I managed to leave for class a few minutes earlier than usual today because I wanted to ensure I caught the early bus to the main campus since I had a very difficult lesson test today and I wanted the extra time to study. As I was driving, I saw a little old lady using a walker to push along the road. I fleetingly wished I had more time because I'd offer her a ride. I stopped at a stoplight, and much to my shock, she knocked on my car door and mumbled something at me in poor English. I told her I was going to be late for class, but then she said she just needed to go to the pharmacy which was around the corner and down the street. By then, I'd missed the light change, and I figured worse comes to worse, I miss the early bus and can't study as much, so I told her to get in and took her to the pharmacy. She told me that she was from Vietnam and I think she said the pharmacy had moved since last she was here in the US, but I could be wrong because her English was terrible. I dropped her off then sped off to Rutgers, where I did, oddly enough, catch the early bus with time to spare. I'm left wondering if it's more of a custom for people to help little old ladies in Vietnam because it sure was shocking to have someone ask me for a ride like that here in NJ!

I'm going crazy trying to get my third recommender to respond right now. If I don't hear back from him within a day or two, I'm going to have to ask someone else. I can't submit half my applications atm 'cause you need to fill in your recommender's names in advance. Arrgh!

Bujinkan tonight was a lot of fun (even if my bruise count is now up to five). I trained with Ja. who is quick with a compliment, fun to teach, and teaches me things in return. We did throws all class, and even the basic ones which I remember have been, sort of, updated over the years so it was a nice refresher course. I got a lot of attention from Jack today though I'm not sure if that's cause of the promotion, Jack's whim or, you know, the alignment of the moon *g* I appreciate it though cause you learn a lot from his criticisms, and I get about half criticism and half praise these days (still have to move more, and keep my kamae the whole time). Jack said I was looking devilish today, complete with horns and M. chimed in with, 'So that's why you bought those horns!' (I stick out my tongue in her general direction:P) Weapon was hung-bo, and various throws with it, which are always a bit confusing to me cause of all the hand position switches and right and left changes (dyslexia causes the weirdest problems in training). Luckily, Ja. is good at that stuff and helped me out, just like I did for him and various throws. Jack saw me at the end pointing out how you can really keep the space if you follow the person down with the hung-bo against their throat, so I was kneeling next to Ja. with a stick across his throat explaining, and Jack mutters, "Ninja Assassin? She's the one who the movie is really about." lol Incidentally, while I'm looking forward to pointing and laughing at Ninja Assassin, none of us are looking forward to the influx of new members who want to do things just like in the movie. *rolls eyes*

I have been studying for my Japanese lesson test on honorific and humble speech in the best way possible. Namely, watching Mei-chan no Shitsuji. It's a little more shoujo than I usually watch (I have a strong urge to destroy those stupid computer generated roses that keep surrounding people), but the acting is surprisingly good all round (something rather hit and miss in jdrama), there are tons of hot guys in tuxedos, and the mix of humour, drama, and angst is just about right (so far... I realize that the end of a series is always overly dramatic schlop so I'm not holding out much hope for eps 9 and 10). Anyway, the reason why it's so good for me to use to study is that all the butlers use honorific and humble speech all the time. It was a good way to train myself to actually listen for this stuff since I tend to just stop listening when I hear complicated speech like that, which is a bad habit I'm trying to break. I'm a bit confused by why the show seems to be slowly being taken over by animated sheep though o_O

Today was a bujinkan seminar, the year in review. Five hours of training. I'm exhausted and bruised as a consequence, but enjoyed it nonetheless. I actually thought it was my favourite year in review yet, though that might just be because this year was really interesting. I also tested for my 4th dan, which is wind (yes, I'm an airbender this year. I was a firebender last year... I should probably stop reading so much Avatar fic.) My main bit of advice was to be like a hurricane, and avoid but with strength. Which, while I understand in principle, I'm sure I'll spend the rest of the year puzzling out how to put that one into action.

C. was pulling my braid all day, and when I scolded him for it, he pointed out that it was just too tempting. Jack was nearby and agreed, then laughed and said, "Poor Ariana. She's got about twenty big brothers who all want to pull her pigtails." and I had to laugh because it's true, even if C. is one of the few who dares to go after the braid.

We began the day at 11am with an hour of integrating moves into our rolls and kata which is what we were working on back in January. After that surprisingly exhausting hour (we were going slowly, but all of us were sweating), we did owaza (techniques from the grandmaster's book)(I'm possibly dyslexically misspelling this word btw) for awhile, then broke for lunch. I had made the healthiest lunch ever of onigiri with a chopped up vegetarian stir fry inside, grapes, and a home made cookie which I shared out amongst several others. Yummy, and rice is perfect for when you need to be full and have an energy boost.

After lunch, there was the test, then we did more owaza for an hour or two. After that was guns, swords, then knives. I was really surprised when the time came for sword that all those things I'd found incomprehensible the first time I tried them over the past year, clicked. It was very weird, but gratifying. And now I totally want to challenge a sword master just to see how he/she'd kill me *g* Gun was surprisingly my favourite simply cause we did a bunch of ways to prevent someone from drawing your gun or shooting you. Knife was defending someone else who was being attacked, which was also fun. All in all, a really good day.

