summer

keys

 
how's everyone been?
      School is over for me. I was going to play in the World Open, but then caught a cold and decided not to. I am thinking I will play the G/30 tournament at the Marshall Saturday, I'm going to play 1. d4 and some new caro lines and the Hennig Shara gambit and whatever openings I'm curious about at that moment, then go to Philly, stay with Greg, and just visit the World Open to see old friends.  

update: the cold continued, and I stayed in bed until Sunday. Saturday morning Jonathan was telling me his father and brother had exactly the same symptoms and they went to the doctor and got antibiotics and were better in a day. I was brought up that you didn't go to the doctor unless you had a fever of 104 or a rash or some other unfakeable-mistakable symptom. And that it wouldn't do any good anyway because you have a virus and antibiotics only work against bacteria. But Jonathan pressured me and, because my regular doctor was gone for the holiday weekend, I called the guy with the highest rating in Yelp. The doctor himself answered the phone ("hi") and told me he couldn't see me because he was at the hospital, but asked me a few questions, and said "You should not have to be sick this weekend; you should enjoy this holiday weekend! This weekend we should all celebrate freedom!" 


I swear I am not making this up. 

So I go to the pharmacy near my house that he tells me to go to, and when I walk up to the counter, the pharmacist says to me, "Miss Elizabeth? Your prescription is almost ready." He takes my insurance  card, charges me $10 and gives me antibiotics + some mega-strong cold medicine. 

I have had some great experiences with Yelp recently.

     On Tuesday, James, Justus, and I train it down to Charlotte for the next US Chess School. I'm looking forward to seeing my old friend Mike Klein there. Mike is a fantastic conversationalist: tells great stories, is always witty and on, always going for the joke-opportunity, and so I'm looking forward to hanging out with him, plus Greg (x2), James, Justus, Guy and Josh for five days and everything being extremely entertaining.

      I laughed out loud several times reading this NYT magazine piece What Does Newt Know?

      I watched the Bobby Fischer HBO documentary last night. What surprises me about him in general is that no one says autism. He can't relate to other people's emotions, hates changes to his environment, is super-sensitive to stimuli most people can't detect, prone to tantrums, can't read emotional cues, loves focusing on one thing over and over again for many hours, and loves animals. Why is that paranoid schizophrenia and not high functioning autism?

     Speaking of autism, an interesting and heart-warming article about a Danish (thanks!) company that recruits autistic people for IT jobs that require extreme concientiousness and attention to detail.

     I'm doing the bare minimum amount of wedding planning, and I'm looking for song suggestions. please.

     Jonathan and I put in an offer on a house! I'll tell you all about it if they accept. We've spent the last few Saturdays biking around the neighborhood, going to open houses. It's a beautiful combination of physical exercise and romantic real estate fantasy.