Yesterday morning, during my drive to work, I found myself unable to turn my head or my body left without excruciating pain. Said pain did not ebb as the day went on. On the contrary, by the evening I could barely get in and out of my seat and, later, my bed.

At that point I thought that perhaps I had pulled a muscle earlier in the gym. I also thought that maybe I had slept in a crooked position and hurt myself during the night.

However, when I asked ballistabob to massage my left shoulder blade, which is where the pain seemed to be coming from, he noticed a small but deep bruise there, as well as another in the back of my arm. Both bruises seemed to be the result of either a pommel or quillion bash.

So how do you end up getting pommel or quillion bashed in your back?

Simple. By infighting at a tournament.

Or at least that's our theory.

There was one particular bout that I fought at Masters of Defence that seems to fit the profile (CSI Rapier!). It was the one that merited calling a hold at least two times because of really heavy infighting. And since I am an infighter myself, and I don't back down when someone is trying to push me around, I guess that's where the pommel-bashing came from.

(Then again, we were pushing each other very hard, and I gave him a bruise or two myself.)

Oh, well. All in a Rapier's day.

On the other hand, Masters of Defence was a great little event and I had a great time on and off the field.

On the field, other than getting a nasty bruise in my back, I did rather well. Like I have said before, I have horrible "butterflies" before each tourney. This one was no exception. However, once I relaxed, I started getting the points I needed and I did get in my five forms. (The format for MoD is that you have to win at least once in every form: Single rapier, rapier and hard parry, rapier and soft parry, case of rapiers, and rapier and dagger.) I did manage to get them all (like Pokémon!) and then some.

(One of my funniest fights was with Kynny, with rapier and buckler, in which both had to borrow someone else's bucklers since we had loaned ours to other people. This resulted in Kynny fighthing with a bigh mucking thing that looked like the kitchen table, and I with a teensy weensy little one that barely fit in my hand. It was a sight to be seen!)

Later on, I went and had lunch and got to have fun with psallite, Simone, spikywheel, goldenhonu, cariola, and other fun gentles.

All in all, a very fun time.

And thanks to my sweetie's ministrations, my shoulder is doing much better today. I am still sore, but I can at least turn my head.

I am so lucky to have him . . .