O shiri no itami

 Actually, no; the pain is in the leg, not in the ass.

This was this morning; left calf - technically it's the "gastrocnemius", the big muscle of the calf - wrapped up and laid over a cold pack, watching poor Everton take a Manchester United hiding.

To get here...well, this winter I went back to the beginner kendo class run through the Parks & Recreation district out in Beaverton by the westside kendo club, Obukan.

I played kendo at Obukan thirty years ago, back when I lived out there (married to a different woman, but that's a whoooooole 'nother story...). I never progressed beyond Rokkyu - the lowest rank - but enjoyed the hell out of it.

(I enjoyed the hell out of the marriage, too, mind, but that's really a whole 'nother story...)

Then I got divorced, moved away, started playing soccer, wrecked my hips, got them replaced and then my knees started to go, got them replaced (in the process somewhere changing women, which is a whole 'nother 'nother story), and then retired. 

With more time on my hands I started thinking about kendo again.

I fenced European style in college - just foil, and just for my own entertainment - and studied karate in the Shorin-ryu style after I got out of the active service, but something in kendo scratches me in all the right places more or less.

My only real question was whether I could return to being a good kendoka after thirty years and with legs full of replacement parts.

Well...so far so good, until last night, when I managed to strain something in my leg, probably pushing my dead ass forward, since the left left is the "pushing" leg in kendo. 

Ouch.

What was kind of odd is that when I played goalkeeper I was always banging myself up. Broken fingers, bruised shoulders, damaged knees...I was the king of pain, and all of the dings were just a thing. 

I'd put my knee braces on - I had two huge rubber-and-metal ones that pretty much took all the weight off the knee - and ice them down, wrap up the shoulder, get the fingers set, and go off to work.

It's been a decade since I've had a sports injury, and I'd forgotten how irking they are. And I'm ten years older, too, so instead of walking it off I've been sort of hobbling around and that as little as possible...

Anyway, just an idle sort of Saturday, and a kind of transition piece away from the politics. I'll be back later in the week with something more hopeful.

Oh, and the title? It's supposed to be "pain in the ass" in Japanese, tho after poking around a bit it sounds like there isn't an exact equivalent for the meaning of the term; the closes seems to be うざい ("Uzai"), which is a contraction of "urusei", "rude" or "noisy", and to bark "uzai" at someone is apparently a way of letting them know they're being a pain in your ass.

Or leg.

Which is what I need to limp off and ice down. No, thanks, I can see myself out. I'm good

It's all about meeeeeee!!! (considering "The Army I Knew")

So just curious.

For a long time I ran a series of posts I called "The Army I Knew". It was a frankly personal recollection of my Army days, from the Regulars of the Eighties, to - I think - the Army Reserve of the late Eighties/early Nineties. IIRC I stopped when I'd gotten off active duty and had been assigned to a USAR hospital unit.

(Just looked it up - yep, the final post in the series is this one, about the technical side of that particular hospital, a "MUST" gimmick that was very Sixties but still around in the USAR like a lot of other antiquated hardware...)

Anyway.

Is there any interest in following this path? Specifically, I would have posts about:

1. A USAR heavy engineer unit outside North Philadelphia. I wrote about one of the adventures of the GIs-vs-turkey-hunters here back in 2015.
2. From there to the old 104th Division (Training) here in the Pacific Northwest, and spending a couple of years under the hat. It was an interesting look at the whole idea of "Reserve drill sergeants".
3. From THERE to the Oregon Army Guard - as a hat I was involuntarily reclassified as an 11C - mortarman - and would have been expected to go to war as a mortar section sergeant of FDC, and at that time I knew about mortar operations what a cow knows about church, so a lateral transfer to a Guard infantry unit. From there to...
4. A Guard artillery unit. For the simple reason that I was too old and to cunning to walk around with a goddamn mortar on my back, and when the ORARNG went fully to the light MTO&E I wanted to ride to battle. and then my final duty station,
5. The Oregon Guard west-side training post, Camp Rilea, where I retired.

I have no idea if there is any sort of readership for this stuff. I don't really have stories about me as much as about the time and places I lived through. 

That Army - the Reserve and Guard of the Nineties and early Oughts - is as vanished as Ninevah and Tyre. The War on Terror destroyed them as throughly as it did Fallujah and Ramadi. 

The reality of deploying very eighteen months to three years meant that the old-school-post-Vietnam guardsmen, the "two-days-a-month/two-weeks-a-year" guys like me, couldn't hang on to both a real civilian job and a USAR/ARNG slot. Despite the law, your civilian employer couldn't keep you if you were constantly vanishing to go play whack-a-muj every year and a half...so the reserve component units (so far as I can tell) largely became a mix of students and young guys without a career and more-or-less-professional-soldiers who picked up odd jobs between deployments.

But...it IS also truly ancient and minor history. There's nothing important or of social value there. It's just a reminiscence of a time that now seems long ago and far away. I time that, all in all, I enjoyed living through. But not one that I'm sure has any entertainment value to anyone who hadn't.

So.

Thoughts?