Well, I might be willing to admit that I could possibly being going through a slight bout of what could conceivably be termed depression, though I'm reasonably happy. I have a severe case of oblom and I don't really feel like doing anything. Even the things I typically use to distract me, like chess, can't be buggered with. At lunch or on the train home, I do some chess or something as a distraction, but lately I've just been staring off into space because I can't be buggered to think.

So last night I went to Bar Louie for their $2 burger nights and then went home and watched a couple episodes of Animaniacs. Not bad. They make you buy a drink to get the burger for that price, but $5 for a 1/2# angus beef burger and a beer is pretty doable. A little bit more if you want condiments. I split the burger with someone.

I wore a suit today because I have lunch with $CHIEF_SUCH_AND_SUCH_OFFICER and because I sometimes like to feel pretty. Honestly, it's no more or less comfortable than what I always wear to work, the only difference is that now I have a tie to worry about getting into soup.

Incidentally, I tied it in a Pratt knot. I feel degenerate.

For my own safety and yours. Instead, I played some chess. Not really so much playing as going over annotated games and then lying in bed with Polgar's brick until I fell asleep. Today was a basic day, it was some Chernev collection for patzers and the mates-in-one. Gotta drill the basics sometimes.

for I am forced to finish my diary. It's also been a very busy week.

Plus Lantana, Dune, sitting, making up for failed local government, stimulating the economy, Years of Rice and Salt, playing to my strengths and less.

Poll: Taxes done?

I did poorly on my chess tactics quiz last night. I took another and did worse. So I took a step back and ran through a large amount of easier problems and did decent. I think I should take a day off today. But it's a travel day. Frig, what am I supposed to do in the car if not play chess? Actually, I'm tired of tactical puzzles, perhaps I should have grabbed Ray Cheng's problem book instead.

So I told this girl I was going to be a full-time rickroller and therefore would probably be too busy to ever see her again took it well. She tried to engineer chillin' and drinkin' or something anyway, but I was able to dodge it.

I feel like I'm a character in some Russian novel, one of those young educated roustabouts of decent birth in some irrelevant position as a functionary in the civil service which really has no bearing on who I am and how I think of myself or even my prospects; everything else is just dissipated in drink and cards or chess. Not quite, really, just the feeling of being a stupid functionary in the civil service and its being irrelevant to pretty much everything.