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The judo club's end of season party was last night. It's not quite end of season, but close enough. So.

I went a little early, because it made more sense to just go there straight from work. Picked up a veggie tray along the way. I got to chat with T-sensei a little bit before VP showed up.

VP put me to work sorting and labeling belts and whatnot, little tasks that nobody had managed to get to until then. There were not a lot of gradings this time, so not a huge amount for me to sort through.

When we do the judo party, we don't do a class per se. We put on our gis and do a bit of warmup, and then there is the grading and so on. So, I got dressed too, and did the warmup. It confirmed to me that I need to stay out of judo until my arm is properly healed - I can't do pushups, and more importantly, I cannot do forward breakfalls, and left sideway breakfall is also kind of dicey.

M1 was upgraded to brown belt. The logic, T-sensei told me, is that since he's going to be competing against brown belts and black belts anyway, he might as well be able to get points for it - you can't start tracking your points until you are a brown belt. It makes sense.

VP also got upgraded to brown belt. That... seems a bit of a leap for me (I could've seen half-blue maybe) but whatever, it's T-sensei's decision.

C and Ed did a kata demonstration! They have only had like 3-4 classes in kata so far, but still they were pretty good, I was impressed that they managed to learn so much in such a short time. (Damn I wish that were me.)

Spoke with J-sensei a bit. He said that when I didn't show up the next class, he knew there was something up, because I don't miss class. He agreed with my assessment that I should stay out for a bit. Seemed surprised that the doctor didn't order x-rays. We'll see what the physiotherapist says on the weekend.

At this rate it looks like there will be no summer judo for me. That's okay. There's a lot I can do at home.

+ This year's Victoria Day weekend has been somewhat cold, as usual, but still nice overall. I finished all of my Obligations on Saturday and Sunday, and now I get to just relax and do nothing. (I might relax, but I will not do nothing.)

+ The interval act from this year's ESC with Baby Lasagna vs Käärijä was pretty awesome, not gonna lie.

+ Wrote a little. Feels good. I also have a finished thing that I don't know what to do with. It'll go up on my writing DW as usual once I'm done a few nitpicks, but I haven't decided if I want to crosspost it or not. It's one of those stories without much substance and not much happening. On the other hand, it's a rarepair. Hm. (I'm leaning toward not crossposting because I can't be arsed to make a decision on how to tag it, but we'll see.)

+ I rewatched Conclave with the director's commentary. It's a good commentary; would recommend giving that a look if you enjoyed the movie. Lots of insight into cinematographic choices and casting choices etc. I found it interesting that they deliberately sought out an unknown to play Benitez - since the cardinals don't know what to expect from him, the director wanted the audience to be unable to have any preconceived notions of the actor, too. It's not something I'd considered but it makes sense. (And it means they ended up with Carlos Diehz, which is of course wonderful.)

+ ...Also spent way too much time playing Delectatio Morosa. On the one hand, I generally like to complete all routes when I play visual novels. On the other, getting the Bad Routes will be hard for me - I am way too attached to these characters and I don't want to upset anybody. On the third hand, I am curious about how cardinal Lawrence could possibly fuck up so badly that it ruins his relationships with everybody, including Benitez. So.

+ I'm rather glad that I did not go to Calgary this weekend to watch the judo nationals in person. It would have been interesting, but I think it would have also been very stressful for me, and I don't really need that. One of our competitors placed, and the other did not. I looked in more detail about the match for our guy who did not place, and found out that our friend was going up against someone from Montreal. So, against someone from a bigger club with many more training opportunities due to the location (compared to here in this small northern town, where the club is small, the opportunities are limited, there is nobody at his level/weight category to train against, and the nearest training camps are 5 hours away). Of course, this is a generalization. But taking that into account, I'm not surprised, and think the guy from our club did very well considering the circumstances. Even getting to compete at the national level at all is a big achievement.