Experiments in Woolgathering

This week I started working on a project with some of the people in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), which is cool, they’re great people so far. The downside however is that I’ve been getting into work at 6am in order to give us more time together.

Now, I’m generally a morning person. I rarely sleep past 7am. Often wake up before my alarm. You get the idea.

However, this is not the same thing as getting into work at 6 am. Furthermore, I can’t quite seem to get in the habit of going to bed an hour or two early either.

So, I’m running on about 4 hours of sleep a night. Though this past weekend I took a couple 3 hour naps which helped.

Anyhow, I’ll be glad a week and a couple days from now when this minor craziness is over.

So, I’ve made it to class two days in a row, which, for this year so far, is a rarity. I seemed to hold up better tonight, which I’m sure is mostly because I’m over the Crohn’s flare from last week, but I’m sure having a made it to a few classes hasn’t hurt either. Either way, I just hope I can go consistently for more than a couple weeks, like maybe for a couple months.

We spent the beginning of class doing some kuzushi (balance breaking) exercises. After that a few yokomenuchi (strike to the side of the head) and mentsuki (punch to the face) defenses and finally an ushiro tekubitori (grabbing both wrists from behind) defense. Oh… hah, not lastly yet.. we did just a basic block of a yokomenuchi using shinai (leather padding bamboo swords) – which was particularly nice for the few beginners who were there.

There are a couple of tests coming up. Tom and Randy are both testing for 2nd Kyu this Saturday, should be a nice pair of tests. Also, over the next month or two, there are probably 4 of us (i.e. including me) who’ll be testing for 3rd. I’m actually feeling pretty good about my open hand techniques, but I really need to get the first 5 kumi-tachi and kumi-jo down. I’ve got probably a month before I’ll have all my hours (I have the time and then som) so I’ve got plenty of time.

Mostly though, I just want to have a sane enough life that I can get back into going regularly – that’s more important than when I test to me.

I finished my second Neal Asher (and here) book (and his second published in the US I believe), Cowl, Saturday. Like the other Asher I’ve read (_The Skinner_) Cowl is a fast-paced hard scifi novel that did not disappoint. (more…)

Okay, this isn’t really aikido, it’s a self-defense video for women. It was made in Britain (as is obvious), though I’m not sure when, but certainly several decades ago.

Anyhow, it’s pretty funny. This somewhat prim and proper English lady tosses this guy around, with some exposition and explanation, and then fixes her make-up at the end of it all.

The clip.

So, something I ate Thursday set my Crohn’s Disease off. I didn’t eat anything I don’t normally tolerate just fine, so something must have been bad (one of the things was chicken, so that’s probably the culprit).

Anyhow, went home early, writhed around on the couch, tossed my cookies a couple times and after a few hours the abdominal cramps stopped. Of course, it then takes a few days for my guts to get back to normal while I drink lots of soy milk and eat pretty blandly.

This little episode meant I bailed on aikido Friday and Saturday. But I went this morning, since Sunday’s class is shorter and usually not too strenuous, though it still was pretty tiring. It was good to go though, nice small class of 6.

On the upside, since I was laying around a lot I got Cowl (by Neal Asher) finished and got some quality time in with the PS2. ;) The review for Cowl is underway and I’ve also started Men and Cartoons, a collection of Jonanthan Lethem’s short stories. Lastly, I went through the large back log of music I’ve downloaded and tossed what didn’t float my boat and moved the rest to the server. So, go me.

We were going to catch a movie this weekend, but never quite made it. Just means we’ll have to watch more next weekend. ;)

So, I took a nerdity test, which I haven’t done in a while. Scored rather high too, which I was a bit surprised at, but then it was a fairly ‘easy’ test as these things too. Anyhow, the results:

The test was all tech and science questions, which is a bit stereotypical if you ask me. It’s not like those two are necessarily related, nor are they the only things about which one can be nerdy.

Yes, I want a multi-subject nerd test that ranks you in several nerd subject categories!

This is the first, in the Dune universe’s chronology, of six prequel novels to ::Frank Herbert::’s seminal Dune series (which is also 6 books in length). The books were written by Frank’s son, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson from Frank’s notes and published from 1999 to 2004. (more…)

I’ve been wrestling with how to review ::Jonathan Lethem::’s Girl In Landscape a little, though not because I didn’t like it, I liked it very much. It was oddly different from most of what I’ve read lately, and the ending left me feeling somewhat ambiguous. (more…)

Mushroom & Pork Stuffed Acorn Squash of course! (more…)

I’m home from New York/New Jersey – even though we met in Manhattan, they had us stay in Newport, NJ because the hotels are about $100 cheaper a night, and it’s only takes 15 minutes by train and foot to get to the offices which are just across the river. (more…)

I haven’t read any non-fiction that wasn’t a gaming book in a while, and I don’t believe any reviews of such have yet appeared here. My non-fiction tastes tend toward history, mythology, archeology, religion and philosophy. _A Coyote Reader is an exploration of the Coyote figure in western Native American culture, as well as its recent flourishing in modern American literature as well. The author also attempts to relate the mythic Coyote to the biological animal. (more…)

I finished Veniss Underground (buy here or visit its web site) the same day (Saturday) that I finished American Gods. Unlike the former, latter is relatively short (about 200 pages), a book, and, well, a completely different story. (more…)