Sorry, Ed

Learn to take a beating.  Learn to take it personally; just personally enough for it to drive your desire for improvement.  –Leaahh




I'm making an antlered headdress for the Hunt. Real whitetail sheds, fake ivy, garnets. I tend to heavily favor citrine when it comes to working with stones, but for some reason I'm all over the garnet for this particular venture. It looks like little glittery drops of blood- yet the purplish cast gives it a subtlety that appeals to me, and I expect it will work out to great effect by firelight. I looked up the properties- it's known as the "warrior stone". Heh.

If you ever go to the Puget Sound area, and you have any interest in such things, here's your Mecca- Earthlight Rocks and Minerals. I try to not go in there very often. My credit card begins to whimper in pain as soon as I step over the threshold. Their prices are actually pretty good... I'm enough of a rockhound to know.... I just can't control myself!
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No-gi, GB Belle. Single leg takedowns. Single leg takedowns with guard pass. Takedown spars. Then positional training with rotating partners: from front mount, back mount, Del a Riva, more takedowns.

It was quite an aerobic class, and pick-on-Kitsune-day continued through this class and into the next one. He did the "purple belt, purple belt." thing again. Well, I'd rather have him riding me than giving up and walking away, which he will do on very rare occasions when you're just too inept to bother with any more.

My ribs were doing okay (takedowns notwithstanding), but by the end of warmups for the following
"black belt" class, the room took on the appearance of rotating slowly- and I was beginning to wonder if I was too tired to continue. If we'd done more positional training for the next hour, I think I might have had to bail. However, the next bit turned out to be more brain-straining than body-straining (altho there was some of that too).

Del a Riva guard. Do not sit up- remain on your back. Take your hooking foot and stick the leg out straight so that you are scissoring opponent's far leg. At the same time, switch your grips. Now, take the other foot (the one you thrust against the knee) and bring the leg around in a big circle over your own arm and behind the opponent. Let go of hir ankle and grab the back of the belt. Kick both legs forward. Your hook feet are inside both of hir thighs. Now you have back mount. Don't forget to complete it by getting both hooks situated correctly.  (Carlos: "Keetsune- how many points?" Kitsune: "Uh, four." Carlos: "NONE, because you only have one hook een.")

Next: Del a Riva guard. Same scissoring variation. This time, keep both of the sleeve cuff gips that you already have, and cross the opponent's arms. Use your legs to load hir. Now you have 4 different options on which way to unload. Thrust opponent's X'ed arms the opposite way that you are thrusting hir body. Dumping hir over your head allows you to coninue the roll and finish in front mount. Dumping hir between you legs- if you tip hir body to one side and make sure you have the arms situated correctly- puts you in back mount.

I was a terrible partner to Ed tonight. I needed some help with the techniques, I kicked him in the forehead once while doing that big leg-circle, and then I hurt him by dumping him clumsily over my head. I realized a moment too late that I was rolling right over his face, and scrambled to move my weight, and didn't even notice that I was doing something worse to his ankle at the same time. I apologized all over the place, but I still felt reeeeeeeeeeeeeally bad. I definitely get clumsier when I'm tired- I think I was edging over the line of exhaustion that was beginning to make me an unsafe partner.

Sore and exceedingly exhausted now.