Oh, way to go, Al!

Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change together have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Congratulations, Al! You did make a discernible difference in my life: it was partly because I saw An Inconvenient Truth that I dragged my bicycle out of my basement where it had been sitting unused for about fifteen years and I biked to work for six months this year. Doing my part, as you urged us to do! I truly do admire you.

And I curse, yet again, that you were robbed of the Presidency.

National Coming Out day, belatedly

Sorry I'm a day late on this, but blessings and congratulations to all on my list who celebrated National Coming Out day yesterday.

And courage and understanding to those who remain hidden, but who wish they could take the plunge. I hope you get there someday.

Combination kicks

Had karate class last night. It started inauspiciously: I managed to strain a hamstring during the stretches at the very beginning. I was overdoing it because I've missed so many classes due to illness that my maddeningly tight inner groin ligaments and hamstrings were even tighter than usual, and I was trying harder than ever to get them loosened up. (Note the incompatibility of "trying harder" and "loosening up.") It backfired on me, and I was bothered by pain in the left hamstring for the rest of class; in fact, I'm still feeling it today. I don't like the fact that we start class with stretches on cold muscles. Based on my own experience from doing years of aerobics, it would be better if we did something to warm the muscles for five minutes or so and then stretch. Usually I try to do get some kicking in for a few minutes before class starts, but I was working on my bo form before class started instead.

For the first time, we worked on one of the kick combinations that I'll start seeing at exams when I reach the advanced belt level (red belt and above): the hook kick/round kick/side kick combination.

I'm pretty comfortable with mechanics of the side kick now, although of course I still have to work on balance. That will come with practice. I think I have the hang of the proper form necessary (chamber the knee all the way back, pivot the supporting leg, lock it out, etc.). I'm not quite there yet on the round kick because I'm not sure I have the proper knee motion through the center line consistently, and it makes me uneasy because sometimes I manage to wrench my hip joint when doing it, a legacy of my problems with my hip ligaments when I was pregnant with Delia.

But with the hook kick I still feel like I don't get it, somehow. I have no idea why. It's not any more difficult technically, and it starts as if you're doing a side kick: you chamber the knee back against the body, then kick out, just adding a snapping bend of the knee at the end. But every time I do a hook kick, for some odd reason, I have to stop and think about it. I haven't yet built the muscle memory so that I can simply do it. I wonder how long it will take me to feel as if it's automatic.

And this was the first time, as I said, that I'd tried to combine the three. Mr. Dingmann told us to try to especially concentrate on keeping the knee elevated, and putting the kicks together quickly. I found that I was really lurching my body on the second one, the round kick, which meant I was hopelessly falling out of balance when trying to finish up with the sidekick. It was interesting, and I did get better, managing to mostly balance on the last few. It was obvious, however, that I have a long way to go.