Curriculum

During my black belt confirmation trip to Yakima, Reed Sensei and the others went to great length to talk about the upcoming year.  This was to develop the curriculum to match the other schools in the region and pitch ideas back and forth.  Through a lot of stories I've heard all kinds of the passive-aggressive behavior that the schools have had with one another, but for the most part they want to be on the same page.  However, having a head master who might not be absolutely consistent from time to time creates friction.

An example in Kata.  He tells one school hands are this way and another school that way.  When testing happens one school fails all the tests because their hands are wrong. How is the local instructor supposed to deal with this?  He teaches his students the other version and then they go back.  As you can guess this might create some feelings. 

To contend with this students are taught to expect flaky judgement at tests.  Not fair, but that's the way life is I guess.  Thankfully color belt tests are all done locally so that's all consistent with the local curriculum. 

So after long conversations with the new regional head guy everybody is on the same page about what katas are supposed to be learned.  Another area of contention, but everyone is on the same page.  We'll see how this ends up in a year.  The black belts all had to rapidly learn a relatively simple kata, pinan godan, and get ready to teach it to everyone in bites. 

This process started last night.  Thankfully, this first portion of the kata is fairly simple and the kids were able to absorb it.  We worked on that for half the class, but as the only other black belt I was instructing the kids again.  The little bit of delight in that was that one of the little girls didn't want to touch the boy across from her.  For their age group and skill level we will often have them touch hands so they know how far they need to be for the work.  These two would get farther and farther apart.  Hah! 

The second half of class was spent working on kata with a brown and green belt.  We didn't get to clean too much up, but the practice was nice. 

I ended up missing the second hour due to work.  Sigh.  I'm definitely not advancing at this point.  This summer is going to be a challenge to remain consistent.

Two Senseis And The Cramps

"That's the name of my band.  You've probably never heard of them."
The tongue and cheek comment of many young musicians who like to quote that line in the Rose city seemed appropriate today.  The ridiculous, but fun situations I end up being in made the perfect band title.

Our regular class was a play day because of Celebration on Monday.  In the beginning of class Sensei said, "you can play or you can train."  His wife and I ended up training on the same kata for the whole hour.  It was fairly well needed in my case, just because I hadn't seen regular training in a few weeks.  His wife hadn't even been taught the kata.  So it worked out for the both of us.

I will say this, the children realllyyyy enjoyed their time.  I've never seen 45 minutes been so animated, and loud.

After class was brutally hot in the garage, but I got Daniel and Reed as teachers.  I needed to complete my learning of Pinan Godan.  I'd had the first half down, but needed the last couple of moves.  A simple kata with complex moves.  I suppose they are all that way, but we are supposed to be starting to teach the color belts for the next year so I needed to know what I was doing. 

This year they are going to see if breaking the kata down into digestible sections will work better.  Each section will be taught with it's bunkai in an effort to get the understanding of what's going on increased.  I have to admit I liked doing it that way quite a bit.  The more esoteric movements suddenly have a foundation.

I got  home pleasantly tired, but as I was failing asleep I got a tremendous cramp in the my left foot.  As I brought my foot up to try to massage it my in thigh muscle (maybe the groin?) cramped as well.  The pain had me fall out of bed and try to sort out what position would create relief.  My wife mumbled in her sleep, "straighten your leg."  Which is normally good advice, but as I got to my feet I couldn't stand on the effected foot.  I worried that I had pulled a muscle and walked/drug my foot on my way to the bathroom.

Within a few minutes the muscles unknotted themselves and I was able to lie back down and go to sleep.  Thankfully when I woke this morning I was totally fine!  I'm breathing a sigh of relief.  That leg/thigh cramp was the first of it's kind for me and I was concerned it did some serious. 

Teacher To The Stars

I'm trying to be better at recalling the schedule Sensei has set for class, but because we are getting ready for Celebration (quarterly testing in other words) the content of class has been devoted to getting the under-belts ready. 

Sensei thought he was going to be late and wanted me to start the class, but he showed a little bit early.  I'd spent a couple of minutes practicing the bow-in and didn't realize my part was just Hajime mas.  "Begin we will,"  in English.

