Caffeine

If you see the situation clearly enough, you can almost always cheat from the other person's point of view.  You can almost always break rules that are only rules that exist in the other person's head.  And that is a huge advantage. -Rory Miller


Sunday: Mulched the roof. Yes, that's right. First, removal of fallen boughs; then, raking the leaves and accumulated mulch off the shingles; and just for extra yuks, scooping gutters.  Still have to clean up the mess around the porch- will do that another day. Ditto, the crap from the rear incline mostly went onto the back porch roof. That is already in the process of collapsing and cannot be walked on. I may be able to get some of it from the ground with the stepladder. Another day.

I had to take off my shoes and socks to do the steepest parts, and haul myself up to the apex by hooking the rake head over the edge and using it to pull myself up. I am the only physically able person in this household who is fit for manual labor, so I get all this sort of fun stuff. And yes, I had a (mini) Dr Pepper when I was done- so there.

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Monday lunchtime BJJ, GB Sea. No caffeine this morning. I felt limp.

I jumped on Crisanne before class, and taught her how to defend each of the things I had done to her last week in the mock tournament. In said tournament, she had also spent a long time trying fruitlessly to cross collar choke me, so I explained why that hadn't been working out for her.  Now I feel better, like I sort of made up for tooling her like that.

Standup: deflect fireman's kick (while turning at the hips), return with an elbow strike. This was just different enough from the Shaolin Black Crane version to royally screw me up. Carlos came over to correct me, shaking his head and saying, "Purple belt, purple belt...." I hate it when he does that... my insecurity immediately starts wailing that he must be regretting my promotion.

Guard pass: opponent has same-side sleeve cuff and cross-lapel grip. You grip hir lapels on the side that s/he has YOUR lapel, and pull your elbow in to constrict hir arm. With the other hand, grab hir pants at the hip. Open your own knee on the pants-grip side, push hir thigh to the mat. back out. KEEP YOUR BACK STRAIGHT and head up (yes, you can do this even if you're bent at the waist). Let go the lapel grip, underhook thigh, grab lapel again, stack, pass.

Drilled with Z. He is tiny, but has awesome pressure when he stacks this pass.

One roll with Lindsey and one with Bryan. I ended up getting one arm trapped over my own body with Bryan, even though I was paying attention to *NOT* letting this happen, since it had happened repeatedly on Friday. Lindsey- freakishly flexible. Very very good at replacing guard- she just folds up and sticks her knees back in there, from any position, no matter how you try to resist.

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Revolution……

In their respective brackets: Looks like Jalen got 3rd in gi (How did that happen? It’s difficult to imagine kids better than Jalen), and Axel got 2nd in no-gi.  Ben got 2nd (his first comp as a purple belt), Kaungren placed 3rd. Kelly got 2nd.  Relax-On-the-Mat got 2nd. Carlos- 1st.   E-man (the kid I bullied!): first in gi, 2nd in intermediate no-gi.  Looks like Cindy’s kids did well, several placements. As usual, GB didn’t win (or even enter) much no-gi at all. It would be nice to have more no-gi classes over there.

Had I competed this cycle, my bracket would have consisted of Amanda- that kick-ass woman from Straight Blast who tooled both me and Kelly last year- and Caitlin Carlucci (who blogs!) and had the gonads to step on the advanced no-gi tournament mat with CINDY last fall. (These were also the two competitors in advanced no-gi. 5 women placed in intermediate no-gi, where I most likely still belong.)  While those girls are scary, the niggling thought persists… well, two niggling thoughts.

1)Even if I pull a Titanic and come in 2nd in a two-person field or 3rd in a 3-person field, at blue belt that still pulled in a cubic buttload of points for my school. At purple, even moreso.

2)Competing is a great way to make myself be disciplined about taking off the extra weight I've collected.

Okay, one more: if I wait another 2 or 3 years, the bolus of great female blue belts that we have right now will turn into a bolus of great female purple belts. Which is incredible. But the option to collect points and medals by losing in shallow brackets will stop being an option in the predictable future.

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Tuesday and Wednesday: walked a mile each way, parking to work and back again. I tried to take the motorcycle to work today, and it up and died on me about a mile down the road. I had to walk back down there this evening and push that sucka all the way back home. There was a hill.

Making a point lately of walking out to get the mail, the trashcans, etc, instead of picking them up with the car on the way in. Extra bits of exercise.

Modest portion control steps, too...

I've been doing well with the caffeinated/sugared pop reduction- two weeks now, and I've been surviving on two 90-cal mini-cans per day. Although this is a cut of several hundred cals per day- as predicted- it does not translate to weight loss for me. I definitely felt the lack of the caffeine push at class on Monday. If that makes me drag too much at class, this could actually BACKFIRE. 

Carlos can be really driving in the weeks leading up to Pans.

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Now that the word is out, I guess, I can say that Cindy is closing her school at the end of the month. She's going to be running a Gracie Barra pod in Mill creek in May. In April, she will be at Bothell. I haven't been to the Bothell pod yet. I'll have to see what the commute is like to these two sites. Mill Creek is getting out into the sticks, but unfortunately that doesn't necessarily save you from the epic Seattle Rush-Four-Hours commute traffic (sometimes RFH is *worse* out in the sticks). Hopefully some of her students will be at Mill Creek- I will miss any that we lose.