I am doing the MS 150 bike ride and need donations. Any amount is appreciated. Thanks and here is the URL:
We went to a four round game in 45 tournament yesterday. Carter “played up” which means he entered in a higher rated section with prize money instead of trophies but everyone he played would be much stronger than he was. I played in my section (under 1200 rating) which was dominated by little kids and a handful of adults 
I had one of my worst days ever and it was really tough. I lost to one adult, then I played the oldest kid I played (age really doesn’t mean much, it was a kid who won the whole tournament that day). In this game I got white and played the kings gambit and I was able to get way ahead but it was close, finally I was able to promote a pawn and I didn’t have much time on my clock. I choked terribly and instead of just lining up to take his pawn that was about to queen the next turn I lined up on my own king thinking I was giving check. He got his queen, I was able to at least force a queen trade and then we raced across the board and took the last two pawns with our kings for a draw with only kings on the board. What a terrible game!
It was all ok though because Carter had the best day ever. You can see what happened here:
http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblPlr.php?200709226691-001-12945576
His rating went from 1122 to 1299 and he won $80 in prize money. He has never come close to jumping 177 rating points in a single tournament. It was a big accomplishment and I am really proud of him.
He recently began getting lessons from Carlos Perdomo who hold the International Master title. He has had three lessons and I think it has really helped motivate him. He also just loves hanging out with the other guys down at the chess center. He would be there every weekend if he could.
After the match I took him home to a super late birthday party with 7 friends who slept over. I then raced off with Hunter to see Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello. Elvis Costello only played for an hour but it was really great. I love both those guys but Dylan sounded nothing like old Dylan I am used to, he was barking out the lyrics to some of the songs, when he did seem to try to sing more on softer songs it was still great but I wasn’t used to the way he sounds now. He is still great but after a couple hours we took off early cause Hunter was fussing and I didn’t want to get stuck in traffic. If Elvis Costello was headlining I would have stayed all night. He is just the greatest. It was just him on acoustic guitar. His final song was “Whats so funny about peace love and understanding”. Its my favorite rock anthem and I was glad Hunter got to see it. His voice is as good as ever and I like him solo as much as I like him with the band. There was no room to stand in front and everyone was sitting and you might as well have been at the opera. It will take something really great to get me to drive out there again to the Gwinnett Center.
I went to lunch with Bobby from work and he told me about this site. I just added everything I have read since I started keeping a list. I guess I will start using that and quit updating this blog with books, I will always have a backup in my palm if the site goes dead.
I think this will work to take you to me there:
Work has been really tough this week with really old friends leaving the company. I found out Tuesday and went to “Fire of Brasil” with Jeff, the oldest of the old friends. We had a great time. The salad bar was better then the meat but for $15 the meat was fine. Fogo is worlds better but also way more money.
I felt bad all last weekend and did pretty poorly in a really long time control (G120) chess tournament. I won 2 and lost 3. My son Carter won 3.5 of 5 and got $81. He lost his chess clock that cost $40 though and I was really upset at him. Just an hour ago one of his oldest friends from there, David called and said he had his clock. He picked it up by accident. I feel way better about it now because the chess center doesn’t seem like a place where people would steal.
I went to work Friday and just felt terrible all day. Its just a cold but I feel really run down. I came home and we a family over for dinner that lives around the corner. The dad James plays in the marching abominables http://www.seedandfeed.org/
They had alot of great stories and for about an hour I forgot I was sick. I went to bed at 10 and slept till 8 and feel even worse today. I am taking Carter from the house he slept over to a scholastic tournament in an hour. Its really relaxing at these tournaments at the chess center. That place is turning into a second home for me and I really love it there. I know everyone and can relax and read or play if there is a non-scholastic going on. Today I intend to find an empty room and read/sleep.
I am almost done with “Bobby Fischer goes to war”. I read all day when I was out sick. Its by BBC journalists and is well written. Fischer was a mess back when he was world champion even before his more recent craziness. Its a great story though. I read Frank Bradys famous biography a few years ago. This is only about the Spassky match.
I have so many books lined up next its going to be tough. This is my first break from WWII reading in a long time.
My family went on vacation without me and I got free tickets to see Ken Burns speak about “The War” and to see a preview. It was really great. I hope everyone who reads this watches it. I think its really important history for everyone to be aware of. I am half way though the +30 year old “World at War” series from the BBC. Its the best documentary of the war I have seen and I have two others.
From a site linked off Ken Burns on Wikipedia:
“In addition to his own film, Burns is pushing other public television stations around the country to tell their own local stories of the war, using WPT’s award-winning Wisconsin World War II Stories as a model.”
Here you can see the whole Wisconsin Show.
I just watched about an hour of it.
http://www.pbs.org/aboutpbs/news/20061106_TheWar.html
that link doesnt work any more. This should always work:
I have been really busy and haven’t touched this in ages.
This last weekend was great. Friday was misery at work with a problem had had me stuck at work till really late. By the time I got home I just went to sleep. I woke up and we got ready for baseball. It was a great game. Grant park is being resodded and we were at this cool park right downtown that I think belongs to MLK middle school, but I am not sure, we approached it from the back. It was all shady behind the plate and we brought chairs and it was just super relaxing. Everyone was being cool and cheering for everybody. We won by quite a bit and Hunter got a decent hit this time but it was high and got caught. I was feeling super social and told Kelly to invite people to eat somewhere. We know half the families pretty well because they have kids in the Neighborhood Charter School. We got almost everyone on the team to go to Daddy D’s. It was ok but the counter dude / cook is a huge cubs fan and one of our dads in a white socks fan from south chicago. He was telling me on Friday morning how the Cubs fans are just jerks and hateful and I didn’t really believe it. It was really funny that we saw it played out the next day. The guy was being crazy. I guess its tough after the cross town rival wins the series and you have always struggled. Anyway the guy got a little out of hand I think. After that 2 parents and I walked with several of the kids down to oakland cemetary which is one of my favorite places in the city. When I went to Ga. State I ran there every day. The trees are just huge, the civil war dead is an amazing sight, its just got tons of Atlanta history. Anyway we walked to the far end which has huge open fields. We tossed the ball for about an hour in the blazing heat. At the end I was playing catch with the coach and it was a lot of fun. I came home pretty tired.