Before class Mark gave me a "thank you for training with me" gift!  He's a fine artist so I was fairly pleased but felt dorky since I don't have anything for him.  My wife was happy because that's going to go up on a wall somewhere. 

Since we had time we ended up practicing bo kata and then Pinan Godan or as much as we could recall.

Class started and I knew where it was going to go before we even bowed in.  Time to teach the girls. Sigh.  However, I was only given Niva and without her cousin it was like a breath of fresh air.  She paid attention and didn't get distracted!  I felt like a real teacher!

After about twenty minutes I was working on some self-defense with a group of four kids.  That went fairly well, but spacing and timing went poorly.  Again, it was pretty good considering the newness of the students.

A whole class of teaching!  Who would have thought.

Relativity

A big part of my life is wrapped up around people visiting during the summer months.  Our home in the Rose city is pretty big so having visitors has become a fairly regular.  This summer we have exactly no weekends free.  Our current visitors are my cousin and her family from PA and that's been pretty great.  I don't have a sister and she's pretty much the closest thing I've got in that case and I also get along pretty well with her husband.

While they get out and tour around I try to see what my schedule looks like and what I can fit in.  Thankfully I was able to go to the first hour of karate last night.  I thought we were going to be doing a false celebration to get the students ready, and I was partially correct.  I was given to the brown belts and told to run through their test.  We had forty-five minutes and I didn't think that was going to work.  The Black-belt exam is pretty extensive and usually takes an hour at the very least. 

However, I was given some unique instruction. Don't chit chat, and keep the flow.  Don't stop to critique.  With that we flew through a lot of the material, but they suffered in a few spots.  Their kata was fine, but remembering the sheer volume of bunkai bogged them down in a few spots.  When they didn't know something I had to move them to the next component.  I'd say they knew ninety percent of the material, but I got them through the whole test in forty-five minutes. 

My wife asked later if they would have passed.  "Oh hell no," I replied.  They've got four months or so to be ready.

Class ranks have swelled and remained fairly consistent.  We've usually got ten children regularly and now have a returning black-belt, Anthony, so the class can be up to 18 members at times. 

Maybe Wednesday I'll get a little more time to work out since the family will be out on tour.  I think my wife already has plans for labor tonight.

Random Stuff

I'm not sure I forgot to post in the last week or so, but the slew of summer visitors has now arrived and my attendance is a bit spotty as a result.  

Tonight was still warm, but Mark and I were there early and worked on the staff kata for a bit.  Thankfully Kyle showed up and helped with a lot of the basic work, but I was already sweating by the time we bowed in.  

We had a long and interesting warmup.  By that I mean that we were introduced to push ups and crunches.  We don't normally do this stuff, so it was a nice change of pace, but he wanted the young students to know about it for the future. 

I ended up working with four kids on downward blocks for quite some time.  Normally I hate that kind of thing, but all four are very dedicated and serious so the time flew by.  

We finished up doing a little back and forth with Nifanshi Oyo.  My two kids knew it pretty well and took instruction very well.

Off topic - I have a sunburn.  My skin feels very tight and it's of course very sensitive.  Ironically going to Karate made me feel better in the sense that sweating and moving seemed to loosen things up.

On an another totally unrelated issue.  My Mom's dementia seems to be kept in check for the last couple of weeks, but she told me that when she missed my phone call in the morning she couldn't remember how to hit redial or call me and just sat and cried waiting for me to call back.  That just guts me.  Thankfully Karate was there and I didn't have to think about that for an hour.  Sigh.

Burning All The Way

We lost every bit of Spring this year.  We went from the fifties to the eighties over night and it doesn't look we have any relief in site.  So this means Karate class is going to be insufferable due to the heat. 

Thankfully the club where we hold the class is air conditioned, but it appeared to be labored and just the barest activity brought the sweat out.  I probably wear the lightest of all our gis, but I was dribbling just trying to help a few of the tiny girls work on a kata.  There seems to be a regular ten children coming which is nice for the class, but it means that the old folks don't get to do much in terms of learning new stuff, but we are getting a lot in terms of teaching kids.

