Demo Day- Help, help! I'm being impressed!

Apologies, apologies. I really am falling behind with this thing, but I'm catching up today. I kept it up for the better part of a year, which is more than I've ever been able to keep any kind of journal-ish thing going, so that's an accomplishment. The last few weeks have been crazy busy, and I imagine the next few will be too, but I'll try to keep up. After the birthday bash was the demo at school, then Thanksgiving, the book fair at school, assorted craziness, and another birthday gauntlet, this time for Ezio, who's apparently been renamed "Stretch." And so many new guys too! We had ex-new guy, who's thankfully become Harnisfechten, then New Guy, New New Guy, and then Sunday, New New New Guy and New New New New Guy too. They will all be renamed shortly.

DEMO DAY!
I managed to convince my principal that a demonstration of sword fighting would be a good introduction for our 5th graders to this big Global Awareness Technology Project that they'll have to do. The idea of the project is that they have to study some piece of the past and illustrate how it still impacts us today. The book fair this fall had a Medieval theme too, so it seemed a perfect excuse to do a sword demo :)

I gave the Professor a copy of the project outline, and he put together a great presentation detailing the impact of swords back in the day until today. The kids loved it- history, castles and their defense, mathematics of sword construction, the impact of and on armor, even Batman & Iron Man got mentions, along with dancing and games too. The teachers were impressed as well, and more than one mentioned how much they enjoyed the language and literary terms that came from swordplay of different sorts. I was a little bummed that I didn't get to play too, but county regs said that "staff were discouraged from participating," so I got to run the PowerPoint. Woohoo. But it was cool- he brought in the mathematics behind longsword construction, pulled in the superheroes to explain about armor's maneuverability, and had a section on girls in combat- which brought a chorus of "YES!"s from the teachers in the audience. (Weeks after, I had trivia questions about the Middle Ages during our book fair, and most of the girls remembered everything the Professor said after that point.)

After delivering the background via lecture, the Professor and the guys broke out the swords. He had the guys fight Hollywood style to get the kids all riled up with great acting and fake grunting by Mr. Piccolo, New Guy, and Riceball. Then the Professor asked if they'd like to see how a real sword fight would go. The kids erupted into cheers and hoots. The Professor took the sword, turned, vorschlag-ed Riceball, and took a bow. WHOA! echoed across the audience. It was cute. He explained then about how the fight was about ending it quickly, and the rest being a lot of "if/then" situations. Cutting demo was next, with the Professor making short work of the tatami mat, slicing and dicing every which way. Best part? One oberhau sent a chunk of tatami skittering across the floor into a chatty bunch of girls who are regular pains in the... anyway, it sent them shrieking and scattering out of the way. It was awesome. Meanwhile, New Guy was narrating- "it slices, it dices, it makes julienne fries!" The pieces that went sailing near the kids were passed around, and when the Professor mentioned that the idea of the tatami was that it was the same thickness as a human neck, more than one pair of eyes looked shocked as hands went up to throats. He spoke a bit about the importance of footwork, had the guys all line up with swords and take a passing step, then a cross step, then a shuffle step, doing a little mini-flow drill. Then he had them drop the swords and do the same thing. Then he had the guys all turn to a partner, hold hands, and do it again. Laughs galore from the little ones and nods of understanding from the adults came when they realized the steps were the same basic steps of a folk dance. It was kind of cool to see it demonstrated so simply- I know I've mentioned before how it looks like dancing when I see some fighters fight.

Clink. Clank. Clink. Eyes went wide and delighted smiles and whispers rippled through the audience when Harnessfechten walked in. I can't imagine a bigger surprise for some of these kids. Some of my kids are big into the Middle Ages anyway, and I thought Ike & Zackaria were going to have heart attacks right there in the audience, they were so excited. At every question the Professor asked, their hands shot into the air. (Zack actually apparently nailed the girl in front of him on accident, I found out later.) Harness did a brief talk on his armor, talking about different developments, the need for change based on developing weaponry, the changes it demanded in fighting, how it actually weighed less than modern soldiers carry, and more. He and the Professor did a brief demo, with the Professor unable to do much damage because of all the plate. One of the kids asked about the fauld on Harness' kit, so Riceball got to pretend to be Harness' noble steed so that the kids could see what the fauld covered while mounted.

The talk continued, with the Professor pausing now and again; here to have Mr. Piccolo do a demonstration of quarterstaff, at another point for a sword and buckler show from New Guy and Riceball, then finally for a 'real' modern battle between Riceball and the Professor. They both got geared up in gambesons and masks, grabbed the feders, and went at it. When they'd been showing off a bit before, I'd heard a couple of the girls in one class talking about how they thought Riceball was cute. When he'd been playing horse for Harness, they were all "awwww"ing. Naturally then, when the fight began they started chanting his name, "ohhhh"ing when he got trounced in the end, but cheering for him all the while. Riceball has a fanclub. Of 5th grade girls. It was kind of adorable.

Overall, the demo was a huge hit, and I heard gripes for weeks afterward that I didn't invite everyone to the assembly. (With so much history, I figured the little guys wouldn't have been able to sit through it. But they all saw Harness walking through the halls, and were envious.) I've got half a dozen kids wanting to do something about the middle ages for their Global Awareness project, had requests from at least a dozen for books on knights, and have elicited awe from most of the 5th grade that I do this stuff too. The teachers seemed to really enjoy it too, which was great. The technology teacher was fascinated by the idioms the Professor mentioned, and loved all the wordplay. One of the history teachers caught me in the hall and said "All I can say is WOW." As one of the only male teachers- who hadn't wanted to come in the first place- put it, "Help, help! I'm being impressed!"

I'd say the day was a success :D

Week 33 - Bunny Bashing

I tried to dodge it, to convince the Professor that my birthday beatings could wait until after the demo, but he didn't buy it. So he invited everyone to the 2nd Annual Great Bunny Bash for practice that week. After a brief review of the vier versetzens, I had to gear up in my new jacket (which seemed way too tight still, but which the Professor assured me would be fine) and face off against everyone in class. Boy that gambeson takes some getting used to. I felt more like a robot in that than in my homemade blue one, but at least I didn't have to fit the arm guards over it, and my gloves fit better without the too-long sleeves of my blue one. And it is rather sharp-looking. Not blue, but still.

So I geared up and faced off vs. Deadpool first in my birthday gauntlet. One minute match for each year. At least it was better than last year, when I had to fight a 3-point match for every year. I'm thinking having to split it over two weeks due to my advanced age brought about the new system. I was all for the new version. I do like the free-sparring, but I tend to get hung up on "I want to try X!," waiting for that chance, and then missing everything else. So Deadpool came first. Then Ezio (who may be renamed Groot or Stretch if the Professor has his way). We had a visitor too, but he just watched this time. Then Riceball. Then back to Deadpool. Deadpool? I'd just fought him, and we had two more guys at practice. They'd vanished though, so I cycled through the guys, then the Professor would take a turn beating me too. I got in several good shots, which was nice. I apologized several times too- I got in some not-so-nice shots on Ezio, who apparently stands at just the right height for my whip-arounds to catch him right in the.... Ya. Right there. Apologies! And again. And, again. Ugh, again too. Someone cracked me an excellent shot on my upper right arm, and another caught me across the left. Overall though, I think I was doing fairly well, though my glasses kept fogging up something fierce. Anyone know a fix for that? When I reached the halfway point, I got a rest. When I took off my mask, everyone laughed I was so red in the face. I'm sure I looked a sight, and was getting tired, but I was feeling well enough.

Clink. Clank. Clink. I was trying to de-fog my glasses when the sound registered, and I looked up to see Harnisfechten clanking his way over- in full gear. The Professor gave a two minute crash course on how to fight a tin can, and sent me back in. Harnis's kit is lovely, and so very cool. I admit I geeked out a bit- I've never seen much armor beyond peeking at Bill's at IGX. I was admiring the armor when suddenly it registered that I was supposed to fight that. And I didn't have a can opener. And I kinda hadn't really been listening well when the Professor was explaining. So when the minute began, there in uffish thought I stood, contemplating my options- of which there weren't many. The Professor said to get his arms up, but that required lifting mine. Given that my jacket was still tight enough in the shoulders to prohibit that and that my arms felt like jello anyway, that wasn't happening. I tried though. I got in a lovely solid nothing against the side of Harnis's neck, and another against the shoulder. He kindly gave me tips on his field of vision and showed me the weak places in the armor, but it didn't help much.

