Friday Night at the Dojo 2/15/08

Aikidokas: Tim, and Randy. I had two Nanadans all to myself.

Ukemi: Ukemi went well. Getting pleasant reviews on the big falls

The Walk: Not tonight.

Releases: Not tonight.

Techniques:

I wanted some work on 17, Hiki-otoshi, left-sided. So, we spent some time working through the entry and getting up to gake.

After that, we spent the rest of the evening on hand randori. There are times I feel I'll never get the hang of it. And, when working with the Senseis, it's more likely to feel that way than not. They're just so damn good at it.

Whenever I manage to get the upper hand, I know it's because they're letting it occur. Still, it's a learning tool. And, I supposedly need to be somewhat competent at demonstration-time. They don't do any on-mat review of hand randori capabilities during the demonstration.

Aftermath: None of note

Winter Gardening

After some resting of the sore muscles, it was time for some light gardening. No sod moving. No sand shoveling.

Just some pruning and prepping plants for movement around the yard. The plum tree, Crepe Myrtles, grapes, blackberries and Blood Oranges all got a little trim.

As a benefit, while trimming the Blood Orange, I found I fruit I'd missed when I harvested the rest of them in December. A nice, sweet treat.

Saturday Afternoon at the Dojo 2/9/08

Aikidokas: Tim, Richard, Kim, Trey, and Brad

Ukemi: Ukemi went well.

The Walk: as usual

Releases: with Trey. It was good to work with someone shorter than Larry. Break me out of ruts.

Techniques:

I worked with Brad on Shomen-ate. He'd been away for a while, so we started from the ground floor. He got a couple of throws.

We also had Trey take some pictures of Kim throwing me with Shomen-ate. We're going to add those to the website when Trey gets them to me.

Aftermath: Beat from gardening combined with aikido. Need a drink and/or some ibuprofen. It turns out we're supposed to get new mats for the dojo this weekend. The ones we're falling on at the moment are about 30 years old.

Winter Gardening

According to the calendar it's still winter. According to the weather on Saturday, it was Spring.

We got out and put down two pallets of St. Augustine. During that exercise, we also dug out some clay deposits left behind by the construction folks. Those clay deposits formed a hill on the side of the yard that would cause water to stay near the shop.

With little concern for our muscles, we then spread out a yard of sand in the dog yard. We need to get another yard of sand for the spots we didn't get to with just one yard. We also need a yard of pine bark mulch to give the blueberry plants enough acid.

Much soreness of muscles ensued.

Friday Night at the Dojo 2/8/08

Aikidokas: Tim, Randy, Larry, Greg, Kim and Trey Sensei Raymond was on the sidelines.

Ukemi: Ukemi went well. Completely freaked out on first warm-up roll. I landed safely, but merely by chance, I think. Big falls were cool.

The Walk: as usual

Releases: with Larry. We played around with only left-sided and with tori starting with hands in a neutral position. Weird. Got chided for improper posture from Sensei Raymond.

Techniques:

Larry and I spent the evening working on 17, 16, 15, 14 and 13. In that order. With me as tori.

We spent a lot of time working seeing Larry's reaction to the off-balances and seeing his recovery steps. I need to extend him to a corner on the initial off-balances for the last 4.

For Hiki, the second off-balance needs to continue along the line of the first off balance. Then I disappear.

For Sumi, the second off-balance is about 90 from the first and gake is about 180 degrees from the second off-balance.

Mae-otoshi seems to fall in place after the first off-balance.

The first off-balance for Shiho is the same as the other three.

Aftermath: None of note

I am Greebo

Which Discworld Character are you like (with pics) created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Greebo You are Greebo! The most evil cat in the entire Disc! Due to an old spell, your morphogenic field is a little mixed up, so you sometimes turn into a man. You enjoy killing, raping, torturing, playing with yarn and inspiring fear. When bored, you like to look for wolves to “play" with. Greebo 81% The Librarian 69% Carrot Ironfounderson 63% Death 44% Gytha (Nanny) Ogg 44% Commander Samuel Vimes 38% Lord Havelock Vetinari 25% Cohen The Barbarian 25% Rincewind 19% Esmerelda (Granny) Weatherwax 19%

Saturday Afternoon at the Dojo 2/2/08

Aikidokas: Tim, Randy, Jeff, Gail, and Larry

Ukemi: Ukemi went well. Left side big falls are still weird. The end result is good, but the way I'm getting there is strange.

Techniques:

I went through reps of 14-17 of Ju Nana Hon Kata, some of 3 & 4, and 8, 9 & 10. Working with Larry again. He opened my eyes up to initial off-balances on some of the later techniques.

On Hiki-otoshi, after meeting at ma-ai, I need to take a step to the back corner for the initial off-balance. After that improvement, the technique started flowing.

He also suggested some tweaks for the initial off-balance for 8 and 9. For these techniques, the second off-balance needs to be to a back corner. Actually, it does for #8. For #9 it's the lack of a dramatic second off-blaance that allows uke to recover and react in to Hiki-taoshi.

We discovered something I needed to do to complete Waki-gatamae. After the entry, and the arm-lock, I need to extend the off-balance a bit with a step out. Then I can breathe out and get the tap-out from uke.

Then Larry did some work on 1-5 of Owaza Ju Pon. And I uked for those techniques for the first time. They went well, except for #2. This technique should be a simple front roll for uke. Larry somehow managed to hook the arm onto which I would roll. I ended up taking a big fall, but without any support from tori. I landed on my ribs on the near side to tori, instead of getting further around and landing on the far side. I almost had the wind knocked out of me. Jeff took my place for the rest of Larry's practice.

Aftermath: Sore legs and arms. A couple of bruises. Sore ribs. A good session, though.

Friday Night at the Dojo 2/1/08

Aikidokas: Tim, Randy, and Larry

Ukemi: Ukemi went well. Left side big falls are still weird. The end result is good, but the way I'm getting there is strange.

Techniques:

Larry is going to be demonstrating for his Shodan in March and I'm doing the same for my Ikkyu. We're probably going to uke for each other.

So, the goal was to run through 1-17 of Ju Nana Hon Kata. Actually, it was to run through a dry run of the demonatration. So, we went through the Walk and then the Releases and then the techniques.

I think I tori'd first and, according to the Senseis, did ok. I need work on Sumi-otoshi and Hiki-otoshi. Also Waki-gatamae.

Aftermath: None of note

Tagged with a Meme

Pat over at Mokuren Dojo tagged me with a meme. The rules: "Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!) Find Page 123. Find the first 5 sentences. Post the next 3 sentences. Tag 5 people."

We'll see if I can come up with 5 folks to tag.

The nearest book, here at work is Tad Williams' "Shadowmarch"

"He's a god, afterall."
"You say that so strangely, Qin. Are you feeling ill?"


Who knows if they read here, but what the heck.
Berry at Berry's weblog
Kim at Kim
Melanie at Hoosier-red
Poxbox at Poxbox's Aikido Blog
aikilass2006 at So, you want to start aikido

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.