As I've grumped before that the kids can be challenging to me.  The two girls I got are cousins and love to laugh and giggle.  They are sweet and relatively nice, but they have a hard time digging into the details.  I'm afraid I'm not much of a teacher for that age group, but I know the kata they are learning so it's off to the races.  After a half hour I was much relieved to be given to Ivanna Sensei.

Ivanna is still in high school and is very quiet, but she's a second degree black belt and knows the material I'll be learning very well.  We reviewed Haku Cho and cleaned up some hand locations and chatted about the bunkai.  I hadn't realized that I needed to learn ten kata for my second degree.  I was under the impression it was five.  Whatever, I learn and move on.

Second hour (afterclass) was off because Daniel Sensei is moving, but Reed offered to go to the park if we wanted to train.  I wanted to train, but it was 92 degrees out.  No thanks. 

I surprised my wife by showing up early so we were able to have a date night on a Monday!

Laughing All The Way

I got in from the East Coast late on Monday.  For those of you that haven't read the past few posts, I had to travel out visit my parents.  Unfortunately my Mother has worsening symptoms around dementia.  It's absolutely the worse and my Father isn't in the best health to help manage around the house.  It's a soul-sucking situation. 

I'm normally very easy to laugh, but with the combo of jet lag and the situation I haven't found anything very light.  Every time I do laugh I feel guilty and so on.

I haven't sleep well for five days, but I know if I didn't get at least some exercise it would be even worse.  I opted going to the first hour knowing it was going to be sparring, but that suited me. 

The only problem is that the kids are so inexperienced that Reed Sensei is trying to get everyone to learn basic etiquette around the ring and how to handle themselves.  He's pretty clever so instead of working on tactics too much he opted to make it a game. 

We got pool noodle swords and had regular matches instead of punching and kicking we were waving around the swords.  I actually caught myself laughing for a really long time, but upon leaving class I was returned to reality.  Yuck.

On a side note we are starting to build a website for the class.  If we get one regular student out of it we will have paid for in one month!

I still have to order my belt with name and school.  Getting a translation out of someone who can actually read and write in Japanese is a bit of challenge.  I'm concerned that I'll get something silly by accident.

And So It Begins

Despite still being a bit wiped out from the weekend I was anxious to get to class to see what was next!  MaryAnn had planted a bug in my ear about the day after you get your sho dan (first degree).  You get to do something else! 

It hadn't dawned upon me that I was actually going to get to practice something else for once.  I've been working on Kyoku Roku Dan and Nifanshi Sho Dan for so a whole year so getting to look at something else was absolutely novel.

Regular class is taking on a new vigor.  A majority of the students are young folks from the ages of 6 to 13.  I think we have eight children most of the time now with new ones appearing all the time.  Last night we got a new kid and I was assigned to him after warmups to work on the basics.  Normally, I don't care for this kind of thing because kids have even less attention span than I do, but he did great.  Probably a half hour of straight work and he got better and better as time went on.  I was very impressed.

My guess is that this is going to be the nature of things for some time.  Work on getting the kids up to their next belt and then work on our own stuff in the background.  It doesn't feel fair since we pay the same amount, but the focus of the school to maintain the current students is very important if we want to ever expand again. 

To that end I hope to start working on a rudimentary website for the class/school.  Reed Sensei's wife is open to the idea and working on a possible e-commerce idea so folks can pay through the site!  Talk about forward thinking.  I was just hoping to have something folks could find if they were searching online.

After class was pretty exciting in that I got to learn a new kata.  Haku Cho is the first of the bird style forms I have to learn for my second degree blackbelt.  The next part of my life is two years of White Crane kata in order to get there.  I'm a big bird!

Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in a Kama (little scythes) as well.

Post Confirmation - Shūdokan 140

I'm trying to reflect on the whole year and compress it into one post.  The simple fact is that I'm still processing what happened during the confirmation test and basking in the fact that that piece is done.  

