Return of Terry

 We can choose to step out and avoid everything painful, but that is a form of soul loss and only will make the journey longer and more difficult. - Tasara



Walked to work and back. I wasn't working today, but I had two little biopsies done. I am corpse-pale and heavily freckled, so melanoma loves people like me. Folks, do not wait to have any funky-looking mark checked out. Things to watch for: asymmetrical borders, a variance of colors in the same mark, bigger than a pencil eraser, and a spot that changes appearance over time. You do not need to see all 4 of these to start worrying. You don't even need one- anything that looks the slightest bit odd, have it looked at. Now, not later. Melanoma can be very deadly and fast-moving. Don't forget that you can also have odd marks on your back, scalp or other places that you can't see for yourself. Okay, that's my public service health care message for the day.


Friday evening open mat at Kirkland. No Lamont, to my disappointment. No Shannon, either. Apparently she injured her shoulder. But Terry was there! He brought his girlfriend Chelsea, who is a white belt. We also had Wei, blue-belt Lindsey, and Casey. I got to roll with everybody except Cindy today.

Terry- constantly moving; he makes me tired just watching. "What the hell do you eat to be like this?" "Gluten-free, lots of coffee." I was on the bottom constantly, but I tried to keep moving, because he gives me a bunch of shit if I Clench-N-Cling.

Wei- always a challenge, but I feel like I held my own with him a little better than I usually do.

Casey- I asked him to deep-half me, and I had some semi-successful practice at both defending it in the first place as well as trying to respond to it in ways that DIDN'T involve conceding the sweep and dropping back on my kiester. He showed me a baseball bat variant using the gi tail to wrap-n-trap the far arm. He had me KOB him weirdly high up on his chest- the idea being to bait the person to push your knee with the free hand, whereupon you pin it down with your leg and then choke the snot out of them. Forehead to the mat beside opponent's hip.

Wednesday evening

If anyone strikes my heart, it does not break, but it bursts, and the flame coming out of it becomes a torch on my path.   Hazrat Inayat Khan


Wednesday evening gi class, Sleeper Athletics.

As great as it is to have a small class, it always means you're gonna work your buns off. We started out with just Jalen and Axel and me. We picked up two additional people later on. First, though, drills of that same takedown. Axel stood at one end of the mat and I stood at the other, while Jalen had to run first to me, take me down, then run across the room to Axel, take him down, etc for a total of ten. Axel and I had to do calisthenics (burpees, pushups, etc) while we were waiting our turns- so no downtime!  Everyone got a turn in the middle. Note that if you're not careful how you land this takedown, the opponent can roll you and end on top.

Next: you are in bottom side mount. Frame up, make room, shrimp, matward knee in, replace closed guard. Double sleeve cuff grips. Go to butterfly guard. Feet on hips. Shrimp out a bit, bring left leg around to "lasso" opponent's arm and hook toe behind bicep. Make sure your knee is bowed OUTWARD and not inward (or s/he will push it down and pass). Bring your other foot to that same side of opponent's torso and press the top of the foot to the ribs. GRAB THE PANTS AT THE KNEE on the side of the opponent that you have no feet. (I kept forgetting that part). Push opponent; when s/he pushes back, load hir onto you and then shove hir off to the left. Keep that pants grip till you get opponent on hir back. Roll up to KOB. Baseball bat choke, moving body all the way behind opponent's head and then placing forehead on the mat.

Second technique: start the same as before, but after you get the lasso (again, make sure knee is bowed OUTWARD), place your rt sole on opponent's same side bicep just above the elbow. As you do this, you want to be SITTING UP, not flat on your back (that was my big challenge this time). If you can't sit up, that means you need to shrimp out more and get your butt further away from the opponent. Now- grab behind opponent's tricep on your "lasso" side and yank hir in for a triangle. Your spider-guard foot is the one that goes OVER opponent's neck; the lasso side is the one that you need to bring hir arm in.

Cindy gave me my pick of drill partners, and since I had picked Jalen last time, I picked Axel this time.

Sparring with everyone. I was informed that I was under no circumstances to be in the same position longer that 30 seconds.  I really wanted to try that gi choke that we had practiced in the Old Farts' class last week, and I tried to set it up a few times on Axel- but all of my partners tonight were way too frisky for me to finish setting it up. I was *very* tired during the sparring- the lack of breaks and the sprints-with-burpees interspersed between were brutal. 

