Becoming one with... something
Sep. 23rd, 2006 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI have been less diligent about aikido than I want to be. The drive is part of it. At its best I have about 30 minutes in the car before I get to the dojo. On nights which are not best it can be almost an hour.
The other part is not yet feeling myself to be a real part of it yet. I've got things to adjust to, differences in style, and new people to get used to.
Maia has been most encouraging, which means I don't let a week go by without at least one session. Wedsnday was good. It was my first session with the dojo's sensei as the instructor. He was, indirectly, how I chose this dojo, because the sensei at the other dojos in which I have trained all trained with the same sensei, and so has he.
If I have anything in which I am better than average in the art, it's ukemi, and espcially the falling part of it (though it's rare I don't have my hands ready to protect myself against strikes of flow... if someone tries to take advatage of an apparante opening to take a strike of opportunity, I might not be there, but if it's something where I am being moved to a place a strike might land, I'm usually covered. We were doing work with the jo (a stick, between four and six feet in length) and it involved a hard fall.
Not difficult, really, but one in which the landing is abrupt, which lots of people want to avoid. The reason I am good at falling is that the first art I studied was judo. Judo is (esp. as a beginner) all about falling, as a result I am not afraid of the mat. He praised my fall.
Later I took a bit of ukemi and he gave me a praiseful nod.
After class I was talking with a dojo member who was preparing for her fourh kyu exam, and he came over to talk to me, asked if I had trained under Mary, and said she had trained me well. It made me feel better, because I have felt less than my best on the mat, of late. I have been doing something wrong in my ukemi, and when I get home it feels I have been boxing. My neck is sore, and it seems I've rattled my brain.
Today I got up, woke Maia and we headed to the dojo, because it was kyu exams, and I, despite not feeling a complete member of the dojo, wasn't going to miss it. The people who were being examined deserved to have as many people there as could come.
So the first hour was the regular class, and it was crowded. I got some good work done, improved some of my centering, and was the beneficiary of some focused training from the sensei. The exams were good, though the method was different (groups, for the various levels, instead of single sets of uke/nage pairs).
Then Maia and I headed to the reptile show at the Anaheim convention center. We were weak and brough home five new snakes. An adult East African Sand Boa, a yearling cornsnake (Amelanistic striped) and three hatchlings (a cornsnake, Normal, motley, with some striping; and two hatchling East African Sand Boas, a male Anerytheristic, and a female, heterosygous for anery).
Made a contact for selling snakes to, which is good, as we have some to get rid of, and saw a lot of pretty reptiles. Expensive ones. Some gorgeous hognose hatchlings. Were they older the price tag would still have been too high (even though we spent $175 there, to get all but the adult sand boa) at $1,250 for a matched pair, but for this years hatch, no way. Not enough certainty, to me, to buy them. If they refuse to eat, well we'd have to eat a substantial investment.
Steve, the guy Maia was there to help (so it was $24 for the two of us to get in, instead of $39) sold a few, but he didn't bring any of the $15,000 hatchlings with him (he breeds rare colors of Columbian Red-tail Boas). He's well ahead of his $400 investment in the booth space.
We may go halvsies on a booth next year (which means we pay 3/4s of a space price, since the second space costs half the first) and sell some there. What we don't sell there (at semi-retail prices) we can then sell wholsale. We'll have to look at it. This year we had an income of $900, and we've spent about $400 on feed, so we'd have to clear a fair bit more than that to make it worth our while, but we can sell them for about twice what we're getting wholesale.
The booth we spent most of the money with comes out from Michigan, and they are making enough to find it worth coming back, with shipping costs included, so...
The other part is not yet feeling myself to be a real part of it yet. I've got things to adjust to, differences in style, and new people to get used to.
Maia has been most encouraging, which means I don't let a week go by without at least one session. Wedsnday was good. It was my first session with the dojo's sensei as the instructor. He was, indirectly, how I chose this dojo, because the sensei at the other dojos in which I have trained all trained with the same sensei, and so has he.
