Quickie

Class is going really well this weekend. It's so nice to be in a class where I'm actually learning something! It turns out that several of the students in my class last term are in this class as well, and they all had similar things to say about the prof and the class we just finished in general, so I'm really glad to know that it wasn't just me who had such a terrible time with him. We've been talking mostly aircraft so far, and a group of us went to lunch with the General today, and his conversation made me think of my grandpa. The General did remember me, though, which I'm not sure is good or bad. One more class tomorrow - I have to figure out what I'm going to do my presentation on! - and then a break until next month.

Martial arts went pretty well this week, although between my sunburn and how badly my knuckles hurt, I skipped FIGHT on Tuesday. The sunburn was fine by Wednesday, but my knuckles are still kind of bruised today. A gave me a pair of hand wraps to wear under my kickboxing gloves (they are almost two years old, I guess!), and I think they will help a lot, but my knuckles were just so bruised on their own by that point that wearing anything on them was painful. I did two kickboxing classes without gloves at all (seriously impressing one of the new girls for some reason - we're not hitting bags right now, just hand targets), and tried to focus more on technique and speed than power. Thursday in particular was pretty interesting, because I partnered up with Gil, who is nursing a broken thumb, and we'd get going pretty fast on each other. Almost like a real fight speed. It was also good because Gil is actually one of the few people there who are taller than me, and I've gotten some comments from Sir lately that I'm tending to hunker down to get to my opponent's height instead of fighting at my height. I'm going to try to focus on that this week. Sir's also been doing more "teaching" with us in instructor class - a lot of how to help new people in kickboxing with holding targets and throwing basic techniques, and also how to work with kids and breaking things down to their level without talking down to them. It's actually a little hard to do in instructor class because we're all adults and extremely familiar with the program, and we know each other so well, but I'm trying. Sir also got on our cases a little bit about making sure that we always bring our A game because we are so exposed now. Not that we always have to be perfect, but basically we always need to stand out like we know what we are doing. (Btw, the fishbowl feeling of the new school does wear off quickly once you get focused on whatever class is going on. Sir has decided he prefers to hear it called the shark pool, though.) I think he was talking mostly to me - I was a little draggy because of the burn and knuckles, although I thought I was keeping a pretty good attitude about it - so I'm going to try to watch myself on that this week, too.

Started another new knitting project, a Ten-Stitch Blanket, out of scrap yarn. I enjoy it so far, although I haven't finished the bag or the gloves yet. Just dealing with a case of startitis, I guess. I did actually find a skein of the Alpaca Silk for the Card Trick Scarf, and I'm hoping it shows up in the next few days.

Started reading Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy and enjoyed it but I'm not quite sure why. Will have to hit the library to get the next book. The new Cast In... book comes out in August now instead of October, so maybe that's a compensation for not getting sent to Basic on time.

The girls are going to come up and visit me next weekend (we're going to see Les Mis again and hang out, which means I need to clean the house again!), and I might be having dinner with another friend/former intern tomorrow. At any rate, I do need to try to get some sleep tonight!