Seoi nage.

I was able to work my seoi nage entries tonight in competition class and it was a delight. I like the seoi nage because it seems like it would be so hard, but it ends up being so easy if you have the setup right; it helps that my hips are pretty much always underneath my opponents'-- thanks God!

And it totally takes the person off balance-- one minute they're facing you, feet on the ground, feeling like they have the world by the tail (or at least you by the gi); the next minute, they're jerked up and forward and you're disappearing underneath them and their feet are skywards and wham, they're on the mat.

[This is the ideal, which I cannot yet accomplish without considerable kindness from my uke. -Ed.]

I know I'm a long way off from landing this against a resistant opponent, but it was fun to play with, and even easier when we did the walking version.

Alas, I popped something in my thumb, which is now swollen and red like a plum, and I tweaked my wrist doing a mount choke. The jaw Jordan abused was the unlucky recipient of my training partner's elbow umpteen times as she worked the same choke on me. Still, a satisfying day all in all.

And-- it rained. It stormed, actually, in the wee hours of the morning. It was almost five in the morning and I laid in bed, looking out the big arch of our second-story window into the branches of a large crepe myrtle, watching lightning flicker and listening to the rain, enjoying the cool wet breeze through the open glass.

I'm pretty lucky and definitely blessed.