Totally different mindset fighting a guy in armor- it was fascinatingly, annoyingly, frustratingly fruitless, that match. The other guys cycled back in, adding in New Guy and another round with Harniss. Someone caught me a magnificent blow to the shoulder, and Deadpool (I think) had a fabulous thrust that caught me right in the face. Up against Harnis again, I had more useless shots that landed with resounding failure on the plate. The Professor yelled out something about aiming for the chain, but I couldn't see well enough to even tell where that was. Stupid foggy glasses really do become a problem, and it was getting dark too, so I probably shouldn't really claim any skill was involved. But I finally managed to land one good, solid shot vs. Harnis. I was getting tired, and was feeling useless against the armor. The attacks from above weren't doing squat since I couldn't raise my arms with the stiff gambeson, so I figured I'd try from below- a streichen that did indeed bypass the plate armor... only to remind Harnis that he should've been wearing ALL his protection. At my apology for that one, the Professor took his sword and whacked me with a "STOP APOLOGIZING!" Ack! Sorry.

The fighting went on. And on. And on. It's kind of all blurred together into one big fog- or maybe that was just my glasses. Thirty nine minutes of fighting, with a break for the introduction of harnisfechten and another at one point for something or another. The last fight finally came, and they gave me the option for counted blows. "SURE!" I said. Ya, I definitely was not thinking clearly at that point. I'm getting tired, it's dark, and I can't see... please let's do the one where we hit each other as much as possible. The Professor was my last opponent. I scored a hit that knocked the occiptal protector off his mask. Then there were... many hits. Mostly his. A rather stellar thrust to the face. Then he paused, and I hit back some, worn out and not caring to the point I just kept throwing shots, whatever I could get. A few final thwacks from him and it was over. And there was much rejoicing.

I'd made it! I hadn't gotten hit too much, and I was still upright and functional. I wasn't completely exhausted either, which was a bonus. More stamina than the guys half my age who did their birthday gauntlets a few months ago, YES! Oh frabjous day! Callooh! callay! Yay for the old lady. lol. It took a minute to peel myself out of the jacket, and I have to admit that by the end, I have no idea if it had loosened up or not, but I'd quit caring, so I guess that was good. We moved on to cutting after that, trying out the tatamis for the first time. They feel VERY different than the pool noodles. On one hand, so much easier! They actually hold still for you to cut, which is nice. And they're solid, so that you get that "OFF WITH HIS HEAD" feeling. I mean, you could. If you were that sort. Not that I get that way very often. I mean, they don't give or bend over like the pool noodles. On the other hand, if you are the least bit off, you know exactly when it goes funny, and you can see it in the cut and when your sword stops its forward momentum. It's really neat though. There's just something really satisfying about sending those things flying. And if I'm mumbling "the vorpal blade went snicker-snack" when I'm slicing and dicing, who's to know?

I may have been at that 'stop moving and I'll fall asleep' stage afterward, so I tried to keep myself busy putting equipment away and throwing stuff into the truck for the demo at school the next day. Somehow while I was doing that, the Professor and his sneaky family set up a surprise in the garage for me- in like the thirty seconds between trips to the car. When I went in for the next load of stuff, everyone was there with birthday wishes and cake and pizza... it was wonderful. I admit I got a bit misty- I haven't had a birthday cake in years. Pizza, hugs, friends, the puppies there to celebrate too. Lots of Deadpools and lovely decorations, and my very own fechtbuch from the Professor! I'm officially allowed to take notes during class now :D

A few days later, the bruises showed up- only got nailed four times, which isn't too bad at all for so much fighting. A few of those were in the arms, which means I've got to guard better- but at least they were on both sides, so apparently I'm not favoring one of the other any more. One nasty bruise showed up on my shoulder, but I couldn't tell you who put it there. And I had matching waffle marks on my forehead (NOT devil horns, Professor!) from where I got caught with thrusts to the mask. The Professor told me I had done well overall, especially as I got tired. Apparently when I get worn out, my technique improves. When I stop thinking, I do better. And I also forget to say "sorry" when I hit someone, which he says is a good thing. And I stop pausing after each shot, following with second intent, or third or more. So what does all that mean for my fencing? I'm not entirely sure, but I think it means I need to start sleep-fighting. So next event, if you see someone sleepwalking down the hall with a sword in hand, just nudge her back to bed. That'll be me, just psyching myself up for the next match.

Weeks 31 & 32 - Telegrams to My Dog & Tatami MATters

An explosion of noise woke me. It sounded as if a dozen express trains had run over the cats' tails. A succession of loud thumpings followed. I peeked around the corner of the living room to see the shadow outlined against the dawn sky outside the window. The top appeared first, a hemispherical shape, crowned with two triangular protrusions on either side. One leg curled weirdly around the box as the other came to rake down the opposite side, leaving furrows in its wake. A third leg scrabbled for purchase before finally sinking claws into the cardboard and heaving the entire mass up to straddle the towering box. A triumphant meow ended in a coughing fit as my fat, asthmatic Circe sat wheezing on top of her prize. That was when the tatamis came...

Or rather, that was the morning the cats discovered that the tatamis had come. They wouldn't leave the box alone. Every day that week, I'd come home from work to find them perched on top of it, stuffing their paws into the holes in the cardboard. Each vying for position, bouncing the other off the top of the four-foot tower, claws splaying to hold on when the other set the box to rocking on its uneven bottom. Or they'd be staking out the base of the box, making more holes with curious claws and exploring the place where I'd crushed the box by dropping it when it arrived. I came home one day to find Abbycat lying in a pile of shredded box bits, the lopsided base a little more lopsided than it had been when I'd left. My living room smelled like grass. Like nasty, dry, dusty, gross grass. Luckily, I was taking the mats to practice that Sunday, so I loaded the holey box into the truck before going to work on Friday. It was weirdly warm that day, but I thought nothing of it... until school was over.

Lovely, sunshiney day, full of warmth and light that mocked the horror that awaited when I returned to my vehicle. I opened the door, only to be hit with a wave of stink, nearly solid in its very awfulness. My truck smelled like something had died in it. Tatamis. Cripes, the smell. They had apparently been baking in the oven-like heat of the interior of the truck, turning the nasty, dry, dusty, grassy smell into a rotten stink the likes of which put that skunk the boys spooked a few weeks ago to shame. I can't even describe it properly, but can say that I was extremely glad to offload them at the Professor's on Sunday. And with a few days leaving the windows down in the cold, my truck no longer reeks.

The last half of Sunday practice was spent learning how to roll and bind up tatami mats and sharpen swords. Thankfully the fresh, cold air in the garage kept the mats from reeking too much. It was fun- the Professor set up stations. Half of us were on mat duty, rolling the tatamis up tight, fastening them with rubber bands. The others were focusing on the care and feeding of swords- learning how to de-rust them, sanding, polishing, sharpening. Then we'd switch. My baby Pavel (she still needs a name) was getting a bit of surface rust and a lot of dings, so it was nice to get her cleaned up. And Bacia the sharp got her edges honed and the dings buffed out too. Oooh, so now that I know how to care for them, the Professor can't claim I'd be a bad sword mom to the Brescia Spadona we've had our eyes on.

Old New Guy will henceforth be known as Harnisfechten. New New Guy is just New Guy. For now, anyway. So for practice, I was paired up with Harnisfechten. We were "defending the wall"- an exercise where one of us was the attacker, one the defender, and the only goal was to use the meisterhau to whack the defender in the head with a good, technical, strike. The defender was trying not to get nailed, using the vier versetzen we'd been practicing, along with anything else that would keep his head from getting crushed. We were to take turns, each of us getting hit ten times before switching places. I guess Harnisfechten and I were doing pretty well- we never did make it to ten hits when quitting time came :-)

We got to try cutting some of the mats the following week. The Professor had soaked them, and we all had to practice spiking them properly, then cutting. Note: tatamis do not feel at all like pool noodles. The pool noodles were great for sword alignment- if your sword wasn't angled exactly right, the noodle just went flying off- but you might not know exactly why. Just hitting the tatami gave great feedback. More snap was needed if you didn't make it through. You could exactly see where in your strike you turned the blade, or whether you'd thrown too much hip into it or didn't have enough power. We used the little chunks as apples to practice scheitels, learned about scalloping and mountaining and clean cuts, and to remember our purpose- even if the cut wasn't super-perfect, the guy on the receiving end would still have a really bad day. When cutting, as with everything else, I still need to work on my footwork. I still tend to fairy foot- I need to figure out a way to be sure I plant my heel every time. Maybe tap shoes would help. I can see it now, out on the porch or the concrete around the pool, trying to be sure to CLICK my heel down with every swing. It might work. I'm sure it would be entertaining for the neighbors and the dog anyway. Or annoying. One or the other.

We also practiced more of the vier versetzens and meisterhaus, trying to reinforce and drill responses into us all, and serving as a reminder for New Guy. I paired up with him for this one, and so we practiced listening to the windows, countering the meisters, and reviewing (and learning for some) the zorn ort play. I suspect the Professor might be wanting to use that one for the demo at my school next week. It's a fun play at least, and one I actually remember. Usually. Thankfully, New Guy doesn't seem to mind my weird mumblings to myself and odd interpretations. Actually, I think he GETS me, which is kind of fun too. At least, he understands my desire to take notes and reword everything. His footwork is still better than mine though. Grr.

