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The next scheduled featured shop is Jewelry by Andrea. She says: "Selling jewelry isn't just a financial transaction for me as each piece I make has meaning and each sale is a compliment."
She's got some really nice, substantial jewelry.
Friday:
Aikido
Saturday
8 mile bike ride
Blueberry muffins
Aikido
Dinner with aikido folks at Golden Island Buffet
Sunday
Mowing
Afternoon and dinner with Val, et al at her place
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Aikidokas: Tim, Mike, Carla, Craig, Jeff, Gail, Larry, Trey, Thor, Troy, Brad
Ukemi: A light warm-up.
Today was a mini-seminar on the last half of the Weapons sections of Koryu Dai San no Kata. We covered offensive Jo and double-bokken. I learned a bunch. I was also taken to task quite a bit for what we call my "monster-face" and my stance when working with the weapons.
Mike, Larry, and Craig were the main instructors for the seminar.
My monster-face is a manifestation of tension. I, usually, occurs when I'm not extremely comfortable with something. Not to say that I'm tension-free when I am comfortable with something, however. I was often told to just let go and do. Don't worry or flinch. Hah! Well, it's something to strive for.
I just had an possible insight. I wonder if the flinching during the techniques has to do with my height? At 6'5" I have to duck under a lot of things. I wonder if seeing the bokken come toward me causes me to want to duck under it?
I think I enjoyed the last technique of the double-bokken the most. It was the most complex, but it really engaged my mind. Here's the sequence: Uke strikes at knee, jabs at right shoulder, jabs at left shoulder, overhead strike, overhead strike.
I have the most trouble with the counter to the left shoulder jab as tori. The tip of my bokken did not want to make a small circle and end up on the inside of uke's bokken. I always ended up in a block with the grip up high and the tip pointing down. I'm going to have to work on that.
Aftermath: Tired. Was standing, learning, and filming for 4 hours. My legs were beat.
Aikidokas: Tim, Trey, Troy, and Dan.
Ukemi: I got a partial warm-up set in, no big falls. I spent quite a bit of time watching Dan. I think he made a big leap in ability this evening. I'm not sure what caused it, but I hope he's able to keep it up so we can move from the crash pad to the regular mats soon.
The Walk: Twice.
Releases: Worked with Dan. We spent quite a bit of time on them.
Techniques:
I worked with Dan on Shomen-ate for about 30 minutes. I think he made some great progress.
He started out intercepting my attack and redirecting it upwards and ending up in my playground. I tried a number of things to eliminate that problem and finally found one that worked. I had him take me off-balance with just his fingertips. It took a few reps, but he was able to do it. I then had him take me off balance with just the fingertips of his pinky and the neighboring finger. He was able to do that. I then had him take my balance with just the outer edge of his pinky and hand. He was able to do that.
An interesting side effect of the attention paid to the off-balance was that his feet ended up in a really strong position. I'm not certain how it happened, and I'm not going to question it.
Aftermath: None of note.
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Yes, a Thursday night session. We're able to get some time on the mat from 8:30 - 9:30 on Thursdays, so we'll see how it goes. This is being used as an opportunity to get the higher belts some time to learn instead of instruct. So, Trey and I are going to be working on our next requirements.
Aikidoka: Tim, Trey, and Troy. Troy's there as an uke who can take a fall.
Techniques:
The first have of class was spent on Koryu Dai Yon no Kata. I worked on the first three techniques. They are the first three releases taken to technique status.
Then Trey got to work on some of Owaza Ju Pon: Aikinage, Ushiro Kube Gatame and Shihonage.
Aftermath: None. This will be a nice addition to the schedule if we can keep it up.
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Friday
Aikido
Had to do some work for the daytime job
Saturday
Blueberry pancakes
Had to do some work for the daytime job
Worjk on Armadillocon Art Show
Aikido (really tweaked a little toe)
Dinner with K and K at Durango's
1/2 price books
Sunday
Had to do some work for the daytime job
Down to Galveston for lunch with K at Star Drug Store
Wandered around the Strand
Started and finished Jack Campbell's "Lost Fleet: Victorious"
Grilled out steaks
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Aikidokas: Tim, Trey, Troy, and Dan.
Ukemi: No warm-up today. I was watching over Dan and did not get on the mat early enough to get the sweeping and my warm-up done.
The Walk: Twice.
Releases: Worked with Dan. Some tweaking on the releases with Dan.
Techniques:
Dan and I did some work on shomen-ate. We spent a lot of time on footwork and made some progress.
After that, I spent some time as uke for Troy on shomen-ate. We had some footwork issues there, as well. Once he got them straightened out, he started nailing me with the technique fairly consistently.
Aftermath: One of my little toes really hurts today. It curled under my foot as I was moving across the mat, so I may have sprained it. We may start working out for an hour on Thursday nights sometime soon.
Aikidokas: Tim, Trey, Sal, and Troy.
