback riding stance), T stance (Cat stance), and Crane stance (Hook stance). Hanchi Duessel and his second prowled up and down the lines giving corrections and suggestions. I know my T stance improved markedly from their advice. I've been going to these seminars since I was an orange belt, and I feel like every time I'm getting more and more out of them, because I have a bigger base of knowledge to start from.

After the seminar, I got to meet up with someone I have thus far only known on-line (from the Isshinryu women Yahoo forum). Sunshine is aptly named and an absolute delight. She's young (early twenties) and a 2nd dan. She's a font of knowledge, but very humble with it, because she feels like she's young for her rank. She and I spent most of the day where we weren't competing, hanging out watching the rings and talking and talking and talking...

I did not break my streak of last place kata finishes, making this the fourth year running I've finished last in my division in kata at this tournament. However, unlike last year, I feel pretty good about this year's results. Last year I finished last in a good sized division where there were several people who really weren't very good, and none of the judges placed me very high at all. I desperately wanted to go shake them and wail "What did I do wrong?" Even after watching videos, my sensei and I (and a few other consulted black belts) were just puzzled about the results. It wasn't the perfect kata by any means, but it just didn't seem to be as bad as the judges apparently thought it was.

This year I finished third out of three. However, the panel of judges was entirely divided about our respective rankings. My three scores placed me first, second, and third, and my competitors' did likewise, making the final placement rest entirely on score totals. Plus, the judge who placed me first talked to me afterwards (made a point of it), and was extremely complimentary about my flow and timing - two things I was getting negative commentary on last year. A note to those of you who judge - this is possibly the nicest thing any judge has done for me in four years of competing. I was nearly in tears, because it's the first time someone (other than my sensei) has told me I'm doing things right in my kata. I'll take my third place and those compliments over the gold medal any day. Not that I won't work my heart out for gold next year, but now it doesn't feel like a hopeless task.

Kumite was simply weird. They didn't have enough competitors in senior women's kyu ranks to make up a field. (Kata and weapons are co-ed, fighting is split out by gender). So they decided to combine all the kyu ranks into one field, leaving us with a white belt (3 months experience), a blue belt (Taekwondo, first tournament), and two brown belts, both of us with four plus years and multiple tournaments, in the same group. Adding to the weirdness, they then paired the blue and white together, and the two browns together in the first round. Patti (the other brown) beat me in a fairly close fight (3-5 with multiple no decision exchanges). She then demolished the white belt for the gold medal, while I beat the blue belt 5-1 for third. I've made a suggestion for future tournaments that small groups (3-6 competitors) use a Round Robin format before progressing to single elimation, both to give everybody more chances to fight, and to make sure medals are more fairly distributed. I don't particularly care about a third place vs. a second place, but Patti, who actively competes for the year end awards (points given by placing), would have been severely annoyed if I had beaten her and she had been placed third beneath a white belt she could beat easily.

T. also came to the tournament and did very well, with three silver medals, especially impressive since he just recently (in the last month) moved up from the pre-teen intermediate category to the teen advanced category, which is a massive leap in competitiveness and aggresiveness. Sensei did not compete (to my surprise), but instead ran the peewee ring all day. He was slightly miffed at the way a tournament that used to be exclusively Isshinryu (non-Isshinryu people could compete, but had to use Isshinryu katas to compete with.) has become an open tournament, with the only concession to Isshinryu particularly being that all weapons must be Okinawan weapons.

I (along with Sensei and Sunshine) was invited back to the tournament organizer's house for dinner and after-chat. I had a blast with this (and found a new beta reader for Ghost Dancer!), and ended up leaving very late, not getting home until past 1am.

The boys meanwhile, had their time with Daddy. Their costumes were a hit, with multiple people stopping them on the street to take pictures. Unfortunately, the pictures Rob took came out too dark, so sometime here we'll try to stick them back on the boys and post them up. Their report cards also came in this week, and both of them did very well, so all is good on the school front. Plus I really like Robbie's fifth grade teacher, whom I had not had a chance to talk to before this week. She's very sweet, and the fact that she seems to adore Robbie doesn't do her any harm in my book. Robbie is also going to be on the Academic Team again this year. It should start in Febuary to prep for spring competition. He really enjoyed it last year, so I'm looking forward to having him do it again.

NaNo is going. My meter is up in the corner for those following along. I'll only be updating every third or fourth day, due to the extreme slowness of the NaNo boards right now. I may change that once we're back from Great Lakes Games and I'm not trying to cram every spare second into simply not falling too far behind. For example, my actual current count is 3687, while the meter shows 2011, but I won't be updating until tomorrow morning, with whatever number is accurate then.