Me and four others went to Yakima Washington to the main school there.  They have a rigid schedule of testing every four months.  We were unsure of the numbers of people testing, so it was some surprise that we found out it was Mark, me and a 12 year old boy doing the confirmation.  The confirmation is done one year after a blackbelt has been awarded, but the certificate has not been written up.  This is a measure to "weed out" folks that can't fully commit to what the belt means.  I gather about one third of the folks that passed the belt test are only the only ones that make it through confirmation.

The test only lasts about an hour, but like clock work we got through all the basics and then messed up during the big application series.  Somewhere on the second run through we got turned around and ended up completing the whole series as if I attacked again.  I was so embarrassed.  

The thing is that the confirmation doesn't come with any penalty connected to it.  So no matter how bad we messed things up we were going to get our certificate.  The point is to show commitment for a year be a good person.  I just felt chagrined that I didn't do the test as well as I could of, but I also feel chagrined that I put so much emotional stake that I felt embarrassed.  Mark was so relaxed about it.  He totally didn't care; he was just glad to be done.  

We spent the rest of the time judging other tests and reviewing the politics of the dojos and what new leadership meant.  Our Shihan is retiring and a leader from a nearby school is taking over.  There really isn't any wrinkles, but the minute details took hours of talking to sort out.  I surprised myself in taking an interest and hoping to participate a bit more in the workings of the dojo.  

I thought I would be more emotional at the ceremony, but I was too overwhelmed trying to figure out what to do and where to go to feel properly grounded in the moment.  I can say that it's better, because open weeping might have been too much.

Tater is second to the right

One Day To Go1

Tomorrow is the big day!  I'm having constantly rotating feelings of excitement and nerves (which I would assume are two sides of the same coin).  The calms I'm experiencing between the nerves allow me to reflect on the fact in scheme of things this isn't that massive a deal for anyone else but me.  All the senseis have pointed out this is confirmation so actual testing is off the table.  In fact clips boards are put down so the judges can sit and watch. 

I hear what they are saying, but my internal mechanisms push me to be the best that I can be.  My ability is a reflection of the training I've received in the last year and a reflection of the teachers that have spent time on me.  To do poorly shows a bad reflection on the teacher and school. 

To be honest I feel pretty good about the whole thing.  Just as long as we have plenty of time to warm up I think we'll be pretty good to go.  Mark and I look pretty good after three run-throughs. 

Case in point - we spent a majority of the class running through the test and identifying any quick issues we could change in the next day.   So by the after class we'd done the run-through about two times.  During the after class we had another technical run of the test.  We did fairly well, but had two sticking points which drive me bananas.  However, the judges said it was fine and we should do fine. 

The intriguing advice was to keep thinking about two moves ahead and not so much on the current one.  I guess trust that when we are in action we do great, but if we start thinking we have a tendency to catch ourselves.  Durp!

To add to the excitement of the big day MaryAnn told me that when they went to get hotel rooms there was only one left.  A fact that I told them two weeks ago.  Now they are all going to share a room, so I feel like I should share my room to ease the crowding, but I got the room so I could have my own space.  Ah well, for the good of the order I suppose.  But, it sure is some poor planning for a group of folks that's done this for years.  I guess it's rare that the hotel is ever booked up.  It's not like we are going to have a lot time to hang out though.  I gather the whole evening can last till 1am, so we'll head to bed and crash and then get up and do it again the next day for the under belt testing. 

I took the day off tomorrow so I can sleep in. I don't want tomorrow to be filled with yawns as the evening plows on. 

Protocol And Behavior

Class whistled by at high speed.  The new norm is all the kids need work on the basics and the ones that have been there are bored in the extreme about the learning process.  Of course that means that Mark and I get selected to help the young kids with the kata we are working on at the moment.  Nifanshi Sho Dan isn't necessarily a complex kata, but it has a lot of detail.  Trying to get 12 folks to pay attention and get most of it right is a bit of a challenge.  Not my best work.

Mark and I warmed up early and got some practice in.  He's exuding a lot of patience and calm, because his blackbelt test was so difficult.  However, he's vexing me because he still forgets two parts.  However, I'm not much better.  I still like to mess up a few spots, but I'm stressed because I don't want to do that.  But as Reed Sensei points out, get ready for when you make the error, because you will.