I came home after sword practice on Sunday completely worn out, so crawled into bed. It was chilly, and normally I love that for sleeping. When I got up though, it wasn't any warmer. I cranked up the heat before work, but came home to find it just as cold. Figures when the temperature reaches a high of 33 outside that THAT would be exactly when my heat goes out. The heater gets an attitude in winter, and starts sucking in extra air until it can't seem to do anything else. I tried practicing my meisterhau to keep warm, but it's too flipping cold outside, just as cold in here, and I gave up after dropping my sword twice. So I figured I'd write instead, but it's even colder when you're not moving. Luckily though, my custom-made SPES AP gambeson finally arrived this week, so I'm wearing it and my undergloves to blog right now. I'm hoping that to break it in a bit, because as of now it's REALLY not comfortable. Everywhere I gave a measurement seems to be ok, but the in-between bits aren't so much. But it is warm, so right now it's serving a vital purpose :)

The last thing I discovered this week doesn't really fit in anywhere, so I'll just tack it on last. At practice, the guys are always trying to set up practice sessions during the week. I'd love to join, but an hour and a half each way is too much on a school night. So when I practice, I have to go solo. I need to get a pell or something so that I'm not just faking everything. I can beat my imaginary partners handily every time, but unfortunately they apparently suck, because when I spar with the boys on Sundays, I don't do nearly so well. With it being so cold outside, I've been trying to do at least my hundred cuts daily- all the meisterhaus from left and right. On the up side, being forced to be right-handed for the last few weeks has been great for getting me used to fighting from either side. But just doing the strikes didn't seem super-useful. I still practice my durchwechselns with Circe, but she's getting cleverer, and has gotten much faster, so it's getting trickier. Abby just lays around and stares at me like I'm a nut when I practice. But Tonka, my dear Uberfluffen, he's always right nearby, hoping to play. And with his help, I hit on this weird but genius way to practice.

I'd been trying to practice the moves that I'd learned with RJ at Longpoint, trying to move my sword without revealing my intent. When I'd told the Professor about it, I couldn't remember the right terminology. Basically, I wanted to practice not foreshadowing my moves, I'd told him. Not giving away my intent with tells. It wasn't feinting really, just trying not to let people know what I was doing. Trying to pop the point of my sword and get moving without forecasting or telegram-ing my plan. You know when things are right there but you can't for the life of you get it right? TELEGRAPHING. I was trying to not do it. But practicing in a mirror doesn't really help, because you KNOW when you're going to move, even if you try not to let on.

Anyway, poor Uberfluffen is missing his pal Roscoe, and he's hating being stuck inside on cold days. So he's dying to play, most of the time. When he gets too bored, he goes on these crazy tears, running all around the house, circling rooms and furniture at top speed, crashing into things when he doesn't turn tight enough, then slamming to a halt right in front of whoever's in the room. He sits there, legs splayed, rump in the air, all tense and waiting for someone to make a move so that he can go tearing around again. He'll do it over and over again until he collapses in a panting heap. As I was playing with him, getting him wound up and sending him tearing around the place again, I noticed that he didn't always take off the first time I moved- if he saw it coming, he stayed frozen. If I startled him, he'd take off like a nutcase. To test if it was consistent, I grabbed a stick and tried it again. Sure enough, if I moved before the stick, he stayed still, tense and staring. If I managed to pop the stick so it moved before I did, it sent him off like shot, zigzagging all over the place and bouncing off the furniture. The next day, I tried it with a stick dragon. Same deal. If I managed to move the dragon without the rest of me giving it away, he was off and running. If I leaned forward, or made any indication that I was going to move, he just stayed there, staring. Finally earlier this week, I tried the sword. It worked! So now the fuzzy boy gets more exercise running around like a freak, and I get to practice not telegraphing with someone who doesn't know what I'm thinking. And he never reminds me about my fairy feet.

Weeks 29 & 30 - Throwing Twinkies Out the Window

As a librarian in an elementary school, I often get the usually boring job of teaching the kids all about atlases, almanacs, encyclopedias, thesauruses and other super-exciting reference resources. I try to make it fun- we do an amazing race twist for the atlases, look up most popular video games and fastest roller coasters in almanacs, research weird animals in the encyclopedias... but my favorite is always the dictionary.

Ok, so yes, I asked for an unabridged dictionary one year for Christmas. I was an English major, so sue me. I like words, especially those archaic and super-specific words. Unfortunately, at school we only have these lame student dictionaries that include things like "dog" and "ice cream," which the kids already know, but pass right by "okapi" and "arachibutyrophobia," which are so much cooler. (Okapis are these little dark brown African deer-looking critters with zebra-striped rumps, and arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth, just in case you wondered.) But with the lame dictionaries, we can't look up fun stuff like that, so I have to compromise. I have them look up most of the words in the lame dictionaries, but then they have to use the big unabridged one to look up DEFENESTRATE. That one's been my favorite for years, ever since I leaned what it meant. And the kids are hilarious when they find the definition. Reactions range from "No way!" to "She said she'd throw us out the window?!" (It's one of my favorite 'dire consequences' to deter misbehavior. They get a kick out of it since the windows are only about six inches off the ground.) I used to threaten my little brother with defenestration too, but those plans got scrapped when he ended up taller than I was. I always hoped though... someday I'd make it happen!

Fast forward. For the past two weeks, we've been working on the sprechfensters- speaking windows. If I've got it right, when you find yourself with your sword in langenort, you try to use your spidey-fullen sense to figure out what the other guy is going to do with his sword. If he applies no pressure, just wind in or duplieren or something. If he does apply pressure, use his force on your sword as leverage, travel after him and whack him in nachriessen with a nice oberhau. I think this is one of the ones I actually understand- I just have difficulties in actually doing it correctly when it's at combat speed. Apparently this is another one of those muscle memory things, that eventually will become second nature. I'm thinking really though that my second nature must be part rabbit, part sloth: my reactions to swordy things seem to be either panicky self-preservation or terribly slow recognition and reaction. If I'm watching others fight, I can see what should be done. Just can't seem to translate that to my own situation when I'm fighting, at least not in time for it to actually matter. It's a bit frustrating.

We had another new guy come join us, so now we have Old New Guy and New New Guy, at least until they get better nicknames. New New Guy did fencing in college or something, so it's not entirely revolting that his footwork and stance are already better than mine. But it is a little. New Guy and Old New Guy were paired up, Deadpool was with Mr. Piccolo (old student of the Professor's from before my time), and, much like the Hostess factory itself, our very own Twinkie finally returned from the brink of obscurity and came back to practice this week too, and we paired up. With the new and newly returned folks, the Professor had us review the meisterhau and the vier versetzens to be sure we were all on the same page. Twinkie's got an injured paw too, so we were working with the sabres again for this exercise. Working with the off hand takes a lot of getting used to, but I guess the up side is that I'll be ambidextrous when I can finally use my left hand again.  

After the vier versetzens, the Professor re-explained the sprechfenster and had us all practice those. We were supposed to do an uncooperative spar, starting off from longpoint and going wherever the wind took us, based on whether or not there was pressure applied to the blade at any given time. Twinkie's out of practice and was learning them for the first time, I was using my off hand again, and we hadn't much sabre experience anyway, so it was an interesting experiment. I think I understood what we were doing enough to get the idea- at least I was able to turn most of my langenorts into successful attacks, when we went slowly anyway. Then it was Twinkie's turn to do the same. I'm not sure how well we did, but when the Professor came by, he didn't have a whole lot of criticism, so I suppose that's good. We did a lot of watching the other guys too, then traded off partners a bit and tried it with masks also. Head shots only, and we were supposed to be sprechfenstering and watching for our windows to be open. Best part?

As the Professor put it: "If I am standing in the speaking window, and you do something that forces me to break that guard, then in a very real sense, I have been forced out of the window, see? Defenestrated."

So technically, I finally got to defenestrate someone! Woohoo!

Weeks 27 & 28 - Turning Keys, Fighting in Jello, & Missing the Point

My mind works in odd ways. I can find any paper I need in the massive piles on my desk, remember exactly where I saw a certain fabric in a shop, and can figure out which book a kid wants when he asks for "the blue one about a dog that my friend had last week." But when I'm learning new things, if I don't write things down, I tend not to remember what I've heard. That being said, sometimes my notes make absolutely no sense. I wrote down a bunch of notes over the past few weeks while intending to turn them into a post, but they make absolutely no sense without anything to connect them. For example, this is what greeted me when I returned to finish this week's blog:

Keystrokes
Uberfluffen and Unterfluffen
This is the house that jello makes
Abschneiden
Schnikt - Wolverine?
Riceballs
Robot videos
Guest readers- guys, cops, firemen! Inhibition games too.
Grapevines
The point of a versetzen
Noisy windows

Most of that makes no sense. Some of it I remember writing, though not necessarily why. Thankfully though, my mind is used to the weird, convoluted twists enough it all comes back eventually. Usually.

