With the end of the school year in sight, I feel an absurd burst of energy, though I know I'm working as hard as ever and should be dragging. Certainly many of my colleagues are on their last nerve, and the kids are wacky. One on of my advisees got a detention and a commendation in the same day. I sent out a bunch of notes to parents because a bunch of boys failed a pop grammar quiz that is exactly like the grammar that's going to be on the exam next week.

But I made it to the ...

Yesterday, I made it to the gym and did half an hour on the elliptical and half an hour run/walk (1 minute/1 minutes) on the treadmill, and I don't feel too bad. Today, I got home early enough to take a little nap and then headed over to the club. I did five minutes or so on the bosu ball, and then qatet, Will, Tom, Charlotte, Mike and I drilled for a good twenty-thirty minutes. We started with clockwork, went to advance-lunge-cut to head, did 1-2-3 steps and lunge, cut anywhere, and then did ...

Today was the last day of sports, a humid day with strong sun. The boys arrived as usual to hang out in the hallway outside the squash courts with their sabres and kit, waiting for me to come unlock and turn the lights on. As usual, they did their warm-up through the squash courts, a hilarious affair that highlights how very nerdy and uncoordinated some of them are. They run three circuits of the four courts, talking and laughing and bumping into one another. I had them do a little footwork ...

It was a small crew tonight, just Will, qatet, Simon, and me, but a good practice nonetheless. We drilled and bouted. Although I was still a little stiff from Saturday night's practice, I could still feel the boost in timing, and drilling has been awfully good for my hand, so I was able to bring a little more oomph to my fencing than I have for the last few weeks. I beat Simon 15-0, got some good touches on Will, and managed to change when fencing qatet, which I haven't been doing much lately. ...

Tomasz is now also holding practice on Saturday nights at Medeo, at least for the time being, and he held a 6:00 spot open for me for a lesson, because I had asked about taking lessons. Saturday night for the next month or so is much better than any other night, because I don't have to get up early on Sunday.

He showed me proper Polish sabre salute, critiqued and adjusted my parries, and showed me five different beat attacks. It all reminds me of what Dave Mandell used to have us ...