I just finished Unseen Academicals and I felt that I missed a lot of jokes in this one due to unfamiliarity with the subject (which is weird since while the book is ostensibly about football, it quite obviously isn't at all, either). I did like the theme of mothers letting their children grow up, and never have I cheered on a more unlikely (and weird by fantasy standards) romance. Glenda was a great new character. Compared to Nation though, this isn't a very clear book, and considering it's esoteric subject matter, it should have been.

Going to visit BU was really worth the trip. I like the city, even if I hate driving in it, and parking was a bitch, but I was glad to meet everyone at the department there, and really think it's the best place for me. The lecture on kofun was really interesting and I was very pleased to meet the professor giving it since he answered a bunch of my questions and confirmed that a) I need to learn Korean and b) the only place I'm likely to be welcomed to do archaeology in Japan is Kyushu, which is fine with me. I also got a free, delicious Indian meal out of it *grin*

When I wasn't at the university, my visit was rather blah. I had dinner at the Union Oyster House which advertises itself as the oldest restaurant in the US. Their clam chowder is delicious, and the fish was very fresh, but something about the atmosphere seemed very fake. It may just be because I could pick out how few furnishings were real. Then my hotel was very clean except for the dead, possible bed bug, I found in one of the beds in my room. I slept in the other bed, of course, but still spent most of the night waking up every couple of hours terrified of bed bugs. Nothing bit me as far as I can tell though, and I practised extreme compartmentalization of everything I owned so that nothing was left where it could have been invaded by bed bugs if there were any, ne? My drive back was also crazy since we have a new GPS and it decided there was too much traffic on the highway so it directed me to this old parkway (with trees and grass on all sides, two lanes, twisty roads, actual pit stops, and a low speed limit) that wound through the woods without streetlights. If I hadn't run it at a high speed, I'd have taken an extra hour to get home (and doing so felt like I was playing a racing video game). I am never trusting crazy detours by my GPS again. On the plus side, its voice is so much nicer than the old GPS. I set it to female British on the grounds that then I could pretend I was on the Red Dwarf or Doctor Who while listening to it (which helps me from throwing it out a window). Another thing that disappointed me about my trip was that I just missed all the beautiful autumn New England leaves and only got to see the trees half full. Still, this trip was quite useful to me in terms of my PhD applications and networking. Even if I didn't get in to BU, I've been invited back up there for another lecture in the spring. And it was just nice to be treated as an adult for once. All these people thinking I'm a freshman or high schooler gets rather tedious after your first Masters.

When I got home, I discovered I had extra Japanese homework in that I had to write a letter in Japanese thanking someone for something, due on Tuesday. Thankfully, I'd already done the pages of homework due this week and thus could devote enough time to the letter. Other than the thanking part of it, I pretty much made it a letter I would actually like to send to one of my students in Japan. I figure I'll get it free grammar checked in the process, and then can send the actual letter. Meanwhile, I had my Spanish midterm on Sunday night which was simply annoying. I opted to do the oral part (which I had to make up) this morning, which meant I had to talk with the professor instead of a partner for the make up a conversation part (gah). I now have to study for both a Japanese vocabulary quiz and a kanji quiz which will happen tomorrow, and then I'll finally be done with my most stressful week this year *sigh*

One of the things I actually really like about my town is that the people in the area aren't into scifi and fantasy, and yet the library still regularly orders all the latest popular scifi and fantasy books. So when I walked into the library today, I was happy and unsurprised to see the new Discworld book on the shelves. That'll be something nice to read while I'm in Boston.

I leave early tomorrow morning for the place. Dad has been going overboard preparing the car, doing everything from replacing the oil to buying a new GPS for me to use since he lost the old one. It's paranoid, but cute. I'm not brining my computer with me, so won't be around until late Friday or maybe Saturday, depending on when I leave Boston. I'm looking forward to this visit, but I'm stressed out about it as well. Meh.

I've been working out my stress by playing Civ. 4 which wastes hours of my time, but I am slowly learning how to manipulate that game even more to my advantage. I'm like 2000 points ahead of everyone else right now. It's a pity I don't have the time to finish this particular game before I leave. I could really do without all the spying in that game (so boring, I can't even bring myself to spend time on it and instead just make sure that I'm so strong, it doesn't matter if they know everything about me), and also the games habit of trying to give your cities to someone else. I can understand that if your population is mostly made up of the other civilizations but when it's 100% your country and you have tons of space claimed around it? So annoying. I think the game has trouble understanding the idea of claiming an entirely different area of land which isn't connected to your own country, but which still functions. (I probably wouldn't have gotten away with it except doing so netted me elephants and gems and really, no one attacks someone who can mount elephant calvary against them.)

Bujinkan tonight was interesting since Jack decided that since there were no beginners in the class for once, we should do something advanced, which is how we ended up doing uneven sword fighting for a third of the class (ie, the attacker has the sword, the defender is barehanded). It all involved luring your attacker in with fake wrong kamae, then striking from there. It involved switching positions from one straightened leg to another which aggravated my knee. Last part was sword to sword and while I could see what Jack was doing (taking the space at the perfect time, much earlier than I was doing), I couldn't really replicate it. Still, with all the stress in my actual life, it made bujinkan tonight relaxing rather than frustrating.

