2002-12-12 - 11:51 p.m.

Snow Fun

I'm falling even further behind on my telling of our adventures in China. I need to get a move on before I am talking about things that are a month in the past.

Anyway, last night we were supposed to get a snowstorm, and indeed we got walloped. We got about seven inches of wet, heavy snow. I was at home working on my column, and the work wasn't going well.

Around the time the store opened, I got a call from the Manager - would I mind covering the register while he ran the snow-blower over the sidewalk? As soon as I got dressed, I wandered downstairs.

I was only supposed to be down there for about twenty minutes, but I wound up being down there nearly two hours. When he the sidewalk was about 3/4 done a stray piece of plywood got wedged in the blower. Cursing and fuming, the Manager managed to get it out by reducing it to splinters and picking it out a piece at a time - quite a lengthy procedure. Unfortunately once the obstruction was removed, the snow-blower wouldn't work. The engine ran fine, but the blades wouldn't turn. So I called the dealer, and they said that they could pick up the blower on Monday. Too bad we are due to get another storm over the weekend.

I went upstairs to finish my column, and it seemed to take forever. When I was finally done I had an additional job - I had to dig my car out since the snow-blower had crapped out before the Manager had gotten to that part.

Well, these are the sort of petty annoyances you come to expect when you live in a part of the world where it snows regularly. The past few years December has not been a snowy month, but this year so far we are way ahead of the average.

I'm probably going to be sore as the dickens tomorrow.

Tonight I had a game in the preliminaries of the Frown Town Championship, my first game in over a month. My opponent was Lee, a wily veteran and the highest rated person in my section. I thought I had prepared pretty well for him, and I did, up to a point. He played a variation that I wasn't so familiar with, and I made a move the was aggressive, but unsound. My position started to slide, so I started sacrificing material in hopes of working up an attack. He parried my threats pretty easily and I was left with a hopeless game, which I eventually resigned.

I would have rather not lost this game, but it isn't exactly fatal. However, I need to win all the rest of my games to be assured of a spot in the championship finals. It's not impossible, in fact I've done it before, but it is far from easy. I have a couple tough opponents I still have to play, as well as a couple of new, unrated guys who look rather dangerous. In fact, one of the unrateds beat the third highest rated person in the section tonight.

Next week, I have to play Bobby, who recently has proved to be my nemesis. That definitely is a must-win game, so I have some studying to do.

When I got home Lily and I watched this week's episode of Survivor, which was totally bogus. The whole episode was edited to make it look like Clay would be voted off next when it was Ted that got the boot. While Clay is kind of an unlikable guy (at least he's EDITED that way) I imagine that the other three people left are keeping him around because they have visions of being in the final two with him. I'm sure they all think that the jury would choose anyone over mean, trollish Clay, and they're probably right.

I have to admit that I don't find this season of Survivor terribly compelling and my interest in the show is dropping. The fact that they had to edit the episode so deceptively is a sure sign that things are pretty dull in Thailand. I'm enjoying Amazing Race far more this year. This is in spite of the media circus surrounding Survivor Brian, the nakey pictures of his wife and the restraining order he filed against her recently. Go see the Smoking Gun if you want to find out what I'm talking about.

Watch out for that link, by the way. You can spend hours wandering around that site. You'll definitely want to have a shower afterwards.