Schlussel. The keys were funny. For some reason, that morning before practice, the Professor stumbled over a certain YouTube video of an instructor telling his students how to 'turn the key,' which involved some crazy hip movement thing and a lot of disgust on his part. So during practice when the Professor's daughter and I paired off to do an exercise about parrying off an attack before sending a new one, it degenerated into us snickering "parry it off, turn the key" with a little hip twist and a lot of giggles. A stern look and a proper explanation of what schlussel should be just made it worse. I at least, was fairly useless for the rest of class.

Uberfluffen and Unterfluffen I can't forget. They're my furry darlings. Tonka, my super-fluffy husky mutt, has more fur than sense. He's the one who sits on the table on the deck and stares forlornly at me when I practice and has taken to running alongside and trying to trip me while I do footwork drills on my own. He's also the reason that every bit of clothing I have seems to have a fluffy golden thread woven in. Unterfluffen is the dear little black chupacabra-looking mutt that I had on loan for a while from the Professor. He has a thin black coat of wiry fur that barely covers his body, and spent most of his time while I was practicing alternately sleeping and systematically destroying all the screens in my windows. The Professor has been kind enough to let me bring the fuzzy boys with me to practice at times, and the difference in their coats and shedding capabilities earned them their new nicknames.

This is the house that jello makes... That one was actually a lot of fun. We were all paired up and were supposed to be going back and forth, throwing attacks, parrying them off, then counter attacking- only we were supposed to move as slowly as though we were fighting in jello. Pardon, JELL-O®. 
Since my left hand was in a brace, I couldn't hold my longsword properly, so got to break in the singlesticks and play with sabres instead. It would have been great, except that I had to use my right hand for everything- normally with the single handed weapons I switch back and forth. The Professor had us going back and forth, explaining about the rolling motion of a ship that would necessitate movement. Then of course, our ship was full of jello, and we'd go into slow motion, which just made the whole thing a snicker-fest. We were playing cooperative uncooperative sword fighting. The massive slow-down was to get us to recognize the incoming attack and give us time to come up with the proper counter- which sometimes took a few tries. I got paired up with Riceball (his choice of nicknames, not mine!), and we took turns: strike, parry off correctly, then counter. Once we got the idea, the Professor had us add in another move each time. So Riceball would attack. I'd see it coming, prepare a parry. He'd attack again, I'd parry it off. He'd attack, I'd parry it off, then counter attack. He'd attack, I'd parry, I'd counter, he'd parry, and so on and so on. Reminded me of the "this is the house that Jack built" story I read to the kids sometimes. Or maybe that game Simon, where you poke the colored buttons that correspond to the tones you hear, and it keeps adding them until you're ready to throw the thing out the window. When we lost the pattern, we were supposed to start over with a new one. I think we made it to ten steps once. But we started over a lot. It was a neat exercise really, and the slow speed gave us a chance to figure out what counter worked best- and to notice that the right one was usually one that felt the most natural. A cumulative tale in steel. Oh, I like that...

Abschneiden. Gesundheit. Wait, that's slicing off... stuff. I think. No, pretty sure. Not sure about the what or how, so I'm just going with a generic slicey motion for that one- drawing or pushing your sword along someone's tender bits. I could go look it up, but I'm tired.

Schnikt. That's the noise Wolvie's claws make in the comics. You gotta love onomatopoeia. Or it could've been schnitt- that makes more sense. Oberschnitt comes from above. Unter comes from below. Duh. We did those with the melon-baller thing.

The video reference must've been referring to Deadpool's birthday gauntlet. One minute for every year older- and HEY! I would totally like to know why it's only one minute now, and I had to do a three minute match for every year?! I'm twice their age! Mine took two days! Oh, maybe that's why. Well, at least mine wasn't filmed. We filmed Deadpool's. The Professor was going to have us critique the fights after, but thankfully seems to have forgotten about that. It's so much easier to pick out the bad than the good anyway- especially when I'm critiquing myself. I do it with everything- a new recipe I tried, a quilt I just finished, these goofy blog postings. And seeing yourself on video is an extremely eye-opening and horrifying experience. We held Deadpool's birthday gauntlet with 24 minutes of fights for him, 5 rounds for most of us, whatever weapon sounded good at the time. All of it on camera. And I am not at all photogenic at the best of times. In any way. Seeing my horrifyingly bad footwork and malfunctioning robot stance is definitely something that needs improving. But I did pop the birthday boy with a lovely scheitelhau at the end of one of our matches.

Ah, the guest readers thing I'm thinking I wrong-windowed while taking notes at school. Sorry about that. Inhibition games could be fun though- duck, duck, goose WITH SWORDS! Red light, green light SWORD! Simon Says SWORD!

Grapevines. That has to be referring to the footwork stuff. The Professor had us do some drills that involved the different steps- passing, triangles, that skipping one- and moving across the field, both forward and back. Then we had a ladder of swords laid out on the ground, and we had to footwork our way through the gaps. Triangle step this way, passing step this way, shuffle step the other, then the one where you do an about face that I can't remember the name of. We'd done this one at the IGX seminar too, so the reinforcement was cool. All practice long, we were supposed to be sure that we stepped with every swing, which is still not an intuitive or natural thing for me for some reason. Apparently I'm all good with just standing there and letting someone hit me. Professor gave us all a quick and dirty assessment of our footwork at the end of class too. One of the guys moves his feet less than I do. One leans forward before he takes any step and broadcasts what's coming. One of the others moves his just to move them- the Professor says it seems without point or purpose. Mine apparently is STILL the faerie feet. I'm convinced that comes from walking in heels and being forced to walk on tiptoe. Next time I'm going to try practicing in heels, see what that does. The guys have all been into the "Wiggins Kick" lately, booting each other in the chest. Just imagine how much more effective that could be in heels!

Vier versetzen: Four ways to break a guard by throwing your opponent's sword offline and seeing that  you threaten him enough that he gets the point... of your sword, hopefully at his throat. We paired off and practiced lots of those, both breaking the guard and then trying to counter whatever broke it too. I got paired up with Deadpool, who also had a skitchy hand- mine's still recovering from IGX- works fine most of the time, but it doesn't like repetitive swiveling motions- which means no zwerchs for a while :( As we were versetzing with our off hands, we were working together to figure out counters for each as well, then counters for the counters.

It was at this point that we discovered that there seems to be a direct correlation between the vehemence of my apologies, and my doing something correctly. I'd been hanging out in pflug, Deadpool schiel-ed me, and I countered that with some kind of absetzen-ish thing that resulted in a wicked thrust to his throat. We weren't wearing masks or anything. I was horrified. Apologies flowed like water as he tried to cough it away and we took a break. We were using sabre simulators and weren't at combat speed or anything, but still. Deadpool's an odd duck though- he seems to like it.

Lastly was our homework assignment. Sprechfenster. Talking windows. That much I remember, and it's all tangled up with langenort, but I'm too tired to figure it out just now. We're supposed to look it up in the manuals and check on counters or how to apply it or something. Tomorrow.

My windows don't have screens anymore anyway. Thanks Unterfluffen.

IGX - HEMAtomas & Seeing Stars

Boston... I do not like your traffic. And I'm from D.C. Well, -ish. On the up side, we had about ten hours to harass the Professor on the way home, so that was fun. 

After crashing at his place and crawling into bed at 2am, I had to drag myself out before 6 and drive the hour and a half home to pick up the dog from the kennel, take him home, change, shower, and be back on the road to make it to work by 8:30. I actually made it, which probably means I was speeding the whole way there. Weirdly, I wasn't tired- but I don't remember the drive either. I'm trying not to think about that too much, because that can't be a good thing.

Work has been interesting so far this week. The teachers all think I'm nuts, and eye me with thinly veiled worry  for my sanity. The kids now think I'm Wonder Woman. Conversations like this played out in all six of my classes today, plus at dismissal time in the hall as they were leaving:

Kids: Whoa, what happened to your hand?!

Me: I got hit with a sword.

Kids: (eyes going huge) No way! A real one? Cool!

Me: Yup.
Kids: You could have lost your hand!

Me: That would have been bad.

Kids: Did you die?
Me: Um... no. 

Kids: (poking gently at my hand) What if your fingers fall off?

Me: Then you can have one.

Kids: Really?!

Me: No.

Kids: You're lucky you survived! Most people who get hit with swords don't. Did it hurt?

Me: Oh yes. 

Kids: Did you cry?

Me: Almost.

Smarta$$e$: Aren't you supposed to not get hit?

Me: Yes.

Smarta$$e$: (inspecting the bandage & bending my purple fingers) You need to practice more.

Me: .... Don't you have a bus to catch?

* * * * * 

I survived! Goal #1 for IGX accomplished. I managed to score some points from decent shots, so Goal #2 was accomplished too. Goal #3 was to take steps with every cut, and I know I slipped on that one, because it's still a conscious thing for me and I know I wasn't thinking of stepping while in the ring. But it was such fun!

