Always the bridesmaid...
Subtitled: ...Never The Bride Who's Angry
Ding dong, the wedding's over - fa la la la la, yay yay yay!
I am so, so, so very tired. I was up yesterday for a total of 17 hours. Most of that time was spent either on the ground sparring (12-3), taking a shower & getting ready (3-5), standing and filming a wedding (5-10) and then downtown with some 1st Cavalry ladies (11-3 AM).
Oh yes. It was quite the full day.
I will start where I left off and see how far I get. I really don't feel like doing much else other than sit here on my bed, so hopefully this will entertain me for a while.
Jiu jitsu yesterday was really fun. I had a substitute named Mike and the assistant was this lady named Anne. Anne is probably right around 5'2" or 5'3" and weighs no more than 100 lbs. After we stretched, Mike had us start off practicing inside control moves. Inside control is where you have a grip inside of their ams -- whether it be your hands gripping their wrists from the inside, or one of your hands "goosenecked" around their neck on the inside of one arm and the other hand gripping their wrist, pulling down, or both hands in "monkey paw" behind their neck (where you cup your hands together with your fingers all together so they don't get broken and apply pressure on their neck by bringing your wrists toward you, pushing their head down). He had us line up in two lines, and one line rotated every few minutes to give us a new partner to practice with. I liked this! I started off with Anne, who was so tiny that I was afraid I was going to break her. Then I got this guy named Lee who was twice her size and I had no qualms about wraslin' with him. We kept rotating through the partners and it was interesting to learn different tricks from each of them. Each one had his own style; one guy just wanted to do inside control with our wrists where it's almost like "hand pile" where you just keep going and going, trying to strengthen your wrists. Today mine are really chaffed from it.
Then we learned takedowns from inside control. Let me see if I can describe the technique. You have one hand goosenecked around their neck. Then you take your other arm and put it under their armpit and grab their shoulder. Then you push your forehead into the opponent's collar bone, basically to distract them and make them think about it for a little bit. Then you start pushing them backwards, and you rotate your shoulders with a lot of strength and it basically throws them off balance and they fall back. From there, you fall with them, clear their legs so they don't get you in their lock, and take side control (where you're laying with your body across theirs, perpendicular, and you have your knee in one hip and your other knee in their shoulder, then your elbows in their opposite shoulder and hip, preventing them from squirming out.).
Another takedown we learned was from inside control of their wrists. You basically throw their arms away, put one foot out in front of you, between their two legs, and kneel onto one knee, keeping the other leg out behind you for base (kind of like a monster walk or a lunge but you go all the way down onto the knee you are stepping forward on). Then, and this is tricky, you swing your leg that's out behind you, forward behind theirs. While you push your shoulders and head into their hip, you take your hands and chop at their knee, and basically use your gravity as leverage to bring them down. Once I got the hang of stepping forward, going down to my knee, and then keeping the balance while you swing your leg out in front of you, I liked this move a lot. So far, this class has really been helping me with the tightness in my hips because so much of it requires you to rotate your leg within your hip socket.
Mike then showed us the spinning arm bar, which was tricky. It was also made harder by the fact that I was practicing with Anne and I was worried I was going to crush her because you have to lean against their stomach and jump across them. She kept telling me to put my weight on her but she seemed so tiny.
We drilled in pairs on our techniques for a while and then we had a little break and everyone started sparring. I was a little nervous because I hadn't done that with Bosco, he had been more of a dummy for me to practice on. So I was stretching and one of the guys Mike came over, who was like 6' but not too heavy and asked me if I wanted to spar. I told him I hadn't done it before and he was like "That's okay, just work the stuff in you learned today."
So we started sparring and I took him down! I got him by doing the monkeypaw behind his neck and pulling him down and forward. Then I had side control and we were trying to do our moves, and at some point I had the option for the choke, which I had learned last week and is pretty basic. But, he blocked with his arm, so I grabbed it and got it in a key lock and he tapped out! I was pumped after this. Then we went again and he took me down this time. I defended for a while and actually got him off me and kicked him away and then did my jump up that I'd had trouble with last week but had practiced a little bit. Once I was standing up again, I took him down again and got him in side control with him on his stomach. This was a very good opportunity for me to do a modified-guillotine and he tapped out again. Jordan, one of the other trainers, came over and showed me a move that I could do that was even more forceful than that where you jump to their other side while you have them in the choke and lean back making your choke much more fierce.
