Administrative Stuff

While fiddling around with my blog tonight, I just happened to wind up on the comments moderation page, a place I don't normally go since I moderate comments by e-mail. Imagine my surprise when I discovered 7 unmoderated comments that I had never received e-mail notification of, including a couple of contest entries. Therefore I've decided to turn off comment moderation--provided my readers behave themselves! Y'all start getting ugly and I'll have to turn it back on. ;)

On an unrelated note, Black Belt class got a really late start tonight because Blake wouldn't leave. Sensei finally had to tell him to just go. After he left, I mentioned that I try to be nice, but sometimes he really gets on my nerves. Sensei said, "Blake gets on everybody's nerves!" We were talking some more and sensei mentioned that Blake isn't ready to test for his black belt. (He thinks he will be going up next summer.) Sensei said he does a really good kata, but he's going to have to toughen up if he expects to pass his test. Blake and Barrett had done a Saturday morning workout (which I fussed at them for not telling me about) and Mr. Eiffling had come into town and was working out with them. Blake refused to spar him. He said, "Naw, I don't spar much." Yeah, Blake is kind of small, but that's no excuse. I'm the smallest person in the class, and a lady (Hah!) to boot, and I can take a harder hit than Blake can. Blake is still whining about the side kick I planted in his abdomen during my ni-kyu test two years ago.

It was just Barrett and I in class, so we did our higher katas as a class, then sensei asked me what I wanted to work on. I said kusanku sai, and not just going over it, but really breaking it down and making sure we were doing it right. So we did that, and that was great. I think I just about have it down. We discovered some things we'd been doing wrong--just little details. We jokingly told sensei that we were "evolving" the style.

Before class, Barrett and I were talking about Kusanku Sai, and Blake kept jumping into our conversation saying stuff like "Kusanku sai is like this," or "kusanku sai is supposed to be like that". He is a san-kyu. We are shodans. He doesn't even know the kata. But he is trying to act like he knows more about it than we do. Not to mention he is a pansy. (Ok that isn't really what I'm thinking, but this is a family blog!) The thought of him wearing a black belt makes my skin turn inside out!

Then we taught Barrett the first part of sunsu kata. After we'd gone over it about 10 times with Barrett, sensei and I did the entire kata. While we were teaching Barrett, we discussed the bunkai as well. After class, I went over the rest of my empty hand kata. All in all, we had a good workout. It was nice not to have to rush home to watch Heroes.

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