So practice was phenomenally exhausting and excellent today--when Shrimp Sensei takes charge you know the sweat will roll off brows and so on--it's always odd though--I find sleep so refreshing wherever I can get, whether with my wifey or passing out randomly on the train, which while no match for wifey's smooth soft snuggliness is a sounder sleep for want of distraction and vivid timewarp dreams starring all the carmates. I feel myself getting somewhere with the training, though I find that I have been getting tireder and tireder--today was awake, and I always fall into the strange lag and drawn-outness of Sunday practice and Tuesday--maybe that too is just the length of Monday compared to my slightly lighter middle of the week. It probably would help my weightloss plans if I actually got more sleep, or so the research shows.

The confounding thing is that once I get home or to wifey's, I can't actually go to bed, and my energy goes up again, what with TV and other electronic diversions before it all crashes around 0130, up by 0700.

The balance of power has shifted--Jon and Samir are staying, but they have enlisted Bicki from upstairs, meaning that now she has a chip on her shoulder against me and the common spaces have been reclaimed after two years of leaking-out-curtains-sprawl-and-inertia. It's for the better and vaguely exciting, but of course the sort of needless drama. Still, I think I do need to credit my kendo training for letting me absorb criticism without being overly aggressive or defensive in response--simply nodding and hai'ing all that, fingers-together. Senseis are not interested in your explanations for why your kiai drags out too long, your left foot is crooked, and your knees bend.

I feel myself slipping badly in school this week, now that I'm only teaching my normal load. Just phoning it in again, I'm afraid. Then again, it's encouraging to see that the problems I have with some students aren't my incompetence as much as their relative incorrigibility.