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Friday, April 18, 2014

A Rough Week & Chess


I’m on a pretty tight schedule trying to finish two projects before the end of he month so it wasn't any help when I came down with a miserable 3-day intestinal something or other.  To top that Ken took a bad fall, broke six ribs and partially collapsed a lung so he won’t be able to help me for a while.

Fortunately, such weeks are the exception and not the rule.  I wrote about this sort of thing three years ago.  Funny, it seems like just a few months ago.

I try to put a positive spin on experiences like this.  If I didn’t have some bad times I might not recognize the good ones.

When I did not feel up to going to the shop I did get some cleanup work done of the computer and I played a little chess with my four year old granddaughter in California on a platform at ChessKid. http://www.chesskid.com/home/

She has gotten pretty good at a game called Arimaa.  She plays it with Betty over Skype.  I’ve only looked at it briefly and it looked something like chess, which I once played, but I just didn’t want to take the trouble to learn another game.  However, after she found she could whack nearly everyone at Arimaa she decided to take up chess.  Keith helped her set up the ChessKid account and get me registered as a player too.  Now we can play slow chess at our leisure.  I generally check the computer a couple of times a day to see if it is my move.  Sometimes she sends me a message on my iPhone that says it is my move.

You’d think this was an unfair setup from the get go - a seventy-year-old with previous experience playing a four-year-old beginner.  Apparently not so.  From the start her competition has been stubborn and clever.  It’s only a matter of time.

My father taught me to play chess and cribbage in the late 1940’s as we were getting settled after getting out of service in the army in WWII.  I never really liked cribbage but the chess took hold.  I played it a lot during grade school, some in high school, less in college and only a handful of times between then and now.

I’m really enjoying playing again.  Probably the Granddad/Granddaughter thing makes it especially satisfying.


I’m feeling pretty well tonight and think I can go to the shop in he morning and put in a good lick.


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