Zub Tales

The movers are coming on Monday and everything’s a mess at our apartment. It’s a crazy whirlwind of things to do as our time in Halifax winds down. Even with the extra time we’ve had before the move, I still feel like it’s breathing down our necks.

In the last newsletter when I talked about heading to Toronto for my Dad’s 60th birthday, I didn’t get a chance to mention a neat encounter I had on the flight. While I flew into town (in the midst of a freezing rain storm) I had a good conversation with the guy sitting next to me on the plane. He was headed to Toronto for extra training in Aikido.

Aikido is a martial art that involves defensive maneuvers, holds and the use of your opponent’s momentum instead of the typical kicking and punching involved in most other forms of self defense. Gal had mentioned to me when we first decided that we were moving to Halifax that she wanted to take Tai Chi or Aikido at some point if they had it at the University. When I mentioned this to the gentleman (who’s name is Lee), he was quite pleased and we talked about all sorts of things for the remainder of the flight.

How this all ties into my current newsletter is simple: Lee invited Gal and I to attend an Aikido session on Thursday night. Even though we’re leaving, he thought it would be great for us to see how it worked first hand. If we liked it, he could put us in touch with the teachers and dojo in Toronto. So, off we went.

I thought we would be standing and watching people train and practice, but they were really happy to have us involved as full participants in the class. Obviously, they went quite easy on us, but it was a really cool experience learning from them first hand and trying some maneuvers.

Everyone at the Dojo was extremely kind and very easy to get along with. It was an odd spread of people too: everyone from a young 12-13 year old who was a brown belt (just under black belt) all the way to a school principal and Lee himself who does financial planning for the Royal Bank. The teacher was really nice, polite and extremely willing to help and offer advice without seeming harsh or overly disciplined.

The work out was good for us, and even though it’s Saturday and my muscles are still a bit sore, it was well worth doing. Gal’s very intrigued and wants to look at the possibility of signing up in Toronto. I’m open to the possibility as well, but with everything else heaped on my plate this summer I know that it’ll be hard to find the time. Still, we could both use the exercise, so anything’s possible.

Meanwhile, we’ve been sectioning everything in our apartment into ‘Storage’ and ‘Useable’ piles to try and make it easy for us to label and put in the right place once it arrives in Toronto. Strange combinations of food have entered our diet as we attempt to finish off the majority of food in our cupboards: there’s nothing quite like leftover pizza, cooked sausage, salad and toast for breakfast.

A last minute spree of drawing and a flurry of e-mails will probably take up the rest of my time before our internet is cut off and the computers get packed up on Monday. We’ve done the power and the phone connection calls, the mail redirection, all those little things that are easy to forget if you’re not careful.