Minor Milestone

I wasn't able to make it to Monday's class since I had to pick up my wife.  She was returning from a trip up North and it fell dead center in the middle of the classes.  As a good husband I swallow my tongue about my desire to get to class, but honestly I'm always a little glad to miss a class here and there due to wear and tear on the knees.  I just hate missing practice.

This was made painfully clear since it'd been a week since I got to work with Mark and we struggled warming up.  I really hope this was just due to focusing really hard on details, but it felt like Mark was really disoriented.

He said that he had to take multiple falls on the hardwood during Monday's class.  He was so sore that he got yelled at by his wife and doctor (who is a friend).  To get ahead of that we set up pads in case we were going to practice that stuff last night.  Although we didn't I felt better about being proactive.  I have no desire to get dropped over and over again. Reed Sensei is awesome, but he's only forty.  I think he might forget how fragile his two old snowflakes are.  

We did a test celebration last night for the lower belts.  To this end Black belt folks don't participate, but he wanted us to join in to a degree so he had us use components of our kata to emulate portions of the work they were doing.  

We finished up by practicing our katas a few times before time ran out.  After class we worked on application and fine tuning foot work.  Then we switched out so Mark and I could start getting a little farther.  We were able to get to the end, but it wasn't smooth. However it's a bit of a milestone in that we now both know both sides of everything.  The next four months are going to be making it as smooth as possible.  

An example of how rough I am is I get thrown down and need to get back up to stop a punch, but somehow while I was doing that I ended up cutting my achilles meat with my own toenail while getting tangled up.  Ow.