Moving along, with pauses...

One of my recent Neflix selections was a couple of silent films from the 20's USSR. The first, Sofa and Bed - a somewhat tedious (to me) tale of a ménage à trois in Moscow - didn't impress me very much. The second, Chess Fever, I enjoyed.

The enjoyment was experienced on several levels. First, the opening scenes of the movie shows some newsreel footage (I would suppose) of the great Moscow tournament of 1925, which was won by Bogolyubov ahead of Lasker and Capablanca. It's not often one sees Frank Marshall, the great US champion of the early part of the 20th century, "live" (as it were). As I watched the film, I was stuck by the strong physical resemblance (in my opinion) between Marshall and James Cromwell, the actor who played Captain Dudley Smith in L.A. Confidential and the President in The Sum of All Fears. There even was a clip of the legendary Cuban champion, José Raúl Capablanca.

That alone would have been worth the price of admission, except that the story line is slapstick-funny (as opposed to, say, George-Carlin-funny). There were some gags filmed that, frankly, ranked with the best of Chaplin's antics.

* * *The local Rotary is having their "casino" night tonight. I toyed with the idea of going, but without Galina, it simply wouldn't have been fun.

I am on tap, however, to go visit Mike and Karen T. tomorrow for dinner, which I am looking forward to. They've always got something interesting to say, and they have a lively assortment of animals around their house (which was built by an artist, back before anyone in Pagosa had heard of the collocation "building code").

* * *I survived the store today, which is a relief because Drew and Shannon (and Huntur) are due back by Monday morning. I've been dragging a lot of stuff back to the house for storage, in an attempt to free up some space in the store. Keeping track of item locations, it turns out, is almost as critical in a packaging and mailing place in the sticks of Colorado as it is on the International Space Station. Maybe even more so.

* * *Given my upcoming work schedule, tomorrow is going to be a completely translation-free day, devoted to cleaning up around the place, which needs it.

In the meantime, relaxation is the order of the evening.

Cheers...

Afterthoughts...

Today's weather was strange. I got up this morning to find snow (or perhaps sleet) had been blasted over the local terrain and had accumulated in various nooks and crannies on the verandah. At various times during the day, I could see flurries flying out in the parking lot, and a few flakes managed the trip all the way down only to end up on my windshield as I drove to the downtown post office to pick up client mail. Three inches of snow fell up on Wolf Creek Pass, which is good news for the snow crowd. By late afternoon, the weather had settled down to just being cold.

I've run about 20-30 "rounds" through Drew's paintball getup every evening for the past few days upon returning home from the store. The first few days, it was a little frustrating, because neither the "quick-kill" aiming technique I learned in the Marines (a "real-world" technique for engaging targets quickly and effectively) nor the more traditional "marksmanship" approach (line up front and rear sights on target, squeeze trigger... very academic) seemed to work very well. Today, everything finally "clicked" and I was rewarded by seeing pretty much every ball hit what I aimed at, using the former approach.

I also finally managed to download some recordings I made of Huntur last Monday night after dinner at the kids' place and edited one down to a short, precise, crisp message intended for Galina (MP3). The kid has a future as a radio announcer, methinks. :^)

Among the authors I like to read is Clive Cussler. I picked up Shock Wave at a garage sale recently and made the "mistake" of starting to read it. I say "mistake" because although I really enjoy the stories (except for when he gets environmentally preachy), I really don't have the time to spare to read them, and they are of that rare class of tale that simply defies you to put the book down! The result, more often than not, is time taken away from other, more important tasks. Shock Wave shall be an exercise in self-restraint, where I shall not allow it to interfere with what needs to be done.

We'll see.

Cheers...