Multiple Degrees of Blackness
Apr. 16th, 2012 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseMason spent Saturday afternoon from 4 - 6 pm (yes, kids, that's 2 HOURS) testing for his blue stripe. As a proud ima, I'm happy to announce that he passed!
Traditionally, I'm about two or three months behind Mason... part of this has to do with the fact that Mason is still a junior, and so there are fewer requirements for him to move up, but also because I have the worse memory for techniques and my instructors know I need the extra time. So, Mason will out rank me for a while. Luckily, that doesn't mean too much at this stage... except he gets to be in front of me in line and closer to the "cool" side of the room when we line up (the cool part being, of course, where all the black belts are.)
If you're wondering, the ranking system in our martial arts goes as follows:
white belt
white belt, yellow stripe
yellow belt
yellow belt, blue stripe
(and then up through blue (+ stripe), red (+stripe), brown, and black. The browns have several iterations of "stripes" and, of course, there are multiple degrees of blackness, as it were.)
As a surprise gift for Mason, Shawn framed up an animation cell from Bleach that I purchased at Anime Detour. The cell is a close-up on his favorite character, the prodigy captain Tōshirō Hitsugaya. It's hand-painted and pretty awesome, actually. He was THRILLED. Plus, mom made us all a lovely lasagna dinner, so the day was really fairly wonderful all around (except, I'm sure for Mason, all that sweating and grunting for two hours... though he got to quit before the brown belts, so he probably only went an hour and a half.)
Anyway, today I'm trying to resist the urge to hunker down and hide from all the snow and cold.
Traditionally, I'm about two or three months behind Mason... part of this has to do with the fact that Mason is still a junior, and so there are fewer requirements for him to move up, but also because I have the worse memory for techniques and my instructors know I need the extra time. So, Mason will out rank me for a while. Luckily, that doesn't mean too much at this stage... except he gets to be in front of me in line and closer to the "cool" side of the room when we line up (the cool part being, of course, where all the black belts are.)
If you're wondering, the ranking system in our martial arts goes as follows:
white belt
white belt, yellow stripe
yellow belt
yellow belt, blue stripe
(and then up through blue (+ stripe), red (+stripe), brown, and black. The browns have several iterations of "stripes" and, of course, there are multiple degrees of blackness, as it were.)
As a surprise gift for Mason, Shawn framed up an animation cell from Bleach that I purchased at Anime Detour. The cell is a close-up on his favorite character, the prodigy captain Tōshirō Hitsugaya. It's hand-painted and pretty awesome, actually. He was THRILLED. Plus, mom made us all a lovely lasagna dinner, so the day was really fairly wonderful all around (except, I'm sure for Mason, all that sweating and grunting for two hours... though he got to quit before the brown belts, so he probably only went an hour and a half.)
Anyway, today I'm trying to resist the urge to hunker down and hide from all the snow and cold.