Wow. No posts since January. Time flies when you are having fun.

The four people who have been coming regularly have all been vaccinated at least once, and the two of us coming most often have been vaccinated twice and have had time to fully develop immunities, so we are starting back to doing tai jutsu (empty handed aikido). So far, we have been revisiting kihon, particularly looking at position, direction, and extension. While none of us are perfect, working on these does noticeably improve our techniques.

Nobody seems to have a good idea of where they are relative to uke. By extension, I wonder if I am where I think I am. Maybe I need to start video taping my movements. Often, we can make techniques work anyway, and the ability to do that is not be be disparaged, because this is a martial art. However, making them work can become a habit, and get in the way of our further development.

So anybody who has been immunized is welcome to come back and work out with us. Anybody who has not been immunized can come work out, but will need to keep wearing a mask and sanitizing hands (as will the rest of us in that case). After all, the vaccines are only 95% effective, not 100%. But with 100% vaccination in the dojo, we are pretty safe.

I plan to test Randy for nidan soon using the modified test (weapons only). No date set as yet.

Right now, with the weather being nice, we have room outside for hundreds of people. We did recently go outside and do some cutting practice on the bushes. I find that there is no substitute for lots of cutting. You do have to clean off the swords afterwards, but we would have to do that even if we were cutting mats (or, for that matter, people).