During ukemi practice on Monday, comments were made on how much of the mat I use to fall. At 6'5", I use quite a bit. Discussion ensued and it was determined that a mat needs to be long enough for me to do 3 forward rolls and wide enough to do 2 forward rolls. That square footage, whatever it is, was designated a zrubek.
A mat needs to be 1 zrubek in area plus 1/2 a zrubek in area surrounding the main mat for a "splash zone".
Attendees: Randy, John, Keith, Stacia, and Sheila.
Ukemi: Need to extend my legs on the rolls to slow me down some.
The Walk: ok.
Releases: With Keith. I'm late on a number of releases.
Techniques: With Keith. I worked on my Hiki-taoshi. Working on the footwork. We worked on his Kote-gaeshi. Up to the final throw, most of the time. I did end up taking two big falls right-sided and maybe one on the left. One of the ones on the right side was good. The other one was a little bone-jarring. I remember hearing my jaw slam shut. Apparently, I tried to extend out of the hold instead of turning in to it, causing a bit of a twist in the roll.
Watched a preliminary assessment of Stacia's and Sheila's progress. They're getting close to their hours for green belt. They did pretty well. Better with Keith as uke than with each other as uke.
Aftermath: Not too bad considering the falls. Took ibuprofen as a cautionary measure.
tag : Aikido
It's interesting how much I enjoy painting ammo cans to be used as caches in geocaching.
I picked up a bunch of ammo cans on Friday. 6 of them, I think. 3 small, 2 slightly larger and 1 fairly big one. I painted them Saturday morning and Sunday evening.
1. Spray them all flat black to cover up the bright yellow lettering
2. Grab some leaves, pine needles, etc. for use in painting
3. Use the khaki, forest green, and dark brown spray paints to paint shadows of the leaves onto the cans
4. Spray paint the geocaching information onto the can so folks know its a geocache.
I think I'll try to post some pictures of them up here at some point.
Fun stuff. Creative use of natural materials.
A friend of the family called up over the weekend and offered up some football tickets. This friend is an Old Ag and has decent tickets. Kim took the call and offered to pay the cost of the tickets, but she was told "No". Apparently, the friend wants to chat and catch up on family happenings so he's treating us to the game. And including a parking pass with the tickets. Coool!
So, we'll be at the Aggies' first game of the season. Thankfully, it's a 6 p.m. start. 2 p.m. starts at this time of year are uuuuuuuuuugly hot.
The downside to a 6 p.m. start is that it ends around 10 p.m. We then have to drive 2 1/2 hours home (probably longer, since it'll be football traffic). We'll get home no earlier than 1 a.m.
Gig 'em Aggies!
Attendees: Mike, Carla, Tim, Randy, Robert, Kim, and Jeff and Dan from Killeen. Mike was down to do a seminar on Ni Kata and we had the day free, so we decided to attend.
Ukemi: No warm-up ukemi
The Walk: Not done
We worked through all of the techniques, but I've forgotten most of what we covered. I know I've forgotten the stuff we did early in the day. We worked on getting out of: two-handed grabs from behind, one hand and collar grab from behind, knife strikes from in front and a bunch of others. Around 17 techniques in all, I think.
Kim did remarkably well. Took some back falls and threw me as well.
Aftermath: None, really.
tag : Aikido
Attendees: Keith, Oliver and Kim. Keith and Oliver worked together, so I worked with Kim.
Ukemi: Me trying to figure out what other folks are doing wrong with ukemi is a scary thought.
The Walk: Ran through it a couple of times.
Releases: Spent the entire evening on them. I think we made some progress, but I really don't feel comfortable teaching new folks. Tweaking I can, sort of, do. Figuring out what to correct first for new folks is tough.
We tired out early because we hadn't had dinner before we got to the mat.
Aftermath: Overall ache, probably from the shomen-ates on Wednesday.
tag : Aikido
Posting this for my future reference.
Atemi waza (striking techniques):
1. Shomen-ate ::: straight frontal head strike
2. Aigamae-ate ::: regular facing posture strike
3. Gyakugamea-ate ::: reverse posture strike
4. Gedan-ate ::: low strike
5. Ushiro-ate ::: behind (from the rear) strike
Hiji waza (elbow techniques):
6. Oshi-taoshi ::: knock or push down
7. Ude-gaeshi ::: arm turn
8. Hiki-taoshi ::: pull and push down
9. Ude-hineri ::: arm twist
10. Waki-gatame ::: side of the chest arm lock
Tekubi waza (wrist techniques):
11. Kote-hineri ::: wrist twist
12. Kote-gaeshi ::: wrist turn
13. Tenkai-kote-hineri ::: circular (spinning) wrist twist
14. Shiho-nage ::: four corner (all directions) throw
Uke waza (floating techniques):
15. Mae-otoshi ::: forward drop
16. Sumi-otoshi ::: rear corner drop
17. Hiki-otoshi ::: pull and drop
tag : Aikido
Attendees: Tim, Keith, Stanley, Oliver and Sheila.
