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Tight squeeze...
May. 25th, 2004 07:52 amIt's coming up on 8 am and I've breakfasted and have laundry in the machine. With any luck, I'll have some dry shirts before I join part of the team for some work at the launch pad starting at 10 am. Since most of the ongoing work right now is on the Russian side, it has been deemed possible for a number of team members - including myself - to attend this afternoon's ISS-related launch of the Progress M-49 from somewhere else aboard this base, and I've got to say, I'm looking forward to the experience, as it provides a bit of "rounding" to my ISS work.
I played another game of chess last night, and very nearly lost again, but lucked out by arriving at a favorable endgame in which I had connected passed pawns. This fact, despite the opposite-colored Bishops, hewed heavily in my favor, but an oversight on my opponent's part ended the game before we could get further on in the struggle. As a postscript, I was able to reconstruct the entire game from memory afterward, which tells me that (at least) I was paying more attention to what was going on this time around.
People have been asking me if I'm "taking it easy" on my opponent, and I get the feeling few believe me when I answer "no." This makes me feel acutely uncomfortable (for several reasons, which I haven't the time to examine in detail right now). The bottom line is this: like it or not, I've never been of a temperament not to go all-out in my chess. It's just the way I am. And though this approach may be a positive characteristic generally, nevertheless I think it adversely affected my ability to pass on my love of the game to my kids (I didn't know how to turn off that "all-out" attitude, which I'm sure didn't make playing the game with me much fun for my kids.)
Enough self-recrimination for now. It's a beautiful day, I'll be doing some interesting things with talented people, and I'll get to see a Progress launch. If only my wife could be here with me, life would be downright excellent.
But right now, I need to go take care of my laundry. :^)
Cheers...
I played another game of chess last night, and very nearly lost again, but lucked out by arriving at a favorable endgame in which I had connected passed pawns. This fact, despite the opposite-colored Bishops, hewed heavily in my favor, but an oversight on my opponent's part ended the game before we could get further on in the struggle. As a postscript, I was able to reconstruct the entire game from memory afterward, which tells me that (at least) I was paying more attention to what was going on this time around.
People have been asking me if I'm "taking it easy" on my opponent, and I get the feeling few believe me when I answer "no." This makes me feel acutely uncomfortable (for several reasons, which I haven't the time to examine in detail right now). The bottom line is this: like it or not, I've never been of a temperament not to go all-out in my chess. It's just the way I am. And though this approach may be a positive characteristic generally, nevertheless I think it adversely affected my ability to pass on my love of the game to my kids (I didn't know how to turn off that "all-out" attitude, which I'm sure didn't make playing the game with me much fun for my kids.)
Enough self-recrimination for now. It's a beautiful day, I'll be doing some interesting things with talented people, and I'll get to see a Progress launch. If only my wife could be here with me, life would be downright excellent.
But right now, I need to go take care of my laundry. :^)
Cheers...
