Rickson's blue belt requirements

 Before I give you the goods... my little recap o' the weekend... it was HOT.  But I still did a fair bit of gardening, trimmed up my monster Danae antique rose which is easily six feet tall and at least ten feet across...  cleaned out the pool, cut up watermelon, watched the Olympics, and trained both days.  Sunday was particularly cool, for a hot day, because my facebook friend Derrick (who happens to be a BJJ black belt freshly returned to Austin) and his buddy Che (another BJJ bb, also a judo bb) were looking for a place to train and their school, Paragon, is closed on Sundays.  So they trekked all the way from Kyle TX (about 30-40 min) to our academy for some rolls.  That was very cool-- I'd forgotten all you Paragon peeps with your deep half tendencies! 

Meanwhile Paulo, our "new" bb, is settling in well at the start of his six-month trial here.  He looked like a monster on Sunday and I look forward to learning from him.  One of our teammates reported that Paulo got his bb on the same day, in the same ceremony, as Saulo Ribeiro and Cleber Luciano and a few other big names in the BJJ pantheon.  Daaang!

On other fronts, I am mildly disgruntled.  I had a positive home pregnancy test last night, but thankfully I refused to get all wildly gleeful about it, having been through these before.  (My husband was even more determinedly unenthusiastic than I was, which was mildly annoying because it turned out he was right.)  I took two more this morning (both negative) and the blood test came back..... negatory.  This means I had a bogus test last night, of course. The top one is last night (and that faint pink line to the left of the darker reddish-violet line is the "yes, you're knocked up" line.)  The bottom one is this morning (this would be the "you suck, test company" version.)

I just want to say, if you're a factory worker putting together these little strips of chemical-sensitive paper and whatnot... damn you to hell for falling asleep on the job, you know?  Agreed, it's better for you to fuck up a pregnancy test than, say, a safety switch on a hand grenade or the brake assembly on a school bus... but still.  I really didn't want it to be a fake positive.

Now I'm kind of laughing at the BJJ people who are thinking "where's my Rickson blue belt requirements?" and also at the people saying "I don't see a second line!  Lady is crazy!"  Well-- now you know.  When it comes to pregnancy tests, any second line is a positive, no matter how faint.  And... here's the Rickson.

Southern Jiu Jitsu put together a mindmap of Rickson's blue belt requirements.  There are links to youtube videos of each technique.  I only looked at the first three-- #1 is by Submissions101 (you may be familiar with the controversies surrounding their competence; some techniques are reputedly poorly done.  I didn't watch this video so I have no opinion.)... #2 is by Jason Scully, a well-known blackbelt.  Again I didn't watch the video so no opinion.  #3 is in Japanese, and again, I didn't watch it, no opinion.

Henry, if you're out there reading, mind commenting on whether this is really what Rickson wanted from blue belts?