Front mount troubleshooting

Many people receive the answer to their prayers, but ignore them- or deny them, because the answers didn’t come in the expected form.  –Sophy Burnham




I was too weary to do a writeup last night; I hope I didn't lose a bunch of stuff.....

Tuesday lunchtime BJJ at GB Bellevue. Many of the same techniques/drills we have done over the past week. We did the grab-the-backs-of-the-heels takedown again, only this time instead of pushing one shin forward and the other back to go to front mount, we folded both shins back on the same side to go to side control. I hope that sometime this week we also cover the technical lift out of this takedown, since I remember doing that before. Having three different options for ending this will hopefully not leave me sitting there on my butt like a big fat panda bear after I get the takedown.
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4:30 basics class- nobody showed up except for me, so I got an hour private with Adrian! Score! We worked on my sorry excuse for front mount. I can't stay put for 3 seconds nor long enough to finish any subs. Adrian wants me to get higher, shoving the opponent's elbows up. I need to fully utilize all my posts, and not be afraid to move them around to try to defend the roll. It's gotten to the point that I'm resigned to getting rolled, and I need to stop accepting that. I can use my head to post (I think this will be a key- I have not been doing this). I can also pull the opponent's head off the mat, which makes it harder for hir to bridge.

Isolating one arm/shoulder can give me an opening to an armbar or mounted triangle. We also addressed isolating the near arm while in top side control.

Adrian suggests that I get my one deep cross collar grip and then hang onto it. Keep the opponent defending chokes, because every time s/he put hir hands up to defend the choke, I can wiggle up into hir armpits a little more. It seems like I am not getting the cross-collar chokes deep enough (STILL!). I frequently get a cross collar choke and then get rolled, and I can't seem to finish them from closed guard.

He also showed me another cool gi-tail choke. This one is from top side control, and uses the nearer gi tail. The hand which is nearest opponent's head, put it behind hir neck. With the other hand, pull the NEAR gi tail across hir chest and feed it to the behind-the-neck hand. It doesn't seem very threatening, but when you grab the outside-knee pants with your other hand and put your forehead down on the mat beside it, it chokes.  (I heart gi-tail chokes!)
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Wednesday lunchtime BJJ at GB Seattle, with Julia!

Same standing roundhouse parry to hip throw as last week. I was nice to Julia and set her down gently.  ;)   I had not been quite as gentle with John yesterday, and he kinda called me on it- he said, "Should I be throwing you harder?" I laughed and said, "I couldn't blame you if you did!" My breakfalls are still kinda clumsy, and I guess the right-sided ones are going to be painful for the rest of my life because of that broken finger.

Hook sweep: You sitting, opponent standing. You have 2 sleeve cuff grips and feet on hips. Switch to a cross-sleeve grip (ie, you grip opponent's left sleeve cuff with your left hand), grab behind opponent's left heel with the rt hand you just freed. Now hook your left toe behind hir rt heel. Push with the foot that you still have on hip, hook that heel out from under. Do not let go of either sleeve cuff or foot. Put your weight on your rt elbow, pull your rt leg under you so that you are belly-down, and stand up. Now you can control the opponent's leg and arm on that side, and go to KOB or side control.

Take the back from closed guard: As opponent reaches for your lapels, you pak sau the arm across your chest and grab the cross inside bicep. Yank opponent forward as you pull with your knees, and place hir front half on the mat beside you. Keep control of the arm. Hip out, stick your lower leg hook in, grab over opponent's back to armpit. Take the back. Do not fall too far to the front so that your are summersaulting off (or leaving your head where opponent can grab it).

Unfortunately Julia pulled a hip flexor, and could not spar afterward (although we did get about 5 min before class). I did one roll with SIDE CONTROL and one with Jason, who just got his black belt last week.

Dave (SIDE CONTROL) mentioned S mount again as an alternative to standard front mount- he uses it on me to great effect (he's pretty much the only person that I can't use the comb-over mount escape on, because he just switches to S mount every time I try to get his foot). Note to self- ask him to work on this specifically with me next time I get a chance to play with him.

I tried to get my gi-tail baseball bat choke on him, but he was spinning away from it. I put my foot over his head, but this time it did not work. He suggests trying to put my forehead to the mat (exactly as Adrian had showed me for the cross-gi-tail choke) instead. Must keep this in mind.

