Would you like fries with that?

I went bowling Saturday morning. This time, I went alone. Dave had family and Adam was sick. What could I do? The trick was to take breaks every frame or two so that I didn't go hurting my back. How did it work out for me? Wow! Not wow in the "I bowled like the king that I am" sense, but wow because I felt pretty good. I actually managed 4 games! I was going to stop at 3, but I kept improving every game and really wanted to eek out a few more points for my overall average for the day. What can I say, I'm competitive even against myself. My biggest improvement was my ability to pick up spares. It's actually shocking if you compare this week with last week. But it's also a little deceptive.

Why deceptive? Because for the 1st two games I was leaving the pins mostly on the left side, and my biggest problems have been with that nasty 10 pin way down on the back right edge. I also wasn't stringing strikes together. It finally hit me in the 3rd game. I was hitting the head pin consistently heavy. So I moved a couple boards to the right, and I was getting more strikes. I was also leaving pins on the right instead of the left.

So, here are the games:

[9/][9-][81][X][X][81][8/][9-][72][7/X] 150
[72][X][81][7/][9/][9/][X][8/][X][9/X] 175
[9/][X][9/][8/][7/][X][X][9-][X][9-] 180
[7/][X][X][X][X][X][6/][9/][81][-7] 209

Average Scratch: 178
High Scratch: 209
Series: 714
Strikes: 14
Spares: 17
Splits: 3

When I got home Jon and Stephanie were walking by my house so I went for a walk with them. I did about 3 miles. After bowling 4 games, I felt like a machine! As machines go, I must be an old one. By 4:30 I was asleep.

Then last night I decided to go down to the chess club. It was around 8pm and usually someone is there until 9-10. When I got there all the lights were off. So I decided to grab something to eat on the way home and go watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. So I stopped at D'Angelos. One of the girls there took my order and put the burgers on the grill. While this was happening I was listening to the exchange between the woman in front of me and one of the guys there. She was being a bit, ummm, let's just say that she must have had a Category B itch. I'm sure that was the problem. Aside from the fact that he started messing up one of her orders, which she corrected him on in her itchy way, she was making comments like, "It's OK to be generous with the mayonaisse". Maybe it was just me, but I really didn't like her. When she left he complained to some of the other employees about her, then proceeded to take over my order. Nice. He flipped them over, put the cheese on them, piled them on top of each other, cut them in half, put them on the bun, and wrapped it up. I was thinking that he was missing a critical piece in that sequence, but I didn't want to be that guy. The woman pissed me off too much, I just couldn't do it to him again. Any guess what the critical piece he missed was? Yeah.. letting it cook after flipping. I would have preferred it. Letting the cheese melt a little might have been ok too. So after I left D'angelos, I went down the street to McDonalds, picked up a few burgers, and went home. What can I say. I suck!

When I got home I threw out the grinder, put in Harry Potter, and watched it while eating my "backup" food. I've been going to D'Angelos for at least 15 years now, always getting the same thing. This has NEVER happened to me before, and now twice in the past few weeks. What's this world coming to?

My chess has been terrible this weekend. I think it's time to slow back down. I've been playing too much blitz the past week, something I haven't done to this great an extent for a long time.

Welcome to Sunday!

Ed.