A Work in Progress

Today was a much more productive day in the music room with the Heroic Polonaise. There's still a few passages that need much more intensive cleanup, as well as moving from having to read the music to actually remembering and watching my hands.

When the Hands and Wrists are Unhappy...

I had a rough practice session with my brain being in hundreds of places at once, mostly revolving around Killer Parakeet. That being said, I focused on shorter pieces that are less technically demanding because the WODs today and yesterday did a real number on me.

Gopak by Modest Mussorgsky is always oodles of fun to play, although it was the most difficult piece I could handle without making my hands and wrists hurt more.  I did one pass through the Heroic Polonaise, and I could tell that going balls to the wall with the wall balls was biting me in the butt.

Then there's Playera by E. Granados, which is another relatively easy piece that my hands and wrists were able to handle.

And then finally I decided to string some Kabalevsky pieces together - a Toccatina, "A Short Story", and a Sonatina. It actually makes for a decent Eastern European-tinged Clementi-style Sonatina.

Thanksgiving Workout 2018

Veni, Vidi, Vici! It was a team of 5, bit conquerong the new world was tough!

Wall balls can go and give themselves a colonoscopy, but everything else was fun!

Bloopers in Progress

Now I remember why I have not really put much effort into the third movement of Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique.  It's relatively blah and definitely gives off that Classical era vibe.  Beethoven is one of my favorite composers from the Classical era, although to this day, I still don't particularly like his Piano Conerto #1 in C Major.  The first two movements of his Sonata Pathetique are lots of fun, though.  I'm hoping to maybe eventually attempt the Appassionata and the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata.  For now though, the Pathetique is quite sufficient with Peer Gynt and the Heroic Polonaise being my primary projects.

I also attempted to play the entire Peer Gynt Suite in a single sitting instead of the usual intermission between the two halves.  That went surprisingly well, considering I was already exhausted from cleaning up the Heroic Polonaise and working on the Sonata Pathetique first.  The second Peer Gynt Suite is in much better shape than the first, as I'm still struggling with "Ase's Death" and "In the Hall of the Mountain King" movements.

More Snatch Accessories!

I'm still playing it caution with the Fine Brown Boundary, but I did get to watch myself do some lifts.  I'm catching my power snatches a little high and have a bit of trouble with my timing it seems, but I'm still enjoying life with the barbell.

After the standard warmup with bare-barbell deadlifts, hang power snatches, squats, and good mornings as well as power snatches at light weights, I worked on my heavy singles.  I tend to catch uncomfortably high on power snatches (and snatches as well).

And then there's the snatch high pull.  Not my favorite movement, but it is one that I need to work on along with being able to drop under the bar a lot faster.  To the best of my understanding, I seem to have a tendency to hitch my hips when I'm actually snatching.

To top it off, I had some fun with some front squats.  Doing front squats while slightly hungry and recovering from a digestive bug does get very entertaining. I didn't go as far as I typically do at 115 lbs, but I also prefer to avoid a Code Brown whenever possible.

The Calm Before the Brown Deluge of Doom

A 4x4 of 45 lb Sots presses was the last thing I did before two gates opened up. First was the Gates to Tir Nan'Og (or any other Faeries realm). The second was the Immolating Great Gates of Browntown, with mighty trumpets heralding the arrival of E. coli fury.

Wien, Austria vs St. Petersburg, Russia

Killer Parakeet dared me to do this while laughing at me behind the camera.  This is Sonata in B Flat Major by Mozart.  I'm still not much of a fan of the Classical and Baroque eras, and Mozart is still one of my least favorite composers aside from the Rondo Alla Turca.

And then Killer decided to sit with me and watch as I played Bydlo from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition".  This is much more to my taste in the Romantic era.

From Boogers to Fjords

I decided that some time in the classroom was a good investment given that I'm still coming back from a pretty spectacular sinus infection that left me with nasal discharge best left undescribed if anyone nearby is eating combined with a piercing earache and a massive headache that jeopardized my proprioception.  Saturday only had a mild dose of nasal discharge and mild sinus pressure after enough antibiotics to decimate the inhabitants of my guts. 

