Whatta Fiasco

There you are, just surfing around the net. Why not take a few minutes to read a cool article about how a unified physics theory explains animals’ running, flying and swimming? As an extra bonus, you find out it applies to Boeing 747s as well. And then you learn that being neutrally buoyant in water doesn’t relieve you of the burden of gravity if you want to propel yourself. This article was doubly nice to run across because it ties in neatly with one of the books I just finished reading, Pat Shipman’sTaking Wing: Archaeopteryx and the Evolution of Bird Flight. The particular overlap is the bit about lifting capacity being a function of muscle mass. Science is cool.

Wednesday was our last practice of the year. Not a bad turnout for it either, but a bunch of us were feeling the week off. A little creaky and the brain not fully engaged. To add to that, I had a tip that was firing very late that made my first few bouts an exercise in frustration. I swapped out weapons and still wasn’t fencing as well as I would have liked, but at least it wasn’t due to weapon failure.

I’m hoping we’ll have all of our teams sorted out for the Jayhawk Open by next Wednesday when we go back to our regular schedule.

It took me a chapter or two to really get a handle on what the author’s intended point of view was, but it eventually gelled. This is an overview of the history and current state of theories on the evolution of birds, feathers, and the development of flight. It tries very hard to make no assumptions about your background along the way. The author also tries not to show a bias, although one is apparent on close reading, and the bias is admitted by the end. My biggest problems with the book are that it tends to repeat itself a little too often and the digressions can be very far ranging indeed. But taken as a whole, it is successful in its aim and both entertaining and educational. Pat Shipman is not my favorite writer of popular science, but she’s a solid second tier entry.

This is a two part DVD. The first is a slightly rambling and not terribly focused portrait of Peter Brook by his son Simon. He’s an interesting person with an interesting story and parts of that really do shine through. But as a whole, the structure feels disheveled.

The second half of the DVD is a film of a production of Hamlet at his theater in Paris, Bouffes Du Nord. And if there’s one good reason to view the first part of the DVD, it is to hear some of the story of this incredible space. If I ever make it to Paris, this is one of the places I want to see. In this minimal set production, the theater space itself is an integral part of the production. Color color color and Adrian Lester as Hamlet are just amazing. Even though it’s not the full text of the play (heresy!) currently this is one of my favorite film versions of the play. Just gorgeous.

On Friday morning I was treated to the joyful sight of a coffee fountain. Perhaps you are familiar with this phenomenon? A take away cup of coffee when the lid is affixed, suddenly begins spurting coffee out of the tiny steam vent hole in the plastic lid. Of the finest kind, which is to say, that it occurred to someone else. In this case, a tall man in scruffy jeans and untidy dreadlocks. It just kept on burbling its tiny caffeinated fountain as if it wasn’t going to stop, but it did. It was difficult not to laugh, so I handed him some napkins by way of apology.

Happy holidays to you and yours.

Monday night saw a decent turn out and lots of fencing. We kept a strip of epee and a strip of foil busy all evening. And I tried out a new theory that the worse my knees feel in the afternoon, the better I’ll fence in the evening. Complete nonsense, but I was flying up and down the strip Monday night.

The downside to Monday night was finding out that Hannah didn’t qualify for JOs because she hadn’t preregistered. Because her dad didn’t know when the deadline was and didn’t know to check the division web site. As club representative I felt bad about that, although I didn’t get any notification either. So last night I put together a first list of tournaments we know about over the next three months. I’ll be sending out a monthly update and posting a version to the web site. We’ll be petitioning to see if we can get Hannah’s name submitted, but considering she isn’t sure she’s even going to be able to go, we won’t be making a huge issue of it.

We got the problem of Hannah’s JO qualifier resolved. I still don’t know if she submitted her name, but we found out how to get it done if she wants to and passed the information on to her and her dad.

After Monday’s bit of flying up and down the strip, Wednesday night couldn’t have been much different for me. Slow and stiff in a way no amount of warm up seemed to be helping. I eventually gave up and just started fencing, only to discover that I was accommodating by twisting my body in a way that was pinching my back. So I stopped again and stretched out. By focusing on fencing smart instead of athletic, I was able to finally get some good bouting in. It wasn’t a consistent achievement, but it’s a little surprising just how well I can manage to fence some encounters even when I’m feeling that crappy. And a bad day of fencing is still better than no fencing. But no fencing is what I have until next Wednesday because of the holiday schedule.

