Rae Roy

On the weekend, I traveled to Peterborough, Ontario for the annual koryu iaido seminar. I always come back from seminar with some helpful corrections and some less relevant ones. The thing about seminar that is different than my dojo or the grading floor is that it is packed with people. There is a kata that we do where I normally cover a large distance across the floor because I assume a kendo like stance and use okuri-ashi. If I did that in seminar, I'd run into the person in front of me. I often sacrifice technique at seminar in favour of paying attention to my surroundings. Several people near me were obviously oblivious to those around them. On this particular kata, it was not the instructors offering corrections, but people near my own level. This actually drives me crazy. Instructors can usually understand immediately whether you're doing something wrong or adjusting to your surroundings. Now, I did receive some helpful corrections such as that I'm not putting my han...

After finishing my work today, I headed west to pick up a dojo mate for an iaido seminar. There was a lot of chatting about a variety of things before dropping her in Peterborough.  Peterborough has a strange spot near the Trent Severn Lock where your options are a tunnel or a bridge. The thing is that the tunnel and the bridge are shared with oncoming traffic. I opted to avoid the tunnel, not knowing that the only other option was the bridge. It was strange and it scared me. I had the illusion of choice. I guess I should've done the thing that scared me. After doing her in Peterborough, I headed further west to Oshawa to a friend's house and we got delicious pho. I'd been thinking about our pho plans all week. We got them to add veggies to it. I need to remember to ask for this in Ottawa. Also, I don't know if my pho place has glutinous rice balls.  After that, she bought books off me, so I've made my first two sales. I should remember to sign them for her before I...

All day she waited for the moment that was planned months ago. As the weather grew dark and stormy, she lifted her chin defiantly. Nothing was stopping her today. She had an important package to retrieve.  But first, there was a workshop on building tension.  As the workshop started, she received a message from a friend, which contained a video. It was from his toddler. She wanted to play it right then, but the authors had begun speaking about tension. For nearly two hours she listened to their suggestions and comments. They offered tricks and suggested ways to...  But what did the young boy have to say to her? Right... The workshop. Oh, a book recommendation that sounds interesting. She writes it down.  It is question time and she challenges them to talk about positive ways to create tension that don't involve dramatic things like bombs. Mostly because she thinks they could all use some positivity. Naturally, there's the obvious example involving two consensual adul...

A friend of the family passed away. He was found in his garage. Given that he was a man who liked to putter, it was probably the best place he could have chosen for his last moments. It was on his riding lawnmower that I had my first driving lessons. A large red beast that my friend and I used to ride together, taking turns driving.  That year, she and I got in trouble for letting some fish out of a cage in the pond nearby. Oops. We thought we were doing a good thing. The bait shop owner wasn't happy. Now, this man was a very nice man, but also very unlucky. One year, his dog ate his false teeth while he was sleeping. Another? He accidentally set his garage on fire. In the north, it's not uncommon for us to have fun by shoveling our snow into a pile to jump into from a height. My brother and I did it often as kids with no problems. Well, this man was shoveling off his roof and now and again his shovel would follow the snow and he would jump down and retrieve it. One of the time...

Danger is really dependent on perspective. I bought a dangerous thing at the store the other day.  They had this set in a locked case along with hunting knives. The young man in that department got the key and placed it into a cloth bag, which he then locked the zipper on. The lady at the cash unlocked it. Now, I'm aware the whole point in to ensure I can't use it in store. Here's the thing, though. If I already had a thing sharp enough on me to cut through that plastic, I could've also cut through the cloth bag. If I really wanted to do something, that wouldn't have stopped me. The other thing is that it's the type of store that is typically hard to find someone to help you in, so I would've had plenty of time alone to do something. Also, the utility knives are easily accessible if I really wanted to hurt someone. I walked to the cash smiling about the futility of their security measures and because I was thinking about my wand project at home that I needed...

[caption id="attachment_4712" align="alignleft" width="300"] Image created using Bit Strips.[/caption] This week I decided it was time to get back in shape. Not just generally fit, but in condition for martial arts. So I'm using Rushfit. Here are some problems I ran into: 1. I started on Tuesday instead of Monday, so I skipped the Day 1 Strength & Endurance workout because I want to leave Tuesdays as just cardio given that I have iaido on Tuesdays. I also want my main rest day to be Sunday because that's an iaido day. 2. Wednesday was supposed to be Abs & Core, but my abs were still killing me from playing too hard with my toddler buddy, so I did the Day 1 workout instead, or tried too. I think they put the hardest workout too soon in the program. It was daunting. I had to skip the core stuff. I also didn't have weights and could only find one weight instead of two at the store. At least I did some of it. I had a date planned the next ...

