I’m afraid it’s easy for me to let this blog slide, so now I want to do a little catching up.
Thursday night (the eighteenth) was chess club night. The West Chester Chess Club was co-founded by two of my old friends way back when I was still in high school, and it has always been a friendly little club. We only have one master, and our expert doesn’t usually show up; at about 1815 USCF, I’m the third-highest-rated regularly attending player. (If you don’t know what “1815 USCF” means: By playing in tournaments sanctioned by the United States Chess Federation [USCF], a player gets a rating, based on his results, that gives a rough idea of his playing strength relative to other USCF tournament players. 1815 is low Class A, and is somewhere around the seventy-fifth or eightieth percentile of all tournament players. Good, but not really good.) Anyway, I played a considerably lower-rated player on Thursday night—we play USCF-rated games most Thursday nights—and managed to win, but it was a tough game, as usual against that particular opponent. I took what looked like a possibly-poisoned b2-pawn in a line of the Pirc Defense’s Austrian Attack that turned into something close to an f4 Sicilian Defense after trading pawns on d4, and then defended too passively and got into trouble. (”b2,” “f4,” “d4,” and so on, refer to squares on the chessboard, using the algebraic system of notation. See, for example, http://www.uschess.org/beginners/read/ .) The game became really tough, and I thought I was done for, but I managed to make a good move when he threatened to trap my queen that won another pawn, and I survived very severe time pressure to win the game.
The last few days have been very warm—in the 80’s Fahrenheit—and my nephews and I have gone to the park, a five-minute walk from here, to shoot baskets. My younger, ten-year-old nephew, who is a little on the short side, finally learned how to keep himself going on a swing—I observed his technique and then corrected it, telling him that he had to sit up and pull his legs back just at the highest point in his forward swing, and then sit back and point his legs forward just at the highest point in his backswing. It worked! He still needs a push from me to get started, but he can keep going now; he was happy.
On the way to the park, we saw a butterfly (or, possibly, moth) depositing eggs with its ovidepositor on a branch. It had the ragged wings and light yellowish stripe around the edge of the undersides of its wings that a mourning cloak has—mourning cloaks are really gorgeous butterflies—but it had its wings folded, so I couldn’t tell what the tops of its wings looked like. And while we were at the park, we saw a pair of hawks soaring overhead, riding the thermals. We didn’t used to see hawks often at all, but last summer we saw them often, and now we’re seeing them again this summer.
Alas, one thing we’re not seeing are red squirrels. A couple of summers ago, we saw several of them; it was a thrill, as I had never before seen them. But last summer, we didn’t see them at all, and we haven’t seen them yet this year.
Later, my younger nephew and I went for bicycle rides. He loves going for bike rides, and he likes having me go along. (His mother requires that an adult go with him, anyway.) On Friday, we left out Heartbreak Hill, but on Saturday, he was ready for it. (”Heartbreak Hill” refers, naturally enough, to a long hill that steepens toward the top and is difficult to climb all at once. I got the name from the Boston Marathon’s Heartbreak Hill.) Both nephews and I tossed around a baseball, and on Saturday, their father and I took turns pitching, fielding, and batting with my younger nephew. (My younger nephew has more desire to get out and do things. My older nephew, who is thirteen years old, has Asberger’s syndrome, and he tends to keep to himself. He does seem to be becoming more sociable than he used to be, though.)
My younger nephew also woke up in the wee hours of Saturday morning with a sore arm. He was very upset, and was crying. I reassured him and, after asking a few questions about what sort of pain it was, told him that he had probably just slept on it wrongly, and that although it might hurt for a while, he’d be fine. Then we read one of his Magic Tree House books. (He loves the Magic Tree House series. The characters of Jack and Annie, a pair of kids, go on adventures to different times and places, and the books are actually educational—but it’s their entertainment value that is the reason my nephew likes them! Mary Pope Osborne writes them, and Sal Murdocca illustrates them. The fortieth book in the series will be available this September. See, for example, http://www.marypopeosborne.com .) After that, he went back to sleep.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how to put advertising on my Web page and on my blog, and how to customize my blog’s display page; I installed the blog using Fantastico, via HostMonster.com, but it’s version 2.3.3, and I’m not sure how I can update to version 2.5 when the blog’s files are on HostMonster instead of on my computer. The same problem—that the files are on HostMonster instead of on my computer—is making it difficult for me to customize this blog’s display page. I might just uninstall this blog and then go to the WordPress Web site and set it up there. We’ll see. If I do that, I’ll have to save these posts!