Sunday was jammed full. We woke up to the sound of the Georgia Ing marathon outside our door. By the time i was up it was the tail end of the full marathoners. We walked down the Little Five Points and saw the half marathoners finishing up going by. Only Carter was up. We walked back to the house and Carter wanted to see more. We looked online and saw you could track people by bib number. Carter suggested putting in 31 and that was cool. we saw the front runners had almost worked themselves back up to freedom park which is just a few blocks from us. we got Hunter and raced down there. I have done four marathons, 2 when I was younger and stronger and two when I was older with kids almost 10 years later. My best time was 3:39 which is something I’m pretty proud of because I never played team sports and its the most athletic thing I ever did. So I was trying to tell the kids about it because I still think the marathon is a really cool thing and i have never watched one before as a spectator. When we got down to the park I ran into one of the guys who was in the group of marathoners that really got me interested in doing my first ones. He had just qualified for Boston which is in alot of ways the holy grail of marathoning. He was going to run in this one but got injured. We cheered everyone with the kids for about an hour. The kids had no understanding of how fast the front runners were. I guess seeing them go by you don’t realize what you are seeing. I kept having to tell them, no kids – these people are flying. My friend has a cow bell. My hands got really sore and I wished I had one.
We came back and raced to church and got there the usual 10 minutes late. We had a big chess tournament and left soon after the sermon cause we had to get there at 1:30 and we were taking Hunters good friend Emma and she needed to get signed up for her USCF membership. We got there and it was really lightly attended. People probably have better things to do then chess on such a perfect day. We tried to make up for it by tossing a baseball between rounds. Its super tough there and Emma lost all her games and took a bye in one round which always seems like a rip off. Hunter also had a bye but he won a rated game and got his rating up off 100. He has won 8 tournament games in the past but never against rated people. That made it a pretty great day. Carter lost 1 and won 3. His rating went above 900 again so it was great for him. He is still all excited about chess and really wants to play in every tournament. Here is the cross table for Carter – they scored it on USCF as k-8 but they actually had trophies for k-6 and k-8. Carter tied for 1st in K-6 but took the $12 bucks store credit instead of the trophy.
http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?200703250581.1-12945576
For Hunter and Emma:
http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?200703250581.2-12945576
I got invited to go to a meeting after church today by our priest. We have only been going to this church a year but they wanted to get several different representatives to be on this meeting. We are talking about the outreach the church does and it does quite a bit. I think the idea is to try to be more deliberate about it and talk about what we want to keep doing and what we may want to expand on. The whole family including Kelly and the kids have gone down to Peachtree Pines several times to feed the homeless right downtime on Peachtree. About 500 people are fed and the church does this once a month. I think it might have been that involvement that got me invited. I was gald to be invited but the other people there seemed way more involved. We first talked about what outreach meant to each of us and then made a big list of all the things the church was doing. It was really interesting to hear this list. There is alot going on.
The first game of the season was yesterday and it was a great one. We have played in Druid Hills Youth Sports for many years. It is way more serious and alot bigger commitment than Grant Park. At the kids age now they have 2 practices a week and then games on the weekend. I really loved it but it was hard. The kids mostly played it in the Fall when it was a little more laid back. Grant Park is really laid back. Carter and Hunter can be on the same team and there is only one practice a week. I showed up with a glove and helped toss balls to the boys and they made me third base coach. Thats how it usually goes and it all volunteer so I didn’t complain. There were some girls on the team who had never played before. It was cool because they got hits. Its coach pitch, 5 pitches no matter how bad per batter, max 5 runs in an inning, over throw is one base, but you can keep overthowing so you teach the kids to get it to the pitcher.
Hunter kept fouling out but it was good that he was hitting the ball, he has had a real hard time in the past. He was hitting alot of fouls and they were going foul both ways. I think he is going to get alot better. Carter really loves baseball. He was killing the ball on offense and they made him pitcher for about a third of the time and he caught one that was hit straight back to him. (The kid pitcher stands next to the grown up coach pitcher). It was looking bad for our team when we were down by 5 in the last inning. it was 5-10. We started getting lots of kids on base and two runs were scored and there were 2 kids on base and 2 out when Carter came up. He hit a really hard home run and cleared the bases to make it 10-10. The next kid up was the girl who had never played, she got a great hit hard but hit it right to the pitcher. They ended it right there which was ok for this super laid back league. In the past I have seen some bad parent behavior in this league even though it had a reputation for being laid back. But this day it was really good, all the parents cheered for both sides and everyone knew kids on the other team and cheered for them. At one point someone asked who was winning and a Mom said “Is that all thats important?” and a Dad said “No, but its way ahead of whatever is second.” He was kidding but he had me laughing all day.
Later that day it was so nice I wanted to get out more. I got the bikes out and we all 3 rode to Candler Park to practice some more baseball. It turns out they are re-sodding so we turned back and went to Iverson Park. We had a great time.
