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Post Hump Day Update
Sep. 14th, 2012 03:24 pmStruggled with sinus headaches all day and was seriously contemplating blowing off BART practice - until I got a text from James indicating that he and Sylvia were not going. Given that Staffan and Brogan both have to come some distance at $4+/gallon of gas to run practice, teach and bring loaner gear, I pounded down yet more Advil and picked up an iced coffee on the way. Yeh. I guilt-tripped MYSELF.
Brogan never made it with the loaner gear (later saw a FB post that he and Lady James have been trading germs back and forth and are under the weather). Eilis and Tom did, which meant we had to juggle Eilis' and Staffan's gear between the three of us (and Staffan ended up in my gorget when I hit my limit). We worked on the concept of invitations: what this means is looking at your opponent's guard and seeing where he/she is "inviting" you to try to strike (or conversely where you are open to attack). Staffan was not wrong when he pegged me as being more tentative than usual. I think it was a combination of (a) feeling like crap and being painfully aware/guilty of finding myself thinking while in range of being hit, (b) tiring quickly from using Staffan's crowbar of a sword and (c) and wary of Tom's old epee fighting habits which have gotten me hit pretty hard two or three times, though his calibration is improving. (He's also all arms and legs and I'm not fast enough to get past his guard most of the time when I'm not feeling like my head is in a vice. That said, I was staying alive longer than in the past against him.
Eilis is an interesting fight. She's all defense and a relatively small target. She likes tying up people in melee with her big ol' steel buckler, so she's the complete opposite of Jackrabbit Tom. In fact, she does some interesting things with slow timing. I managed to kill her a couple times, but she made me work for it.
In short, I sucked. At least I got out of the house and went.
*************************
I have just been given a reason to blow off fall Collegium. For one thing, I wasn't sure what I wanted to teach. Then Tamsin/Yoko sent me an email introduction to her friend John, along with the program and registration information for the 2012 San Francisco International Conference on Chanoyu and Tea Cultures over at SFSU. The scheduled presentations are on various aspects of tea aesthetics (calligraphy, flower arrangements recorded in early Edo documents, utensils and so forth), so this is going to be far more scholarly than the usual Obon festival tea demonstration! Speaking of which, there's going to be a demonstration of Korean tea ceremony, about which I know zip.
*************************
Off to meet the League of Evil Geniuses gang down in San Gregorio in a little bit. We're camping the Best Buck In The Bay rodeo this year.
Brogan never made it with the loaner gear (later saw a FB post that he and Lady James have been trading germs back and forth and are under the weather). Eilis and Tom did, which meant we had to juggle Eilis' and Staffan's gear between the three of us (and Staffan ended up in my gorget when I hit my limit). We worked on the concept of invitations: what this means is looking at your opponent's guard and seeing where he/she is "inviting" you to try to strike (or conversely where you are open to attack). Staffan was not wrong when he pegged me as being more tentative than usual. I think it was a combination of (a) feeling like crap and being painfully aware/guilty of finding myself thinking while in range of being hit, (b) tiring quickly from using Staffan's crowbar of a sword and (c) and wary of Tom's old epee fighting habits which have gotten me hit pretty hard two or three times, though his calibration is improving. (He's also all arms and legs and I'm not fast enough to get past his guard most of the time when I'm not feeling like my head is in a vice. That said, I was staying alive longer than in the past against him.
Eilis is an interesting fight. She's all defense and a relatively small target. She likes tying up people in melee with her big ol' steel buckler, so she's the complete opposite of Jackrabbit Tom. In fact, she does some interesting things with slow timing. I managed to kill her a couple times, but she made me work for it.
In short, I sucked. At least I got out of the house and went.
*************************
I have just been given a reason to blow off fall Collegium. For one thing, I wasn't sure what I wanted to teach. Then Tamsin/Yoko sent me an email introduction to her friend John, along with the program and registration information for the 2012 San Francisco International Conference on Chanoyu and Tea Cultures over at SFSU. The scheduled presentations are on various aspects of tea aesthetics (calligraphy, flower arrangements recorded in early Edo documents, utensils and so forth), so this is going to be far more scholarly than the usual Obon festival tea demonstration! Speaking of which, there's going to be a demonstration of Korean tea ceremony, about which I know zip.
*************************
Off to meet the League of Evil Geniuses gang down in San Gregorio in a little bit. We're camping the Best Buck In The Bay rodeo this year.