Ukemi: I got a full warm-up set in, no big falls.
The Walk: Twice.
Releases: Worked with Troy. I was a bit off on my releases tonight for some reason. Troy did well.
Techniques:
Trey and I did quite a bit of work Waki-gatame. Tim wanted us to play with the technique and see if we could work on the mawashi form of it. I think we managed to come up with something that incorporates the mawashi and the arm bar and will be used for kata demonstrations.
We then spent some time with Troy working on Ushiro-ate and the various entries and off-balances that you can play with for the technique.
Aftermath: None of note.
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ArtFire has just introduced collections. These allow a member to pick a group of itmes they like and publish them as a group. I just created my first one (and managed to not correct the typo in the title). All of the items in it are from my shop. I wanted to try it out with things I knew to begin with:
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I spent the weekend in Raleigh, N.C. attending NASFiC. The con was much smaller than I expected and there was a lot of room to rattle around in, so it may have felt smaller than it actually was.
Thursday
Up at o dark 30 to catch a flight. I arrived around 12:30 local time and caught the city bus into town. Cost $2 Cost of a Super Shuttle: about $20. Worth the savings.
Checked into the hotel, dropped the stuff in the room and went to registration for the con. Went to the Art Show to help hang art. They generally had more folks than they needed most of the weekend.
Dinner was at Patty Greene's: a restaurant and brew pub. I really enjoyed the beers I tried: a Dark Scottish Ale and a Hefe Weisen (sp?).
The walk back to the hotel was an adventure because it was pouring down rain. I walked about 2 miles in the rain, getting partially lost during the trip
Friday
Up at a decent hour to get breakfast at Sam and Wally's nearby. Just ok grub.
Back to the hotel to do some work, and then to the convention center to sit at either the Texas in 2013 bid table, or at the Art Show. Also helped the London in 2014 bid set up their party for the evening.
Dinner was at the Mellow Mushroom, a pizza joint about 2 miles from the hotel. The place was hopping!! I think there were more people in the pizza joint than at the entire convention.
An uneventful walk back to the hotel. I then visited the Texas and London parties before retiring to read.
Saturday
Up and out to breakfast at "The Diner" Good stuff.
Back to the convention center to sit behind my usual two tables. We closed up around 5 pm to go to the "Fannish Inquisition" panel on upcoming Worldcon bids.
Dinner was at Napper Tandy's Irish pub. They had a pretty good shepherd's pie.
Back to the hotel to drop by the London party and the back to the room to read.
Sunday
Breakfast at "The Diner" again. Back to the convention center to sit behind my usual two tables. Then I helped tear down the Art Show. More reading, dinner and then the Dead Dog Party.
Monday
Lazy morning, as my flight wasn't until early afternoon. Caught the city bus into the airport and then flew home.
The next scheduled featured shop is Jewelry by Andrea. She says: "While making jewelry is a relatively new avenue of artistic expression for me, my passion is singing and gardening."
She's got some really nice, substantial jewelry.
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The next scheduled featured shop is Haunted Willow. she may get another week as featured very soon, as the schedule is in flux. She says : "I will craft until the day I die and before that, passing what I learned onto my children. "
She's got a variety of handcrafted decorations as well as soaps and lotions available.
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Aikidokas: Tim, Trey, Brad and Dan.
Ukemi: I got full warm-up set in, no big falls. I watched over Dan some. I think we may have had some light bulbs go off on his right side rolls. We'll have to see what the next time brings.
The Walk: Twice.
Releases: None.
Techniques:
I worked with Brad on Hiki-taoshi and Ude-hineri. He's doing really well on Hiki-taoshi. He's having trouble with the arm bar for the finish. That's not surprising. It's only the second one in the curriculum and it's not an easy one.
Ude-hineri was good for the first time looking at it. I tried to let him feel the motion of uke rocking back and forth, let him see what his happening with my feet and what he should be looking for.
Trey and I then worked on 1, 2, 3, and 4 of standing Koryu Dai San no Kata. He did pretty well. He had them 80-90% nailed by the end of the afternoon.
Aftermath: None of note. Just tired.
Aikidokas: Tim, Trey Brad, Sal and Dan.
Ukemi: I got full warm-up set in, no big falls. The bike bruise did quite a bit of healing over the past week.
The Walk: Twice.
Releases: Worked with Dan. We spent a bit of time on this. At one point we did some work on how to move in aikido: with the ball and big toe of the foot always in contact with the floor, the heel should not be a stake in the ground.
Techniques:
Trey and I did quite a bit of work on aikinage and ushiro kube gatame. These techniques have uke going around in circles. We did quite a bit of work on them, so I went in quite a number of circles. I was a bit dizzy at the end of the evening. Also, ushiro kube gatame is a choke technique, so the dizziness was exacerbated by a few well executed chokes.
Aftermath: A headache from the circling and chokes.
