14 February, 2009

It's the Late, Late--I mean, Really Early Show!

Yes, yes...it's 4 AM and I cannot sleep. Methods I've tried tonight:
  1. Staring at the ceiling
  2. Staring at the insides of my eyelids
  3. Listening to music in my head
  4. Praying (I lack the discipline to pray for 4 straight hours)
  5. Reading
  6. Sketching
The painting in the post below has my artistic mind churning. I tried to sketch a sunset resembling Munch's, with some of my own technique, but couldn't figure out how to make the sunrays and the waves interact. So then I got out some color, hoping that would help...but I think pastel is the wrong media for such a blatant image. Too soft. Also, I should get/make a blending pencil. Some day.

I'm kinda concerned that I can't sleep. College fencing practice is tomorrow, and I'd really like to go, but after that I have set-up for church (it's in a different location, ergo the Saturday set-up) and then 4 hours of work. I've been doing nothing all week due to illness, so I'm concerned that no sleep + fencing + set up + work could equal a sicker Elf come Sunday morning. Sigh. And I already didn't go to practice on Thursday because I didn't feel good.

Oh wow! I haven't blogged about the tournament last weekend yet! Well, then, here's the report.

The weekend was a smashing success. My fears about what could happen when a bunch of college students rent some hotel rooms for a weekend were unfounded, at least for the night I spent with them. Thank God! I fenced the best I ever have in my life, which is remarkable because by 2 PM I was a metabolic mess. I had failed to carbo-load the day before the tournament, so after a few hours of fencing my body had no more energy to give my muscles or my brain. Ergo I could have won the bronze medal match for my team, but failed by one point. I tracked my performance, and won 7 bouts in a row before crashing...maybe next time I'll be able to extend that streak by planning better. Ah well. 4th place out of 20 colleges ain't bad, and we even got medals! So now I can say I medalled in a collegiate fencing conference :-)

The girls fenced the first day and the guys fenced the day afterward, so for the day that I was fencing I had a wonderful support group of guys from the team. Will was our main coach, and did a fantastic job. If he weren't so keen on leaving my city I'd ask him to join my coaching staff. Josh, who is planning to get his Master's degree in fencing (ack! So jealous), helped me with doing specific drills for some of my opponents, and tried to get me to fence smarter :-P Maybe I should ask him to join my staff...

Why did I fence so much better that weekend than other tournaments? The team aspect made a huge difference to me--I'm used to it because of high school. Individual bouts were better because I was not trying to analyze every scrap of information I could. Apparently I fence better when I'm slightly spaced out! By the end of the day I was pretty giddy and probably annoyed a lot of my teammates. Oops. Being sick didnt help that.

A note on some teams...our first match was against Swarthmore College, our hosts. None of us had warmed up (BAD idea), so we lost miserably. But we finished way ahead of them in the standings. Huh. Navy had a team there...and I was like "oh these girls should be fun to beat," expecting them to be all hardcore etc. Nope. Not so much as a fleche out of them. (PS I scored on fleches a lot! Weird.) William & Mary's team looked like they could all be relatives...after our match, one of their girls asked me if I spoke Icelandic. I don't, but told her I was a linguistics major, which made her explode in joy. Rather funny to watch someone else have reactions that I usually have :-) We had beaten Florida earlier in the day, but they beat us in the bronze medal match. Both matches were won or lost by one bout. They were a frustrating team to fence, but it was good fencing.

Also, I found a magic weapon. Well, ok, it wasn't magical, but the grip (large Belgian) fit my hand remarkably well, and though the blade had several weak spots (I prayed it wouldn't break on any of my opponents), it was light enough that the weight of the weapon was pretty far toward my hand. Yay! It's a lot easier to fence with lighter weapons and/or weapons that are weighted toward the hand. I was borrowing this particular weapon from Alex, because all of my weapons failed. Jason fixed one of my weapons and fell in love with it (it has a German grip and really flexible blade), so I told him I'd trade it for Alex's weapon (named Lucille). Maybe I should show up at practice tomorrow, if only to see if Jason got that worked out with Alex!

With that, I think I'm going to try this novel thing they call "sleeping."

3 comments:

John Q said...

"Ergo I could have won the bronze medal match for my team, but failed by one point."

And when the entire team fails to gain that one (or two points), the entire TEAM bears that burden, not just one individual.

Regardless of who won gold, silver, bronze...you did great! It was fun to watch.


what about root beer every round?

you guessed it said...

wait, what about beer all around?

Anonymous said...

1) i got your hug, 3rd hand, on sunday afternoon. i miss you, too!
2) makoto fujimura is coming to gcc on march 18th and 19th. be there. it's going to be AMAZING. i'm about dying with excitement. and the rest of my art class is like "huh, who's he? oh, some whacko. not worth my time. *yawn*"

-_-

silly people.