Well, someone’s lower body isn’t up to the challenge.
Thursday had 2 focused hours of ba gua / taiji / shaolin kung fu. Low intensity, but very productive.
Saturday saw seven hours of constant, mid-intensity workout (half with longsword body mechanics, half with running (gack!) and various conditioning things inc. broad jumps, inverted crab walks, bear crawls, and some random yoga). It had my legs in constant cramps. I guess priming my system with three bananas early on Saturday was possibly too little too late.
Sunday saw another 4 hours of longsword and kung fu.
Probably the best workout week *ever*. Tuesday or Wednesday, I’ll round it out with a focus on upper body and core. It was going to be Monday, but I don’t think I’ll have recovered by then. Exercise totally beats out getting drunk to forget things.
For now, stretching poses an interesting problem. Any major group I try to stretch requires contracting or at the very least compressing another group, which often revolts and cramps.
Re: longsword, thanks to training with Scott, I’m rediscovering some vital basics I’ve neglected for … nigh on 5 years now. It’s not that I never worked them in that time, but I certainly never focused on them for more than a few idle minutes here and there.
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I dislike text messages. Not in and of themselves, but because I get charged $.02 per message.
One or two critical ones here and there, fine.
But some people send me stuff like, “Hey, ’sup man?”
Now even I can afford $.02, but don’t make me pay for your laziness, y’know?
I haven’t said a word to any of them, though, b/c it’s petty and unnecessary.
But recently, the number of spam messages has skyrocketed. I got 2 all last year. So far this calendar year, 4. And after the two I received this morning before I’d had breakfast, I’d had enough.
So I finally registered my number on my service provider’s text messaging site, and set prefs such that only people who know my cell phone nickname can send me messages. And I’m not giving out my nick (which is only semi-obvious). :P
And no one can send messages via e-mail or web. If the sender’s at a computer anyway, send e-mail. If it’s time critical, call. When I finish class or my current appointment, I’ll check back.
And to complement that, I’m being more conscientious about checking my voicemail. :P New voicemail greeting, hopefully no more full inboxes going forward, etc.
..The hell? My subconscious of late has been cheesing me off. As in Limberger-type cheese. Two nights in a row, it might as well have hung up a sign for me to read: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
And then last night, to add insult to injury… I randomly check myself on the scale every few weeks, when I remember to. So I’d been holding steady at 195 for a while. Last night, 185. I was like, “woo hoo,” though some of that was probably dehydration at fault, b/c I didn’t drink enough all day.
So just before I wake up today, I have a little dream vignette where I see my weight hit a new high of 197.
Sheesh.
If my own mind isn’t in my corner, then maybe I’ll just stick to my swords and hammers. And whatever work I can find.
This is me, flipping Morpheus the bird. Tuppin’ liberty.
Despite listening to Irish bubblegum pop last night and minimalist classical all this morning, the last thing I had playing through my head last night and the first thing upon waking today was Queen.
Time waits for nobody
Time waits for nobody
We all must plan our hopes together
Or we’ll have no more future at all
Time waits for nobody
That’s all I can remember, and it just keeps playing on infinite loop. Well, it could be worse — like Portishead at 260 bpm.
Or maybe not so much.
I’ve known the security guard at one of the places I frequent for probably 2 years now. Every week, regular as clockwork.
So her older daughter is getting married in March, and they can’t find a photographer to suit. So she asked me if I could suggest anyone in the $500-$1000 range, me being a student and connected with other students and all. I said well, I could mention it to a couple people. She asked, wait, don’t you take pictures too? And I replied, well, yes, a little — I enjoy candid photography. I’ve never officially done a wedding, and I said so. Family and friend type things often enough, as one of the familial paparazzi.
So I was quick enough on the uptake to recognize an opportunity. I said, why don’t I show you some of my past pics, and if you like what you see, I could do it for her / you. So I got her daughter’s e-mail address, and I’ll be sending along some pics by Monday.
Having hung around enough weddings, I have a vague inkling of offerings and pricing. These folks are pretty working class, and I got the understanding that what they really want is just the goods — a set of nice keepsake photos to trot out every few years for friends and family.
Report on Monday.
