Today marked the regional grade-school level chess tournament, held at Robert Gray Middle School at 9:00 this morning. Grout Elementary’s team included both of the Kerezman rugrats.
After six rounds of competition, Alex and Erica each had 4.5 points (though one of Erica’s full points was a “buy”), helping Grout to place second in the team standings. We’d been third overall after the fifth round, which would have meant not being able to send a team to the state finals. Almost every team member turned in a win or draw in the last round, however, so it looks as though the Grout team will see one more tournament this season.
And there’s a chance both of my “young-uns” will be there.
Some tidbits from the day:
- While Alex has certainly gotten the hang of losing gracefully, he’s now needs to learn to keep a poker face when he’s ahead of the game. Clapping your hands together in glee as your opponent is ground under your heel is generally considered bad form.
- As we learned last time out, Erica performs best when her blood sugar levels are appropriately raised. We packed snack food and still ended up running to Safeway for some meatier fare. It worked, though, didn’t it?
- Wendi took pictures with the Yashica. If they ever make it into digitized form, they’ll end up in the Gallery. In three weeks I get my camera, so the next event will appear in said Gallery nigh-immediately after it happens.
- Robert Gray Middle School is located close enough to the Stonehenge (KGON) tower that I could easily pick out small antennas on even the uppermost platform. Call me strange, but I actually spent a portion of my day doing just that. I’ve always felt an emotional attachment to that big ugly tripod.
- Wendi and I went for a “real food” run to Safeway during the fourth match. Here’s a note to grocery store managers: Do not, please, staff the one and only “express” lane with an eighty year old woman who has failing eyesight, no clue how to fill a paper bag and a propensity towards banging objects against the scanner. (We asked for paper. After stuffing the object in her hands into the oh-so-convenient plastic anyway she then put the plastic into a paper bag… and then set the paper bag aside. That’s right, one object per bag. Incredible. Wendi spent thirty seconds before we left putting everything into one paper bag.) I also offer a special “thank you” to the feeb who brought a big stack of coupons through the “express” lane. Yeah.
So what did you do with your Saturday, huh?
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3 responses to “Chess Piece Day”
my saturday: went to some friends’ house, ate some tasty pork chops, was almost mauled by their pit bull — but, yay!, just received a knock on the nose before friend jumped on the pit bull & locked it up in the garage, was gracious about almost-mauling, silently vowed to NEVER get near a pit bull again, watched Shallow Hal, ate some cheese cake, came home, drank a couple glasses of wine, thanked my Gods that I wasn’t mauled, and ended the evening by drinking two lovely glasses of merlot and reading lovely weblogs.
random notes about your day: Alex and I have a lot in common when it comes to the “poker face.” it’s hard to be calm and graceful when you’re kicking bootie.
doesn’t your Albertsons have the “self-checkout” line? you know… where you scan & weight your own groceries & then insert your cash & change or credit card all by yourself? it’s really caught on in Texas. yeehaw!
yay, I’m so glad to have internet access again. I missed all my favourite blogs.
xo to you & the fam
I rolled out of bed at 10:30 after a loud disturbing call from my parents. At 11am I headed out the door in clothes that I had grubbed off the floor and drove 2hrs over the passes to be greeted by a teenage sister, two parents, a whiney kitty, and an excited pug dog. We did the family adventure to a furniture store to pick out a lazy-boy chair for Dad’s birthday present. All that, just to wake up on sunday (today) and drive 2-3 hrs back home. I’m tired.
The sum-up of my Saturday: I lazed around the house before heading over to the mall, bought some more (much needed) incense, film and photo albums. Then, I rushed my mother over to her hair appointment halfway across town and we, surprisingly, made it there one minute before said appt started. I later got my eyebrows waxed. (Pain.) Then, much, much later on, we went golfing with a bunch of people (I bit. My hand/eye coordination is probably worse than your 80 year old cashier.) We ended up afterwards searching desperately for some sort of movie and left with ‘The Birthday Girl’, which we didn’t watch. I kind of liken it to a “attempting to kill time” sort of evening.
— I don’t know anyone who really has a poker face. If I’m in the right sort of mellow mood I can usually be fairly okay with it, but the people who know me really well can usually pick up on it, I think. I can’t wait to see more pictures in the gallery. Waiting for stuff to come is never fun.
My dad’s bringing down the digital next visit and I get to take pictures of…. CHINA. (The excitement! The neverending thrills!)