The following has happened more than once this month, so I felt the need to say something about it: "Sorry Raeanne.. I fell for it also.....but it's for a very good cause!  Here it goes... you shouldn't have liked or commented on my last status.  Now you have to pick from one of the below and post it as your status. This is the 2016 Breast Cancer Awareness game. Don't be a spoil sport. Pick your poison from one of these and post it as your status. 1. Just found a squirrel in my car! 2. Just used my kids to get out of a speeding ticket. 3. How do you get rid of foot fungus? 4. All of my bras are missing! 5. I think I just accepted a marriage proposal online?! 6. I've decided to stop wearing underwear. 7. It's confirmed I'm going to be a mommy/daddy. 8. Just won a chance audition on America's got talent! 9. I've been accepted on master chef. 10. I'm getting a pet monkey! Post with no explanations. Sorry, I fell for it too. 😂Looking forward to you...

Back to the grind this week. It was a little hard to get into French tonight, but after a while it was OK. Sometimes I feel like my pronunciation is very good, but my comprehension isn't. I guess that will come in time. Yesterday was a packed day. After iaido, I had a date at the Ottawa Geek Market. It was just OK.  After that, I had a visit with my toddler buddy, which was awesome. I was taken aback when he greeted me at the door. Usually, he's excited to see me but also shy about it and half hiding behind one of his parents. Yesterday, he said hello, asked me how I was, and how my weekend was. So adorable! Then he wanted me to do burpees with him hahaha. Of course, I obliged despite having done a bunch of leg work at iaido. At one point he said, "ciao"! After reading him "Stuck", it was time for b-movie club, which featured "Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead". It was pretty funny, though I still prefer "Cannibal the Musical".  The...

There's a book called Inevitable. I've only read the "blink" for it. Blinks summarize books for those of us who are busier than the average and I find them helpful to get a taste of what other ideas are out there.  Anyway, it posits that the future is not one of utopia, but one of protopia where each day we will see a small improvement over the next. It's saying that no invention will be static as it will constantly be improved upon. They base this on trends like how quick we are to delete apps after installing them. Let's face it though, some apps just don't do what they sound like they are capable of doing. Or they create extra work. Anyone try a diet app where you have to put in everything because your sport or the measurements of your food aren't in there? And hey, the next day you have to enter it again because it didn't automatically get added to the list of options, meanwhile there are whacked out measurements for things that are obviously f...

It's hurricane season. Thankfully, where I live I don't get much more than heavy rains. I find it interesting that the US elections are held near the end of hurricane season. I suppose if they can make it through the elections, they can handle anything. I do sometimes feel like my life is one storm followed by another. I'm not saying that in search of some pity. It's just an observation. Outside of the challenges I face from allergies and such, I get very busy during the year from April through to December. It makes it hard to feel like I have my shit together in the slightest. Someday, I may have a clean home, but that's going to take a partner that can work with me on keeping it clean. I'm hesitant to bring someone else into the hot mess that is my life. I know the right one will help rather than compound the hard things, but there has been far more of the wrong. Largely, I feel like living life is far more important than my dishes and laundry always being cle...

My life is filled with uncertainty lately.  I'm struggling to get the fiction writing in while learning French and doing my job. I think it's mainly because I'm losing so much sleep from being chronically itchy.  No idea what is causing that. And it's one of those things where you hope the blood tests uncover it but also hope they don't find anything and it just goes back to normal on its own. On top of this, something happened to the woman across the hall Thursday night and I don't even know if she is alive. I didn't hear anything but the barking dog, but I saw a man while doing my laundry. Now, I'm wondering if I could be a target next as the police spoke to me quite a bit. What if I had started my laundry a minute sooner or a minute later? I wouldn't have seen anything at all. And there's still nothing in the news about it. Dating is largely fraught with uncertainty. I seem to be a magnet for the wrong ones or there's just a lot of the wro...

Dating is what is on my mind tonight. Why? I suppose that's the newest thing in my life. I'm really hoping it will get better. I really don't like wasting time with men who obviously don't care about anything but getting naked. I'm looking for someone who can be a friend too. That means we need more things in common than being close in height and a decent vocabulary. I need someone who has a good heart. What I've experienced most recently was someone who is very judgemental about the sex lives of women. Someone who thinks it's wrong for women to have "special friends" and to be with one man this week and a different one the following week all while expecting a woman to put out on the first date. Also while declaring what birth control methods will be used going forward. When I was safe in my own home, I told him there was no forward. Then he sent a barrage of messages and phone calls my way. He said there must be miscommunication somewhere because ...

Sorry. I really thought I had posted on Monday. The seminar went well. It was an informal and intimate group and we learned a lot because there was no need for translation. We also didn't need to discuss a single movement for 30 minutes. We covered setei (zen ken ren) and went through Omori-Ryu before closing the day with a nice set most of us hadn't seen called Keshi-Ryu. I have pictures I need to get posting soon, but life has been busy. Also on Saturday, the Shifting Shards anthology became available, so there is a book with my name on it in the world! You can get your very own copy from any of the links on my Books page:  https://raeannegroy.com/the-books/ We went to a pub before dinner. Doubles were on special so I celebrated the completion on the seminar and the publishing of the book. Then dinner brought sake and eventually my dojo friends decided to revamp my dating profile. This may have brought me one man with potential. Time will tell on that. After dinner, we return...