I try to incorporate some sight-reading sessions in my playing when I have enough privacy to do so, as most people seem to NOT enjoy the sound of sight-reading work, especially if it's a bit more challenging and/or filled with enough accidentals to summon litigation-lunatic lawyers. "Es War Einmal", one of many Lyric Pieces by Grieg, passed my test for me to actually want to learn it (can't say the same about the Bach Inventions I keep around for sight reading practice). 

I also decided to experiment with my phone's recording capacity and my own endurance.  It so happens that my German language and AP English teacher inadvertently got me hooked on Edvard Grieg's compositions. I have already been partial towards the Romantic era, but in preparation for the AP exam, I had to read an uncomfortable amount of painfully pathetic literature that didn't involve combat or mayhem and excessive doses of romance and/or politics. One of the better works I had to read was "A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen, who also wrote many other plays, including "Ghosts" and "Peer Gynt". I had heard parts of the suites and enjoyed several parts, but reading the play and gaining a better understanding of the pieces I was listening to suddenly made Edvard Grieg a much more exciting composer. Plus there's something appealing about his rustic composing style without the excess frills that made me despise much of the Classical (Mozart and Haydn in particular) and Baroque (Johann Sebastian Bach and Handel in particular) eras. 

Robot Combat Videos from Maker Faire

I had a few videos sporadically during the day in the various fights.

First was the Mammoth vs a robot whose name I can't remember...

Then there was the Kraken vs Hypershock fight, which I did in two parts because they had to pause the fight to put parts of the arena back together. 

Then there was the fight between Hypershock and a pushbot whose name escapes my mind, also in two parts.

Then there was the Foxic vs Mammoth fight, or as I thought of it, the little fox vs the gigantic mammoth. Despite the differences in volume, both robots are in the 250 lb weight class.  Neutron star vs red giant... Pomeranian with adamantium innards vs a walrus...

Maker Faire 2018

I got to check out the Orlando Maker Faire today and got to meet several of the builders from this past year's Battlebots.  I even got to meet Ray Billings (of Hardcore Robotics and Tombstone / Last Rites fame) briefly, but he was one of three Battlebots makers I didn't get to take any good photographs of (others being Predator/Foxic and Battle Royale with Cheese).

I'm standing behind Axe Backwards, a robot that didn't get very much airtime on TV, although it had a few spectacular fights with War Hawk and Monsoon.  I'm always impressed with the sheer size of these 250 lb robots!

 Captain Shrederator is another one of those robots that really grew exponentially in reality versus television.  Whew, that fanny bag and the belt to hold my shorts make me look awkwardly shaped! I was amazed to find out the spinner part of Captain Shrederator weighs almost as much as I do!

 Witch Doctor is relatively compact, but it's still a pretty massive robot! I'm especially impressed with the mass in the ribs and the vertical spinners.  Later on in the day, I would be able to get a selfie with the builder, Andrea Suarez, along with Nicholas Nave of Captain Shrederator doing a little photobombing.

 I would have liked to have seen Witch Doctor in combat in person, but given the size and structure of the arena, this was probably a good thing that it didn't go into the arena with its vertical spinners.

 Kraken is quite amusing to look at and watch! It also put on a couple of great fights today as a grappling robot.  The spelling on the one that actually went into the area today left a bit to be desired though... This was one of the more artistic robots on the show, along with Sharkoprion, Warhead, Predator, and Valkyrie.

 This was me with Tantrum, which didn't work so well this season, but is still quite fun to look at.  It's a very compact robot - still around 250 lbs, but in a much smaller space compared to many of the other robots I got to touch and look at. 

 Robert dared me to stick my head in the show model... There's plenty of room in there for either a reckless human or a reckless robot.  It's supposed to be a sea monster, but I think of it as more like a huge snake head minus the rest of the snake!

 I'm with Hypershock, including driver Will Bales (farthest to the right). They are quite the showmen, and their robot is hard to love. They had a rough season in Battlebots, but always proved to be highly entertaining as the bouncy, super-fast robot.  My favorite fight of theirs in the 2018 season was against Free Shipping, although their fight against Reality was also quite fun.