Monday, October 13, 2008

Bad News/Good News

Hey all two of my confirmed readers! Heehee.

Bad news first. The reason there was no posting last week is because I was battling a nasty, nasty cold and didn't exercise at all.

Good news (there's a lot more of this, luckily): I was well enough to go down to Connecticut to train with O'Sensei. We spent Friday night doing self-defense against knife attacks. Not my strong suit, but it was still amazing being in a roomful of very high-level martial artists. (At a high brown belt I was one of the lowest-ranked people there.) O'Sensei didn't seem himself from what people had described of him, but I found out later that he was stressed and upset due to some stupid martial arts politics. (Yes, they do exist and are in Tae Kwon Do and probably every other art in existence as well.) Afterwards, I found out from Sensei that O'Sensei was supposed to present me with my black belt certificate but politics kept it from happening.

So, I now have two black belts, just not officially yet. Not sure when I will actually be officially promoted because Sensei tends to be absent-minded about such things.

Saturday was the big banquet for O'Sensei's 60th anniversary of teaching. It was really fun to see everyone dressed up. What was truly amusing is that you could tell that most of the people there would have been a lot more comfortable sitting around in their gi's.

More good news: Yesterday Dr. Z and I went on our first hike in months. We decided to do Catamount, which in the end wasn't a good idea for me. I'm bad at rock-scrambling as it is, but I still had vertigo from my cold, which made it even more challenging. After hours of having to balance by sight alone, I was physically and mentally exhausted. I did manage to not fall off the side of the mountain though and am even not that sore this morning.

There's no Karate today because of the holiday, but I plan on trying an easy run and hopefully some canoeing with Dr. Z after work.

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