I was at the dentist today (zero cavities. woo!) swishing around the fluoride rinse and one of the dental hygienists walks in and goes, "Oh, you look about 12 years old. Aren't you precious?" I roll my eyes, and give her the 'are you crazy?' look until I can spit it out, then point out, "I'm 26." She pauses. "Oh, well, you're getting up there, but you still look about 12 years old. 16, maybe, now that you're not swishing." Tells me about how she got carded for buying cigarettes when she wasn't wearing makeup. I put on my glasses. "The glasses make you look a little older." I refrained from asking just how much since I suspect I still looked like a high schooler to her.

Dad and I are really liking this new show, White Collar. I just hope the quality stays the same after the first ep. Also, we started watching Castle from the beginning tonight cause I'm running out of television for us to watch this week. Don't ask me how that happened cause it's not like I have time for us to watch much either. Now I have to write a short reaction to Kiki's Delivery Service in Japanese. Ja ne!

The alarm clock sounded very far away this morning cause I was so deep inside my dream. I was Captain Piett in a quasi-Star Wars world (I say quasi cause all the imperials were straight from SWs but the setting was a giant office building most of the time), who, after an interview with the Emperor and an order to massacre millions, decided to go rebel. I had Piett's pov most of the time and could sort of possess him, but also watch from afar (it's telling that at one point he didn't want to do something but did it because the woman stuck in his head (ie me) would be angry if he didn't). We had a thinly veiled conversation with Vader who was also planning on taking out the Emperor. Vader urged Piett to go back to the Emperor's side and do some spying so he'd know when to strike/leave (whichever came first). Cue lots of water cooler conversations with Imperials officers (who were wearing bright coloured towels about their waists... no idea why, but Piett liked them). Also, a discussion inside Piett's head why I wasn't nervous (and how this extended to him not being nervous). I figured compared to most of the rebellions I'd been in, this particular one had a high chance of success (since I'd seen the movies). Piett was not so reassured by this.

This is a nice step for me since it's the most long term, obvious control I've ever had in a dream (usually I just assert control to stop things I dislike, then fade back into the background). My goal of pure lucid dreaming may be attainable in several years *L*

I've been meaning to mention that we're doing the keigo (polite language) chapter in Japanese atm and I'm kinda disappointed that it's so easy. I'd expected with all the fuss and the fact that I'm taking a lower level course because of it, that it'd be hard. A lot of the phrases are familiar in a 'huh. I've heard that before' sort of way just from my everyday life in Japan. Oh well, at least my spelling in Japanese is improving. I'm a little disappointed I only got a 88 on the midterm, but how was I supposed to know I'd need to be able to spell 'robot', 'pants' and 'cup' in katakana? (If I know before hand, I can memorize the spelling, but I invariably misspell even the most obvious of words when switching from English to katakana. It's quite frustrating.)

I'm looking forward to our next chapter which is 'humble expressions' or as I've dubbed it, "The Learn to Speak Like Kenshin" chapter degozaruyo!

I was watching snippets of Kakashi gaiden today (I can't bring myself to watch the whole thing in one go yet, for some reason) and I was trying to figure out why Yondaime's voice kinda freaked me out so I looked it up and he was Giffith in Berserk, Kimimaro in Naruto, and Enel in One Piece. That explains it, in spades. Geez.

Bujinkan last night wasn't a lot of fun for me since I ended up paired with R. who is a lot older, sexist and likes to try to force things. I told him flat out that I didn't want to train with him, and either that or something else got through to him cause he wasn't as bad as he usually is. He still managed to horribly insult me (handing me some extra weapons and telling me that they'd even the odds for me against him!) and bruised my shoulder despite us not doing much shoulder stuff, but he did also take direction most of the time, said I was a good teacher and didn't fight me at every turn (all of which were firsts). Training wise, we learnt this weird, sideways, half-distance kick which with you standing sideways to the person had you bringing up your closest leg and twisting it out and back so you hit their stomach with the top of your foot. We had to practice it a lot to get it right and it really twisted my bad knee up. The kamae we were working from was the bear stance (hands above your shoulders, fingers curled like claws) and we had a lot of fun with it. One move was sort of method acting with someone trying to grab you and you shrinking down with head bowed before (softly, but strongly) bringing your hands up into the stance and making eye contact to drive the attacker back. Pretty hard to simulate in training, but oh well.

My allergies have been killing me lately so I keep waking up coughing from the heater being on or what not. Anyway, I woke up at a fortuitous time this morning since I caught the text from Ashfae saying their plane was delayed. Since I don't tend to check my texts (at all), if I hadn't heard it, I probably wouldn't have known until too late. As it was, I checked the new time and realized I had plenty of time to go to both my classes today then schlep on down to the airport. I read a bit once I got there until Ash and Chris arrived *cue much hugging* I then dragged them to Ikea because really, what else is there to do in Newark close to the airport? We had a meal, shopped a bit, then I dropped them back at the airport and made my way back to my house. It was a beautiful day today, and I wish I could have kidnapped them and brought them home.

Things that make you despair: Someone assuming that since I was reading a fantasy novel, I read and enjoyed Twilight. *shudders* Even worse? Was when she told me that the writing wasn't that bad and I should ignore the poor writing because the story was good. *winces*

Bujinkan last night was good. I trained with Ja. and we had a good time. I taught the class once, and amused Jack twice (he loves watching me beat up people *sigh*). Our weapon was knife and it was how to not die when someone's holding a knife at your neck in various ways. The hand to hand part of the class was various responses to someone grabbing you with both hands.

