Ahhhhh Tuesday!

I don't know whether it was the time change or the coming of spring, but it was crowded enough--with a whole bunch of people all gathered even before practice began. I wish I had been keeping a blog a year ago, so I could compare. It's strange when you can't yet identify seasonalities.

One of our prodigy sensei made godan, which is phenomenal at his age. As much as one wants to envy him his success, then again it's not like it's not a lot a lot of really hard work.

Practice itself was intense--I think my men was on crooked, my himo were fraying, my tenugui was slipping off, and I ended up getting nailed on both my regular and my gyaku-do, or rather inches high enough to leave welts which are only now settling in.

But it was a good practice, even though I felt short of breath and my back felt achey. I had plenty of good keiko, more patient and relaxed than normal. I don't know what other specific details I need to work on, though it's interesting to compare my debana-men type attitude versus my more shikake-kote moods. I'm still not consistent yet, but I think I just need to keep on showing up, keeping on mixing it up, but also to stick to kihon, nice and big.

Shinsa is coming up in just two months! And I won't be able to go four times a week eight months out of the year once I kick off this doctoral thing. So it's going to be hard and tricky to negotiate all that. I should have a goal of at least two practice a week, though.