I thought it was funny that Warrior Challenge was mocked on Leno. It's the "PBS version of Jackass."

Oh, also. I'm happy that fencing was moved from 5:30 on Fridays to 6:30. It's a smaller, more experienced group... I caught the tail of the 5:30 group, which was a bunch of hyperactive kids who were treated like idiots, for good reason. ("Put your sword down before you take off your mask for safety..") The good part about being in the 6:30 group is that you get more individual attention. It's beginner II and I got my ass kicked by seven year olds. I was the only girl there. There was an old woman there, though that term is unfair as it really makes her sound more senile than she was because she was very experienced and much better than I. But since I was doing drills with more experienced fencers they could correct me, even when the teacher wasn't paying attention to our pair. It does make me feel over the hill though.. nobody (nobody good anyways) starts fencing at the age of 18. He'll earn faster than me, and in many ways he is my teacher. He (the pre-pubescent kid I was fencing with) has a brother in fencing, and fencing gear at home, and if they wish to they can bout every day, so if they keep at it, by the time they are my age, they will be amazing athletes. It makes me kind of sad. Though from the actual teacher's reprimands they must bicker more than they practice. Ah.. youth.

I don't know how to hold a foil (Damn you, French grip!). By the end of class I had to peel my fingers off of the handle because they were molded in there. I miss my po' pistol grip, which is much easier to hold but apparently lacks the finesse of a French grip.. :( Of course this is a lot more "real"... I'm glad also that we were dry fencing (without the electric hookup to the scoring system). You focus more on the fencing and less on the scoring, or the cable trailing out of your ass. And I had forgotten how much masks restrict your vision though I was glad for them; I kept hitting my opponent in the mask, because I have the point control of a manatee (Damn you, pistol grip training!). Also, I hadn't the faintest clue what the teacher meant when she was like.. "Straight parry 6, riposte!" "Parry 4, riposte!" "Disengage!" "1, 2 combination!" It's not like I've never learned this in DCFC, but I'd forgotten, especially the names. It's not like bicycling, where you never forget. Apparently, 6 is an attack of your opponent's chest area (if your opponent's torso were theoretically divided into quadrants) close to the sword arm and 4 is the chest area farther from the sword arm. But at DCFC I'd simply been taught that one was an "outside" parry (4), one was an "inside" parry (6), or for all practical purposes, either clockwise (4) or counterclockwise (6). But this way of thinking really screws you over when you are, like me, fencing a lefty, in which case it's all reversed, with the outside parry clockwise being 6 and the inside parry counterclockwise being 4. (Damn you, lefties!) Unless you're doing a "1,2 combination" which is actually a combination of 4,6.. or is it 6,4...? It boggles the mind. To make things even more confusing, even if you know exactly how to do all of the above, you may not necessarily (and most of the time won't) succeed in hitting your opponent anyhow. Like in doing a 1,2 combination.. it relies on your opponent being bluffed into moving their arm to defend against an attack in 4, and then you attack them in 6 instead and go, "Haha, sucker!" It's a feint of some sort. But since we're doing drills.. your opponent knows exactly what you're doing and isn't all that surprised. I've only been faster than this seven year old kid like once or twice. To my credit, he had a hard time with me too, but I think that's only because it's not that I'm great, it's just that I'm too stupid to be feinted against in the first place.

Also: I think that parry 4 is retarded.

I did additional drilling after I came home for an hour or so, fencing my music stand, so I think I understand this now. But during class I was very confused.

I've never seen Boromir so pretty.

Obviously, as you can tell by now, all this free time is putting me on a fantasy art kick.

Me and Malex kind of tried to get a group together to see the Matrix. But Andrew couldn't go later than 12:00pm because of piano lessons at 3 and everyone else had already seen it or had some rehearsal of some sort, mostly Shakespeare or Resonance or whatnot, so it kind of fell flat. Dena is organizing a trip to see it Saturday night. I'm really impressed with her vast amounts of group-organizing.