I kinda panicked about postgraduate applications last night. So I wrote up a bunch of questions I needed answered (since I've never done this is America before), then stayed on campus after my Japanese midterm (which was decent, for a midterm. my grade will depend largely on how well I spelled everything, as usual) the next day. I had an early, leisurely breakfast then headed over to career services where I killed the time before their drop in hours by taking notes on how to write a personal statement. The drop in went well and I was able to get advice on a lot of things, but it left me exhausted and stressed out.

See, I have no safety schools here. There aren't enough universities that focus on what I need for me to be able to apply to a few sure things, and since my last application was ruined without my knowing it by incompleteness, I don't really know if it had been complete if I'd have been able to get in, and that's freaking me out more than it did the first time for some reason. And should I apply to Hawaii again? They didn't tell me my application was incomplete, but nobody ever said they had to. Then out of the other universities, the career services guy suggested more than four applications, but do so is a bit of a stretch in terms of them being appropriate for what I want to focus on. *sigh* Anyway, I've decided to get all the personal statements written so I can get them critiqued, so that'll be my goal for the week.

Here's hoping my sore throat is from allergies and not a cold.

Dad and I stumbled upon a ridiculously good deal on Friday - two huge london broil steaks for $4.50 each. Even then, they were so big that Dad and I could only eat a quarter of them each, so we chowed down on london broil last night which cost a little over a dollar! So yummy.

Tv show wise: Merlin's latest ep annoyed me with all the false romance. I'd also find the Gwen/Arthur a lot more cute if they hadn't reset Merlin and Arthur's relationship back to near zero at the beginning of the season. I had better get a few eps of bromance (or, you know, subtext that will make me laugh) to make up for watching all this romantic crap.
Dexter is being very stupid this season, and there's a lot of little plot holes that annoy me (like, if Dexter is the one getting up every night for the baby, how can Rita say he's not doing anything for her? Does Rita still have a job? Why can Dexter only blend into society when the writers say he can? etc.)
House: I had hoped for something a bit less cliched dealing with House's hallucinations (which oddly enough, when they're caused by drug use, don't make you crazy, o writers, nor would you check into a mental hospital for them). Like most, I suffered through the crap in order to see House back at work. The verdict is still out on whether it caused any lasting change. Also, really don't care about the ducklings any more, much to my surprise.
Flash Forward: Dropped it. Much as I like John Cho, I disliked nearly everyone else in the show, especially the main character (so pretty, so hypocritical) and I've never seen such an interesting premise handled so boringly. Oh well.

Moviewise:
My Dad and I discovered Grosse Point Blanke which is quirky little movie about an assassin attending his high school reunion. It has some pretty funny moments, which carry you through any duller bits. Not bad.
We also saw Surrogates which I expected to be a bit more typical of Bruce Willis in the scifi genre (peers at The Fifth Element), but was actually a pretty good, serious scifi film that'd appeal to any old school scifi fan. I was pleasantly surprised. (though I could have done without ( spoiler ))

Reading wise, I've been dropping books left and right. I gave up on Steven Brust and his Vlad Taltos series, though I may be able to convince myself to read the other two books in my collection at a later date for politeness sake. I tried to read The Witches of Eastwick, but after slogging through the first twenty pages of weird similies and metaphors about boring characters, I decided I didn't care enough to finish. I feel vaguely guilty about this because it's supposed to be a great novel with fantastic writing, but it's obviously not my cup of tea.

What I did read that was amazing recently is a manga called Ooku. It's got a premise I really adore and had only seen in fanfic before now - namely, in the early years of the Tokugawa era, a fatal disease targets and wipes out 80% of the male population in Japan. It continues to do so, so women take over all the jobs men had from rice farmer to merchant to shogun, while any men who survive are cosseted and kept because even though they are still stronger physically, they have weak constitutions. Most women can't afford to marry so they pay men in brothels to impregnate them, and women sell nights with their sons for money. The story is set 80 years afterwards, and perhaps my only problem with it is that not only have the common people forgotten what it was like before the plague (which is somewhat understandable in a non-literary society) but so have the shogun and the high ranking samurai. While I'm sure there was a bit of a disconnect, I find it weird that they can't remember 80 years before, though I suppose they don't want to considering an old man is mentioned as being crazy and talking about days when men were in charge. If the first female shogun made a concerted effort to consolidate her reign by saying women had always been shoguns... On the other hand, if you know your history, discovering that men used to be in charge makes a very good parallel for the shogun and various high ranking people (plus the nobles and even the emperor) discovering that the emperor used to have power (which happened in real life around this time period and laid the seeds for the bakumatsu a century later).

You've got the female version of various historical people. Yoshimune was one of the most famous shoguns, and well known for his financial reforms and frugality which still shows up here, but is more awesome coming from a kick-ass woman *L* (to be fair, the reforms weren't enough in the end, but that's another story). Her advisor, Kano Hisamichi is a plain, humble looking woman, but wow is she cunning. She's great to watch.