If I have anything in which I am better than average in the art, it's ukemi, and espcially the falling part of it (though it's rare I don't have my hands ready to protect myself against strikes of flow... if someone tries to take advatage of an apparante opening to take a strike of opportunity, I might not be there, but if it's something where I am being moved to a place a strike might land, I'm usually covered. We were doing work with the jo (a stick, between four and six feet in length) and it involved a hard fall.
Not difficult, really, but one in which the landing is abrupt, which lots of people want to avoid. The reason I am good at falling is that the first art I studied was judo. Judo is (esp. as a beginner) all about falling, as a result I am not afraid of the mat. He praised my fall.
Later I took a bit of ukemi and he gave me a praiseful nod.
After class I was talking with a dojo member who was preparing for her fourh kyu exam, and he came over to talk to me, asked if I had trained under Mary, and said she had trained me well. It made me feel better, because I have felt less than my best on the mat, of late. I have been doing something wrong in my ukemi, and when I get home it feels I have been boxing. My neck is sore, and it seems I've rattled my brain.
Today I got up, woke Maia and we headed to the dojo, because it was kyu exams, and I, despite not feeling a complete member of the dojo, wasn't going to miss it. The people who were being examined deserved to have as many people there as could come.
So the first hour was the regular class, and it was crowded. I got some good work done, improved some of my centering, and was the beneficiary of some focused training from the sensei. The exams were good, though the method was different (groups, for the various levels, instead of single sets of uke/nage pairs).
Then Maia and I headed to the reptile show at the Anaheim convention center. We were weak and brough home five new snakes. An adult East African Sand Boa, a yearling cornsnake (Amelanistic striped) and three hatchlings (a cornsnake, Normal, motley, with some striping; and two hatchling East African Sand Boas, a male Anerytheristic, and a female, heterosygous for anery).
Made a contact for selling snakes to, which is good, as we have some to get rid of, and saw a lot of pretty reptiles. Expensive ones. Some gorgeous hognose hatchlings. Were they older the price tag would still have been too high (even though we spent $175 there, to get all but the adult sand boa) at $1,250 for a matched pair, but for this years hatch, no way. Not enough certainty, to me, to buy them. If they refuse to eat, well we'd have to eat a substantial investment.
Steve, the guy Maia was there to help (so it was $24 for the two of us to get in, instead of $39) sold a few, but he didn't bring any of the $15,000 hatchlings with him (he breeds rare colors of Columbian Red-tail Boas). He's well ahead of his $400 investment in the booth space.
We may go halvsies on a booth next year (which means we pay 3/4s of a space price, since the second space costs half the first) and sell some there. What we don't sell there (at semi-retail prices) we can then sell wholsale. We'll have to look at it. This year we had an income of $900, and we've spent about $400 on feed, so we'd have to clear a fair bit more than that to make it worth our while, but we can sell them for about twice what we're getting wholesale.
The booth we spent most of the money with comes out from Michigan, and they are making enough to find it worth coming back, with shipping costs included, so...
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 07:54 am (UTC)This is kinda off topic, but I hate the UFC. When it first came out I was like, "Oh hell yeah! Boxers versus karate guys, we'll see which is best!" It's turned into "mixed martial arts" which is a euphamism for no holds barred wrestling in which someone taps out because they're getting a limb yanked off. I feel cheated by that, but I guess fighting and fighting don't always match up.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 05:28 pm (UTC)Boxing was about covering up, landing punches and outlasting the other guy (which is why I gave it up, the guys in my wieght class are all about 6" shorter than I am and have more muscles armoring them. If I don't ring their bell, they just wear me down).
UFC, well I knew it was going to degenerate (and quickly) to grappling, because it's safer to be in close contact than it is to be at range, for all the reasons I gave about why I gave up boxing.
If it weren't that aikido is competitive, in that way, I'd be curious to see someone who is a really good aikidoka, as well as other arts (there are many, but they tend to come to aikido after other arts, not the reverse) becuase I don't see most of these guys getting much of anywhere against a good aikidoka, and watching them get worn out, bouncing off the cage would be worth it.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-09-26 10:54 am (UTC)