So, Saturday during the day (10 am to 5 pm) I went to a Chen T'ai Chi seminar taught by Grandmaster Chen from China (a descendant of the Chens of the Chen village where modern t'ai chi originated). I've been dipping my foot in with the artspawnchen Monday classes, and this seminar seemed like an excellent thing to do, and indeed it was ( Read more... )

Being a log of the day...

( Long and rambly and not up to my prose standards )

I've been very hyper this evening, and then I figured out why - I'm happy. :) I think I had a case of the blahs for a while; November appears to do that to me. But it looks like the last few days have put a spring back in my step - I'm bouncy again. Proof is the weird conversational tangents this evening involving the Penis Cozy of Damocles, and ( Read more... )

After sparring yesterday, I came up with a nice formulation on "speed". It's not all my idea, and it's not universally applicable, but I still find it nifty: Speed is not a matter of how fast you move; it's not the time between when you start and when you stop. Speed is a matter of people's perceptions; it's the time between when they notice ( Read more... )

A number of my recent posts, and some that I'm planning on making in the near future, involve my martial arts training. I'm not obsessed, really. But it's not just that I'm learning new things there; I'm learning new ways to perceive things, which increases the number of my new experiences exponentially. It thus looms large in my mind ( Read more... )

( Some day, the doctors will point to this entry as the exact moment that I lost my marbles... )

Today I just tested for green belt. This is where they start letting people hit you in the head, and vice versa. This is where they start letting people hit you below the belt, and vice versa. This is where they start allowing standing grappling and takedowns ( Read more... )

Today after class, there was sparring, as usual. But this time, Master Evans was out on the mat sparring with us. And in the last round of the afternoon, she sparred with me ( Read more... )