I need to put in some time for working out, too! I also wonder what it means that I'm listening to Kylie Minogue's darkly beautiful and sinister "Where the Wild Roses Grow," as I write this. Odd that romance and darkness often seem to go together.
Together:They call me the Wild Rose,
But my name was Elisa Day,
Why they call me I do not know,
For my name was Elisa Day.
Female:On the third day, he took me to the river,
He showed me the roses and we kissed,
And the last thing I heard was a muttered word,
As he knelt above me with a rock in his fist.
Male:On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow,
she lay there on the bank,
the wind light as a thief and I kissed her goodbye,
said all beauty must die,
and I leant down and planted a rose between her tears.
Aussie accents are awesome.
JOURNAL:
Chess
Two Bishop and King mate. Interesting - still tricky for me to use it, but it requires me to have two pieces on a king, which is of dubious utility in an actual game. The best part, though, was beating an highly skilled player, two ranks above my level. I had honestly perceived such players to be invincible to my skill level, but some part of me decided to just go ahead and give it my best shot.
As White, I did King's Pawn opening to his Sicilian Defence. Thngs seemed to go badly for me there - I gambled on an early fight for the center, only to have my kingside knight get attacked by a pawn after exchanging a d pawn for his c pawn. Rather than lose a tempo, I noticed that he had a queenside weakness with his moved pawn for the Sicilian, and checked his King with a bishop. He responded with Bd7, and I exchanged bishops with Bxd7(trying to avoid losing tempo again). His Qxd7 later, I finally retreated my knight to b3. With his Queen now on d7, I could attack it later with the knight by moving to c5 as soon as he moved his center pawn from d6. This seemed likely, so I was content to continue my development with QNc3, o-o,Be3(to contain one of his knights, but even better, it attacked his a7 pawn.
I think around here, he realized that he was in trouble, and made his first mistake by moving to attack my center e pawn by advacing his d pawn. This, of course, was the break that I was looking for, and immediately responded with Nc5! This forced him to sacrifice a tempo to save his queen, so I just brought up my second knight to b5 to increase pressure.
His queenside weakness is becoming more evident by now, and after some more threating posturing in the center where he took another pawn of mine and piled both of his knights, I pinned the two with an e-rook to his king. So to defend them(and also to develop another piece into the center), he made his biggest blunder by opting to defend them with Qd5?
I immediately knight-forked his queen with his king by Nc7+!! He immediately resigned rather than to play with the inevitable loss of a queen.
I won three more games after that, giving my record today at 4-1.
Even though I feel that my win against the player two ranks against me was heavily due to his mistake, I did make it much more likely by playing such a strong game against his queenside and demonstrated how overambitiousness by Black in the center can have disasterous consequences.
Social
I actually made no plans to try to talk to anyone since I wanted to get on the ball with my studying and writing, but when I was eating, I ran into a bunch of hospital volunteers(all girls) heading toward their lunch. For some reason, one of them decided to talk to me and we chatted a bit. Groups of girls still make me nervous, it seems, but it was wonderful to feel like I got noticed.
And on a related note, during lunch, I managed to cajole the cashier into giving me more food than I had paid for. Its amazing what you can do by being persistant, seeming to have a reasonable argument, and take advantage of the fact that others are hassled. Hehe.
Literary
Wrote what I needed to and submitted it to my editor. She seemed quite pleasantly surprised that I actually met my deadline for once, and complimented me on my detail. Rock.
Technical
Partioned what I needed to study to finish the entire thing in two weeks, then took an examination and studied one chapter with highlighting. I think it could be interesting.
CONCLUSION:
Well, so many things.
Chess frequently helps me think about life and I can see why it was taught at schools to promote intelligence. Good chess strategy helps you realize good life strategies; in the opening, for example, you're trying to accomplish not one, but three objectives with every single move you made(develop a piece, defend your king, and challenge the center). And while my time in a day is limited, much like in chess, if I find ways to accomplish related items together, I'm essentially moving faster and doing more in the same time.
Being confident, truly confident, really does have a surprising effect on others. I think that human beings are programmed to sense confidence in others, and I've never ever gotten any attention. Yet, it seems like I get noticed almost every day now. Its a bit weird, admittedly, but I'm not complaining.
In the end, I think our greatest enemies are always ourselves.
Regards,
IO