Then I sparred with Anne for a little while. The pace was a little bit slower although we did do a lot of grappling and she would shrimp around away from me. She helped me with my shrimping, and it was much better than last week. I think it was hard to get around Bosco because he doesn't make a lot of room for me to get away.
I was wiped out after class but of course no rest for the weary and I came home and had to hot foot it into the shower to get ready for the wedding. Yay, weddings! I arrived at the church at 5 PM and started setting everything up and getting some shots. I was filming the guests as they were ushered in and through my lensfinder I suddenly saw someone and said to myself, "Is that Rusty?"
Yep. What makes a wedding even worse? Seeing your old boss and his wife.
Well, the wedding started, albeit about forty-five minutes late, and everything went amazingly smoothly. The best part was that because I was so focused on not messing up, I had no time to get emotional. It was a good way to be detached, staring through a little 3" by 5" screen and being paralyzed with fear that I was going to mess up.
During the part where the bride and groom walk out, followed by the bridal party (the photographer, earlier in the day when I described that part to him as that looked at me and said, "You mean the recession?"), the "low tape" started flashing and I had five minutes left on my tape! But luckily I got the very last grandma being escorted out and the tape cut off. Perfect timing, couldn't have asked for it any better. The photographer and I even had a little classic part like in a movie where I finally gained his respect. He came up behind me during the vows to take a shot and looked through the viewfinder and saw how I had it framed and nodded at me quietly and smiled. A small victory there.
I hauled over to the reception, where I spent another 45 minutes waiting for it to start. I had to get them coming in as they were announced. Originally they were going to come in up these back steps but because it was misty the coordinaters wanted them to come up through the inside stairs for their announcement. So there was a little bit of time where I didn't know where I was supposed to be but then they talked to Cheryl and Craig when they finally got there and agreed to go up the inside stairs. So I hustled up and got ready to shoot. I had a really good spot where they would walk through right next to the ice sculpture (yes, ice sculpture) with their names on it. It was a good spot. The photographer's assistant was like "I thought you were a professional because of where you were standing and how you were framing everything." She was really nice, she looked like a short Angie Harmon. Anyway, they are going to put the photos online so I'll post then link when they come up.
After the toasts and the dancing and me saying awkward hello's to Rusty and his wife, I left. My duties were done. I never got emotional, thanks to living through the camera rather than letting reality hit me.
I went home, changed out of my wedding clothes and went down to meet some girls at the Ivory Cat piano bar. Andrea is the wife of one of IS2's friends, Richard. When IS2 got back from Iraq the last time, he lived on Andrea and Richard's couch. Andrea spent all of last night telling me how she has such a soft spot for him because of this and how when she watched my video she started crying about IS2 leaving. She kept saying "Who makes a video like that?" Andrea brought with her Emily and Christine, and then two other women who left really early (as Andrea said "When I look at you Rachel, I see a survivor, but I worry about them."). Emily is from North Cackalacky (IS2: She asked me how I knew this when I said, "Ah North Cackalacky!" after she told me she was from Raleigh). She met her husband at Duke. Christine is from Colorado. They were all really fun. I was the DD, so I had a completely sober night (I don't think I would have made it that late had I been drinking) and drove us all home at 3 in the morning after Andrea standing on 6th Street for an hour saying "I don't want this night to end!" We got home and they all slept in my living room on the floor (amazing, I don't know how they did it) and the couch, and then we got up at 7 and I drove them back to their car (Andrea had to get back by 9). Oh! Shirikins, you will love this. So, we were trying to get to 8th and San Jacinto. I was on 5th Street and it was blocked off at Lamar. I was like "Since when do they block off 5th Street?" Christine said "It looks like there's some kind of race..." and I suddenly saw ALL THESE JOGGERS all over the place. Race for the Cure.
We COULD NOT get past Guadalupe. We finally pulled over and asked a cop and he said they'd have to get out and walk. I felt so bad. I dropped them off at 8th and Guadalupe and they had to do the walk of shame all the way to San Jacinto at 7 AM. "Honk if you hate joggers!"
Hopefully they aren't still walking. We had fun anyway. I'm going to put up some pics from last night. I like how in the last 2 photos everyone has their hand on their head!!!
