so there hasn't been much to post about. Boring is great. Boring means no struggles, no angst, no scratching and clawing. You go to class. You learn techniques. You practice. You advance. Not exactly marathon post material. Ok, Thursday was pretty neat. Only Anj, me, Dennis and Joe were there so Anj was teaching. We started off playing dodgeball! I'm serious! It was the boys' idea (the boys are in their mid 50s and 60s, so there is hope for you young people fearing aging). I'm not good at sports but it was really fun, especially when Anj hit Dennis in the back of the head. Hey, dodgeball night is an annual event for the kids so why should they have all the fun? Then we actually got down to work. I got to run through some my current self-defense moves and despite having learned all of them in one day, they are as solid as I thought. Usually I wish we would work on self-defense (rank requirements) in class more often, but not when I understand them and can work on perfecting them at home. I can hardly wait for my next belt test!! I am going to have to make a great impression in class to show that I'm improving because these tests can happen at any time. I also got to work some of the moves that the advanced students (translation: everyone but me) are learning, including sticks, knife (defense against the 'psycho' stab), and even gun disarms (gun disarms don't come until 3rd degree black belt. I wonder how Anj learned them ? :)--she seemed really good at them too. Her brother is a policeman in a suburb called Lake Forest. She was an officer in the Air Force.) She was told to teach us whatever except for grappling, which we ended up doing a bit of anyway. I wished we could have done more although my skills are rapidly diminishing and I hardly remember a thing. They were very impressed with my  key lock and the rear naked choke though. I'm glad that at least on that day I had something to bring to the table because they are always beyond generous with their time and knowledge. It turns out that Dennis has gone to Brujo's Jiu Jitsu. It was fun to compare notes.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, I finally managed to test out of downed position and caught kick escapes. My attention span must be going. I will not be able to force myself to practice these for a long time. We used to have sessions as long as 17 weeks on certain techniques and I was fine with that so I'm not sure why I'm feeling like this...again. Maybe because it's now two days a week vs.one? Maybe the moves used to be more complex; some required private lessons to pass and even more time before they 'came into focus'. I know there used to be more than 2-5 techniques per session, but usually not that many more. It's true that we've done these techniques before, I even remember doing a technique with the kids that is no longer part their version (called 'the bail'), but I never did punch or kick defenses before. I tell myself that I'm going to be working/practicing these techniques for way more than 8 weeks, but that doesn't work. I think it's my attention span.