Ukemi: Not bad. Got a fair amount of time to work on it.
Did a first pass at knee-walking. Talk about the knees complaining. Wow. A nice amount of burn from the knee joints. Left big toe wasn't terribly happy either.
Releases: Worked with Keith. Spent some time on 5-8, working on timing, pacing and getting under my arm.
Techniques: Worked with Keith on Ude-hineri, trying to get the footwork corrected. Improvement, but still more to go. Then uke'd for Keith on Shomen-ate. Spent 20-30 minutes on it. We bowed out to end class and I continued to uke for Oliver, Stanley and Keith on Shomen-ate and Aigamae-ate.
Aftermath: Not much after class. Felt a little like I'd been run over by a freight train when I got up this morning. Back muscle seems to be getting better. Sternum, where I get stuck for Shomen-ate by shorter folks is a little achey.
tag : Aikido
This week we won 0 out of 3 against "Passing Out", the second place team. Once again, we had a different cast of players. We played decently.
The games were close. Well, the first one wasn't. We had a chance to win the other two, though.
We're in next-to-last place. Mathematically, we are eliminated from playoff contention. We're off next week and then we have one more match.
tag : Volleyball
Attendees: Randy, Keith, Stanley, Oliver, and Sheila.
Ukemi: No problems noted.
The Walk: ok.
Releases: With Stanley. Not much of note, for once.
Techniques: With Keith/Stanley/Oliver. Round-robin type. Worked on #5 and #8. Uke'd for other ones that Randy assigned to tori.
We did a couple of interesting group exercises.
1) Tori stand in the middle of the mat, eyes closed. One of the rest of us comes up to him, grabs either the shoulder, the collar or the wrist. Tori's task is to make a shomen-ate strike, very gently, on uke without opening his eyes. I didn't do very well.
2) Tori stand in the middle of the mat, eyes closed. One of the rest of us comes up to his back with evil intent. Tori's job is to get out of the way of uke just in time to avoid the attack. Almost everyone was able to avoid my attacks. Whether because I came upon them with VERY evil intent, or my weight caused the mat to sink under them more, I don't know.
Aftermath: Still protecting to sore on the left hand. Also a sore muscle in the middle of my back, left side (spinalis dorsi?).
tag : Aikido
Attendees: Keith, Oliver, Sheila and Kim. Keith was running the newly rejuvenated Judo program, so I was running aikido.
Ukemi: Me trying to figure out what other folks are doing wrong with ukemi is a scary thought.
The Walk: Ran through it a couple of times.
Releases: Kim and Sheila worked together. Oliver eventually came over from the Judo side of the mat and worked with Kim on releases while I worked with Sheila.
Techniques: Oliver worked with Kim while I worked with Sheila. We worked on 1, 2 and 5. The height difference is big enough that I did not think I would be a efficient teaching partner for Sheila on 3 and 4. I don't know if Oliver went beyond Shomen-ate with Kim or not.
Aftermath: One muscle in the back is aching, probably from working the convention last weekend. Left foot is slowly getting better.
tag : Aikido
As Kim and I were getting ready to leave the house last night, Kim
spotted one of our local Red-shoulder hawks sitting on our chain link
fence. I rushed to a window in time to see the hawk fly from his perch
to land at the edge of our garden about 15 feet from us.
He looked around in the g/a/r/d/e/n/ weed patch for a minute or so and
then flew off. It appeared he was unsuccessful in his hunt for food.
It sure was neat seeing the eyes of a hawk pop up between random gaps in the weeds. I had no time to get the camera, unfortunately.
I think it was probably a youngster from this year's crop as his head
feathers were not a uniform as an adult's usually are.
tag : Gardening ::: Wildlife
Attendees: Tim, John, Keith, Stanley, Oliver, Stacia and Sheila.
Ukemi: Not bad. Comments from Stanley about twisting.
Releases: Worked with Stanley.
Techniques: Round robin with Keith and Stanley on 6-9. Not pleased that I haven't corrected the footwork for 8 and 9.
