Zen and the Art of Mouth Guard Maintenence…

Karate was good tonight… for some reason I was just off. said I seemed distracted, but I don’t really have any explanation for that.

I was running late because I had to run to Wal-Mart to replace my mouth guard which had been missing for a long time. I got behind every geriatric and mouth-breather in the city, and I also got in a trainee’s line at Wal-Mart, so I ended up getting to Karate about ten minutes late. I don’t know if this is why I came off as distracted or what… maybe it’s the fact that I have three Real Life Events coming up next week. I have no idea.

By the time I got there, everyone was halfway through warm-ups. Sensei Hartman had us working on attacking and defending to the corners, something that we haven’t worked on in a long time. Sensei had us assist in correcting the lesser belts as they did a partner drill. I really like stuff like this and I was really looking forward to mixing it up once I saw that John had come in right before Advanced class.

In between classes, I asked Sensei if he would run through Unsu with me again, mostly because I’m trying to commit it to memory. I’ve always liked that kata since my ten-year-old days of watching Sensei Hartman and Sensei Jennings do it for demonstrations. I’m fulfilling one of my “when I grow up, I’m going to…” assertions.

My hopes were dashed once O latched on to me to be his partner, which was unavoidable because I was right next to him in line. We had a few more yellow belts than normal, so thankfully Sensei had them pair up with a black or brown belt so they wouldn’t utterly destroy each other during the drills that we were about to do. Lots of body shifting later, I was having a good time. It wasn’t so much physically exerting, but I did get to work on timing of the moves at a slower pace than I could have with O. Plus there was less whining.

The yellow belt girl (can’t remember her name) that I was with did pretty well by the time we were all done. I wished out loud that these classes were few and far between, or else we were going to end up with green belts that can vanish like Sensei Brewer. That would not be good. We also don’t need Toms learning this stuff too early either. 🙂

For some reason and didn’t show, which was odd, but Matt did mention wanting to take a nap after Karate. I’m sure he probably just slept over or something. Usually it’s him that rescues me from the extra “talking at” that occurs after classes and unfortunately I was left vulnerable without a wingman tonight. (Those that have been affected know what I speak of.) tried to assist, but I ended up getting in my car about 9 pm. No biggie though, I had to meet my cousin John at 10:30 anyway.

I did get a chance to ask Sensei Hartman about what the judges prefer… I was in a bit of a quandary regarding Nidan test kata selection. I was thinking about learning something a bit further up the black belt hierarchy, but at the same time I am so comfortable with Enpi. The only drawback is that I did that one for my Shodan test, and I didn’t know if it was advisable to go in there with an old standby. This is all part of the pre-planning process, I don’t intend to even consider going for my Nidan until next April.