Oh, the things you learn when building an MMO. 

For instance! The Olympic record holder for marathon racing ran 42,200 meters in 7495 seconds, or 64 meters in 11 seconds.

And the average walk speed is 2 meters per second.

And the Olympic record for the 60 meter dash is 6.39 seconds.

How exciting!

I go back to Aikido tonight for the first time in two months.  I'm a little nervous.

This place was excellent, and their name is awesome. I mean, c'mon -- how many restaurants do you know with the word "penultimate" in their title?

By far some of the best food I've had in Missouri. I could sense the copious amounts of cream in the pasta sauce before it even showed up at my table.

Though I am dead broke, this was Curtis-sensei's last night in St. Louis, and I wished to properly thank him for being a terrific instructor by buying some of his last dinner. This turned out to be quite a lot of money, but he earned it and thensome.

To thank him, I gave him a hug of farewell, bowed my head a little too much, straightened a little too quickly, and promptly clocked him in the lip with the top of my head.

You might be saying, "But Steph, this is an eighth-dan aikido instructor you smacked in the face. Shouldn't he have been able to defend against your attack?" To which I have to say, "My friends, that is just what kind of awesome I am."

I felt terrible for having thanked him by giving him a slightly split lip, but he laughed and gave me a kiss on the forehead, and then was whisked off into the night by my sensei. I suppose I should look at it this way: I left an impression. On his lip, perhaps, but nonetheless -- I left an impression.

Tomorrow I'm prepping to cook for 20.

G'night, ya'all.

I'm having a creatively frustrating week. Not a week that is frustrating in new and interesting ways, but my creativity is frustrated and I can't buy it a drink to make it feel better. Oh well.

The aikido seminar's going great, but my knees are never going to forgive me. The Boulder people make me smile. Their two senior sensei are total goofballs (like me). It makes me think that Colorado may just be my final destination when all my traveling days are done.

I think one of my dojomates is gearing up to ask me out. The problem is, I've been thinking this for six months now. Maybe my flirtation sensors are on the blink.

Must be all those trashy girl-fantasy novels I've been reading. And writing.

Surprisingly, the first thing that went through my head when I thought sensei had broken my wrist was not, "Oh shit, my wrist just got broken. How am I going to go to work tomorrow?" but "Oh shit, he may have just broken my wrist. How am I going to get off the mat gracefully without alarming all these new students?"

As it turns out, he didn't break my wrist. Just a wicked pin that I wasn't expecting.

Tomorrow I need to actually work on Firebird and not succumb to the sweet, siren call of the ravens. :P

Also -- who knew Ellen Kushner wrote Choose Your Own Adventures?

EDIT: In retrospect, those first two paragraphs sound frightening. I'll assure you that my sensei is an awfully nice guy who does not intentionally hurt anyone. Yours truly is far more likely to get in trouble on the mat because her mind is being pecked at by ravens than because anyone wishes her ill.

We had a UHF moment tonight in the dojo when special guest sensei Koichi Kashiwaya was talking about reasons people take sudden, deep breaths. Such as when they are taken by...surprise.

I managed to restrain my laugh. But only just barely.