This was the first time I've ever rolled with Jason. He's small (like, *my* size small). So relaxed. I had what seemed to be a nice deep cross collar grip, and then I got another, but I could tell that he wasn't worried about it- he was as relaxed as if he was on his couch with a late night movie on and almost falling into a snooze. I said, "Still not deep enough, huh?" He said, "Nope." Gak!  He was fun, though. I hope I get a chance to work more with him.

Further refinements- baseball bat chokes

Players tend to get attached to fancy techniques and fail to recognize that subtle internalization and refinement  is much more important than the quantity of what is learned…. Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential. - Josh Waitzkin, “The Art Of Learning”

"Bunny Jiu Jitsu" is now blue.... women are invading the ranks of the colored belts in tsunami waves....

Monday evening gi at Sleeper. More neck-squeezing today!

A couple of the same ones we did last week.

Then: You have butterfly guard. Snap neck and bicep down. wrap around head and one arm, gable-grip under opponent's chest. Use the butterfly hook on the side that you have the arm trapped to flip the opponent over. You can run around and entangle hir legs with yours if you wish. Then "RNC" grip and squeeze. This would work for no-gi as well- it didn't use any part of the gi.

Sony caught some flak for being "too nice"... Finally, someone else in here is "too nice"! I think she's even "nicer" than I! She has lovely choke placement, even if she lets go too soon sometimes. Her side control is very good as well.

Lamont is using some calisthenics counts to perch kneeling on one knee with both arms spread out, heels of hands up, eyes closed. He absolutely refuses to tell me what he is doing. Thus I am free to speculate that he is rehearsing a marriage proposal, trying to spin Spiderman silk, or doing a chi exercise which involves attempting to vaccuum Dragon energy out of all of his classmates for his own use.

Rolls with Cindy, Sony and Eric. Sony escaped all of my KOB attempts with alacrity today. I front mounted her about a Brazillion times, and made her do clean upa's with good hip pops and no stinting the arm or leg captures. (I saw Terry doing the same thing to her later, and I called, "You're going to be upa'ing in your dreams tonight!") After she upa'ed me off, I scissor-swept her and front mounted her again. It took her a while to start defending the scissor sweep with any success- or at the very least, scramble after being swept and not just lie there and let me regain front mount.

Eric and Cindy both leglocked and footlocked me upon request, and I tried to escape, with lukewarm success. Eric let me baseball bat choke him about 4 times (both with gi tail and without- I didn't get a chance to try to the gable-grip collarless version, must remember to work that one too). He was running away from them, and prompting me to plant a foot behind his head to hold him there while I finished. I also tried to employ the refinements that Jesse suggested yesterday (more elbows together, more sprawl to the mat, you don't necessarily need to get all the way behind the guy's head).

I was worried about my knee, but it did mostly okay. I was even able to run laps and do (shallow) lunges. The only time it really whined was once when Eric put it in half guard. It hurts now, though. Limping a bit.

I asked Cindy about that spider guard sweep. She confirmed what I had already pretty much decided- that, like kung fu throws, you aren't going to just go up to someone who is standing there flat-footed and try to do this to them. If I'm playing spider-guard and can get the guy to overbalance forward, or commit to a weight-forward attack, then I can do this sweep. Cindy was also pulling her knees abruptly to her chest to overbalance me, then sweeping. That might work for me, especially on smaller guys, but I am going to have to make sure I'm sufficiently underneath them first... and also take them by surprise.

I did have to sit out the last match.... because I thought if I rolled one more, I was gonna upchuck.

I do not heart leglocks

When we have worked hard and succeed at something, we should be allowed to smell the roses.  They key is to recognize that the beauty of those roses lies in their transience. It is drifting away even as we inhale. We enjoy the win fully while taking a deep breath, then we exhale, note the lesson learned, and move onto the next adventure. –Josh Waitzkin, “The Art Of Learning”

This is for Wednesday evening. I was too damn tired to write it up when I got home last night. And then just as I was about to hit the hay, I had to drive an acquaintance to the ER vet so that we could watch the cat she was babysitting for die. Fun evening.

Wednesday Form Of the Day: Bung Bo Kuen. A few fast reps, a few "tai chi speed" reps. Also did a couple reps of the Spear Hand frag, since it's a Mantissy day.

I thought Ginger Snaps (who apologizes to people for submitting them) was the ultimate BJJ apologist. But "Bunny Jiu-Jitsu" is officially the first BJJ blogger I have ever met who feels bad for her opponent because her feet are cold while being footlocked (Google her and see her blog post for yesterday).