Ding dong, the wedding's over - fa la la la la, yay yay yay!
I am so, so, so very tired. I was up yesterday for a total of 17 hours. Most of that time was spent either on the ground sparring (12-3), taking a shower & getting ready (3-5), standing and filming a wedding (5-10) and then downtown with some 1st Cavalry ladies (11-3 AM).
Oh yes. It was quite the full day.
I will start where I left off and see how far I get. I really don't feel like doing much else other than sit here on my bed, so hopefully this will entertain me for a while.
Jiu jitsu yesterday was really fun. I had a substitute named Mike and the assistant was this lady named Anne. Anne is probably right around 5'2" or 5'3" and weighs no more than 100 lbs. After we stretched, Mike had us start off practicing inside control moves. Inside control is where you have a grip inside of their ams -- whether it be your hands gripping their wrists from the inside, or one of your hands "goosenecked" around their neck on the inside of one arm and the other hand gripping their wrist, pulling down, or both hands in "monkey paw" behind their neck (where you cup your hands together with your fingers all together so they don't get broken and apply pressure on their neck by bringing your wrists toward you, pushing their head down). He had us line up in two lines, and one line rotated every few minutes to give us a new partner to practice with. I liked this! I started off with Anne, who was so tiny that I was afraid I was going to break her. Then I got this guy named Lee who was twice her size and I had no qualms about wraslin' with him. We kept rotating through the partners and it was interesting to learn different tricks from each of them. Each one had his own style; one guy just wanted to do inside control with our wrists where it's almost like "hand pile" where you just keep going and going, trying to strengthen your wrists. Today mine are really chaffed from it.
Then we learned takedowns from inside control. Let me see if I can describe the technique. You have one hand goosenecked around their neck. Then you take your other arm and put it under their armpit and grab their shoulder. Then you push your forehead into the opponent's collar bone, basically to distract them and make them think about it for a little bit. Then you start pushing them backwards, and you rotate your shoulders with a lot of strength and it basically throws them off balance and they fall back. From there, you fall with them, clear their legs so they don't get you in their lock, and take side control (where you're laying with your body across theirs, perpendicular, and you have your knee in one hip and your other knee in their shoulder, then your elbows in their opposite shoulder and hip, preventing them from squirming out.).
Another takedown we learned was from inside control of their wrists. You basically throw their arms away, put one foot out in front of you, between their two legs, and kneel onto one knee, keeping the other leg out behind you for base (kind of like a monster walk or a lunge but you go all the way down onto the knee you are stepping forward on). Then, and this is tricky, you swing your leg that's out behind you, forward behind theirs. While you push your shoulders and head into their hip, you take your hands and chop at their knee, and basically use your gravity as leverage to bring them down. Once I got the hang of stepping forward, going down to my knee, and then keeping the balance while you swing your leg out in front of you, I liked this move a lot. So far, this class has really been helping me with the tightness in my hips because so much of it requires you to rotate your leg within your hip socket.
Mike then showed us the spinning arm bar, which was tricky. It was also made harder by the fact that I was practicing with Anne and I was worried I was going to crush her because you have to lean against their stomach and jump across them. She kept telling me to put my weight on her but she seemed so tiny.
We drilled in pairs on our techniques for a while and then we had a little break and everyone started sparring. I was a little nervous because I hadn't done that with Bosco, he had been more of a dummy for me to practice on. So I was stretching and one of the guys Mike came over, who was like 6' but not too heavy and asked me if I wanted to spar. I told him I hadn't done it before and he was like "That's okay, just work the stuff in you learned today."
So we started sparring and I took him down! I got him by doing the monkeypaw behind his neck and pulling him down and forward. Then I had side control and we were trying to do our moves, and at some point I had the option for the choke, which I had learned last week and is pretty basic. But, he blocked with his arm, so I grabbed it and got it in a key lock and he tapped out! I was pumped after this. Then we went again and he took me down this time. I defended for a while and actually got him off me and kicked him away and then did my jump up that I'd had trouble with last week but had practiced a little bit. Once I was standing up again, I took him down again and got him in side control with him on his stomach. This was a very good opportunity for me to do a modified-guillotine and he tapped out again. Jordan, one of the other trainers, came over and showed me a move that I could do that was even more forceful than that where you jump to their other side while you have them in the choke and lean back making your choke much more fierce.