After class was all about the confirmation and what to do and how to act.  We literally spent the whole time covering all the questions that I could think of.  I was honestly a little thankful for the break.  I'm vaguely sore all over and Reed pointed out that he was very sore.  He's gone all in on training, but it sounds like a classic case of not giving himself enough time to rest.  Every day for hours at a time doesn't sound great, but he's a machine. 

Friday is the big day!

The Run Down

Reed, Daniel, Mark and I met on Saturday and ended up working out for three hours.  I was glad to have the time to work on everything, but I was left amazed that we spent that much time on all sorts of things.  I'm not sure I'm going to remember everything (or much for that matter), but the take away continues to be - you're doing great and you are always going to have something to work on. 

Hand locations, deeper stances, what to do when you forget, etc.  They all littered our conversation the whole time.  And I couldn't believe they were spending all this time on us!  Reed has been working on his test materials for three to six hours a day!  His wife and kids, all of whom are in class, understand this, but I bet he is straining things a bit.  We only have a the remainder of this week to get ready and my blood pressure is up. 

I don't think it's only because of the test, but my family issues are changing on the hour and emotionally robbing me of my ability to be in the present.  Thankfully, Karate keeps me in the present, so I'm hoping tonight's practice goes well. 

The Run Through

Now that Sensei has created a schedule he appears to be sticking with it.  This means that one Wednesday will be self defense and one will be sparring.  The whole class was mostly children so Mark and I popped off to the corner to work on our test.

Previous to class we worked tirelessly on getting rid of bad behaviors and this was pretty good during the class time, but it was a different story later.

After about a half hour Reed asked to help out with directing the kids behavior during the self-defense practices.  It wasn't for me to say, but I thought he was going into some pretty complex moves for fairly small  kids.  For my troubles, the six year old accidentally gave me an elbow to the face and I chomped my tongue.

I was often selected as Uke during the demos and this meant taking falls on the hardwood.  I mean I'm glad he knows that I can do it, but damn after the fourth or fifth fall I thought I'd said something to piss him off.  Part of the setup was a grab at the shoulder and his hands were taking handfuls of my skin.  When I took my top off later I could already see the black and blues starting.  That's going to look stellar tomorrow.

So that wore me down pretty well, but it was off to after class.  They had us run through a practice test.  We had four judges and then made us do everything twice to make it a bit more difficult.  I was wheezing horribly at midpoint, but we made it through.  Without going into too much detail about the corrections (because at this point it's become ad nauseam) the main point I came up with is to keep my mouth shut and try to recover as smoothly as possible after an error.

Today's practice was from 3:45 to 7:30.  I still have to pick my wife up at the airport at 10pm.  I see a short, hard night of sleep tonight.

10 Days To Go!

"So how do you feel about things?", asked Reed Sensei.

"If you asked me a year ago that I'd even have any of this vaguely looking like I knew what I was doing, I would have said you're probably crazy.  That being said, I'm pretty darn happy that everything looks fairly good after a year of hard work.  My biggest concern being that I recover from an error without looking too bad," I replied.

Not the most auspicious conversation, but it was illustrative of where I'm at in the process.  Normally Reed will simply state, "You are doing great and could do the test no problem; I just like to see things more refined".  He no longer says that, but asks how I feel about my progress.  

Mark likes to point out that that Reed will try to refine our moves up to two days before the test.  At that point he says, "you are good to go".  That got me a chuckle, because Reed could always find something to address, but he knows at a certain point we just aren't going to be able to much more.  Frankly, I'm still fascinated that he's spotting stuff that I've actually forgotten and have had to re-add.  

I finished my on-call week on Friday, but didn't get any additional practice this weekend.  Which is a shame, but at the same time I need a break from it.  I'm definitely at the point where the repetition is becoming onerous.  I'll be glad to be doing something a bit different. 