Wednesday evening gi at Sleeper. I'll write what I can remember... if I don't do it as soon as I get home, I start losing chunks....

You are in turtle. Opponent is sprawled on your shoulders NS. Poke your head up beside hir ribs on one side. with your OPPOSIDE side hand, grab hir knee/pantleg on the side that your head is poking out. Post out with your leg on the side that your head is poking out. With the other, bring it under you and sit through on the back of your hip. You do not need to raise your body and bench-press the person up during any of this- you can stay hunched low. When you sit out, you need to end with yout body all the way out from under the opponent. Turn and take hir back.

You are in turtle. Opponent is sprawled on your shoulders NS. Perhaps s/he is scooted too far ahead on you. Grab one of hir legs and scoot your body forward (still low, still turtled) till you are under hir pelvis. Bring yourself upright on your knees, adding your second hand to brace the same leg. Now you are in a "wheelbarrow" position with the opponent, only you are turned the wrong way. So turn around (toward the leg that you are holding). There are several ways s/he could fall. Try to pin the legs and get overtop of them.

Same technique as Monday ("We're going to call this a choke." Cindy comments, using much the same conspiratorial expression that Rodrigo uses when he looks at us and says, "This is not illegal, guys.")

Then, a variation using the same opening as Monday: you are kneeling facing opponent, hook hand behind head, snap down, get head and arm. This time: gable grip. You now have a sort of baseball-bat-esque arm formation, with your forearm pressed on the back of hir head. Tighten and suck in, then pull opponent forward a bit so that ideally s/he is faceplanting on the mat. Press and twist with that forearm on the back of hir head to put hir down (Jalen was doing a complete somersault, I was just  kind of flopping over on my side like a dog that'd been shot- which confused me at first, but either was fine. I did need to visualize the somersault in order to remember exactly where to apply pressure). NOw, the arm that is under opponent's head- inch that through a bit more until you can do an "RNC" formation with your arms and squeeze. If you need to, you can sink your own body down toward the mat to finish.

Rolls with everyone except Lamont. Sony did much better tonight with the KOB tutorial. Better shrimp escape, quicker reaction time. I also had her defending chokes, and upa escaping from my front mount (which she had to do clean- trapping the posting arm well and sticking ONE hip up, not two- before I let her reverse me). I got one choke tap on Jalen, but it seemed like he let me set it up for some reason. He got me with that incredibly fast, hard triangle- then, after I commented on it, he promptly did it to me AGAIN. He's not setting it up from guard, which is part of what's confusing me. And again, it's coming in so goddamn fast that I can't even SEE how he's setting it up. If he keeps hitting it on me, I'm going to have to ask him to demo it for me in slo-mo so I can see what the heck I'm dealing with.

Cord tapped me several times as usual (including several leg attacks). This time I was ready for his fast continual flow, and I tried to play his game a little. It seemed to go marginally better than before, but only marginally.

Then I got Terry, who was an exercise in frustration. I was already annoyed with myself for getting caught in several leg attacks by Cord, and then Terry tapped me about eight times- all with leg attacks.

I continue to freeze up whenever anyone attacks my legs. 1)fear of serious, long-term, debilitating and expensive injury, 2)general cluelessness about what is being set up, how it works or how to escape it. It has now progressed to a significant emotional sandtrap situation, which bloats the problem beyond all reason. I really need to fix this. It's crazy to be at purple belt and still be so helpless with leg attacks. Terry and Cindy were trying to help with a few specific escapes when I asked, but Lamont made a snarky comment from the sidelines about the fact that he's been trying to teach me those simple escapes for two years and I'm still clueless (which is true- although shaming me about it isn't really helping my emotional barriers around it).

Anyway: If they have the leg pinned against the front of their body, I need to get my foot on the opponent's butt and use that to pry the leg out. If they have my foot in their armpit, I need to kick the heel forward as if I'm setting a parking brake- not a huge movement, I don't have to sink my leg up to the crotch- but just enough that they're now holding the shin instead of the ankle. Now, remove opponent's foot from your hip hip and hop your butt over it to the outside.  A lapel grip can also help.