Then I sparred with Anne for a little while. The pace was a little bit slower although we did do a lot of grappling and she would shrimp around away from me. She helped me with my shrimping, and it was much better than last week. I think it was hard to get around Bosco because he doesn't make a lot of room for me to get away.
I was wiped out after class but of course no rest for the weary and I came home and had to hot foot it into the shower to get ready for the wedding. Yay, weddings! I arrived at the church at 5 PM and started setting everything up and getting some shots. I was filming the guests as they were ushered in and through my lensfinder I suddenly saw someone and said to myself, "Is that Rusty?"
Yep. What makes a wedding even worse? Seeing your old boss and his wife.
Well, the wedding started, albeit about forty-five minutes late, and everything went amazingly smoothly. The best part was that because I was so focused on not messing up, I had no time to get emotional. It was a good way to be detached, staring through a little 3" by 5" screen and being paralyzed with fear that I was going to mess up.
During the part where the bride and groom walk out, followed by the bridal party (the photographer, earlier in the day when I described that part to him as that looked at me and said, "You mean the recession?"), the "low tape" started flashing and I had five minutes left on my tape! But luckily I got the very last grandma being escorted out and the tape cut off. Perfect timing, couldn't have asked for it any better. The photographer and I even had a little classic part like in a movie where I finally gained his respect. He came up behind me during the vows to take a shot and looked through the viewfinder and saw how I had it framed and nodded at me quietly and smiled. A small victory there.
I hauled over to the reception, where I spent another 45 minutes waiting for it to start. I had to get them coming in as they were announced. Originally they were going to come in up these back steps but because it was misty the coordinaters wanted them to come up through the inside stairs for their announcement. So there was a little bit of time where I didn't know where I was supposed to be but then they talked to Cheryl and Craig when they finally got there and agreed to go up the inside stairs. So I hustled up and got ready to shoot. I had a really good spot where they would walk through right next to the ice sculpture (yes, ice sculpture) with their names on it. It was a good spot. The photographer's assistant was like "I thought you were a professional because of where you were standing and how you were framing everything." She was really nice, she looked like a short Angie Harmon. Anyway, they are going to put the photos online so I'll post then link when they come up.
After the toasts and the dancing and me saying awkward hello's to Rusty and his wife, I left. My duties were done. I never got emotional, thanks to living through the camera rather than letting reality hit me.
I went home, changed out of my wedding clothes and went down to meet some girls at the Ivory Cat piano bar. Andrea is the wife of one of IS2's friends, Richard. When IS2 got back from Iraq the last time, he lived on Andrea and Richard's couch. Andrea spent all of last night telling me how she has such a soft spot for him because of this and how when she watched my video she started crying about IS2 leaving. She kept saying "Who makes a video like that?" Andrea brought with her Emily and Christine, and then two other women who left really early (as Andrea said "When I look at you Rachel, I see a survivor, but I worry about them."). Emily is from North Cackalacky (IS2: She asked me how I knew this when I said, "Ah North Cackalacky!" after she told me she was from Raleigh). She met her husband at Duke. Christine is from Colorado. They were all really fun. I was the DD, so I had a completely sober night (I don't think I would have made it that late had I been drinking) and drove us all home at 3 in the morning after Andrea standing on 6th Street for an hour saying "I don't want this night to end!" We got home and they all slept in my living room on the floor (amazing, I don't know how they did it) and the couch, and then we got up at 7 and I drove them back to their car (Andrea had to get back by 9). Oh! Shirikins, you will love this. So, we were trying to get to 8th and San Jacinto. I was on 5th Street and it was blocked off at Lamar. I was like "Since when do they block off 5th Street?" Christine said "It looks like there's some kind of race..." and I suddenly saw ALL THESE JOGGERS all over the place. Race for the Cure.
We COULD NOT get past Guadalupe. We finally pulled over and asked a cop and he said they'd have to get out and walk. I felt so bad. I dropped them off at 8th and Guadalupe and they had to do the walk of shame all the way to San Jacinto at 7 AM. "Honk if you hate joggers!"
Hopefully they aren't still walking. We had fun anyway. I'm going to put up some pics from last night. I like how in the last 2 photos everyone has their hand on their head!!!
Labels:
6th Street,
deployment,
jiu jitsu,
weddings
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Love the Jujitsu commentary!