So I returned to the regular class last night and it was back to the schedule.  However after warmup was complete Mark and I were directed to run through the test.  I welcome the practice.  Since Mark hasn't been able to practice for nearly a week his rust was showing.  After three runs we looked pretty good.  However, I notice if we do it around six times he starts mixing up portions of the kata.  If I make a mistake we fall apart as well.  

After class we ran through the class with only a few corrections in the kata portion.  Almost no corrections in the bunkai and then it was on to the applications.  We had a few hiccups, but the second time we looked pretty good!  

Now to make hotel reservations! 
 

Uke

Daniel and Reed are getting together whenever they can so they can knock of Reed's requirements for his test. I believe he's going for his 5th degree?  He has to show 10 kata and create bunkai for all of it.  Very exciting stuff. 

We meet at the garage again around 5:30 and got started going through my test requirements.  Although there was a lot of notes on the my first kata we were able to get through all the requirements and do some extra refinement before my alarm went off. 

Since I really didn't have anything important to get back to at home I drug my leaving out.  Thus I got to participate in their bunkai contstruction.  Our school requires that the moves from a kata need to show a practical or impractical move to go with them.  Since there is no right or wrong move the imagination of the presenter can make for some interesting interpretation.  

Reed wanted me to work with Daniel so he could see how it looked.  This meant taking a lot of twisting falls.  Since I was warmed up it was enjoyable to be helping, but last night after I got out of the shower I noticed I was pretty stiff.  This morning was not enjoyable getting out of bed.  Urgh.

However, the savagery of the session was what I needed.  The continuing flow of information about my Mom and Dad is like being punched in the gut over and over.  Karate provided a nice escape for several hours.  Coming back to the empty house wasn't great.

Speed Test - 14 Days!

I'm still on call so I was only able to go the after class last night.  Which turned out to be fairly awesome.  Daniel Sensei and I chatted for some time and I realized no one was showing up.  So we ran through my test and I don't recall ever going through things so quickly before.  I was literally wheezing by the time we finished up. 

I hadn't realized that Mark and me have a pace that we go through and we tend to stop and rework things off and on.  Consequently it takes us about 15 to 20 to finish.  I think it took Daniel and I about 10 minutes altogether. 

Reed showed up a little later and ran me through my Kyoku kata.  He originally wanted to run through my whole test, but we ended up reviewing a lot to work on in the kata.  I can't say that I was frustrated, but I sure thought I was doing a bit better than his corrections would indicate. 

Due to the feeling of pressure to get ready, Reed and Daniel are trying to meet as much as possible.  So we'll be meeting again tonight to run through stuff again, but I was unable to practice much.  So hopefully I'll fix a few things tonight.

18 Days To Go

I keep telling myself that I am feeling pretty good about the test coming up.  I've been studying this stuff for a year and Mark and I get through it pretty easily, but there is always errors.  I don't think we've gone through our application song and dance without at least one hiccup.  I had my wife video us but I'm actually dreading looking at it.  We hadn't warmed so we were a mess to be sure.  After about three run throughs we looked okay.  

I'm currently on call so I'm living a weird schedule.  I can't be farther than 20 minutes away from a computer at any given time so going to class is out of bounds, but that's more because if falls before 5 pm.  My real time shift ends at five.  So Mark took pity on me and came out to my place to practice for an hour so I could be close to work.  Although I didn't get any emergencies I was able to get work done during the hour I had to sit here.  

After class was just a run through over and over again of our long application string.  We picked up a few fixes (open hands with closed fingers, and step this way not the other), but by and large we looked pretty good.

I'm glad we are fairly decent because my mind is occupied with all kinds of issues with my Mom.  My wife, who is retired, is heading out to the east coast tonight to be with my parents for a couple of days.  Organizing care and getting insurance to pay for it is a learning experience for everyone.  I'll be going out the weekend after my test.  

Submitted!

It was kind of a big deal last night as I turned in my Black belt paper/thesis.  I went through six revisions and two modest rewrites to come to a grand total of five double spaced pages. What a joke.  I remember suffering through writing my masters thesis and some other big research papers that probably took less time and effort than these five pages.  I mean I love what I wrote, but I'm guessing after it's read once or twice it's going to go in a folder somewhere and influence exactly no one.  My wife enjoyed reading it though and it provoked a few good discussions.

