The ol' Monday bloggage.

Things are pretty quiet at work, so let's do some bloggin', shall we?

Friday evening, me and Iwan and Sara and Eryn headed over to Norm's for a little impromptu slide show. Iwan and Sara just got back from a trip to Costa Rica, and had a bunch of digital pictures (you can read all about it on his blog). With a little effort, we got a laptop hooked up to Norm's TV, turned down the lights, and had a good ol' fashioned slide show! The pictures were beautiful, and the trip sounded like a lot of fun. Lots of self-portraits taken from a Iwan-arm length away.

Saturday, Diana and I went out to lunch, where I got a nice big turkey sammich. Then, we headed down to the airport to pick up my parents car from long-term parking (they left that morning for a long trip), and headed back up to their house to take care of the cat. By this time, the tryptophan as kicking in, and we totally crashed out for a nice little afternoon nap.

I roused myself in time to head over to Iwan's to head out to M.Kyle's bachelor party. Yeah, that's right. I got to Iwan's at the pre-appointed time, and them dicked around for an hour waiting for Iwan to show up. Weird. We headed down to the bar and grill where we met up with the groom-to-be and all his boys. Everyone was in good spirits, and Kyle seemed especially happy that we were able to make it. We hung out there for a while, Iwan and I sticking mostly to ourselves since we didn't know the others too well. We had some grub, and headed over to another nearby establishment, had some more drinks, and some more fun. Details of bachelor parties really should never be discussed, and I'm not one to break that unwritten rule. The moral of the story is that by the time Iwan and I left, everyone seemed to be having a fun, safe time, and Kyle seemed to be having a really good time with us all there. Anything that happened after we left is between Kyle and his attorney.

Sunday, Diana and I headed out for a nice walk in a park nearby, found a pair of geocaches, and just got a chance to catch up on some of the events of the last couple days. The evening was concluded with our latest Netflix rental, "The Big Chill", which was enjoyable. Kind of a "Breakfast Club" for older people.

I got a chance to play a little World of Warcraft on Sunday, and some chess while the servers were down. Good times... good times. Tuesday nights are the evenings my boys and I all get on at the same arranged time and try to team up. Tomorrow, we've got this big mission planned, and lots of lunches have been spent discussing our plans and strategy. I'm looking forward to it.

That's about it from now. Leave a comment and lemme know what's up with you!

Just because Norm mentioned he liked 'em, here are some more chess games.

I haven't updated the ol' blog lately. So, what's new?

Actually, with me, not so much. Recent activities of note include getting together with some peeps and watching the Chargers lose to the Jets. Man, what a rollercoaster of a game that was. I really, really would have liked to see the Chargers win, but barring winning the Super Bowl (which would have been a miracle), they had to lose sometime.

We played a little poker at our local cardroom, and in spite of coming out ahead overall, I think our days are numbered there. They've changed the way the house collects money, and it's a little too aggressive for my liking. In general, my poker days are numbered. It was fun while it lasted, but it just doesn't hold my interest the way it used to (and the way chess does now). So it goes. According to my spreadsheet, my winnings are at $90, so it's not a bad time to retire. I'll still play friendly games with friends, a'course!

Work is cruising along pretty well. I'm not really on any big project, but sort of help out as needed with day to day stuff, which can be satisfying, as I'm frequently "coming to the rescue" of something, which is a nice position to be in (if you can finish the job). My annual review is coming up at the end of January, which typically is good news, but always a little nerve-wracking. I hated tests in college, and this is kind of the closest thing to it I have in my professional life.

When I was gone over Christmas break, I can back to find lots of the chess players at work a little subdued. Two of the three chessboards have been removed, and there was talk that our supervisor was potentially getting more and more interested in who was playing when. I'm not too worried about it, as I have a strict "lunchtime or after business hours" policy, but others would jump off for a game whenever they felt like it. And if someone is playing, usually one or two others might watch. It started to add up. In any case, games are still being played, and it's still fun.

Diana is busy as ever. I'm not sure if I publicly announced it here, but she got a job for next semester teaching math at a new high school near where I work. It's only for the semester, but it gets her hired into the district she wants, and she's hoping to get transferred back to the school she's student teaching at now. Pretty exciting stuff! I'm very proud of all her hard work, and am glad that others are recognizing what a great teacher she'll be. It will also be nice to go back to DINK status.