These are, of course, all incidental details since the main story deals with a young man joining the inner court (ie, becoming a concubine to the shogun). It's well written and fascinating (god, I want to see a version of this set in the bakumatsu where the Shinsengumi are all female!) The extra chapter at the end is about the shogun herself, and provides a side splitting foreign account about meeting her. There are more volumes coming out, and considering how many awards this manga has already won, I highly recommend them all.

Anyway, I must go. I have a Japanese midterm to study for, and for some reason, I thought up an original scifi story plot last night and I'm trying to get it all down on paper today. Also have to work up the courage to email more people at post graduate places. Ja ne!

Bujinkan tonight was nice. It was kihon happo with Jack which is a lot more fun than it is with other people because Jack's kihon happo has really evolved over the years. Some of the moves I barely even recognized from the ones I learnt long ago, while others had become so streamlined. It was fascinating to watch and fun to try. C. and I made good partners for these moves because C. is a big guy, with lots of muscles and is somewhat stiff. Meanwhile, I'm very flexible, short and my shoulders don't lock. So while I was having trouble doing omote gyaku on him cause of his stiffness and strength, he had trouble with the final arm bar one cause he had to get very low and do it perfectly since my shoulder wouldn't lock for the arm bar unless the movement was continuous. Even though I haven't done some of the happo exercises in ages, it surprised me how easily most of them came back. Jack is a lot more focused on keeping movement continuous these days. Even the hand movements flowed from one to another and everything was light light light. I remember when it used to be a lot more bang move bang move. (Completely miscellaneous, but these last few sentences would make a lot more sense in Japanese.)

What surprised me is that apparently the verbal judo women I trained with on Saturday (one of whom is a 4th degree black belt in Kendo) told Jack I was really hard on them, which really amused Jack, but puzzled me cause I wasn't hard on them in the physical sense (that I know of) and had to insist that they scale it down so I wasn't injured. I was hard on them in terms of insisting they do things right and pointing out mistakes so they could learn, but Jack seemed to think I'd injured them in some way. There was a new guy visiting from another state there today and Jack gave him a choice between C. or Jo. for his training partner, then said he'd have paired the guy with me, but I'd hurt him (the new guy). *pout* Meanwhile, Jack wanders by fifteen minutes into training and says he's going to call me 'KKK'. Me: What? Jack: Kendo King Killer *walks away laughing* C: I like it. I'll put it on a t-shirt for you. Me: *glare* It was shortened to Kendo Killer by the end of the class (what is it with people giving me nicknames at Buyu lately?) I think the comment that amused me the most was when Jack was demonstrating the last arm bar of the night, saw the trouble C. was having and called me up to go, "Okay. What if a short, crazy person attacks you?" Me: *rolls eyes, but attacks* T. told me later on that I was getting a reputation for being evil, and that I should be careful. But it's not like I have a say on these things. I'm not much more nastier than anyone else there, and I'm nicer than Jack (all the 'evil' stuff I know comes from him...). Jack just thinks it's hilarious to build up my rep. and laugh at my training partners when I take them down.

I dreamt I and another guy (who was from an earlier awake fantasy oddly enough... I wonder if it was more subtle lucid dreaming on my part or if my subconscious was just bored.) were cast as actors in a allergy commercial, so we had to run laughing in a field away from a weird pied piper who was putting to sleep all the other allergy sufferers who came after us. Very odd. Other dreams involved having to walk home through a huge, Japanese style garden/playground with giant wooden structures next to beautiful lakes. I was told to visit the visitor centre at one point. Still other dreams involved me hanging out with a sarcastic British guy for various rock bands to play and since only a few people were there, we could get autographs and chat with them. I got, like, Axel Rose to sign my yearbook *L* And I don't know who came before him, but he managed to transpose pictures of people drowning on the titanic with song lyrics underneath as his signature. In the dream, I really wanted to know how he managed that.

I've been going to sleep earlier due to exhaustion, so I guess doing that nets me dreams.

I endured a fair amount of teasing upon showing up at Bujinkan after having missed the past 4 classes (I was told that attending Buyu camp in between them didn't count). I was told no more unexplained absences this month (which isn't quite fair since all my absences were explained, just after the fact). Anyway, I ended up training with C. and despite not training all that much in the past weeks, I was totally in the groove. A lot of what we did was very freestyle and only once was I really stymied as to what I should do. Of course, I'm really regretting those couple of miles I walked earlier today since I naturally tend to go low using my knees and our style leads to that as well so the ligaments on both sides of my knee (one for being injured and one for compensating for the injured one) are killing me now. I just took two ibuprofen and I'm icing them for the second time. I've got a nasty bruise on the inside of my bicep too (I was very tickilish tonight, so pretty much everything C. did that was painful, also tickled, leading to a couple of yelps of pain/laughter which amused C. at least.

