This Has Been

one of those "Calgon, take me away!" days. Not a bad day, per se, but just very hectic. I won't bore you with the gory details, but let me just say, I asked if I could be paid by the mile, instead of by the hour.

Ok, let me gripe first and get it out of the way...If you've been reading my blog for a while, you've heard this gripe before. If you continue reading my blog into the future, you will most likely hear it again. Either way, I won't hold it against you if you decide to skip this part. I'll let you know when you can start reading again.

Mr. T came to karate Tuesday night for his once-every-six-months class attendance. I don't really have a problem with him missing so much class. He has pretty legitimate reasons. He is chronically ill for one thing. He has a condition that can't be cured, but can be controlled. It has taken quite a toll on him, physically. He is also attending college--including a once a week class in New Orleans. That's like a 4-5 hour drive away. This semester, he is taking 24 hours. That's insane in itself. Finally, he is a full-time pastor. When one says full time pastor, that's exactly what one means. Full time. Twenty four hours a day. 365 days a year. Being a pastor is one of the most stressful jobs there is. Everyone makes so many demands of a pastor, but so few give anything back...but I digress.

So, Mr. T makes his semi-annual class visit. That's not so much the problem. When he gets there, sensei is not there. He had been doing a demonstration at one of the schools and hadn't gotten back yet. Mr. T takes over the class. I suppose that is his right, since he is ranking shodan. Well, let me say that he got his shodan before I got mine, but if you count actual dojo participation, I've got way more time in than he does. But he takes over the class, bows us in, and introduces himself to the students who've joined since his last visit--some of whom have yellow belts. He introduces himself as Sensei T and says he's been training with sensei since the beginning of time. Excuse me? Sensei T? How in the world can you be a sensei if you hardly ever set foot in the dojo? And how can you call yourself training with sensei if you never actually train with sensei? Yeah, he may have started training 3 years before I did, but if you had to log actual hours in the dojo, I'd have many more hours than he does. I train 3 hours a week in class, plus whatever I do outside of class. He spends about 3 hours a year in class, and that time is usually spend acting like he's co-owner of the dojo. I could go on, but I'll spare you.

Ok, I'm done griping now. You can start reading again.

Tuesday night, Mr. T led the basics. When he's there, it's more like ka-robics than karate. It's hard even for us higher ranks to keep up with this two counts per second pace. But we have 7 white belts in class now. Some of them got totally lost. I told them not to worry about the count, just get your technique right. We have one white belt, Carlissa, who is very good. I missed two weeks of classes due to being sick (and tired) and she learns nearly the entire first kata.

Anyway, after Mr. T led the basics, sensei spent a few minutes talking about basic techniques, since we have so many new students. We had a short break, then did seisan kata--or as much as they knew for the white belts. We finished off the class with some two-man kicking drills.

After class, I went through all my kata fairly slowly, concentrating on form and stances. Even going through them slowly is a good workout. I want to get one of those heart rate/blood pressure monitors that you can wear on your wrist and see what my heart rate gets up to after just one kata. (I probably should get one anyway since high blood pressure runs in my family.) Today at work, I manually counted my heart rate and got 72. It wasn't even that low when I was running 5 miles a day.

After tonight's class, Josh and I stayed and went over Urashi Bo kata. I had learned about half of this kata before my black belt test, but when sensei announced that I would be testing, it kind of fell by the wayside while I was preparing for that. Sensei had started teaching it to Josh and Barrett this afternoon, so I asked Josh to review it with me. Once I got going on it, I remembered it pretty well. I told sensei I was going to practice it over the weekend so we could work on it some more Monday. He said that we were going to be doing Urashi in black belt class.

As I sit here tonight typing this, what is left of Hurricaine Humberto is passing over, bringing much needed rain to this area. I'm afraid it's too late to save what is left of the cotton, though.