Day 1 of Detox! I PASSED ALL MY FIGHTS!

So today is the first day of my self imposed Facebook Detox. As of 10am this morning, I deleted facebook on my phone and haven't been on facebook since 12:09am. I may have sent some videos of fights from yesterday through dropbox in facebook messages, but have been trying to avoid facebook itself.

Speaking of fights....PASSED ALL OF MY FIGHTS YESTERDAY!

 The way the SAFD works is that you can fail, get a basic pass, or get a recommended pass. There are a bunch of various ways you can fail a fight test...actually hit your partner, sword point go across your partner's facial plain, weapon going across the line of death into the audience, those kinds of things.

To get a basic pass, you demonstrate you have learned and can perform a fight with that weapons style safely and accurately. There is room for improvement with the acting of the fight, but you've at least demonstrated you can handle that weapons style.

To get a recommended pass, you have demonstrated high proficiency with that weapons style as well as demonstrating you can "act" the fight. It's not just choreography, it's a fully developed scene. There were high acting stakes and a real sense of danger. As of the most recent rules, this is the highest "grade" you can get with one of these tests.

So with my fights yesterday, I got recommended pass with 5 fights and a high basic pass with 3 fights. The 5 I got recommended for were Unarmed, Singlesword, Knife, Smallsword, and Rapier & Dagger. The 3 I got the basic passes on were Longsword, Quarterstaff and Sword and Shield. If memory serves, Longsword was a borderline test between basic and recommended. If we had pushed the tempo and stakes up a little more I think we might have gotten the recommended. For sword and shield, the beginning was a bit under tempo and there were some things that didn't line up for the audience. With Quarterstaff, we both had some goofs on choreography so that didn't help us. So I know now some things I need to work on.  But I GREATLY want to thank all of my partners from yesterday. Jacqueline Holloway, Oliver Donahue, Lauren (Ren) Williams, Martin Boresma, and Kathryn Roper. And thank you SO SO SO much to Ian Rose for dealing with all of this craziness and giving us the guidance all along the way! 

Practice at this beginning of this week.

The Boys having some fun.

Night before tests

Last kill of the day!

Now, it's recovering from this week of craziness. Sore muscles treatments and bruise reduction is the name of the game now. My thing is that I bruise like a peach, so for the next two weeks you will not see my forearms. (Last thing I want to hear ever with my bruises from stage combat is "Do we need to call someone for you? You don't have to stay with him".) But in the coming days, you will see the videos of these fights on my Youtube channel: TJMPhilly.

For tonight, I wanted to reflect on what it's been like to not be on Facebook for the first 24 hours, but seeing as how I've slept most of the day, kinda not much to say. So for now, off to another hot soak, uploading videos and being with my family before going back to work tomorrow. Tomorrow night in class (yes, jumping right back into Monday night classes) we're doing some Rapier and companion weapons, so excited to use my new cloak for the first time...thank you Siobhan Richardson! I will have money for you soon for the skirt! Also have registered for the Winter Wonderland Workshop in Chicago and will be buying my plane ticket out there soon. Will also be traveling down to the Baltimore area next weekend to see the fight tests for Lewis Shaw's class, also being adjudicated by J. David Brimmer! So some good stuff coming up soon!!