We started off using our elbow (either one, though Jack favoured the right one in the end) to block quick, boxing style punches (jabs and crosses). You basically put your elbow in the space where the person would punch and kept it there. If you kept aware of the space and distance, you could usually move in before the third punch and take them out. I had fun experimenting with distance and timing. We then moved to taking them down after blocking a jab, then cross with your elbow. C.'s a lot bigger and stronger than me so rather than force myself into the position for something, I sort of fit myself in and took more and more space. (ie, block the first jab with elbow, block the cross, then step in and thrust the elbow in the face, while the other hand comes up to guard your opponent's right. With the elbow still up (and if you're me) you end up with your right leg up against the inside of their left leg. I sunk my weight and moved my leg to take the space behind and past their leg, and they fall down). Jack really liked this, so much so that he made me demonstrate it to the class (and laughed when I gave C.'s leg and extra kick as he went down... which was total instinct on my part.) A later variation was catching the jab fist in your hand, bringing it to your chest and pulling a little, when the second punch comes, you turn to the opposite direction and step backwards, twisting the fist into uregyaku (it may have been omote). It took me a couple tries to get the distance right on that one, but Jack managed to walk by when I was finishing my most successful one of the bunch (I was surprised to realize that I automatically flip the hand around when the person goes down in that position to be ready for an elbow/wrist lock. I figure I picked it up from watching all the higher levels do it.) Anyway, Jack was looking very amused to see me taking down C. again. We did various variations of how to deal with those kinds of punches, some of which allowed me a lot of play and others not so much. We all ended up doing some mass training together too when Jack got a phone call and told half the room to attack the other side of the room. It was basically you taking the space where the jab wanted to be by extending your arm into and beyond it, then doing whatever attack you wanted. It was interesting to try it on a bunch of people, though I regret having to do so with R. who fights everything you do no matter what (there are some people in the class who he apparently doesn't do this to, but not women. Poor M. had to train with him for the last part of class and he was just awful, but played nice in front of Jack). Anyway, I gave R. back as good as I got and bent his finger as hard as possible for such stupidity (in a real fight, I think I'd just kick him in the balls and walk away... whistling).

Weapon was interesting in that it was guns (hand guns), not how to use them, but how to replace one in a holster while someone's attacking you. I was, unsurprisingly, considering I don't own or use a handgun, awful at it. At first I always missed (which Jack explained is what happens to a lot of law enforcement people because they practice drawing the gun, not putting it back), but by the end of that part, I could get it in the holster about half the time which isn't bad considering I'd never even worn a gun holster like that before. Then we did various defences against someone trying to pull your gun out of it's holster, all of which were pretty difficult. I found the one where you block by putting a hand firmly on their back very difficult (partly cause of the size difference, and partly cause I suck *L*), and the one where you block with your body and your head against theirs not so bad. Meanwhile, Jack wandered by to ask if I was going to the seminar on Sat. which I hadn't even known about, and then explained that there was a group of women from some other martial art coming in, and he wanted to show off *his* female martial artists (which basically boils down to M. and I) so I pretty much had to say yes to going to the seminar. I have a feeling Sat. will be very unpredictable. Oh well. Meanwhile, the chances are high I can test for 4th dan next month. It'd be cool, even if I can't really afford it.

It's such a gorgeous day outside. The wind is blowing in strong gusts, sending the trees and leaves flying, and thick, white clouds scuttling across the blue sky. It really feels like autumn even if the leaves are only just turning. I was so entranced by the weather that I decided to walk the couple of miles from the campus where I park to the campus where I have classes, and I didn't regret it. The view out over the Raritan river was gorgeous, though I got a lot of weird looks from bikers who'd apparently never seen anyone walking the paths (I don't see why. it's not that long a walk).

I gave two weeks notice on my job on Monday, pointing out that spending 4 hours commuting (plus extra hours sleeping to make up for my early shift on monday) for only 6 hours of work was not time efficient especially now that I have to start phd applications. It was accepted and I think he appreciated that I gave him notice and didn't just quit without warning. I'm counting down the hours, but first have to suffer through waking up at 5am on Monday cause the shift has been changed to 6:20am from 7 (gah!). I'm glad this is the only time I'm ever going to have to do it. Meanwhile, I've been trying to figure out how to get a paycheck for the work I've done, and will hopefully get a check on Fri. *fingers crossed*

Currently, my Spanish 101 grade is 100% cause I aced the quizzes and tests. I'm trying not to let it make me cocky since I'm sure the tests will eventually get harder (it helps that he forgives a few grammar/spelling mistakes whereas I get penalized for every one in Japanese). Japanese, I've been working on drilling te form into my head since that seems to be the root of about half of my spelling problems. I'm using online quizzes to constantly drill them in the hopes that it will just become automatic. Can't do anything about the dyslexia or the katakana words I don't know, but I can fix the te form problem. I was so tired for the lesson test on Tuesday that I just wrote nearly everything in hiragana (the teacher doesn't care, but I try to write all the kanji I know whenever possible), then went home and took a nap. Monday was really tiring for me even if I didn't go to bujinkan. I had a one time class on how to learn accents for stage and theatre. She taught us the tools, ie, what to listen and feel for if you wanted to learn or imitate an accent. It was really interesting and the time just flew by, but that was probably because I'd given in and had a cup of tea with caffeine earlier (and suffered the headache for it later). The teacher said she rarely met anyone who pronounces all their 't's like I do. Belly dancing is also going well, but I'm going to have to skip it next week if I want to survive since the earlier wake up time that day will kill me. We've already learnt every basic and quite a few advanced steps in belly dancing anyway since we learn a lot faster than the teacher's adult classes. I can't say I look all that good belly dancing, but it's damn good exercise. It's a pity it really seems to put a strain on my already strained knee ligament *sigh*

My book got rejected by an agent again. Same story really. The writing's fine, but they didn't fall in love with it. This one in particular didn't think it was that funny, but considering how subjective that is and that he's american, it doesn't really surprise me. I wish there were a way of checking what sort of sense of humour an agent has before you send something cause I don't think I'm going to get evil overlord accepted by anyone who doesn't have a British/morbid sense of humour. Looks like it's time to start submitting the book in the UK. You guys wouldn't happen to have any suggestions for agents or agencies in the UK, would you?