Before I forget, superhuge kudos go out to Jeff and all the IGX organizers and helperfolk. I know what a nightmare scheduling can be even for small events, so one as grand and ambitious as this was bound to have a few hiccups. But the classes and workshops I was able to attend were all excellent, the fighting was wonderful, dinners were good, and the company world class. Thanks so much for putting it all together! 

IGX: The Beginner's Perspective

Day 1: Getting up early when I don't have to work rots, even when it's for something fun. We made it over to the venue and staked out a corner. Many people seemed to be walking around half asleep, but all were friendly. I'm not the social butterfly the Professor is, so it was nice to see some familiar faces. The cutting tournament was first, and a lot of fun to watch. I had half-wanted to enter, but knowing my luck with the pool noodles, I didn't want to waste the tatami mats. I'm going to practice though, so I can enter the next one :) We watched the cutters and chatted until it was time to suit up for the Open Steel. 

I swear, getting all geared up in fencing gear is more complicated than even getting into my wedding dress was. I know why knights had squires now, because it's a royal pain to try and get everything on quickly. My new gambeson hasn't been finished yet either, so I busted out the blue again. And I had all the same problems this time I'd had last time, the worst being that the sleeves are too long. When they're strapped down by my forearm guards, the whole mess tries to push my gloves off. So once I got geared up, I just stood around with my hands clenched, trying to keep my gloves from moving. Since it was such a pain to get the gloves on and not moving, I couldn't take them off to put my mask on. Fitting the mask over my glasses never seems to work the same way twice. I'm seriously thinking of ditching the specs when I have to fight. If I aim in the general top/middle/bottom direction of my opponent, it won't matter if I can't really see, right? Anyway, I felt like a kid on Christmas who'd eaten an entire plate of cookies the night before- super hyper-excited to the point I was bouncing, but kind of queasy at the same time. 

How do I always seem to end up in the first round? Do organizers have this special sense that tells them if I think too much about what I'm doing that I might run screaming or throw up in my mask? It happened at Longpoint, and then again at IGX too. First round, both days! At least I was early enough that the Professor's matches didn't overlap, so he could coach me a bit. 

The calibration round: It was kind of a neat idea, now that I get it. I had absolutely no idea what was going on though at the time. At school, I've got a schedule, but it rotates. I know I'll have fifth grade at a certain time, but I'm never quite sure which class it will be. I just teach whoever shows up. That's kind of the way the calibration round went for me. I geared up, they color coded me, and I just went where they told me and fought whoever stepped into the ring. I didn't have much of a grasp of how it worked. I hopped in the ring, they started the match, and then it was over. Actually, I guess there was 20 seconds of fighting in the middle, but I'd swear I blinked and missed it. And there were stars too! I don't know what they were really, but I liked the idea of keeping them. I read the rules, I really did. But apparently I didn't quite get it. I knew it was counted blows, but I thought initially that meant that you only got three shots, so you had to make the most of it and then you weren't allowed to throw any more. So that's what I did- went in the ring, threw my three shots, then spent the rest of the second parrying incoming shots. When I got out of the ring, of course the Professor told me I was being too defensive, and told me to throw as many good shots as I could, try not to get hit, and let the judges sort out the rest. It's one of those communication things I notice about the county where I work too- a lot of times, people in the know assume that everyone knows how everything works, and that everyone has the same background info so some things don't get explained quite as thoroughly as one would hope. I felt kind of dorky, but the feeling improved when they said the calibration round wasn't really going to count.

The real round: I was in pool D with McKenzie E., Jonathan G., and Charles S. I sort of knew McKenzie by sight from my sparky match at Longpoint, when his pal Marcus trounced me. The others were new, but the fights were fun. I had all these grand ambitions and thoughts about throwing specific cuts and working in at least one zwerch (they're my favorite), but all of those thoughts kinda fell out of my head when I stepped into the ring. Mostly I just remember trying not to get hit. I did manage to score two points on someone, got thumped by McKenzie, and somehow managed to hold on to all but one of my stars. According to the Professor's daughter, I came in second in my pool!

Real round 2: Next up was pool E, with Jess R., Keith C., and Julie C. Jess I knew from Longpoint and one of OtherJake's KDF practices. Keith's the one who eased my mom's worries by decking me out with protective gear- and who's holding my new jacket for ransom or something ;-) Julie I hadn't met before, and sadly didn't get to find after either. Keith easily trounced me, but Jess, Julie, and I all managed to fend each other off long enough to keep most of our stars, and I think earned an extra, so we tri-tied for second. Professor was off socializing and MISSED IT! lol. The boogerhead. But I did well all by myself! So now I know I can, which I guess is a good thing.

The rest of that day was spent in watching other fighters, pal-ing around with Miss Cat, and watching the Invitational Tourney, which was awesome. So many awesome fighters- Axel and Charles, Nathan and the Professor, Andrew and Casper and Omar and so many others- it was great. Though to be honest, I was totally starving by the time it started, so was cheering for whoever's name came first alphabetically. Except for the Professor's, of course. Truly. His was an awesomely fun match to watch though. He and Andrew looked like they had a blast.

Back to the hotel for a shower and change, then to the restaurant for dinner. Apparently not everyone went for the 'shower and change' option though, so major apologies to everyone we disturbed coming in late for the lecture. But because we did, we got a small table in the back, which turned out very nicely. We got to meet Graham and Ange, who also came in late, and had fun conversations with them all night. Then back to the hotel where we all crashed early. 

Until like two in the morning, when the Professor woke me up. "You made the eliminations!" It didn't register at first. I remember a vague feeling of disbelief and the thought that I was still sleeping, but he showed me the pools for the next day, and sure enough, there we were. Both of us made it! His making it was no surprise, but I have no delusions about my ability. But it seemed that the defense game had worked out for me! And I apparently was so good, that I made the list twice! Either that, or the organizers knew I'd need twice as many chances as anyone else to actually have a prayer of getting any farther. Or maybe someone was just sleepy. Whatever the case, I was in both pools A & B.

Luckily, someone else caught the double booking early in the morning, and it was sorted before the eliminations began. I ended up in a pool with Casper, Graham (was supposed to be Eric, who I still need a dance with), and Michael S. I'd heard those names before. I knew this one wasn't going to go as well as the day before, but I didn't have that healthy fear thing going I'd had previously. My faithful squires helped me get dressed- remember when you were 5 years old and your mom had to zip you into your snow suit and help with your boots and gloves and hat?- and I curled my hand around my sword so my gloves wouldn't loosen, got tied up with my green ribbon, and off I went- again, FIRST ROUND. Casper very gently, very thoroughly, kicked my tail. He was so relaxed, just letting me try a strike, then batting it aside and lightly poking me, tapping his sword along my arm as I tried a thrust from entirely too far away (forgot to step again). One star down. I don't think I even came close to hitting anything. Then Graham, who came hard and fast like a bull, but with this sidestep dancing step that threw me for a loop. I remember thinking I had been using pflug way too much and so ought to try something else, extending my arms for a cut of some sort, and then... CRACK!

Eventually, I will learn to pull back into a guard after a strike. That morning, I did not remember. Which is a bit ironic, because I don't remember much after that hit either. Apparently my sword hanging out there made a lovely target, because he scored a magnificent hit right across the back of my hand. I'm sure there were other hits, because I think I lost another star too. I found it a moment later though- it was circling in the air above my hand and my head as if I was Bugs Bunny or something. The third match was mostly a blur of pain, from which I awoke with about five seconds left. I pulled myself together enough to strike out at the other guy's leg and force him out of the ring. My ducking down left my head open though, so I got whacked for that maneuver- which served me right, really. Unfortunately, the judges didn't see my shot to his leg, though the ref did, so I lost that one instead of tying. No less than three people came by after to tell me they'd seen the shot, which was kind of nice.

Honestly though, I didn't care at that point- I just wanted my glove off. Miss Cat helped me get the thing off, saying she could see my hand shaking through the glove. Cripes it hurt. I've got pretty decent pain tolerance, but I was blinking back tears when I saw what looked like a small turtle perched on the back of my hand, slowly turning red and getting bigger. Luckily, the booboo-meisters got me wrapped up and iced, told me all sorts of horror stories about what would probably happen over the next few days (whole arm turning black and purple, more swelling, stiffness, major pain- none of which have come to pass, thankfully), and gave me advice on treating it. They told me to RICE it. I replied that I didn't like rice, and they laughed. So I learned a new acronym: Rest Ice Compression Elevation. I got to spend the rest of the day just watching everything, feeling like a dork with my hand wrapped in ice on top of my head. But apparently it worked, because so far, I have had none of the extra nastiness they hinted at, just my fingers turning a bit purplish and the back of my hand hosting a smaller turtle. I've been advised to go to a doctor anyway though, so have an appointment next week. They were great though, and every time I went by the booboo station, they pulled me over to check on it. The nurse was very sweet too- I stopped and chatted with her a bit, even ended up buying a pair of gloves from her.

