The Thin Black Line

  Today marked 4 weeks on the new job and also the first day I had to drive in the snow. I covered the 57 miles at around 45 miles an hour. Even though it was snowing, the cars in front of me left 2 black lines in the road to follow. As long as I stayed in the lines left for me, I was able to drive fairly fast without sliding around.

  In many of the chess games I play I get in a bad position and I have to make a series of moves that don’t lose from many attractive alternatives. Meanwhile, my opponent also has to find a series of moves that keep the pressure on me. It is the chess version of the thin black line. I played 2 games yesterday that followed that path. In the first against Matt Kriegel form Tama, after some passive play on my part, Matt built up a promising king side attack and I had to find many moves to keep him from attacking. Eventually, Matt lost the thread of his attack and then lost the game. Next I played my personal gadfly, Jaleb Jay. I played aggressively and built up a promising position, but missed the only move to win the game and was fortunate to hold the draw. Matt Kriegel lost his way on the black line and slid into the ditch. I lost my way against Jaleb but was able to correct my course before I followed Matt into the ditch.

  I saw Tiger Wood’s speech today. He went way off the thin black line and his line was a lot clearer than Matt’s or mine in our chess tournament. He seemed very wooden to me, but it may have been because he was so uncomfortable talking about this even in the cocoon like environment he surrounded himself with. I’m going to give him credit for wanting to save his marriage and get help for his sex addiction, although I’m not sure how you cure a sex addiction. If you have a drug addiction, you have to give up drugs. If you have a drinking or gambling addiction, you give up drinking or gambling. But Tiger is still married. Will he be celibate? Maybe it’s like a shoplifting addiction where you can still go shopping.

2010 Resolution Progress
Push ups - 1410 (out of 8000)
Stationary Bike (94.6 miles) out of 525
Blogs - 15 (out of 104)