Small Wrongs

Before going to work, was yelled at for washing the Mad Scientist's sweater with something that made it red and fuzzy. At work, spent day finding and looking at frequently out-of-order microfiches to determine whether the scanned image was bad because the image was bad or because the scan we outsourced was bad. Came home to discover that the squirrels ate the thumb-size green tomatoes on my tomato trees and the Roomba couldn't vacuum because it hadn't charged properly the night before. Cleaned house a bit. Got phone call warning me that my website has been hacked and is now redirecting to porn. Unfortunately, don't have time to clean it up until probably Saturday afternoon. This evening, off to grappling class, the martial arts skill that I am least skilled in (yes, even worse than jump spin kicks).

How was your day?

Oddly enough, I feel entirely neutral.

Yes, Punching Bags Are Good.

Ah. Feel much better now after a couple of hours of martial arts training. Drinking a peach-yogurt smoothie and then it's off to bed for me. I should buy some protein powder...or wheat germ...or something to throw in these to make them a bit better for me.

Regular class we went through our basics, which is very good, as I am a long way from smooth on mine--as an example, basic number 1 for me is
* triple-kick without setting the foot down: inside crescent kick, front kick, chop kick
* jumping high spin kick, low spin kick
* jump spinning inside crescent kick
* ridgehand, backfist, reverse punch
My problem is with jump spin kicks. Recently, I've been devoting what "martial arts study/practice time" I can scrounge up to going back over old notes, getting them in order, and refreshing my memorization of lower belt level techniques. Not practicing jump spins, which I need to do. Along with pretty much everything else. It's a bit odd that I enjoy so much something that I have pretty much no natural aptitude for, but there it is.

We worked on our joint-lock self-defense combinations, wherein I learned that yup, I've got some troubles getting my arm muscles to flex that way, but if I just remember to get both my arm and my stance low enough, things work. Then we hurled ourselves at mats for a while to practice our rolls: great fun!

The first class came close to wiping me out, but I stuck around for the boxing/full-contact-style second class, where we strap on the big gloves and the thick shin guards and work against the heavy bags and hand targets held by a partner. It's a great class for a) throwing techniques full out, b) learning how *not* to hyper-extend your joints, 'cause ow, and c) getting the most intense workout of your life. And though tomorrow it will probably hurt, right now it felt really good.

Also, I have figured out what happened with my website. A third-party coding script that used to be useful and harmless became useless and now has evolved to harmful. Fortunately, it was only used on the very old "bottom layer" of my website, which is still up simply because I haven't run out of webspace yet.