I won an online chess game for the first time tonight.  The crucial moment was when I won my opponent's Queen by pinning it with my Bishop. I also spent some time today doing exercises from Lev Alburt's book.

I managed to read the first few pages of Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia today, in which he describes his quest for the fossil remains of the mylodon.  I also read a little bit of the New Republic, including a very interesting article about New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's successful tactics in promoting the interests of consumers through litigation, rather than simply seeking to punish corporations.  The magazine had a poem on burying the jellyfish that had washed up on the beach outside the narrator's parents' home.  The poem had an elegiac quality overlaid by a feeling of mild nausea.

11:01:47 PM    

Chess Notes I got crushed playing chess last night.  Notes to self:  1) trade off pawns in the center before my opponent develops a massive pawn center; 2) do not put a bishop and a knight on the third rank one square apart where they can be forked by a pawn.

7:01:19 AM    

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