Aims, you and Joe and Em will be very much in my thoughts. I'm glad you were able to talk to your brother.

In other news, I divided my iris colonies today. I started with 7 rhizomes 3 years ago, and now I have 87 separate plants. It would have been more, but I lost most of two colonies to rot thanks to an unusually wet spring and soil that wasn't draining as well as it should have. The rhizomes have had a bleach water bath to kill off any mold, and now they're out on the patio so the places where I divided can scab over before replanting.

Anne,

that is incredibly impressive.

Not Attenborough documenting the behaviour of the Wild Bitca outside her native habitat?

We should have people audition. Because I just heard James Earl Jones say, "This is Buchmann" in my head and now I want him to narrate us.

Off topic (from any conversation in the past 48 hours) Martial arts question.

Every now and then in fiction you run into a guy (always a guy) winning a fight against a better opponent by dropping all defense, and going to pure attack and aggression. I always though that would be a good way to lose faster.

The way I see it, against a male opponent doing this in a real life situation (not a contest - so no cup) the obvious choices would be take advantage of his lack of defense to go after balls or throat. But that particular attack could change his mind, and those are easy areas to defend from non-defensive positions. So maybe better a stomach or kidney punch.

Then it occurred to me, why guess? There are people (especially ita ! but not limited to her) who know what they are doing on this list. A male, who you know is less skilled in combat than you, is using the "no defense" tactic against you? He is not wearing a cup. For the sake of argument, the "no defense" thing actually is letting his attacks be effective - gets him to your level if you let him continue. How do you best take advantage of his lack of defense to either immediately win the fight or at least curb his ability to attack effectively? balls, throat, eyes, stomach, kidney, other?

We are two exits from home. Thanks for indulging my road trip ramblings.

I'm happy to be almost home but didn't need to say it twice.

Wow, Suzi, that's awesome.

Typo Boy, I have no answer for you but hopefully someone will.

Back from the beach, spending the night at my parents' house. I feel weirdly untethered and not sure I can handle my life back in NOLA. Hrmph.

Typo, most fighting is based on knowing how to block and counterpunch, so if a guy comes wading in flailing haymakers you're trained to take advantage of that.

balls, throat, eyes, stomach, kidney, other?

In my training, yes. Whichever target presents itself. We train on blocking and moving in to take advantage of these spots. Most attackers don't expect you to get inside what they consider punching distance. Takes away their reach and puts you in place to hit soft targets and/or use knees and elbows.

Anne, that is impressive indeed.

I'll go with Suzi's answer, however my training was pretty basic and was about restraining people, not defending myself (so I know more about pressure points, less about "kick there". Personally, I go with the "run as the wind and call for help" approach).