Things Change

Life. It just blows me away sometimes. Here's this absolutely enormous, unimaginably complex world of unlimited possibilities. A place where anything is possible and all one has to do is dream. Then here I am. Totally clueless. What are the odds of that?

I've been feeling pretty terrible again this weekend. It's almost like a resurgence of the flu that I think I had a little while back. Mainly in my head. That constant dizzy feeling where, occasionally, I think I just might lose it. I'm getting by, but it's no fun. As some of you might know, I've been completely addicted to World of Warcraft this year. It's all I do when I have free time. Because of it I've been putting in all nighters on Friday and Saturday nights. It's crazy. Yesterday I probably only played for 4 hours. You know I've got issues!

I slept through the afternoon yesterday. When I finally got up at around 6-7pm I was still feeling a bit shaky. I figured I needed to stay away from World of Warcraft and do something different. I decided to go to the chess club! Back in December I was really at the top of my game. It was the best that I've ever been playing chess. After really not playing much for the last 6 months I can assure you that I'm rusty. Regardless of the results, you don't play much for 6 months and you're going to lose some of it.

Now that I've set you up with my list of excuses, I'm sure you're wondering how I did. I have to say that overall I was pleased. I definitely felt a little out of sorts, especially with my tactics. But I wound up playing 4 5-minute blitz games against Larry Williams. Larry and I were pretty close back in December, though I would have given a slight edge to me at that time.

Game 1: I had black and managed to get into an interesting ending. I lost on time. In the post-mortem we found that it was a draw. Ah well, I can't complain with a loss on time.

Game 2: I had white and we drew the game. It was another exciting endgame.

Game 3: I had black and Larry crushed me like a pig. No Post-Mortem necessary!

Game 4: I had white and won! In the post-mortem we found that there were some drawing chances for Black.

Still, it was 5-minute chess. But given my absense, I was very pleased with the result. Hopefully it will motivate me to increase my chess activity and get back to something else in addition to World of Warcraft. I don't think I've ever been so addicted to anything in my life! Though it might be close to the early days of chess. When Sean and I used to stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning at his parents house playing blitz games over and over again. Those were the days!

Speaking of Sean, if you still happen to read this from time to time, Paul Sarrazin says hi!

Wish you all the best!

Ed.