I’ve been doing tai chi every morning for a couple of weeks now, and it’s feeling pretty good. I credit it with helping me do the daily run with the fencing team, and with aiding me to lose a few pounds, and breathe properly when everyone else is sneezing their faces off. Today’s exercise took nine minutes. This is not so good. I really need to be able to slow down my practice. On the other hand, my breathing was OK, and the shape of my movements seemed to come from the core for about half of the exercise. So, progress, sorta. Needs work. A lot of the books and teachers I’ve had recommend doing 100 days of tai chi with conscious effort, and Leah’s teacher offered the same advice. So I’m keeping a semi-private journal of the 100 days, but I’ll post occasional notices of it here. I’ll say for the record that I’m not having much trouble generating the Chi, but the Jing is going to be a while.
The apartment is very cold this morning. I checked, and the alarm on the boiler in the basement is going off. So the heat shut off sometime during the night, probably between four and six hours ago. Figure a degree per hour of heat loss. It’s about 63 in here, even though it’s supposed to be about 68. The difference is kinda staggering. I’m definitely chilled. Currently my apartment has no hot water, and now apparently it has no heat. Watch the social contract break down. Update, post-breakfast: My apartment is now 60 degrees and dropping stone-like. Maybe it’s the right time to ask for a wood-burning stove?
Fencing went well last night. We showed up on time, we had four teams to fence, and they had four strips for us to fence on and four teams for us to fence. Everything was copacetic. We fenced from 6:40 to 8:25 on three strips, and Pete began double-stripping the competition to compensate for some equipment problems. Men’s novice they won, 13-3 (JR won TWO, IK won one); Women’s JV they won, 13-3 again (ST won one; SB won none; MS won two). Men’s JV tied on victories, 8-8, with them winning on points, 61-57 (CTH won all four of his matches. AB won one. DCG won one. MG won two). Women’s novice they won 10-6.
Equipment problems remain our greatest difficulty. I don’t know how to repair an electric foil, though I know roughly how to fix body cords. Pete said last night that every fencer should learn how to repair his weapons, and I agree. I just wish I knew how to repair mine. What I should do is get some repair equipment, and go through the process with all our foils. I should get a tool kit, and just learn to do it over break. Ideally, I want to be able to fix body cords, foils, and even machines.
Peter gave me a lead on how to buy two serious fencing machines and four reels in record time. It’s going to be great, and we’re going to have some really nice targeting equipment. We may even have a little money left over in the budget, which I will probably spend on spare foil parts and an equipment kit.
