The Wistric household contains many Thanskgiving traditions. Wistric’s family comes to visit, Wistric makes chocolate pie, She Who Must Be Obeyed makes Wistric’s favorite stuffing, Mother of Wistric makes the traditional Wistric Family Rolls, and all stuff their faces until thoroughly sated, then sit around on Friday wishing that Wistric didn’t live right next to the mall that every car on the road is heading towards. Also, there is the tradition of She Who Must Be Obeyed saying “You will NOT have practice on Thanksgiving Day!” Yes, sometimes (read: always) Wistric has to be told this.
But not this time, because in addition to those who spawned Wistric, also arriving for Thanksgiving are Brother of Wistric and his lady, as well as all of the In-laws of Wistric (Mother-in-Law of Wistric, you may recall, approves of Wistric’s eccentric hobby*), including the sister and grandmother of She Who Must Be Obeyed. All in all, an embarassment of riches.
Which brings me to my point: You get three posts this week, ’cause next week you ain’t gettin’ jack, unless I can devise a tortured analogy between carving a turkey (my carving fu rocks, by the way) and crushing an opponent’s little soul.
This Week’s Practice, or How Wistric Find Himself in a Stranger Place than Usual
My own fighting was pretty low key at practice. Short of Roz and Percy, the only opponent I could push myself on without it being boring was Letia, so most of the rest of my fights were in teaching mode, or more often I just sat back and watched others work, providing my distracting and valueless input. Oh, and laughing at Letia as she thwarted her own drill, ’cause it was funny (Speaking of which, Letia, work on keeping your back foot in place when you lunge).
Usually, a teaching-only day is frustrating, but I find myself in a place where I was content to have that on Thursday. A strange place. Maybe it’s just gratifying to see other fencers making the breakthroughs that’ve stalled them for a while.
And a Happy Birthday To Bjorn
Down in Attillium is a decent fellow name of Bjorn, mild mannered newsman by day, heavy fighter, fencer, and selfless servile type by… well, the rest of the day, like, when he’s at SCA stuff. And Bjorn clocked up his 35th birthday and decided he would take on all comers on the rapier field at Sunday’s baronial practice. Bjorn is not a particularly active fencer, so I turned out to get the chance to kick his ass, which I have not in a while. Dame Roz conspired with me, and we ended up making him hold the field as we (and then also Adam) swapped back and forth with him. The guy fights well, quick hands, a good concept of measure, and not easily faked out. So I may set about leaning on him to get out and fight more.
My fighting on the other hand was not great; the ground was all pine needle and leaf litter, and my feet had no traction. I thought back to Ymir, because it was very much like that zero-traction surface. So I could play my sit-back-and-wait game, but when I got bored of that my attacks were screwy because my feet simply were not stable under me. I wonder if there’s a way to practice that (short of fencing on ice… actually, that has potential) before Ymir rolls around again.
And once more unto the running breach I go, this time in cold ass weather guaranteed to make my lungs scream, which means cutting back a few weeks on the C25k.
*Wistric often has to force himself to forget that his Mother and his Mother-in-Law read this, to achieve the requisite flow of vulgarity necessary to convey the art of defense. Also, no word on whether either approves of Wistric’s reference to himself in the third person.
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