Aftermath: Muscle in the left middle back is giving me a little grief. Perhaps from the big fall on Monday? Bandaged up the left hand to protect the injury caused by pegboards at Armadillocon.
tag : Aikido
This week we won 0 out of 3 against "Cogito Ergo Boom", a team that had one only 3 games prior to our match. Once again, we had a different cast of players. We played decently. We won 8 straight points on my serve in the second game.
The games were close, but we should have won them all. We're having Robert set all of the time and I think that's a problem. In our co-ed league, the ladies have to hit it once if we hit it more than once before we send it over. Having a guy set it means there's a 50/50 chance of him being able to set to a guy. If a lady is setting, there's a 100% chance that she can set it to a guy.
We're in next-to-last place. Mathematically, I think would could possibly make the playoffs if we win the rest of our games.
tag : Volleyball
create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands
US, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland and Australia
Attendees: Randy, John, Keith, Oliver, Sheila and Stacia.
Ukemi: Pretty good considering I'd been thinking about Art Show all weekend.
The Walk: ok.
Releases: With John. Did some more tweaking, as usual.
Techniques: With John. Did some work on #11 ( new one for me ) Kote Hineri. It's the same as Oshi Taoshi, only different. :) The main difference is the addition of a wrist bend of uke's hand. Also did some work on Oshi Taoshi as a result.
I uke'd for Keith on some of his stuff, mainly Kote Gaeshi. This is usually a big fall , but since I haven't done big falls Keith was going to have me do roll-outs instead. We worked a lot on him getting me off-balance. Lots of tweaking going on. Then he got it just right. And forgot to let me roll out. So I took my first big fall. A nice, solid, relatively pain-free big fall. We stopped at that point in case it happened again.
Aftermath: Skin burn on my left hand from moving pegboard over the weekend caused a few issues during the session. I hope it's healed to the pain-free stage by Wednesday.
tag : Aikido
Going home.
First task of the day was to get packed up. It looked like I had all of the Art Show and all of my own stuff in my hotel room. And I did.
I need to get all of the packages of mail-in art to the various shippers before getting on the road to Houston. I had to visit USPS, UPS and FedEx to complete that task. It actually did not take that long to accomplish. Maybe an hour or so.
I was on the road home by 11 am and made it home a little before 2 pm. I grabbed the heat-sensitive items out of the truck and then collapsed into bed for a couple of hours of shut-eye.
I needed to be ready for aikido later that evening.
We totaled about $3400 in total sales in the Art Show for the weekend. That's down a little bit from past years, but the convention had reduced attendance because we're hosting WFC later this year and a number of folks could not hit both conventions. Also, our Artist GOH had to cancel at the last minute so we lost the sales we would have made from her art.
tag : Convention :: Travel :: Aikido
Checkout and Tear down.
Sunday morning was when everyone came to pay for and pick up their purchases. A busy couple of hours dealing with the public.
We started tearing down the show at around 2, after all of the artists had picked up their unsold works and Laura had packed up the stuff for the mailin artists.
We managed to get the steel and pegboard taken down, packed up and stowed away in the storage unit by 5:15. That enabled us to get back to the hotel in time to caravan to the County Line for a BBQ dinner. Good stuff.
Got back to the hotel and it was time to reconcile the books. They balanced on the first try!
To celebrate, I went up to the dead dog party and had a few beers. I got to talk some more with Julie Czerneda and kibbitzed a little with Willie Siros before turning into a pumpkin.
tag : Convention :: Travel
More time at the Art Show.
Also during the day was the Charity Auction. Laura D. was willing to be my proxy for the auction since one of us had to stay in the Art Show. I wanted the three books that Julie Czerneda had donated for the auction. "Survival", "Migration" and "Regeneration". The copy of "Regeneration" included two alternate endings. I gave her what seemed like appropriate budgets for the books. I won the first two in the series, but did not win the third. I did win a "Tuckerization" in an Elizabeth Moon novel, though. Laura dashed out during the auction and grabbed me when said item came up for auction. She satyed in the show while I went in and won the bidding.
When the auction was over, the bidder who won the third book came up to me and offered to sell it to me for $40 more than he paid. If I'd been quick on my feet I'd've agreed to the offer, if he donated the extra to the charity. Instead I just declined.
Shortly thereafter we closed the Art Show in order to prep for the Art Auction. We actually had one this year and had 10 items in it. The last minute bidding before the auction was quite lively. The bidding in the auction was lively as well. Once piece started at $15 and made it up to $66 before it was sold.
Some checkout of items occurred after the auction, but traffic died down and I was able to close the show at 9:30 instead of staying open until 10:00.
tag : Convention :: Travel