Unfortunately, because of the way they wrapped my hand, I couldn't get my gloves back on, so had to drop out of the women's mixed tournament, which was kind of a bummer. On the up side though, I was able to attend Axel Petterson's class on using all the guards. Even though I couldn't play (couldn't grip a sword at all) or take notes (it was my left hand that got squished), I at least got to observe and listen in as he taught us how to use the more uncommon guards to your advantage. There's one he mentioned that I really want to try for sure- the really high vom tag, but from a lowered position- seems like that could really mess with an opponent's head. Since I'm lefty, everything we learned was backwards, but I'm used to that. Even not being able to participate much, I enjoyed it. Weirdly, being on the sidelines gave me the opportunity to meet new people too, which was nice. Whether by loaning out swords, watching the cutting clinic, even just standing around, there were always great people to talk to. The next day was the Professor's class, which was fun too. I'd expected it to be stuff we'd already done, but he pulled out some new exercises and drills that I hadn't gotten to do before, so I was trying to keep up with an imaginary sword. Felt a little dorky zwerch-ing and krump-ing with nothing really in my hands, but at least I got to pretend. Thankfully Natasha was walking by and took pity on me, and handed me one of the singlestick sticks, which was light enough I could hold it without my hand screaming at me. So I got to play fight at least, standing parallel to the participants and faking zorns along with them. Being the odd one out though, I was also free to talk to people who wandered by, and got them to come play too. Plus there was something kind of fun about poking people with a stick.

OH! And I didn't apologize once! Well, not counting that one slip during warm-ups when the Professor was taking me through the paired form routine. But in my matches- not one apology! Which probably means I didn't do anything right, now that I think about it. lol. That's usually when the apologies slip out. But it was sweet when Graham came by to apologize for the hand. Twice. It wasn't until then that I recognized him as the fellow we'd had dinner with the night before. And again later that night, actually. It's funny the things that bring people together. Getting knocked out of the eliminations I'd expected- but there's no shame in being beaten by two of the eventual finalists. It's kind of neat that even as inexperienced as I am, you can just TELL some fighters are amazing.

So overall summary- HEMA folk are great. Bruises suck. I really liked the idea of the star system, though I'm not sure I ever figured it out entirely. 20 seconds is either an eternity or a blink, depending on how you're doing. I loved being able to keep my points (it was a touch demoralizing to have any points you scored negated by an opponent scoring more). I want to take more clinics, and hate that sometimes being in an event makes you miss the class that sounds most fascinating. I'd never been to IGX before, but really enjoyed myself, met some great people, and learned a ton- which are the reasons the Professor used to persuade me to come in the first place. Figures that he'd be right.

IGX Induced Panic

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhh!

We leave today for Boston. I may not make it. On the up side, nerves had me up until 4am doing ALL THE THINGS! I baked cookies, did all the laundry, shoved all the stuffing back into the dog's bed, read a book, reorganized my DVDs, washed windows, repacked my sword gear, and jumped in the pool for a swim. On the down side, I'm still awake, the smell of cookies is making me hungry, the dog is pulling all the stuffing back out of his bed, I forgot that the temperature only got up to 64 degrees yesterday and the water had a greenish tinge to it and now I'm freezing.

Ever since I was a kid, every time I had a piano recital, an orchestra concert where I had a solo, a work in a school art exhibit, Longpoint's paired forms, even the quilt I just entered in the fair this year- every time, I have these stupid bouts of insecurity. I talk myself into forgetting things I knew, or only see the missteps in my artwork, or whatever. It's ridiculous. So I had a little panicky moment or two about IGX too. I know it'll be fun. I know I'm going to learn a ton. I know we'll have a great time. But I don't know if it was the six people today telling me not to get dead, lingering unease over my as yet un-healed bone bruise from Longpoint, or just dread of a nine-hour drive, but something got me more than a bit nervous. The poor Professor got the joy of dealing with it, but managed to allay my fears enough to get me to let him go to bed. Then the aforementioned frittering began. But my house has never been so clean!

Really though, I'm totally looking forward to trying another tournament and fencing more great fighters! At Longpoint, I got to face the others in my pool, but that was it. The squashed finger kept me from picking up any other matches, so I spent a lot of time just watching. This time, it sounds like we'll have tons of fighting to do. As last time, my main goal is not to get dead. I'm going to shoot a little higher though, and hope to at least land a couple of really good shots, and to try and be sure that I take a step with every cut- I'm really bad about that. Watching the videos we took of Deadpool's birthday gauntlet, I saw that I move with all the smoothness and grace of a robot that's short circuiting. Hopefully I can keep it together and fight the nerves off enough to put into practice some of what the Professor's been trying to get us to see. I'm going to watch for those indes moments and try to actually act on them, rather than just watching them flit by. But if you're at IGX and see a goofball in a blue coat and bunny mask waving randomly in the air, you'll know I missed one. But hey- at least I'll have recognized it :)

Wish me luck- we're shipping off to Boston!

Week 26 - Swordhouse Rock - Conjunction Junction

So this week, we spent quite a lot of time on the hangen and winden again, reviewing how they help get us from point A to point B in a play. The Professor was demonstrating, explaining how they connect strikes and responses, and then he asked "given that windings could functionally extend a play beyond the end point as written, what does that say about what winding actually is, and why the plays are written to end as they do?"

I'd zoned out a bit and lost myself over-thinking, which happens a lot really, when suddenly it hit me... they're just conjunctions! My language arts teachers would be so proud. I knew someday being able to diagram a sentence would have to come in useful! My BA in English Literature paid off at last! Well, not really, but still. And hey, and the whole point of the previous week's homework to find a play that could be extended with winden fit right in- fancy that!

Windens are just "or,"s "and,"s & "but"s! So immediately my mind sticks on the word "conjunction" and wanders off. I think I hang out with kids too much... they're a bad influence. Those of you who remember "Schoolhouse Rock" can come with me for a sec on a little side trip: 

Winden Junction, what's your function?
hookin' up pflugs and albers and ochses,
Winden Junction, how's that function?
I got four favorite winds that get most of my job done.
Winden junction, what's their function?
I got "eins," "zwei," "drei," and "vier"; they'll get you pretty far.

Eins- that one twists, wrists cross the inside like that.

Zwei- that flips to the opposite, not eins but zwei,
then drei and vier- one-two,
when you have a choice like from left or right

"eins," "zwei," "drei and vier," get you pretty far.

Winden Junction, what's your function?
Hooking up plays and making 'em end right.
Scheitel to kron, zwerchin' vom tag, krumping an ochs-
Hey that's nice!
Sweaty but happy, battered and bruised,
Loving your swords, getting your tail kicked too.
I'm poor but honest, black and blue,

Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!

Winden junction, what's your function?!

Yes, I actually sing it to myself. And then I proceed to giggle myself stupid. Those of you who don't get the reference are horribly deprived little whippersnappers, and need to go educate yourselves. Here: Conjunction Junction. (While you're at it, check out "I'm Just a Bill" too. You may laugh, but I still know all the steps of creating laws thanks to that song.)

So anyway, the Professor said that was exactly the idea. I waited patiently for my gold star, but sadly, none was forthcoming. I was a little bummed, but we moved on to cutting, which always cheers me up. I managed to cut with an oberhau on my first try, and was the only one to manage it that day too :-)

I'm sure some other stuff happened too, but those were the important things. I totally should have gotten TWO gold stars.

Week 25 - Winden Down

This week started off with the ALS Ice Bucket challenge thing, so it was a slow start to class. I volunteered to film, but knew it wouldn't get me out of it. Luckily, I'd been saving milk jugs for months. They are tons easier to cut than stupid pool noodles. After we'd all been properly doused and recorded, we did a group warm up and review, then had a quick demo of the winden before we had to pair off to practice. 

Poor Ezio... both of us trying to learn the first four winden, me trying to do it all bass-ackwards since I'm lefty but not allowed to be, neither of us getting it at first. I was always really good at assembling those box drawings in my head on the stupid aptitude tests in high school, figuring out where the shady sides would be and such. But I cannot for the life of me seem to figure out what to do with my feet when sword fighting. Either they stay still entirely, or I step with the wrong side, or I do the fairy foot thing. The Professor, Lee, Mr. ZeusSquatch, RJ, and half a dozen others at Longpoint have all told me I just need to relax. Unfortunately, that has the same effect as when the gynecologist tells me to relax- it's the absolute last thing that happens. (Yup, I tossed in a lady doctor. You're welcome.) Maybe once I've figured it out enough that I don't have to think about every little thing, then I'll be able to relax. For now though... not so much. Basically, I could not figure out how these winden eins, winden zwei (1&2, really?) were supposed to go, and Ezio was terribly patient while we tried to work it out. The Professor had to come over and walk me through them a few times before finally I got it straight, then showed us the windens 3&4, which made EVER so much more sense. Then Ezio had to figure out the reverse, because my lefty ones made sense finally and his were the ones that were bass-ackward.