Still Kicking

2008-10-28T01:10:00.002-04:00

We had my FIL visiting this last two weeks (over the anniversary of Mom W's death), which put a severe damper on my on-line activity. The major activity of the moment is prepping for NaNo, which is going to be a severe squeeze to make work this year. 50,000 words in thirty days is always a tight squeeze, but due to scheduling considerations, it's more like 50,000 words in 20 days for me this year. Yikes!

A more detailed breakdown of why things will be so tight can be found at my LJ account, which is where I'm putting the more technical writing stuff.

Lennox Legacy is this coming Saturday! I head out with my great ambition of not finishing dead last in kata, unlike my previous three appearences there (I have had much better luck in kumite and weapons). I'd feel more secure if I had actually had much practice time in the last week, but not only is that not true, but five of my usual practice times got nixed, due to a day at the car shop, a day at the emergency room with my FIL (he's fine, bad bronchitis), and a day icing my back, which chose to remind me that it does not like extended sitting - such as happens in ER and dealership waiting rooms. Seriously, I sprained my back eleven months ago, isn't it about time it stopped being sensitive about such things?

Oh well, all I can do is practice my little heart out this week and pray that it, plus the prep before this last week will be sufficient. The major problem I seem to have may not be practice affected that much anyway - I don't appear to sell myself well while doing kata, no flair. My technique is good, but it wasn't bad before (so says my sensei and two other black belts after viewing the video), I just don't seem to have that charisma in the ring that arrests the judges' attention. And I'm not sure how to practice that. All I know how to do is to try to make my kata more intense, snappier, more perfect in technique.

So I guess I do that and hope for the best. Sigh.

Yes or No

2008-10-11T12:45:00.002-04:00

Copped from Becky, who got it from Robin.

Only yes or no answers allowed, no explanation unless asked. And away we go!

Over 18? Yes
Danced in front of your mirror naked? Yes
Ever told a lie? Yes
Been arrested? No
Kissed a picture? No
Fallen asleep at work/school? Yes
Held an actual snake? Yes
Ever run a red light? No
Ever drink and drive? No
Been suspended from school? No
Ever been fired from a job? No
Totaled a car/motorbike in an accident? No
Sang karaoke? No
Done something you told yourself you wouldn’t? Yes
Laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose? No
Ever laughed until you wet yourself? No
Caught a snowflake on your tongue? Yes
Kissed in the rain? Yes
Sang in the shower? Yes
Sat on a rooftop? Yes
Thought about your past with regret? Yes
Been pushed in the pool with your clothes on? Yes
Shaved your head? No
Blacked out from drinking? No
Had a gym membership? Yes
Been in a band? No
Shot a gun? No
Liked someone with nobody else knowing about it? Yes
Played strip poker? No
Been to a strip joint? No
Donated Blood? Yes
Liked someone you shouldn’t? Yes
Have a tattoo? No
Have or had any piercings besides ears? No
Made out with a complete stranger? No
Caught someone cheating on you? Yes
Skinny dipped? No
Regret any of your ex’s? Yes
Been to a rodeo? No
Been to a NASCAR race? No
Been in Love? Yes

Regressing to the Front

2008-10-06T23:45:00.003-04:00

We've had three sessions with Tokemine no Kun working with backwards shaping now. I think we'll be doing this again in the future, as sensei is tickled with the results (as am I). There are three of us learning the kata (two first timers, one re-learner). Of the three of us, I'm picking it up fastest, most likely because I'm already comfortable with backwards shaping from piano. I'm loving it. I'm much more secure in each new segment, and can demonstrate it without hesitation within three or four repititions when learning - and I've yet to forget or exclude any sections while practicing at home (which happens with some regularity learning forwards). At the rate I'm moving, I have hopes (slim, but hopes) that I can get Tokemine no Kun down in time for the Lennox Legacy tournament Nov. 1. I wouldn't be likely to place (now that would be a coup for backwards shaping!), but I've done Tsu Yoi Bo to death, and I'd rather do something else, as long as it's not embarrassingly bad.

T, our new brown, is also learning noticeably faster with backwards shaping than forwards. He's not terribly comfortable with it, and tends to stutter at the junctions between new segments and old segments more than with forward learning - yet you can see him getting more confident as he progresses towards the segments he knows better, and even if he doesn't see it, he's definitely got more kata down more securely than he usually does in a week and a half. I would suspect that as he gets used to the weird new learning method, he'll get more adept at adding on, since it's not something that bothers him the other direction.

Sensei D is our re-learner, and also the one with the most trouble with the learning method. I'm not sure if it's interference from already knowing the kata in slightly different form, somewhere buried deep in his hindbrain, or if it's generalized discomfort with the learning pattern, but he doesn't like it much. He is still learning it though, and not noteably slower than he has relearned his other katas.

It's a little hard to tell how much of the difference in speed of learning here is due to comfort with the method, and how much to our more general learning speeds, but all-in-all, this little experiment has been well worth our while thus far.