links to come

Last night was Takadanobaba's last cutting practice. It was raining like crazy last night, so not a lot of people showed up. There's usually some God-awful number of people at Baba (around 20 or so), which means two things: one, there are a ton of rolls that need to be carried over from Saka's place to the practice area, and two, since there tend to be a lot of beginners cutting for the first or second time, the wait can be as long as an hour before your turn comes. Only ten people showed up, so we got about 12 rolls each (three times the usual number). I did some tricky stuff towards the end of practice that should be linked up as soon as the video clips get posted on Saka's blog.

The down side to having fewer people is the clean up. Set up starts at about 5pm (two hours before the scheduled practice), and yesterday was no picnic because of the rain. Clean up takes about an hour with ten people, but by the time we started cleaning up last night (about 10:30) there were only six people left! I got home at midnight....

As the new year approaches, a lot of changes are being made within the organization. This comes as no surprise, but the fact that changes are made so frequently really upsets me. As soon as I get my schedule figured out, suddenly everything goes to shit and I'm back at square one. Up until this month, cutting practices were held on Saturday afternoon at Hombu, but as of the new year they'll be held on Sunday morning. While this isn't exactly inconvenient for me, the fact that I have to rework my schedule again is a pain in the ass. Takadanobaba will stop having cutting practice in March too, and apparently the kata are going to change as well. Trying to contend with all the changes that are made really takes the focus away from training (for me at least). I'd rather show up to train than have to worry about where and how I'm going to train a month from now.