One of our numbers who doesn't come much any more showed up for the ALS Challenge thing, and wanted to do hand to hand-to-hand and staff work, so we did a bit of those after the winden. Well, the guys did the ringen stuff- that's not one I'm keen on learning. We had stations though, so I ended up with Ezio again, using quarterstaves this time. Quarterstaffs? Whichever. We were using big sticks. I was a huge Robin Hood fan as a kid, and always wanted to learn how to use a staff. New stuff! Yay! Only problem was, I had never even picked one up before. Well, one that wasn't attached to a bristle broom anyway. Ezio grabbed his and started spinning it around like he was Gambit or something. Suddenly I was feeling a bit intimidated.

I have discovered that I do NOT like the 'sink or swim' method of learning martial skills. (Apologies if this paragraph sounds disjointed, but I've re-written it like three times because it keeps sounding sketchy.) I grabbed hold of the staff with both hands, and tried to follow Ezio's lead while the other guys called out 'helpful' comments. They said it was like a really big sword, so I tried to treat it that way, and ended up catching a schielhau to the mask that knocked me back and had me staggering a bit. I saw him coming, but couldn't manage to duck out of the way before I caught it full in the face. I always thought that cartoony image of stars and twittering birds was just done for effect... yeah, no. I saw stars. And shooting comets. Several supernovas. I kept at it for another few minutes, but honestly couldn't report another thing that happened. I think I got in like one or two decent shots to Ezio's side, but kept forgetting the stick had two ends and no pointy bits. Mostly, I just remember the stars.

So homework got postponed again last week, and we're for really this week supposed to find a play in the manuals that can be furthered or countered with zwie hangen. As the Professor put it, were someone to say "Hold up, Siggy (Sigmund Ringeck)- what if I did this..." at the end of a strike, what would it look like? But it rots- I had my example all ready to go for last week. I'd been looking at plates, found my doorknob absetzens and thought if you pulled back into a high hanger after thrusting you'd be all protected and ready for another strike. Then the Professor describes the assignment again in class since not everyone remembered to do it, and STOLE MY EXAMPLE! Then he said we couldn't use that one.

Rude.

Now I have to go find another. Most probably I should be finding one now, because this is the only free moment I have this week since school is starting again and I'm supposed to be focusing on getting the little darlings to read. Ooh, wonder if any of the picture books I have with knights have illustrations with hangen opportunities?! I know there's a book with an armored squirrel by Jacques. Surely that'd count! I'd love to do a big display on medieval warfare, but we only have like two books left. I had a group of sixth grade boys enamored last year- I ordered five beautiful new books on swords and weapons in January, another three on battles, and every one of the new ones was stolen before the end of the year. So on one hand, grrrr, lousy thieves! On the other, yay! I bought good stuff! At least someone's going to read them.   :-)

Week 23 - Dr. Seuss Must Die (& Week 24 - Hangen Out at Home)

One bruise, two bruise, red bruise, blue bruise. Bruises big and bruises small, check me out- I've got them all!

School starts in two weeks, and the first kid who asks me for a Dr. Seuss book may find himself crowned with it. Geisels galore this week, again. And every single time, I saw it coming and thought to myself "hmm, I should go for an ober lauOWWW." Three times I got caught with that stupid geisel, and I never did get the ober lauffen around in time.

This week we got a new student to join us. New Guy seems very sweet so far and is familiar with harnessfechten, but the blossfechten stuff I think is new to him. We started off reviewing the zwie hangen, and had an assignment to go find illustrations of them somewhere in a manual on wiktenauer, to explain to everyone next week. We practiced with our partners the ober lauffens again, and did more reviews of the basics to be sure New Guy had them down.

We also spent a while doing more of the spar/coach/judge exercise. The Professor had us switching off again, this time mixing up our partners more so that we had a chance to coach everyone at least once. We're getting better, I think, about being specific with our criticisms, which truly does help a lot more than "don't get hit!" It's a lot easier to spot openings when you're not the one getting pounded on. It was also apparently the week of Bill channeling. So many hand shots! But if people are going to leave their hands out there, they're going to get whacked, I guess. I caught one shot to my pinky, but it was on a thrust- can't block with hands. Holy crumbs did it hurt too- much worse than my ring finger getting crushed at Longpoint. That one is still achy too. And still a little crooked. It's all weird now :(

Cuteness overload occurred at the end of class. New Guy's family came to pick him up, and his two kids spent the last hour or so watching us practice and do our cutting. Last time I was at the pool store for noodles, Mitch the pool guy showed me some little cutlass handles they'd gotten in, specifically to use with the pool noodles to make swords. They just screw into the end of the foam, and the little pieces that are left after cutting practice are perfect to make swords for little guys. Or to use for dagger practice. Anyway, after we'd finished, I grabbed the noodle swords and let the boys go at it. They seemed to have more fun swatting at the Professor than they did at each other. Yay, new recruits in a few years :D

* * * * *

Week 24

SOOO much fun! Triangle of Death drills! This week was all about getting the muscle memory to actually become memory rather than "OMG stop hitting me like that!"

After a review of each of the wards and the ways to counter them, we practiced with a partner to be sure we actually could match them up and successfully use them in sparring. This is where those flashcards I need to make really would come in handy. We had to practice each from both left and right, and using left-handed and right-handed stances. (I sort of hate to admit it, but the Professor not letting me use my lefty stances actually really made this one easy. And his not letting me be lefty helped me see how I'd been opening up my right side, which is why I'd kept getting stabbed in the chest. Happily, this week I have NOT ONE SINGLE NEW BRUISE to add to my collection! Kind of nice to prove him right, I guess.)

Once we had the basics down again, we moved to a new game. There were only three of us left at that point, so we had to triangularize (don't care if it's not a word, I like it) ourselves. Each of us had to pick a ward, then we circled to the left, using the appropriate meisterhau to break each guard. Starting off, I picked my backwardsnonleftyweirdfeeling pflug, Ezio (formerly known as T) chose vom tag, and C (who still needs a better nickname) went with alber. So we zwerch, scheitel, schieled our way around the triangle to the left, and as soon as the one guard had been broken, we had to pick a new one, and continue going around and around, taking turns and breaking guards. Then we had to do the same, but it was two vs. one- two of us would guard, the third would break them both. Then the Professor popped into the middle, and we went round robin again, this time with him breaking all our guards- which got really funny when he started calling them out as he'd break them. After a while, the schietels started getting schieldy and the krumps were going wild, and I think he got a little dizzy. It was cute.

While we took a break, he pointed out that nobody ever actually stays very long in a guard, once they know what they're doing anyway. But in the middle of combat, you hit those guards while moving from one cut into another, or while parrying a strike and moving to guard yourself, and have to be able to recognize when one of those meisterhau might be useful. So next up on the practice field, we had to do some sparring, trying to break the guards when we saw them. We did the coach/fighter thing again, and the coach gave us a sequence of guards that we were supposed to use, always watching for the moment that we could break the other fighter's instead. I went first, but had apparently totally missed the finer details of the exercise. I got my orders from my coach, and when the match began, went into my sequence of guards, looking for my opponent to do the same. But none of his guards showed up as such. There'd be something that looked a little like an ochs, but in the wrong place, and while I was trying to figure out what was going on, he'd throw a strike I had to parry, or end up getting hit. I got creamed that first one. Apparently I'd misunderstood, and we were supposed to just spar and look for opportunities to break the wards if we saw them in the midst of the fight. Makes a big difference when you actually understand what you're supposed to be doing.

We finished up with another review of the zwie hangen, and a reminder to do the homework that we hadn't reviewed as we were supposed to. So I spent a few hours getting lost in the Wiktenauer this week, looking up plays where you might find hangen, along with every other thing that caught my interest along the way. "Here's a great illustration from Pseudo-Peter von Danzig's blossfechten gloss... hmmm, why's he called Pseudo-Peter anyway? Cool, he might be Ringeck! Yikes, that one must be a cataloguing nightmare. Oh what's this rossfechten stuff? Ooooh, horses!" This is why librarians know bits of everything.