I also turned in my testing fee last week (or farther back), so I'm on track.  I just need to rent a hotel room for the night of testing and I'll be ready to go. 

Reed Sensei wants to put a little structure into class so one Wednesday a month we'll do self defense and another we'll do sparring.  That makes for something to look forward to! 

Mark has returned from a bit of illness and was ready to go.  We practiced before class and got the first half of class to work on some of the test material.  The second half was dedicated to "self defense".  In actuality we worked on our elbow techniques.  The moves are considered something of a Shudokan thing.  I don't think we are doing anything that would be considered earth shattering or unique, but they are "fun" and interesting.  About half way through we went into choking.  We worked on escape and such.  At end of class everyone had red necks and messed up hair.  A sign of a good class.

After class consisted of me and Mark going through the test components.  Lots of fine tuning, but by the time I left we were looking fairly good.  With 21 days to go I think we can still work on being better, but for the first time I'm feeling very good about where we are at.

23 Days To Go (Shūdokan 130)

I like to reserve this blog for writing specifically about class but my regular life is feeling like it's impacting things at the moment.  My Mom started developing Dementia symptoms a few years back and they've been accelerating at an alarming pace lately.  After a bout of sickness that was mishandled by my Dad and her she had to go to the hospital.  Things are in a messy state because my Dad is having troubles making clear headed decisions.  My wife has volunteered to travel to the East coast to help him out while they try to put their affairs into order.

I'm consumed with guilt about not being there, but it's not that I could have done much except fretting and generally pulled my hair out.  It all seems so chaotic with no clear idea of what to do next. 

Last night I was just starting class and got the two little girls (much to my chagrin).  I didn't have much patience anyway, so when my brother called I had to leave class to get the latest details I felt mixed dread and relief.  I ended up talking to him for forty minutes.

I got to go to after class and had Daniel Sensei work on my testing stuff.  Concentrating on the details was a nice way not to think about my problems. 

I guess technically this is my 130th class because Reed and Daniel came over to my house to work out Sunday morning for a couple of hours.  We go one in, but they were able to point out a huge amount of corrections in the simpler of the two kata I have to do.  Being able to make those corrections in the next twenty-three days will be a challenge, but nothing they gave me we was horrible. 

Before they left they started talking about what was next for me.  Mark has apparently told them that he no longer wants to work on testing or a next rank, but simply train.  The wear and tear and/or boredom and repetition was bringing him down.  I have the choice of three schools of style to chose from which is a departure from both their experience.  Apparently, students are not pleased with the next sequence to 2nd degree.  But honestly I don't know any better so I'm fine with whatever they have to offer. 

28 Days

Well, there's no zombies in this post, but I'm under 30 days until confirmation.  When I start thinking about how far I've come I get electric feelings in my hands.  I remember this from my old school when I was just starting to learn stuff.  My feet felt like they were alive with lighting.  It's a bit of a let down to know that it's a by product of adrenaline bursts, but when it happens I feel like Iron Fist for a second.

I went to class with a lot of dread assuming I'd be teaching the girls all class again.  I went really early so Mark and I could practice as much as we could and we got a solid half hour of work in.  I ended up leading the warmups and gritted my teeth when class assignments were handed out.  Low and behold Mark and I were told do the Nifanshi Shodan Oyo!!  I've never been so happy to do repetitive work.  We literally did the same thing for the whole hour.  Reed would come up every couple of minutes and correct some portion that needed some love. 

At one point Mark was lamenting how frustrated he was on such a small kata and why was it taking so much effort to clean up.  I pointed out that within a half hour we'd cleaned up 80% of our errors with no problem.  Honestly, I was feeling the same, but I noticed that we could fix almost everything within one session.  That in itself was tremendous.  To compare, it's taken us a year to learn the basics, relearn the basics and continuously refine.  A half hour is awesome.

After class was more of the same with even more refinement.  Hopefully Mark and I can get together this weekend and get a little practice in, but organizing our schedules is going to be a nightmare.