Meanwhile, I finally finished the third chapter of Uric, and all the main characters have been introduced and are tentative friends at this point. The next couple of chapters deal with bullying, classes, Uric being weird, and subtle killing/kidnapping attempts. I'm just not sure in which order I should throw them all together. I'm being rather free form at this point.

Reading wise, I'm reading Daemons are Forever (the sequel to The Man with the Golden Torc) by Simon R. Green, though it reads less like a Bond fantasy novel and more like a Hellblazer/Lovecraft story that drags on a bit. What it's really done is driven me to consider rereading the Dresden Files. It's a pity I don't own all the books though cause reading them on my comp isn't half as much fun as taking them with me places.

And that's it for this update. I'm going to enjoy my pumpkin spice creme (courtesy of a gift card to starbucks from a grateful mother of a kid I taught over the summer) and do the million other things I need to do before I leave for bujinkan. Ja ne!

I woke up this morning in the middle of shouting, "The rights of the people are never worth giving up for our safety!" at my high school biology teacher. We were all on a train, in the future, on a different planet to Earth. I think I was supposed to stay quiet cause I was part of the rebellion, but his proud declaration of preferring safety to freedom really annoyed me.

Earlier parts of the dream had me inheriting this really cool boat/barge on the planet which could teleport at certain gates in the canals. Once I'd checked the ship out for myself, I invited havenward along for a joyride. I remember passing the gates out into open sea on a sunny beach with a light house. Something we saw on that trip got us involved in the rebellion in the end.

Ah, rebellion dreams. What would I do without them?

I had a Spanish exam at 8:10pm today. Sunday. As a consequence, I spent the whole day studying and getting more and more pissed off about the whole thing. It's ridiculously early in the term for an exam imo (which is 15% of my grade). It's so early in the term, we've only covered two chapters in our textbook so the reason I got more and more pissed off is that there just wasn't that much to study. There's only so many times you can go over how to conjugate 'to be' and 'to have' and regular verbs. And the exam really was easy, with only one tricky question, and one word I couldn't remember (cause it was never a word we'd learnt, though I'd looked it up on my own a few weeks ago).

Of course, I had to get to the exam, which was a lot harder than I anticipated. I left early thankfully cause when I got closer, I discovered they completely shut down the highway an exit before the one I needed. So I got stuck on a twenty minute detour along the river. Then, I got to the campus, and my car ran out of gas. I pulled into a handicapped spot and pulled out the gallon of gas we keep in the back for just such a purpose (it's sad how acclimated I am to cars breaking down while I'm driving them. I can change a tire and jump start my car much faster than the men who often offer to help me. You're talking to someone who had three flat tires in her first month of driving though.) Of course, the handy funnel I'd used last time had gone missing, replaced by a funnel that leaked gas everywhere, I finally ended up carefully pouring the gas into the gas can's tube (still spilling a fair amount) until it had the gas I needed to go park (wiping up the excess with a rag). I then walked to the building and discovered that it was locked so there was no washing my hands (which were drenched in gasoline) for me. I poured a bottle of water over them, but that really didn't help much. Luckily, the exam only took a half hour of the hour they'd given us so I finished, washed my hands, went to get a little gas from the rude, expensive gas station, and am now home, drinking a brandy sour (cypriote style), periodically trying to get the gas smell off my hands, and trying not to be so annoyed at the world.

Oh, and I have to be up at 6am for lifeguarding tomorrow and my masochistic monday schedule. I am so glad I'm quitting my job soon.

I expected an entire day of training to get very wearing after the first several hours, but to my surprise, I only occasionally wondered if it was getting closer to five o'clock and the end of the camp. I do have little recollection of the moves we trained in for the last half hour simply because by that point, they'd surpassed my capacity for paying attention to such things. Usually, I just watch and repeat, but my mind was incapable of staying focused on what Jack was doing for that last half hour, and kept going, "Oh, pretty trees." or "It's drizzling again." whenever he demonstrated. Oh well.

It was, of course, pouring all morning, and when I found the camp nestled down a winding, one way road through the woods, Jack greeted me with the option of training first aid upstairs, cane fighting downstairs or trekking through the rain to a small, covered pavilion. I chose the pavilion because that was where Stephen, an amazingly skilled German guy, was teaching and I'd heard many good things about him. It was a good choice. We switched partners often so I trained with just about everyone there. My favourite was when I trained with Stephen's uke/friend also called Stephen. There wasn't a lot of room so you couldn't really throw people, but I had fun trying variations of what we were doing (gyaku ryu stuff). An example would be if someone grabs your collar from behind, you take a step forward and wait to feel the slight tug that means that person is kicking, you turn, block the kick (or get out of it's way and trap the arm) then do a omote gyaku (towards the outside) while giving them a kick for good measure. The Stephens didn't speak a lot of English so J. communicated to the Stephen I trained with in hand signs that I was dangerous. *L* The elder Stephen did ask me not to kill the younger one *looks innocent* Then they tag teamed me and casually pinned me to the floor *L*

One of the guys who I see only at seminars since he lives a few states away, L., has taken to calling me 'Professor'. About half way through the day, I wondered why my mind already had that nickname associated with ninja, and realized it was the nickname of the third hokage in Naruto. This made the geek in me very happy *L* I had really good luck in training partners all day. Most were quite skilled and I didn't have to teach them, and the few that were were mostly gracious about it. There's one guy, T., who's been training with C. on Thursdays and it's amazing how much his attitude towards training has changed. He used to fight me and flail about and now he really appreciates my suggestions about how to do things better.