Then some random notes on swording, learned thus far from practicing at home:

a. Practicing indoors no es bueno. Aside from the previously created gouges in the ceiling (only one was mine thank you- the Professor made one too), it is far too easy to damage furniture. I was practicing my stucken and managed to clip the piano. Took me twenty minutes to buff out the mark.
b. Nephews are heartily impressed by an aunt who keeps swords in the house.
     c. Corollary to b- When speaking of swords with nephews, be quick to mention that some are sharp.
          d. Addendum to c- Be sure to have sparkly, girly band-aids on hand, in case one's tongue is too slow to remark upon the sharpness of swords, and nephews decide to test the aforementioned on their own skin.
e. Practicing outdoors is no good when furry beasts are about. Especially when the furry beasts are the kind that like to stay right at your feet.
f. Practicing durchwechselns with the evil cat with one's fingers no longer works. She is evil, but smart, and is amazingly quick to counter. Sparkly band-aids will be required to continue.
     g. Corollary to f- durchwechselns work surprisingly well with the cat when using a blunt- the four foot length of steel is just barely enough to keep one out of claw range. It actually gets her evil chubbiness some well-needed exercise as well.
h. Triangle stepping is interpreted by puppies as an invitation to play.
i. There are a lot of crummy videos out in the interwebs about footwork. (How do you triangle step by moving your feet only once?) Definitely gives one an appreciation for folks who actually look to sources to figure it out.
j. Passing steps are interpreted by puppies as more invitations to play.
k. When ordering the fifth box of pool noodles in one summer, the pool guys come to really appreciate visits, and seem to enjoy asking about how the noodles go with swords. Especially when one brings cookies.
l. Practicing cutting on a pool noodle tied to a weather gauge works great... once.
m. Manuals are difficult to interpret, even after you get past the guy who can't seem to draw human limbs correctly and makes them bend in seemingly impossible directions.
o. Motivators are interpreted by puppies as a definite invitation to play.
p. Getting blogs out in a reasonable time period is directly proportional to the amount of time spent at home. I'll try and be quicker next week :)

Week 22 - Green Eggs and WHAM!

I swear, I think our club owes more bruises to Captain otherJake than any set of techniques or people combined. Ever since Deadpool saw him pull a geisel on the Professor at the Short Point event, it's been the most obnoxiously popular move since. At least, I think it's geisel- like Dr. Theodore Seuss Geisel? Or maybe Gazal? Guesel? Gaizel? No idea. Professor said it was geiselhau, I think. Whichever it is, I have a lovely purple and black bruise across my knee from getting whacked with one. I think we've all been nailed with one at some point lately. Luckily, this week one of the maneuvers we learned can sort of counter it and maybe save our shins and kneecaps. Oberlauffen. When he comes in with a mittelhau or that nasty geisel or some other low cut, cross your wrists and rotate your sword down to parry it, then use the momentum from that to snap the blade around in a circle to pop your opponent on the head. More or less anyway, I think that's it.

We also learned Schwert nehmen. 'All your swords are belong to us.' It looks snazzy, and seems to work well when you can do it, and you end up just taking the other guy's sword away from him. I rot at this one, partly because I can't seem to let go of my sword. If I remember rightly though, when you're bound at the strong, you're supposed to take your dominant hand off the pommel and reach around to grab the other guy's sword, lift up to lock his pommel behind your quillions, then pull down and twist the whole mess up and under your arm. The other guy either has to let go or risk breaking bits off his hand. First time the Professor illustrated it on me, my glove got stuck and I kind of clung to my sword while he twisted around, and I got to experience the 'risk breaking bits' part of that little exercise.

I also got tips on what to do if I get charged in a match again, so next time I don't do panic splits in an attempt not to get shoved out of the ring. I'm supposed to pull back and drop my stance and sword down so the bull charges himself up onto it. I can't ever seem to remember that though, and my default "OMGwhatDoIdo?!" move when I get charged or someone tries to disarm me seems to be to turn lemur and just hold on to my sword and whatever's trying to push me over, no matter what. Apparently my tenacity COULD pay off when that happens, because I've been told two or three times that I've had the perfect opportunity to pommel someone in the head. That just seems like cheating for some reason though. Plus... mean!

After the new maneuvers, we worked in pairs on what ended up being a really fun drill. One of us went sparring while the other acted as coach. As coaches, we had to watch our fighters free spar for a minute or so, then offer suggestions on weaknesses that we spotted, or things that we noticed weren't happening with our fighters. We also were to watch the opponents, to look for openings or mistakes that could be exploited. After a round like that, we then had to pick out something our fighters were not doing, some move they hadn't tried, and work out a secret code. When we shouted out the code word, our fighter was to immediately try and work the move into his attack. Part of the idea was to point out the delay between the shouted command and when the fighter's brain actually processed the request and allowed it to happen. Part of it I think too was to realize that if you made a bad call as coach, you could get your fighter clocked. As a fighter, after the first time you heard the other guy's, you just knew what was coming. I came to dread "rice balls" or whatever the call was (C. was hungry), because it meant Dr. Seuss was visiting again. 'I do not like that whack to knee! I do not like it, C! You see?'

Poor Deadpool had me as a coach. While watching his bouts, I noticed that his opponent was constantly crossing his steps, leaving an opening where Deadpool could rush him and likely knock him off balance. It worked a bit too! (Thanks Lee, for the 'exploiting weakness' class- it's helping a lot!) We switched it up a bit, and I noticed one of our guys wasn't covering low very much. Apparently I'm better at noticing stuff when I'm not the one in the middle of the ring. It kicks over to just survival at that point, and I swear everything I learned falls right out of my head. Or maybe getting hit in the head knocks it out my ear and all over the ground. Regardless, I can't remember squat when I'm in the ring. Hopefully things will get ingrained enough that I'll be able to at least think while I'm in a match, and not just react. That passes, right?

The whole day was kind of neat, actually. We advanced that exercise, and the Professor told us we had to add in a two-step combo that the other had to do on command. I can remember the durchwechselns and absetzens and abnehmen stuff perfectly well when I'm sitting here writing, but on command I can't seem to recall anything useful. But I like zwerchs and can remember the meisterhau, so unfortunate Deadpool had to follow my directions, and when I yelled out, he had to unterhau into a zwerch. I don't even know if those two things go together at all, but it WORKED! That may end up being my strategy- whatever crap I can remember gets strewn together when fighting, whether or not it's actually in the right place. Maybe the combination of weirdness will work to my advantage. Regardless, Deadpool managed to pull it off, so yay! When it was my turn, I was fighting T., who is at least a foot taller than me. Deadpool told me to durchwechseln him when he came in for an oberhau, which is kind of T's favorite strike these days. I know the durchwechseln thing, that's the one I practice with the cat, trying not to get my finger sliced up. But for some reason, it translated into a duplieren in my head. So when I went out to meet T., his oberhau came down as expected and I tried to double it over. The problem was, with the sword way above my head to meet his, I couldn't angle it right to double over anything, and ended up just like halving it instead. Or something like that. So it's no wonder that it didn't work.
After a quick break, we each took turns either sparring with the Professor, being marshal, keeping time, or acting as coach for whoever's turn it was to get beaten. That lesson was on providing specific, useful information to your fighter- something beyond "don't get hit." The idea was for the coaches to watch their fighter and the opponent, and try to provide specific tips on what to try, weaknesses or openings that were spotted. "He leans forward when he's about to throw an oberhau, so watch for that, get ready for nachriesen," that sort of thing.

It was awesome. On my turn, the Professor channeled some of the fighters we'd seen at Longpoint: Captain otherJake with his pretty footwork that looks like dancing, Axel's constantly moving and tapping the ground, Mr. Marsden's seemingly disjointed and laid back style that's amazingly effective, Roberto's incredibly low stance... There were others too, but those I recognized right off. My coach during the round was giving me advice on each pass, but pretty much summed it up with: "ya, I don't even know what to say about that." Hehe. I know I get more carried away with the fun than with the proper techniques, and I think my lack of seriousness exasperates the Professor sometimes.  I totally admit I was fascinated by the mimicry enough that I barely even tried any attacks of my own during my match. I just wanted to see who'd come next, so pretty much got horribly beaten in every pass- but it was such fun! When the Professor decided I'd had enough, he even rode his sword-horse off to the sidelines in homage. 

After practice, the Professor laid down some ground rules for next time. C. isn't allowed to start in pflug ever again. T. isn't allowed to throw oberhaus unless he does an unterhau or a thrust or something else first. (Ya, they need better nicknames, I know.) I'm not allowed to use left-handed guards or wards any more. Apparently I guard my left fairly well, and the shots from that side work as they're supposed to, but I may as well paint a bullseye on my right side, because I get nailed in the chest every time I miss. I'm not showing you people, but I've got the most colorful breast you can imagine- glorious shades of purple streaked with blue, ivory giving way to green-tinged gold speckled with brown, pale pink blossoming into giant red starbursts... pretty sure the whole rainbow is represented at least twice over. I bruise easily, apparently, which doesn't help either. Anyway, the Professor said I was getting too comfortable using my lefty advantage with the boys, so now I have to practice the off side, which feels all weird and wrong and makes me all twitchy. Hopefully that will get easier too. 

In the meantime, I'm trying to stifle my sinister superiority and am practicing my right-handedness. I'm working more on my cutting, because I was seriously impressed with the cutting tournament at Longpoint, and I want to do that someday! When I go out, I'm tending to wear longer sleeves to hide the bruises, so that I don't get concerned advice from little old ladies who worry about my choice in men. Oh! If you ever find yourself confronted by Jehovah's Witnesses, as I was this morning while practicing, you can actually render them speechless when you answer the door with a sword in your hand. Just a tip. :-D