Jackie walked Ashley successfully for a couple of days right after we brought her home from the shelter, but then we had a couple of incidents where the dog pulled her over, or yanked the leash out of her hand, and we realized that it wasn’t safe for Jackie to be the dog walker.
Over the past couple of years though, Ashley has gradually become more tractable, and today we decided to experiment once again with Jackie being the dog walker.
It worked great! Ashley pulled some, but I don’t think Jackie was ever in danger of being pulled over, or of losing the leash.
We were thinking of it especially because tomorrow I’m going to spend close to 10 hours at an all-day sword fighting workshop organized by my local club TMHF, which is bringing in three well-known HEMA instructors to teach classes. There’s a group lunch, but I’m going to have to miss it to dash home and walk the dog. But since this outing went so well, hopefully next time there’s something like this, Jackie will be able to do the dog walking. It’s also a useful backup, just in case I’m sick or injured, to have Jackie able to do what’s necessary.
I’ve scarcely fenced with the students since the groups split a year ago. It was made clear that I was welcome to come train with the student group, but most of the training sessions were the same time as my group was meeting, and anyway my shoulder and elbow issues meant I had to reduce the amount of training I was doing, so I ended up training with my own group.
That changed this week when the student group had a “fancy-dress fechtschule,” and invited the TMHF members to join in.
A fechtschule (which just means “fight school”) is a particular kind of contest where the point is not so much to “win” (although you want to do that too), as it is to display artful fencing. To encourage that the rules call for only head hits to count, and prohibit things like thrusting (too likely kill your opponent), grappling, pommel strikes, etc.
Because only head hits count, it seemed reasonably safe to wear just masks and not full protective gear, enabling a fancy-dress version, which seemed to me like great fun. Many of the women showed up in dresses or gowns of one sort or another (some in heels!). Many of the men wore suits. I wore a coat and tie.
The call for attending was simply to wear “the most formal thing you own that you are willing to fight in.”
After a youth during which I couldn’t imagine “dressing up” any more than absolutely necessary, somewhere along the line I figured out a few things, one of which was that men’s dress clothing is actually more comfortable than casual clothing, because it is altered to fit well, rather than just being “the right size.” These days besides wearing dress clothing whenever it will give me an advantage, I also wear it anytime it seems like fun. (While traveling—on a plane or a train, and while in a station or an airport—you get much better service if you’re wearing a coat and tie than if you’re wearing shorts or sweats.)
It has taken most of three years, but I’m finally doing a pretty good job of keeping my arms extended while doing longsword. (Partly I just needed to develop the habit, but I also needed to build strength and endurance in that arms-extended posture.)
It was glorious fun. I even did okay in the contest. (I think Milosh went easy on me.)
I have an idea for reducing surveillance capitalism:
Every time a company sells (or gives away as part of a commercial transaction) any information about you (name, location, unique identifier, website you visited, etc.), they have to mail you a postcard telling you what they sold and who they sold it to.
Jackie shared this with me, and now I want a bear-fur cap. (Actually I read it as a bear-fur cape, which might be even better, but I’d settle for the cap.)
He was wearing a striped goat-fur coat, a bear-fur cap, and sturdy shoes with bear-leather soles
During today’s longsword and rapier class with my HEMA group, Tempered Mettle Historical Fencing, we noticed that a banner had gotten crooked, and took a break to adjust it.
I took this image to document the scar from Ashley getting nipped on the nose by a neighbor dog, but it was such a handsome picture, I figured there was no point on dwelling on the scar. #dogsofmastodon
Just before my summer trip to Amherst, I got a Covid booster—even though the new Covid shot was just about to come out—because I wanted to minimize the chance of catching Covid on a plane or at an airport, and bringing it to my mom or brother.
Since then, I’ve been waiting for four months to pass, so I could get the new shot, now that it’s available. (It turns out that now you only have to wait two months, but nobody told me that.) Anyway, the four months are up, so I got my Covid booster and a flu shot this morning.
Flu shot and Covid shot
My left arm is now moderately sore. In fact, it roughly matches my right arm, which has been sore for months now. (I think originally dog-walking injuries to my right elbow and right shoulder, exacerbated by sword fighting, and exercise. I’ve recently started walking the dog left-handed, cut my sword fighting practice to just once a week, and cut the weight way down on my kettlebell clean&press. Oh, and I have a modest bruise on the right bicep where yesterday I took thrust that just missed the protective plate on my fencing jacket. The jacket is also padded though, and the thrust wasn’t that hard, and the sword was nicely flexible to make it safe for sparring between friends.)
“Mounjaro and the weight loss drug Zepbound slashed by 94 percent the risk that overweight or obese adults with pre-diabetes would develop diabetes… a lot of those same people could have had a great outcome with lifestyle intervention”
