Joy and edged weapons
The only other time I remember feeling this stoked was at the McGuinty war room victory party on election night in 2003. It's been a damn fine day.

This morning I set an AEMMA record by fighting sixteen schollers and free schollers in a row. (Well, with a five minute break in the middle.) There's still a lot I need to learn, but I managed to land some clean whacks on people I had no expectation of being able to touch. It made me very happy. They got some good ones on me, mind you. I'm now limping slightly because there's a big purple egg on the side of my right knee.

Interestingly enough, I think the best psychological preparation for the test was the ten or fifteen times I've re-read Robin McKinley's novel The Blue Sword, which has a great tournament scene in it. It made me feel like I'd been in that particular headspace before. Really, people who think fantasy fiction doesn't teach you to cope with the real world have obviously just never done anything interesting with their lives.