Brilliant.

First, a great little blurb bashing the NYT's abysmal coverage of the gang rape of an 11 year old girl in Texas.  As a former journalist (photojournalist, but still) and sexual assault survivor, I wince and hang my head on behalf of that NYT reporter.

Second, kind of took yesterday off.  I did a morning open mat/class/lab, went over a nifty choke and some variations on it, did some rolling on video for further analysis.  Went to the gym to work on a technique called the power clean. Here's an example, though I did mine with just the bar (45 lbs.)



After that I did kids' kajukenbo class, before going to BJJ at 6.  There we worked on sit outs and other counters to being sprawled on. I got put to sleep (well, a micronap) by a good friend with a sneaky variation on a sleeve choke.  He's done it to me before and it's way frustrating.  It was pretty cool, though, because I woke up sitting up with my face against his chest and he was hugging me and patting my back.  Awwww all combat-cuddly.

After that, I sat down and talked about a prosecutor's and assault survivor's perspective with one of the guys' wives who came to us for self-defense techniques since she's being stalked by someone at work.  Now she's starting to get a little bit interested in BJJ which is AWESOME :)  But she is delicate, with elegant slender arms and long silky hair.  She also has personal space issues, and is diametrically opposed to my tomboy, rough-and-tumble, looks-pulled-backwards-through-a-hedge self.  I talked about the goal of jits, all the major positions, and showed her a simple guard break and a technical pass.  She was uncomfortable having me between her legs, and was VERY uncomfortable with me putting my hands on her hips, so I think it's great for her to have me showing this and not one of our 6' tall firebreathing specimens of American manhood.  It was nice to have a mellow moment, too, though I felt obscurely guilty for spending prePans time not rolling hard, not drilling technique, not positional sparring.  But it wasn't wasted time in the grand scheme of things, I was happy to prioritize winning hearts and minds for jits over an extra 20 min of training...

This morning was better-- woke up late, got to class in time for the last two side control escapes, drilled with Courtney, and then did two timed matches starting from the feet.  Working on better shots, ankle picks, foot trips. 

Oh, two fun things... one, working on a cracktastic opportunity which might have fallen into my lap, to get sponsored to go to Brazil for a month in late summer, hopefully bracketed by the Rio Open/Masters Seniors Worlds (not sure which I would compete in, but they are on the same day so I gotta pick one) in late July and then another tournament in Sao Paulo in August.  :)

Two, the super phenomenal people at Black Eagle might get me a Predator II gi in time for Pans! I compete in Pans in 15 days!  Wooo!