Free time is mostly consumed with World of Warcraft and Netflix. WoW is an amazing game. I'm having so much fun doing my little adventures and meeting up with my boys and so on. Good, good times. In terms of the guys I play with, I'm generally in the middle, level-wise, in spite of having played significantly fewer hours than they have (you can actually see exactly how much time you've spent logged in, which is a little humbling). So I guess I'm efficient or something. Anyways, that eats up most of my time when Diana's not around, and I'm completely remorseless. :)

Netflix is a lot of fun as well. I love coming home, checking the mail, and seeing that red envelope, knowing there's some cinematic goodness inside! The coolest part is that, since we chose all the movies, I don't remember exactly what's coming, but I know it's something I want. It's like Christmas! We just watched "Monster", which was pretty disturbing but really engrossing. Other recent were "Inspector Morse" (always fun mysteries), "Bridge on the River Kwai", and "Cold Mountain". I liked BotRK, even though I found it a little muddled. At some point, it was sort of a tense psychological chess match between opposing commanders, and then it kind of turned into a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby romp through the jungle. But the ending was great. "Cold Mountain" was pretty ok, I guess. I never really bought into the love story at the beginning, so the rest of the movie was a little cumbersome to me. Anyhoo. I have "Fiddler on the Roof" to watch, I think another Inspector Morse, and am hoping for Napoleon Dynamite soon!

I just read a funny quote online. Someone on a message board basically came up with the idea of "what if real life had a God Mode" (which is a computer game term for a cheat where you can't die). How would you live your life differently, etc? After some mostly predictable, banal comments someone responded with simply "You have too much time on your hands. Contribute to society please." Cracked me up, in spite of it's arguable relevance to myself.

Speaking of cracking up, I had a moment today at work, reading a funny email, and trying to restrain myself from cracking up. Eyes watering, body shaking, hands clapped over mouth, the whole thing. Funny stuff.

Back from Montana

Diana and I spent the past week in Montana, visting the family for Christmas. In total attendance were the two of us, David and Elaine and Ben, my aunt, and my parents.

The trip was a lot of fun. We spent most of the time in the house, sitting around the fire and watching little Ben be cute and play with toys and stuff. He's an exceptionally good natured baby. I think he only cried for maybe a cumulative 20 seconds or so over the entire week. It's kind of eerie, actually. Otherwise, he loved banging on a pot with a spoon, waving stuff around, and generally making funny noises and being cute. Very fun to watch. He's not crawling yet, so it was pretty easy to plop him down, spread out some toys, and watch him go to town.

Montana was beautiful. It snowed a heavy, wet snow the day we got there, and then was pretty clear for the next few days, and then snowed a very light powdery snow the last two days. We went snowboarding in the middle of the week, and that was really fun. Unfortunately, the mountain is prone to being really fogged out, so we only went once. The day we went, the fog was pretty bad down low, but taking the chair to the top of the mountain was really breathtaking. All of a sudden, you broke out of the cloud into sunlight, and everything was clear as day. Turning around, the whole landscape behind us was like a sea of clouds, with mountains sticking up in the distance. Absolutely beautiful.

Not much else specific to report from the trip. It was great to see my brother and Elaine be parents. It was fun seeing my aunt, who I don't see too often. We hung out a bit with some friends of my parents, who were a lot of fun to be around. I schooled my brother in chess a few times, though we did split some games and I think he even beat me once. Good times all around.

Since getting back, we've unpacked and gotten all moved back in. I've been playing with my new iPod Mini, and organizing my electronic music, which is fun. I played a bit of World of Warcraft, which is still fun as ever. Watched the Chargers second and third string whoop up on the Chiefs.

Last night, Diana and I went out with Iwan and Sara, Little Buhr and his ladyfriend and played some poker at our local establishment. It was a fun, but I'm sorry I didn't get to see Little Buhr more. I won about $30, while Diana lost just a couple bucks. They have pretty good food there, too, which you can eat while playing, which is really cheap ($2 or $3), so we definitely paid for our fun and food.

Back to work today. It's pretty quiet, just catching up on emails and stuff. Apparently there was some excitement the week that I was gone. People thought that every transaction that we posted was incorrect somehow, and were trying to figure out a strategy to repost them correctly. Turns out that only a tiny fraction was done incorrectly, and the problem has been fixed, so just a minor cleanup effort.

That's all I got for now. For your (or probably more specifically, my) pleasure, here are some Yahoo chess games. First and second.