Couple nights ago I was hungry after a workout, and the peanut butter crackers I cribbed from work didn’t cut it by 1 a.m. So I stopped by the usual Kroger Signature for some ingredients. Now, they say that one should never go grocery shopping when hungry. That was definitely true, as I browsed for ideas. In the end, I spent just into the teens, b/c I splurged on a jar of olives steeped in olive oil with herbs.
[Random synapse firings remind me that I’ll likely never buy anything but the cheapest dark rum when cooking. Recent taste tests suggest it just doesn’t flippin’ matter. At least to me. Gif, who I once observed finishing a bottle of Mount Gay — on the rocks and without help — in an evening of casual chatting, may have a different opinion. Which will never manifest here, since he doesn’t read this.]
So as I wended my way to and fro amongst the aisles, I crossed through a group of folks hanging out in one of the aisles. I figured 1+ worked there and had just gotten off-shift. One of them asked if sir needed help finding anything. Sir replied that he didn’t merit a “sir” and was just browsing for late-night munchies. We exchanged some light banter, then I moved on.
Halfway across the store, at the olives, it hit me — caprese! Mark and I had just talked about them a few weeks ago. That required passing back by the earlier group, and I was so excited I shook my olives at them and said I had gotten it — caprese!
When I came back that way again, the girl in the group asked me what I’d told them b/c she’d missed it. I repeated myself, and she asked what it was. So I laid it out briefly, and 5 minutes later was talking about parkour with one of the guys. 5 minutes after that, the girl grabbed another guy who wasn’t paying attention, and said, “Honey, he makes swords!”
“Well, a falchion and some knives so far,” I demurred. Close enough, for their purposes. They were gaming geeks, and could identify falchions well enough.
Another of the guys wants to get into kung fu so hard, he’s like Seann William Scott in Bulletproof Monk, even though we both aren’t fond of that movie. And he has a friend who is ex-HACA/ARMA. There seem to be a lot of those around.
An hour and a half later, after a conversation spanning AD&D 2nd through 4th ed, the pope and the Hitlerjugend, art school, leatherworking, yoga, bodyweight conditioning, environmentalism, and spiritual centering (none of which I brought up first), we exchanged e-mail addresses.
Tonight, one of the guys came out to the shop, and proved to be a very able and enthusiastic assistant in the shop. He used to be a Boy Scout, and seems like a do-it-yourselfer, so score one for the shop. We’ll see how Pat turns out in the long run. Initial impressions of long-term qualities are favorable.
In a productive 12 heats or so, we forged the beginnings of some prototype scentstopper pommels out of a 50-lb bar of steel. Pat’s stout forearms were trembling, but he declared our choice of work to be the shit. 15 minutes after he left, I got a call from him asking me if it’d be OK to bring a very interested friend out with him the next time. I said we could meet someplace (for me to vet the guy), and go from there.
OK, so 1st checkpoint passed with honors. Next are the 2nd-visit, 1-month, and 3-month checkpoints. If he passes those, we’re probably set for the 6- and 12-month marks.
And while we were monkeying with the fullering tool (at Mark’s pointed suggestion), Mark was doing round 2 on his first raised copper work. He took the slightly complex four-lobed bowl from last time, and peend out the larger imperfections with his new raising hammers. It looked awesome, though he was less than pleased. I said something less elegant than but along the lines of: You’re seeing it as the sum of 9 hours and probably at least 15,000 imperfect hammer strokes; I’m seeing an intentionally hammer-rough (we’d have used the English wheel in the later stages if a rough texture hadn’t been intended), hand-crafted bowl with some nice curves and lines. He liked the discoloration induced by the annealing heats and quenches, but ended up scrubbing them off.
And every time I see him, he has a new knife or two or three to show, it seems. Plus he’s managing to be a real trooper with work — shut up and soldier, as it is said. Mark is a huge inspiration.
In work news, my Kaplan hours are steadily increasing as things come up — more than I’d thought I’d get. First classes went alright. I think I’ll get into the groove by 2 or 3 or so.
And in further work news, I’m starting to hit the PPAs in hopes that maybe they can get me an in where I’ve been unable under my own sails. :/ Rather not talk about it until I have something to show for it. Grr.
Longsword practices have been really satisfying, though we still have about 5 folks (split between the two practices) missing in action post-holidays. Not too worried about most of them, though have to check on 2.
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