"Be content with what you have. Rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you."

For a long while, shihonage seemed to give me the most trouble.  It felt as though my height was going to be a significant obstacle.  I've since discovered that it is my ignorance that is at the heart of the matter.  Realizing that, my feelings about shihonage have improved a great deal.

I do not have a comfortable familiarity with any given technique to call one a 'favorite'.  I do have particular fascination with zenponage, iriminage, and the kokyunage family of techniques.  This fascination has nothing to do with my knowledge or understanding of how they work or how to do them, but they are the ones I find the most intruiging.

I'm at the point where I experience exhilerating learning curves only to find that I forgot it all three days later.  On the bright side, I suppose that means I get two rides for the same quarter when I "relearn" the technique, but for now it's frustrating...  Lately I'm drawn a bit more towards irimi techniques in general, whereas only a month ago I was much more comfortable with tenkan, kotegaesh in particular. 

Just last Friday tenchi nage finally "clicked".  I hadn't been able to understand why it wasn't working until then (why didn't someone tell me it was basically sumi?).  It still gives me a bit of trouble, but I gained a general understanding of how it feels/works.  There was also a particular irimi sayu throw that caught my attention last wednesday.  Anyway, I really liked how those felt and it changed my feelings towards irimi in general. 

For some reason my Ikkyo has been broken lately, but only for certain people - you know who you are

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