Tuirgin

I woke up this morning with a crushing headache. It felt like some Satanic co-mingling of a hang-over, caffeine withdrawals, and the worst sinus and tension headache you could ever dream of. Possibly related, possibly not, I was also nauseous. And the itching, burning eyes, and extreme congestion continued from the 2 days previous.

I had Jodi take Madelyn (21 months) to the baby-sitter today so that I could die in quiet, undistracted peace. I ate a breakfast of Malt-O-Meal and breakfast tea while I watched Werner Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness. Shortly after finishing my food I turned off the movie and slept on the couch for another two and a half hours.

Once I awoke, I took some more ibuprofen, grabbed some food to see how my stomach would handle it—okay, as it turns out—and finished the movie. I was bleary eyed, aching, and mentally fuzzy. There was no way I would be working on my CCNA studies, so I opted to do some chess study.

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I have to admit browsing the selection of chess improvement blogs populating the web can often be intimidating. Chess bloggers from relative beginners to experienced pros have theories and ideas on learning strategies, many of them quite in depth, technical, mathematical and seemingly requiring the selling of one’s soul to the devil out of a pure demand for form. (Hrm. Maybe that’s why so many religious leaders reviled it before the Enlightenment.)

If I got carried away with all these training ideas, I could probably drive myself nutty. But in the midst of all this hot sizzling brain spasmodificationism there’s a voice that rings true to me. C. J. S. Purdy’s constant advice on how to improve is… practice. (continue reading…)