[As usual, three weeks lag here, if you aren’t reading this on my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/blazeward). If you’d like your news fresher, and the monthly Anti-Stodgy/Redneck Chef newsletter, all I ask is a buck to help keep the lights on around here.]

Shift to Tuesdays in process. Possibly permanently, because I’ve started learning Karate and the sensei has access to a space Monday mornings bright and too fucking early. Easier to shift the blog back a day, but I’ll be a bit getting the mind around it, after years of Monday.

Gotta rebuild the whole schedule. Worth it, but still an adjustment.

And this week, he had something come up for Monday, so I went to his dojo this morning instead. Just got home after stopping at Krain Corner for breakfast, then trying to get my shit together. Might be harder than it seems. We’ll see.

I am a white belt, but only in this art, having studied several others over the years. Would have gone farther in kung fu, but I realized that I was four years in and that teacher didn’t have a single student more advanced than yellow belt. Including folks that had been there for six.

He has a LOT to teach, but seems to believe that a black belt involves learning everything he knows in 30+ years of training. Put it in these terms: I figured I was another seven to twelve years away from earning a black belt, and I’m pretty sure I was his best and most advanced student when I gave up bashing my head against that wall.

Most arts, you might earn a black belt in 3-5 years. I was looking at 10-15. Worse, that teacher isn’t the most organized, so we were starting to learn Modern Arnis. Which is utterly unrelated to his school, but is this shiny, cool, new thing he’s learned, and so everything was going to be stick for a while, when his black belt curriculum doesn’t involve weapons until second-degree black.

Uhm, yeah, time to rethink. Life happens. 2025 is going to be a bunch of changes, so we might as well roll with it.

Corsac Fox #7 just crossed 60k yesterday. Probably 90k to done, which is longer than most and puts it up around Lost Tribe for length. And brings Block One to a nice conclusion that lets me step forward several years for what happens next. ‘Cause a lot happens after this. And I don’t want to spoil the fun, because most of you haven’t even read Lost Tribe yet, to see where we’re going, let along 6 and 7.

You’ll enjoy it.

Past that, not a lot. Holiday brain, because everything churned sideways, but in a good way. Hope your various holidays are lovely and calm, and that 2025 doesn’t end up biting you too hard.

Y’all enjoy your Tuesday.

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

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