This would make a cool prom dress.

It's so seldom done well that I really appreciate it when it is.

Proof that I am straight and there are indeed boys I do like.

Nicely drawn wind; a fair test of the artist's pen is to see how well she draws something that's invisible.

I'm amazed that someone drew him. Hurrah! Very nicely not bishonnen; stalwart, direct, and not liable to be snapped like a twig. He's not at all unpleasant on the eyes, either. Hm. Mm. *contemplate.* I need to form a Not Bishonnen webring.

It's art. Probably not what I ought to be looking at, but I'm impressed with the hand for some reason.

Galadriel and Celeborn looking 100% better than their movie counterparts.

I like Eomer in one of the other pictures, but We Don't Need To See That. Mwee. He eats silly bishonnen boys for breakfast.

That was a sucky episode of Warrior Challenge (Knights). I was disappointed; there wasn't anything I didn't know already and the info was fairly general. (Of course, there'll be stuff you don't know already because y'all aren't knight freaks, so you watch it still. It's on tomorrow at 11PM and Sunday at 2:30PM.) The contestants this time around lacked oomph. It's always best when you have US airmen... the British police are kind of boring. Can't blame them though; how rowdy can two people get? Romans was better, also, because they actually had a bunch of guys living in the barracks, cooking their own pork and lentils, washing their own dishes, bitching about their underwear and lack of socks and too-tight chainmail, brushing their teeth with Roman toothpaste ("Mmm... minty!"), scrubbing their own armor, laying the gatehouse siege smackdown on each other, charging in formation, harassing innocent civilians, going on long marches and hitting the bath house and tavern circuit like they were Roman soldiers. It was the Roman soldier reality show and reeked of Roman coolness.

With all due credit to the filmmakers, who tried to make the whole tourney thing look as dramatic as possible, Knights was just like.. Renfest on tape. But without the fire eaters, genial but potbellied old men in kilts, drunken fat goth chicks, over-exposed old women in crushed velvet, pasty teenagers in brass chainmail bikinis and people yelling "Huzzah!" every 15 seconds. Granted it had its moments (armored knights doing pushups and jumping jacks to the theme from "Rocky," ... knight-tipping... , "I need my inhaler..") but for the most part, it just did not reek of knightly coolness.

I thought I was screwed for the history exam, but then Cathy told me Turkey counts as a middle eastern country as well as a European country, and Malex told me the Armenians are technically a religious group since the people oppressed are Armenian Christians. If I'm vague enough I just might get away with grouping them as an Oppressed Religious Minority, like the Jews. Either, way, it's over with and I don't care.

Christine has kindly offered me a ticket for graduation, so I no longer need extra.

Remember to watch Warrior Challenge, a tv show wherein a bunch of modern people live and train as ancient warriors. It's very cool. The Gladiators and Romans episodes are over, though Romans gave me a good bit of entertainment. My mom was like, "what?" since I was beaming/ laughing my ass off the whole time while watching it. (*holding up a sponge on a stick* "This is a sponge-ium. There's one for the eight of you." "What's it for?" "It's for the latrine, you know... to wipe your .. *demonstration* ... like that. There's only one, so you have to clean it off real well after you're done with it. There's a stream of water that runs through the latrine you can dip it in." *laughter* "Do we have to use that?" "Of course." "See, this is why the Roman Empire died!") The sponge-ium is later found used as a loofah to scour dishes and clean armor.. XD

But you can still catch the Knights and the Vikings eps.

Warrior Challenge broadcasts coming soon:

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Knights - May 13, 9:00PM
Knights - May 14, 11:00PM
Knights - May 18, 2:30PM
Vikings - May 20, 9:00PM
Vikings - May 21, 11:00PM
Vikings - May 25, 2:00PM

You're watching PBS on WETA TV 26 / 90.9 FM.

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For those of you not checking your calendars, the most convenient times for you are probably the episodes that show on Sundays at 2:30 or 2:00.

AVE, mighty SPONGE-IUM!