I skipped aikido today. I rarely if ever skip aikido on Sundays, but I felt some resistance to training and decided to indulge.

I'm watching Kill Bill, Volume 1. I like it for a lot of reasons, but I really appreciate the action sequences: real violence is fast and adrenalizing and interesting enough by nature. The various stupid things that filmmakers do--speed it up, slow it down, put the actors on wires so they can fly through the air--reduces the power of violence. It's violence. It's not supposed to be cheap, or easy, or full of camera trickery, and except for the big battle scene with the Crazy 88, the movie stays pretty honest. There is, or should be, enough power to move you in the mere act of people trying to hurt each other. It's a brutal movie. A great quote from the beginning: "It's mercy and compassion and forgiveness I lack, not rationality."

It's cold here. California-cold, anyway. I've actually closed the windows, and the weekend has been windy and chilled.

I'm looking into buying part of a TIC in downtown Palo Alto. Actually I've done a bit more than look into it, I've essentially said I want to do it. This runs into some issues with my being a bit short of the (unusually large for this area) down payment, and the fact that I don't feel entirely ready to leave this house yet. It means leaving a really nice and cheap place that's right down the road from the dojo, and essentially sinking all my finances into this property which is right down the road from work. So I've got all these inertia and money issues going on, and I'm trying to sort out what is habitual resistance and what might be useful intuitive feelings. The reality is that this place is about as sure a thing as real estate comes: an earthquake could level the buildings, and if we could hang on to the land for a couple years after that, we could probably still come out ahead.

If I'm lucky, the original three organizers of the TIC won't give me the opportunity, and then I won't have to choose.