To perform the foot-in-the-armpit: have the forearm oriented so that the ligament in the back of opponent's leg is grinding on the blade of your forearm. Slide it down enough so that you're seated in the "natural handle" at the back of the foot. I was trying to do it too high up on the shin (although I think that's a different legitimate sub). Place your foot (on the same side you have their lag trapped) on opponent's hip (on the outside), roll onto your side on THAT side, and arch back, looking over your shoulder (the one that is on the mat). 

I did get a couple of choke taps on Terry (including the gi tail baseball bat, and the sloppy single-forearm-under-the-jaw-and-lean-over-the-head thing that I know is kind of douchebaggy, but I was getting frustrated). I also got one funny armbar that was not an actual technique- it was a creative improvisation, which I am not good at, so that was a thrill. But it was mostly him running a clinic on me, which frustrates the heck out of me.

I also tried the gi-tail baseball bat choke on Cindy. She let me get it almost all the way set up, then abruptly started yelling, "Oh no! Oh, no! I saw that one on your blog! I'm not letting you get that one!" And then she escaped. Razzafrak!

 

Gi tails

This is the universal hand signal for GO AWAY! (Holds handgun in firing position.)



(Pic- that's John on the right, who also got his purple yesterday)

WIP: After not getting anything concrete done on this for a while, I wrote part of a very intense scene this morning. I woke up pre-dawn after sleeping only a few hours, and the scene was just eating my brain.... to the point that I could not go back to sleep- I had to get up and purge it out onto the laptop. It's going to need a ton of revision, because this scene is a collage of a jillion aspects of the story that I want to tie in here... but I got a nice backbone down now. It's intense. I hope it's not too overrwrought. I'm struggling a little with the line between intense and overrwrought. I don't think it's going to be overrwought in context, but taken as a stand-alone snippet, it's probably Way Too Much. Which is unfortunate, because I'm itching to get some kind of excerpt down that would be appropriate to show one of my experienced writer contacts (who has already kindly offered more than once to look at something for me).

It's been an eggy few days. I want to cut my soda consumption down a bit, too, but right now I'm primarily wrestling with a constant, mindless, consuming (heh) desire to snack.

I decided to fleece my (soon-to-be-former) employer's health insurance to get the repeat allergy scratch tests before I lose my insurance at the end of Dec. I'm still experiencing mucho congestion on the $120-per-bottle prescription inhaler. If I get really pumped, I might try to get to the eye doc too.

Thursday lunchtime BJJ at GB Seattle. Starting off with that annoying invisible guy standing behind me with the electric drill between my shoulderblades again. I hate him. On the upside- it does need to get to a certain threshold of pain before whatever it is that I'm doing to trigger it starts to feel really excrutiating. I guess I'm not quite there yet, but maybe soon I can pinpoint the precise culprit.

All rollin', all the time. I had a suspicion that something was up when Carlos put me with several jumbo-sized purple and high blue belt guys that he usually doesn't put me with, because those particular guys are not good at modifying their Hulk Factor. I survived. I didn't sub any of them, but none of them subbed me either- and  furthermore I didn't spend the entire class lying on the bottom like a smashed cockroach. I didn't take any breaks. One of the Hulky high blues clocked me in the temple with his elbow. I have a huge goose egg there now. The prof reprimanded him for putting his weight down on me while I was curled up under his groin, but I was actually okay there because my legs were loaded between us. I did not let him front or side mount me. Bottom side control would quite possibly have been lethal for me with that dude.

I also rolled with a white belt that I've never seen before, who gave me more of a challenge than anyone else on the mat today- all those big colored belts notwithstanding. This white belt has otherwordly open guard skills. I must have charged him eight times, and after the first three, I did it with the mindset of "Now DON'T let him catch you in THAT again," yet he ended up trapping mein the same open guard position every damn time. He was good!

And then... yeah. As I said in the previous post. I'm not really freaking out yet because I'm still in too much shock. John got promoted to purple today as well. It was nice to share it with a good teammate. Carlos hinted that there would be some more promotions tonight, which makes me want to go in... and stay all the way through advanced class.....  I'd really like to see Ben and Ron get promoted to purple, and if Ben at least doesn't get promoted tonight, I'm an aardvark. But whew, I'm tired- he made me work for it today- and my thumped melon aches. Plus, stepping out on the mat in front of all those people, like that.... eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. 


