Roo roo! It's the tournament! Part 1

Well, I haven't been writing too much for April recently, and it's because of a few things. Number one I was sick...again. I got a wicked infection that wouldn't allow me to swallow without pain. So I thought , well, so much for the tourney. And then I remembered how much time I spent married to my oar. Oh yes. We're a couple now. Plus I had this maniacal desire to watch Bailout drop her tonfa.

I started to recover on Friday, when with the help of nice weather I decided, what the hell? I'll go embarrass myself. So, this presented a bit of logistical problem. Never mind that Batta and I had been planning to go to this tournament for almost a year, yet this plan evolved into Batta and me going with Spam, Batta's mom and sister, and Oar. Oar and I got along just fine, but my ears and a fast compounding headache made the ride up and the back very...unpleasant. Yeah.

So we get there, and already I can tell this year is different. Head Honcho sensei has been ill, so he wasn't there for most of it. And there were far less people at the tourney than at past ones. It was also 85 degrees at 9 in the morning. We cooked on the bleachers, until I realized that it was 20 degrees hotter on the competition floor. Ick! I jumped to judge just to get off the bleachers, so as to not answer Batta's sisters' questions about "when is this over?" and "is pizza healthy?". Judging was actually a blast. I judged the under 10 self defense division, and boy, were they bad! This one group didn't understand what the difference between attacker and defender was (they were probably 5 at the oldest). We had to kick out this one dad who was coaching under the guise of using a video camera to get onto the floor. And there was this one kid with the craziest hair and voice ever. He probably got the silver just on his intro alone- "JUDGES....*breathes through teeth* mynameistommyiamfromglendaleschooliamgoingtoperformmy WAZZZZA!! Can I begin?" Worth every moment. The winners of that category were two brown belts who, frankly, weren't all that good but since they were twice the rank of everyone else, they should be winning. 10 year old brown belts- SO WRONG!

I next judged the over 35 white to orange kata division. It was mildly entertaining. There was this yellow belt Mom there that was one of "those" moms. She did her kata spiel like an over-coached beauty pageant contestant. It was blah. There was another guy who did a good heian godan. And then there was this guy who did Seisan. This kata I have not seen performed in almost 6 years, and it is one of my favorites. Despite being an "easy" kata, I think it is hard as fuck! In my first style, this kata was in the purple belt rank. He ended up winning by a slim margin over pageant mom, so I was happy with that.
Stay tuned for more info!

A Bail-out Nobody Wants

I'm renaming Doppelganger- she does not look like me anymore, nor is she particularly interesting anymore now that she thinks she is queen of the universe. I will call her by a name that suit her- Bailout. Why Bailout? Because when it is her turn to do something hard like teach warm ups or get thrown by a technique she doesn't like, she bails out. It was either that, or Tonfa Dropper. But that name could easily be confused with Wheezy Kid.

The class dynamic has been about the same- more yellows and orangies now, but just as many new white belts. I had no idea we had this many kids in our neighborhood. Perhaps our school is "recession proof"- or at the least, cheaper than daycare. We have a couple of white belts I will call Weebles, because they roll with so incredible ease compared to some upper belts I know. They are pretty decent listeners too. There's a group of yellow-bellies I call Pitbulls for their sparring skill. Other than that, Fubar is still useless, Snot and Snotshadow are still kinda "there", and the black belt children still suck. Not to worry- Sprinkles will kill them all :)

I haven't be writing much because I'm in the process of losing my job (they keep slicing my hours...excpet on Easter) and my jaw was messed up for three weeks. I was in horrible pain, and on ibuprofen which put me to sleep. That makes preparing for the tourney really hard. Never theless, I have been drilling the oar kata. It's been fun, and I think I'm headed in the right direction.