Work is a lot more fun now that I'm almost done with my current projects, we don't have a whole lot of upcoming projects (since my team is gone by no later than December 31st, and will probably start disintegrating before then as we find other jobs). And, of course, there's no one to impress: we've already lost the political battle to stay intact, so justifying our existence is moot.
I went to Anno Sensei's first seminar today. At this point I suppose it's fair to call him "venerable": he's a sharp, kind old man who's been doing and teaching aikido for 50 years. One of the problems I have with aikido is that when I see someone whose style differs from stuff I've seen before, it can take a little while to get a clear sense of what he or she is really doing; this gets worse with the aikido elders, whose aikido is deep and subtle. So I had a frustrating day, not being able to clearly receive what he was teaching, and one of those days where my head is all fuzzy and I'm distracted and my aikido does not go well. I also suspect some of the folks I trained with had less-than-stellar ukemi, so I couldn't really tell if I was doing the technique wrong, or if they were just declining to go where I was putting them.
At any rate, Anno start each class with 10-15 minutes of seated techniques, and my legs feel like I'm trying to walk through mud.