Later...............
Ok, so I made basics and study hall, but bailed before advanced. By the end of basics, my brain was feeling kinda full, and after study hall it was ready to explode. Too bad, because my body actually felt up to another 90 min (ignoring the guy with the drill, and the goose egg (which really only hurts if I touch it... or try to brush my hair)).  The competition class that used to be in this time slot wiped out my body; study hall wipes out my brain. But study hall is my favorite class. I can tell that Carlos really gets off on teaching it, too.

Basics: I drilled with a nice fellow who was visiting from the Federal Way branch. We did baseball bat chokes from side control, using the gi tail. Does this *get* any better? I love playing with gi tails (even if I haven't yet been able to do much live), and I am lately so intrigued with baseball bat chokes.

You are in top side control. Tease opponent's far bottom gi tail out and pull it up behind hir shoulder. Pass it to your other hand- the one behind opponent's head. Your palm is to the mat. Don't pull the gi tail too far behind opponent's head/shoulder- you need to leave room for the second grip.  Double check to make sure you have hir near arm controlled and everything nice & tight.

Now, Slide your other hand in PALM UP to grab the gi tail just under your first grip. Move your body up toward the back of hir head, and choke-a-palooza. The first couple reps, I mistakenly grabbed a lapel grip for my second grip- it worked just as well.

Next: opponent keeps elbow glued to ribs so that you can't get the gi tail under. Wrap that puppy OVER the arm like a sling. Pass the grip exactly as before. Again, double check your control of the near arm and make sure everything is tight. Now use 2nd hand to post on the mat, and slide your knee (the one nearest opponent's feet) onto belly. Now secure the second grip exactly as before. Hop backward a titch with your posting leg, enough to give you room/angle to slide your KOB over the shoulder, spin and kneel behind opponent's head (facing hir feet). I was able to choke easily from here, but if it isn't good yet, you can post your head on the mat beside opponent's bicep (on the side that you DON'T have the gi tail trapped).

If you sling-wrap the arm but the opponent manages to work it out, slide your own arm though the hole, place it across opponent's throat, and scissor the forearms to choke.

Study hall: triangle practice. Hip the heck up. Failing to hip up properly is a common error. I told Lindsey that I think we small females have an edge here, because we *HAVE* to hip up from the very first- otherwise we can't reach! I also gave Lindsey good advice on push/pull violently with opponent's hands as you hip up (thanks Cindy).

Carlos showed us that if opponent tries to turn the trapped arm down and hide it behind your thigh, you have only to hip up and then you can slide your own arm down your buttcheek and scoop that hand right out. I was happy that I knew the answer before he told us- but I didn't know the scoop method. I have grabbed the sleeve cuff and yanked at it, which doesn't always work with strong guys. 

Note also- do not turn the body too much. You must have the *LEG* turned, but Carlos' body stays mostly square. I may be turning the body a titch too much.

2nd half: sweeps from bottom turtle (Today has been a really good day for me!). That one I like. I'm not going to transcribe it all again, because I did that very recently (and I'm getting tired of typing tonight; this has already been a long entry!) Refinements that I did not catch before: Post the head more diagonal than I have been doing. Also: as you roll, keep the hips OFF the mat. This allows you to stick your weight on the opponent better and transition to side mount easier.

The other one: Again, I've transcribed this technique fairly recently. Opposite orientation: for this one you trap the arm nearest the opponent and stick up the diagonal leg furthest from hir. Thrust hir to the ground. Throw your body over hir, END FACING THE FEET (oops, forgot that part the first rep). Hug thighs. Move to side control.

Bonus: You are in turtle and your opponent is hunched over you on the side, with hir NEAR fist in your far collar (wrist under your throat). Wrap your arm around hir elbow, Turn your SHOULDER toward it, and try to join your hands. Wristlock on hir gripping hand, and just to be even more evil, s/he can't pull the damn thing out. This was *only* working well for me on one side- the side that puts opponent's fist at my right jaw.

It looked like a small class gearing up for advanced tonight. I didn't see Ben or Ron come in before I left. I'm pretty sure Lance was going to get promoted, by the way Carlos (and then Casey) oh-so-casually asked him during study hall if he intended to stick around for advanced. Tall Dave was also looking like he might be about to take on a slightly azure haze.  I would have liked to see that, but not bad enough to try to do the advanced class tonight.

Oh, Lindsey mentioned that Sonia is no longer at GB. So that leaves Bree at 4 stripe blue, Kelly at 3 stripe blue, and a few lower women blues. Still good, but a bummer to lose another almost-purple female.