Texas A&M pounds Texas, 80-63

Ah, sweet victory.

I was doing stuff out in the workshop and got delayed getting in for tip-off. I have a completely functional shop, even if it still needs to have cabinets built.

When I got inside, I was apprehensive about turning on the game. I'm glad I turned it on, it was 22-7 when I did. I'm glad that the arrival of the in-laws caused me to get satellite so I was able to watch the game.

I was coughing throughout most of the game as I try to get over this cold. I hope the remnants of the cold don't keep me from aikido this weekend.

Saturday Afternoon at the Dojo 1/19/08

Aikidokas: Tim, Randy, Jeff, Gail, Greg, Trey, and Gary

The Walk: Once

Ukemi: Still turning in on left-sided big falls

Releases: with Jeff. Brutal, absolutely brutal. The style he teaches them at his dojo is quite a bit different than how we normally do them. We did not blend well at all on them.

Techniques:

I served as uke for Gary. Gary's an ex-SEAL who's just recently taken up aikido. We worked on Shomen-ate, Aigamae-ate, and Ushiro-ate. I had a tough time with him the few times I tori'd for him. I did not see the attacks coming.

I like to think he made some progress in understanding the techniques. I know we (Tim and I) pointed out some changes to make: shoulders square, push from your center, etc. We'll see at the seminar in March, I guess. Unless he comes back before then.

Aftermath: None of note.

Friday Night at the Dojo 1/18/08

Aikidokas: Tim, Randy, Kim and Trey

The Walk: as usual.

Ukemi: Ukemi went well. Left side big falls are still weird.

Releases: with Randy. Very, very slowly

Techniques:

The goal of the evening was to have everyone run through their demonstration techniques at least once. So, I had to run through 17, Kim had to run through 10 and Trey had to run through 5.

Mine were ok. I stumbled through Sumi-otoshi and Hiki-otoshi. I forgot what the 13th technique was (Tenkai Kote-hineri). I was beat by the end of the evening.

About all I remember from the rest of the evening (I went first on the techniques) was Trey's Gyakugamea-ate. He didn't have it first, but he kept drawing me out and drawing me out. He was then able to get the eye flash and make me fall. If that had happened in an actual demonstration, I would have given him a green belt no matter what else happened during the demonstration. It was awesome.

Aftermath: None of note

The arrival of the tools

The new woodworking tools have arrived and boy, are the boxes pretty.

3 of them arrived Friday via Southeastern Freight. On pallets. Thankfully, the trucking company knew to bring them out on a truck with a lift gate. Without it, I would not have been able to take delivery.

The driver was a great guy who helped me load the boxes onto my furniture dolly and wheel them into the shop, one by one. It took us the better portion of an hour to get all of them off of the truck and into the shop.

I sent him on his way with some homemade cookies. Looking back, I should have tipped him cash, but I did not even think of it.

Now to uncrate and assemble the contents of the boxes.

Garage sale

Due to the construction, we put a lot of stuff into a storage unit. Now that construction is *this close* to being complete, we're slowly getting stuff out of storage. However, some of that stuff does not need to come back out. It needs to go away.

To achieve that, we had a garage sale on Saturday.

A bunch of stuff from my in-laws, a couple of items from my mom, and a bunch of our own stuff.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous. In the past, we've had a garage sale in the summer and we've closed up shop by 11:00 am to get out of the heat. Saturday, the high was in the low 70's so we were quite happy to stay out selling stuff until 2:00pm.

All of the big stuff (lawn mower, picnic table, table saw) sold. Most of the little stuff sold, too. What didn't sell is now out in front of our house, free for the taking.

While we didn't make a lot of money in absolute terms, we did bring in enough to make it worth our while. And we cleared out a bunch of junk.

Friday Night at the Dojo 1/11/08

Aikidokas: Tim, Randy, Greg, Kim and Trey

The Walk: as usual.

Ukemi: Ukemi went well. Left side big falls are weird at the moment.

Releases: with Greg.

Techniques:

Mae-otoshi: Worked as tori with Greg. I feel like I'm not getting a bump at the chest level on uke. That is kind of tough for me, considering how much taller I am than most.

Shihonagi: Worked with Greg from soups to nuts.

Kote-hineri: Worked with Greg from soups to nuts. Uke's elbow should go through the uke's ear. No grabbing. Non-working hand should aim for uke's elbow, not upper arm.

Shomen-ate: Worked with Greg. Most of the time as uke. I did tori a couple of times and was using a lot of muscle. Snort-do, not aikido.

Aftermath: None of note

At the Movies

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street : 3

A lot of blood. Decent singing. A sad twist at the end.

I'd not seen or heard much about the storyline, so I was a new victim for the story. I enjoyed the film fairly well. My niece did not think much of the singing.

Saturday Afternoon at the dojo - 1/05

Aikidokas: Tim, Randy, Jeff, and Gail

The Walk: Not today

Ukemi: No warm-up ukemi today

Releases: None today

Techniques:

I showed up today to serve as uke for Jeff and Gail on various Nidan and Sandan techniques. A whole bunch of techniques. I think we ended up going through about 10 or so.

Some of them were suwari-waza, so I got to uke from my knees for a few techniques. One of the ones I did not do was Kote-gaeshi from my knees. I'm not sure I'm ready to try that yet. I probably can, but don't feel capable.

I'm trying to guess how many falls I took during the 3 hours. I'd guess around 70, but I don't know if that's close or not. Jeff took some falls for Gail, but I took almost all of the falls for Jeff.

On some of the throws, Jeff was cupping my leading hand. That turned a roll-out into a big fall. No problems. We got that corrected fairly quickly.

I do know that my brain was toast at the end of the session, even just uke'ing.

We've managed to come up with a workable mat layout that eliminates a majority of the sliding and iffy footing.

Aftermath: One nice big bruise on my right forearm. I have no idea how it got there.

Friday Night at the Dojo - 1/04/2008

Aikidokas: Tim, Randy, Larry, Greg, Kim and Trey

The Walk: as usual. Trey got to count for the first time and did well

Ukemi: Ukemi went well. One big fall.

Releases: with Greg.

Techniques:

Shomen-ate: Worked with Greg and Larry on this all night long. Most of the time as uke. I did tori a couple of times and finally feel competent in the new version.

Aftermath: None of note

Friday Night at the Dojo - 12/28

Aikidokas: Tim, Randy, and Trey. I think

The Walk: as usual.

Ukemi: Ukemi went well. Big falls! Big falls! Big falls! Yahoo!

That's about all I remember of the evening. Trying to stay away from a computer while on vacation makes remember bloggable events difficult.

Aftermath: None of note

Saturday Afternoon at the dojo - 12/22

Aikidokas: Tim

The Walk: as usual.

Ukemi: Ukemi went well. No big falls. Soon.

Releases: Per usual.

Techniques:

Sensei Tim and I worked on Sumi, Mae, and Hiki as much as we could.

Since the Christmas holidays have intervened between then and now, that's about all I can remember.