Sunday

 Teaching beginners, you have to break down a lot of conditioning.  Years and decades of being told not to be rude. Don't swear, don't spit, don't use nasty words and don't touch people inappropriately.  Almost everything that falls under the umbrella of self-defense is rude.  Injuring people is very inappropriate physical contact.  Setting boundaries is yelling at strangers.  "How can you hit someone if you can't even look him in the eye?" –Rory Miller


Pic- Carlos & Rodrigo


Friday: 133.0


FOD: Touch Bridge


While the stuff I ate at the Thai restaurant (the leftovers of which I finished this morning) wasn't diet fare, between that and the broccoli thing CK made for lunch yesterday, it was probably more vegetables than I normally eat in several months. I feel like some kind of granola-crunching healthy person (not that granola is particularly healthy- it's very caloric!)  It would be nice to be down a few more pounds before PSG, although I'm not really up for the kind of effort it would take to get back to 124 at the moment.


Researching for weblit: fun educational fact of the day. You can move your beehives by blocking the entrance at night while the bees are all home, then when you get the hive to the new spot, keep them confined for 1 to 3 days. When you reopen hive, place a distracting object (like a big leafy branch) right in front of the entrance, which will force the bees to reorient before they just peel out and get lost.


I have corrections on forms from my lesson with CK on Friday morning, but I haven't had a chance to transcribe them yet. I'll try to get that done in the next few days. Unfortunately, Cannon Fist seems to have some directional errors. I get turned around 180 degrees, then at a later point I get turned around 180 AGAIN so that I actually finish the form facing in the correct direction. When I had a (single) directional error somewhere in the Chen Dao form, it was a major PITA to track it down and then re-transcribe all the directions in my notes... and this form is about a jillion times longer. I'm dreading the note-revising.


We didn't get time to nitpick other corrections in Cannon Fist, so next visit I'd like to start with that form. The other thing I want to make sure we do next time is some serious sparring, which we also didn't have a chance for this visit.
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Saturday FOD: Southern Mantis Long Form fragment. I'm mixing up the little hop-and-shield here with the similar technique in the Green Dragon form. Mantis: Hop slightly to left with left palm-strike outward at rt shoulder and rt palm-strike at groin (palm down). Rt knee is up. Green Dragon: Little hop to the RIGHT, Black Crane guard toward left (Rt palm at left jaw, left palm outward at left thigh).  Additionally, re: Mantis- ahrrrg, forgetting the double down-block again. As the knee comes up for the strike right after that, don't forget to pivot the toe out on the posting foot. Otherwise the next turn is ludicrous if not impossible.  And... why do I continue to turn all the Mantis fist strikes into Dragon fists? Hello, this is a MANTIS form.


Also Saturday: Unfortunate encounter with ice cream bars at work. Thanks a lot, Archie.
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Sunday FOD: Leopard At Dawn fragment


Bought three fridge-packs of Diet caffeine-free Squirt. It's pretty foul, but I'd like to try to cut down my Dr Pepper habit. I know from past periods of abstinence that it doesn't affect my weight, but I don't care for the caffeine monkey on my back.  Also: made a healthier-than-usual version of my beef/potato/mushroom stew for work lunches this week. Healthier than usual because there are less potatoes and more meat. I have been haunting the about-to-expire bargain meat bin at Safeway, because I found some 30%-off lamb in there recently that I could feed to Richard. I've been picking up random meat for stew and throwing it in the deep freeze; this particular package I totally underestimated and found the crockpot more than half full before I even started adding potatoes.


Housemate's stolen car has been found. The thief left "a big knife" in it. Am I weird if the first thing I thought was not "Fingerprints!" or "OMG, if she'd been *IN* the car, he might have actually KILLED her for it!" but "OOOO- a big knife? What kind of knife? Is it a cool knife? Do we get to keep the knife?"


Cringe-worthy search term of the week on my blog: "kneeling beauty rear view". Jesus, I hope someone wasn't looking to *ME*  to provide that.