It was the strangest canopy bed she had ever seen. A beautifully padded mauve velvet covered the four columns, and the canopy was metallic silver.To t...e right of the bed was a large window, and a man was standing in front of it, facing away from her. At first, he appeared deep in thought, with one hand on his hip. Blanche was confused by his appearance, however. The man was in a nightrobe, the belt of it hanging on both sides. It was evident that it was open. As she stood there quietly, trying. The problem for teaching and learning Aikido is that it's unlike anything else in life, so there's not a good vocabulary for it, the new concepts are so foreign to the students' existing ways of thinking that they're extremely hard to grasp, etc. It's somewhat like the proverbial, "trying to teach a blind man about color."The more I learned, the more sense I could make out of the underlying principles. For example, every week Sensei says things like, "Use uke's force against him," or, "Move in. ” Kimmie smiled, reassured, and filled her glass. “They make me feel so sexy.” “Carols make you feel sexy?” Lawrence laughed. Kimmie appeared confused. “What? I didn’t say that. I said ‘Christmassy’!” “Well,” said Jennifer, “I think Christmas is fucking sexy.” Her f-word’s resonance showed in the others’ faces. She emptied her glass and the eggnog slithered custard-thick down her throat. “Drink up. I’ll go make some more.” * * * * “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” Andy Williams. The Apaches were waiting in the woods when the work detail was spotted leaving the fort. Ah, the wagon was being pulled by mules—there would be an extra treat on the menu at the celebration that night. They stayed out of sight of the soldiers and made no effort to hinder them as they traveled to the woods.As was normal with anything the Army did, they had an exact schedule for harvesting wood, so they headed for a specific point in the small forest. The Apaches knew where this site should be.