It was a mostly relaxing weekend, aside from completely striking out on my shopping objectives. Why, oh why didn’t I pick these things up earlier in the year? I just don’t learn. I don’t even have the excuse that this is obligatory gift giving and can therefor be mocked and denigrated. No, these are people I’d enjoy buying things for, but I have a horrible time with holiday shopping.

Yesterday we got to spend time with the kids. Baby G got handed off to me right after a session of eating, and promptly had an explosion in his diaper of the kind and magnitude that leaves a damp brown spot on the back of his onesie. And then he let rip an impressive belch and began to hiccough. It was amazingly funny. And after Miss K. got to play in the snow and eat snowcream (snowmen were sadly not on the activity list because the snow was all powder) we made some sugar cookie tree ornaments. A fun evening.

And now I have some plans back up in the air for January, but that should all be resolved by sometime tomorrow.

This is the third of the Jenny Casey books. All three were entertaining and well-written. If you’re looking for a good read featuring a strong but flawed female protagonist going for an interesting adventure then I can strongly recommend these. The biggest complaint I have is that some of the supporting cast got a little short-changed in the process of furthering the plot, but it’s only a minor grumble. I’m looking forward to more books from Elizabeth Bear.

When I walked into practice for the first item this week, I could have sworn it was a Monday night. But of course it was Wednesday. Adrian was there and I got to hear from him the thrilling story of the bout that got him his B. It was a real nail-biter. If I remember correctly, he was down 10-3 at the end of the first period, and came back to 14-14 at the end of the second period. Cass managed to hit him, but it was after time ran out. And then Adrian pulled off the last touch, all with his mother and wife watching. Big congratulations to him! That was the semi-final bout. In the final he faced a Lincoln fencer, and even some of the KC folks (not from our club) were rooting for Brad. But it was a good day of fencing.

Back to Wednesday night. It was a slow warm up night for me, getting the knees going. But I got some lesson work with Chris. He was still getting over a cold and still wasn’t up for much more than some coaching, which was all to my benefit. After hearing my description of the scary old ladies, he picked right up on something I needed to work on quite specifically; when to let the hand yield to an attack and when you should instead press forward. Essentially, if you’ve come in too deep, you’re much better off pressing the arm forward as a defensive measure. Even if you put your blade passe, you’ve also kept control of your opponent’s blade: Don’t Get Hit! When threatened with arm wrestling at more of a distance, break the pressure just enough to roll off and renew the attack through another line. My problem was that I was nearly always responding with the break when I should have been pressing. We also talked about using an attack to the bell to set the hand of someone who’s waiting to counterattack. And there was some other stuff along the way too. In short, a quick lesson with Chris tends to leave me with a whole basket of things to think about and work on. And then I did some bouting with our new Killer Bee.

So, the attitude adjustment that came out of the short lesson with Chris is that the reason I don’t enjoy the game involved in fencing the scary old ladies is because I didn’t have a tool set designed to use against them. When I have the proper tools to use against their style of fencing, I can make it an interesting game again.

Friday as a bit light in attendance. Only seven of us, but we got some good fencing in. Oddly, I spent most of the afternoon hobbling around and trying to decide if it was worth it to go get my knee wrap out of my fencing bag in the car. Stiff and sore. But after warming up at practice, I had a couple of gorgeous five touch bouts. By the end of the evening I was slipping a bit. I still have trouble sustaining that level of focus over the long haul, but I’m getting there.

There’s just nothing like a short week at work. You’re guaranteed to have something broken, a pile of items to get caught up on, and still need to do your regular work. I had all that and more, including some as yet unidentified person stomping on one of our production databases. And then I had the pleasure of contending with feature creep instigated by a hydra-headed design committee. What’s worse than a group of people who can’t agree on what they want? A group of people who think they all want the same thing, while stating contradictory requirements. (Surely you heard my screams of frustration.) I got to say no and then dug into sorting out the mess. My job can be fun sometimes.

Hooray for the weekend. I’m looking forward to sleeping in a bit and getting some quality time with my current books.