The next session was a choice between survival skills, basic kihon happo, and a class taught by the younger Stephen. I kinda wanted to practice the fire making and survival stuff cause you can never have too much practice with a bow drill, but I didn't have my inhaler with me and you have to inhale a lot of smoke to get a fire going so it seemed better not to risk it. Not to mention, the class taught by the Stephen I trained with was very tempting. It ended up being very relaxing after the semi-brutality of the earlier class. It was all about catching punches, keeping the feeling light and the contact at a minimum, all of which guides the attacker into a poor position. It was free flowing and fun to play with. it reminded me a bit of some of the lessons I had in Japan where you just laid your hand lightly on a person's back/side/whatever and used subtle and patient shifts in movement to make them collapse.

We broke for lunch and I ran to a local deli to pick up a sandwich for me and M. We all ate and chatted and I met two guys who were up from Maryland to train. They had a good sense of humour and were easy to talk to, so I ended up training with them for the rest of the afternoon. That was actually a blessing since it gave me a bit of a break when we took turns to figure things out or just to rest. It was still muddy, if only occasionally drizzling by around 2pm. Jack was teaching and he was nice enough to do hung-bo, and not require us to throw anybody down to the muddy grass (though his uke weren't spared). We started off with practising all the basic hung-bo strikes, and then various combinations. From there, it was fighting off a knife attacker with the hung-bo (very similar to fighting off a sword - take the space where the knife/sword needs to be, or rather, where the attacker's hand/arm needs to be). After a break, we switched to protecting a third person from being attacked by a knife. C. joined in as well with this one so we switched off a lot, and I mostly got it, though this was the point where I wasn't really capable of paying too much attention so it's all a bit blurry. We had a lot of fun trying to kill each other and joking about whether whoever the victim was, was worth saving. I really enjoyed myself, and I'm glad I went, even if my knee ligament is killing me and I'll no doubt me aching tomorrow.

I subbed a 7-hour shift at the pool today. I was rather amused when they called me in the middle of it to ask me to sub a different pool. You'd think they'd have looked to see if I was already working cause my name was up on the shift board. My fellow (sub) lifeguard was from Peru which invariably led to me mentioning Machu Pichu *L* This led to talk of archaeology which he thought was 'awesome' and that he'd 'never met a lifeguard archaeologist before'. It was all very cute. The first hours were lifeguarding swim lessons which is rather gruelling mentally since several kids always look like they're about to drown. My heart was racing for some of my on station shifts. It quieted down in the last hour for open swim though, and I even took the opportunity to go for a swim myself and then use the steam room after I clocked out. (It is totally unfair that Rutgers only steam room is on Cook/Douglas campus which is furthest away and hardest to get to for me.)

I work out at the gym on Fridays, and yesterday I decided to reintroduce arm exercises to my regime. I tend to bulk up really fast muscle wise so I dislike focusing on my arms since muscle makes them look fat. Only, the muscles I've built up over the years haven't really gotten smaller, only gotten weaker so I figure I may as well go back to exercising them and get them back to rock hard status. They've been aching quite a bit today in consequence, and I'm sure the swimming didn't help, but it's a nice ache (for now. I reserve the right to whine about it tomorrow when they're killing me after several hours of Bujinkan on top of said ache).

I haven't been looking forward to this weekend much cause I had work on Sat. and then Buyu camp from 9:30 to 5 on Sunday and I have to eat really quickly once that's through so I can start fasting for Yom Kippur. Monday's going to be a pain as well (since the best thing to do when fasting is sleep through the hunger, only I can't cause I have to be up at 6am for my lifeguard shift). I'll be glad when Tuesday hits.

I'm currently reading William Shatner's latest Star Trek book called Starfleet Academy: Collision Course, and it reads like an AU fusion of TOS and nu!Trek written as pre-slash. It's even heavily centered on flashbacks and fallout from Tarsus IV! I kinda want to huggle William Shatner (and his ghost writers) now. Seriously, it's about how Jim is flirting with the wrong side of the law a few years after his experiences on Tarsus. He steals a Starfleet car to prove a point, ends up in a seedy bar to hide from the police and starts a fight (well, tries to) with a young Spock (who is there doing his own investigation into Vulcan artefact smuggling) in order to distract security from picking up his girlfriend. So Jim and Spock first introduce themselves to each other while in handcuffs, and things go from there. I've really enjoyed the first half of the book and wish I hadn't had Japanese homework to do or else I'd have finished it by now.

Have been enjoying all the new episodes from various shows like Bones, House and Merlin. Though Merlin the show kinda pales in comparison to all the awesome fanfic it generates. Ah well.