20260623
[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.]
Those of you reading this in three weeks, this is your sign from the heavens to gimme $1 a month on the patreon side of things(https://www.patreon.com/blazeward), so your news is a little more fresh.
Tomorrow, bright and (fucking) early, we’ll be headed out. Another epic road trip, this time to the Twin Cities. My birthday is Friday (57?!?) , plus my BIL and SIL celebrating 25 year anniversary with a mariachi band saturday, and several other birthdays all falling around this weekend. Most of the clan will be gathering, and we decided to make the trip. Flying or train were both about twice the cost of driving, plus I love a good road trip. Will wave at you from SD as we zoom by. Some of you already know and we’ve made arrangements for this weekend, but if you suddenly went boop, email me or text between now and Saturday and I can get you details. We’re only going to be in town until Monday morning, then driving home. But I haven’t gotten to see the grand-niblings since 2019, and some of them are taller than me now.
Gonna be awesome.
Writing: finished the sixth Mick story. Having fun turning that into a novel of darkness and mental health. Working on Derlyth 4 slowly. Harri 3. And close to finishing Corsac Fox 8, so probably another week there. (A week after I get back. Taking the writing phone but not the computer, and I won’t write much between now and July after today.)
Saw Mama Deer and her two zoomies several times this last week. She’s bedding them down on the hillside below the septic field or over the ridge behind the barn, but brings them out. We all had breakfast together Sunday, as she was feeding them while the Fabulous Publisher Babe™ and I fixed bacon and eggs. Squirrel and chipmunk babies are running around being dorks without adult supervision, so that’s been entertaining. Feeders have been emptied daily, and the gang is going to leave a 1-star yelp review when we’re gone for a week, but they do have the potential to eat other things. Even if the goofball Stellar Jays have learned from the Flickers how to eat from a suet feeder. (Always funny, because they don’t normally, so I’m introducing new evolutionary pressures around here. Heh.)
Past that, training continues apace. I’m probably in better shape today than I have been since I left Los Angeles in 1995, if that tells you anything. Test still likely sometime around the end of the year, if all goes well. I’m over 30k on a series of essays and articles currently (temporarily) entitled ‘My Blackbelt Journey.’ Sometime next year, I’ll sit down and organize it more into a descriptive text as a workbook to help training, by covering my interpretation of all the things that the curriculum contains.
Last night, learned (rough) the first half of a new kata. Seunchin (sp?). Core curriculum is Sanchin, Seisan, and Sanseru. To that, after black belt he adds Tencho, Seunchin, and Suparempe, plus one sai and one bo kata for one of three secondary fields of study (kata, weapons, and/or grappling). I also know Saifa and Gekisai-dai-ich, but those are just for knowledge and never going to be on any test, as far as I know.
And swinging heavy weights, plus carrying them. As I said, the goal is better shape at sixty than thirty, because I’d like to still be doing this at ninety. Got the genes for it. All four grandparents were in their seventies when they died, and all smoked, drank, and ate crap. Mom made it to eighty. Dad is still full of piss and vinegar at eighty-six. I can do this. And that’s thirty more years of writing, so the heirs will inherit one hell of a catalog, and hopefully it makes a difference in their lives, both for money and showing them that they can be successful artists, because that side of the family are all into art.
Past that, on the road this time tomorrow. See you in the Twin Cities. Or not.
shade and sweet water,
b
West of the Mountains, WA
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