As mentioned before, I started playing chess again a little bit. not too serious, I don't have much time. If you're looking for chess content, though, check out this guy and his "speedrun" videos, he's a young grandmaster who's playing his way up the ratings ladder and explaining the games as he goes. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHP9CdeguNUI-_nBv_UXBhw Very good instructional content. Mostly doing problems and looking over games, don't ever have time to sit down and actually play a real game, that's at least a dedicated hour and a half.

Work is... going.

So got a new phone for the new year. It's nice. Also got new running shoes.

Still been running every day, but my mileage is down - inclement/cold weather, getting started late near the solstice, things of that nature. So that means sometimes it's just a mile. The new phone is accurate enough to use as a GPS tracker, which is good. The old phone was too old to work well.

Chess again: I was looking to see if there were tournaments around in the spring when I have more time, they've got some purely online ones going, which is good. But I saw they have one here, in town, next month... in person. That just seems like a bad idea. It's one board per table, masks mandatory, but even then, being across the table from somebody for 2.5 hours at a time is... not great. Very bold of them.

The events of the middle of the week were very distracting, they made it hard to be productive. And I really need to be productive.

Having annoying computer issues. Latest version of the kernel doesn't play well with my graphics card, so I have to boot into an old version. I'll have to sort this out soon. Even in the old kernel, things sometimes blow up. Probably firefox doing it.

Finished off The Good Place. Ending was okay but not great, not disappointing.

More chess: looked up some people from the past. Found out the guy who ran the chess scene in my  hometown died a few years ago. He was old and retired but younger than I thought. Also found out a big figure in the Chicago tournament directing scene died a few years ago - he was much younger, only 40, sudden heart attack. A few of the young players I ran into in tournaments when I was playing are masters now - one an IM with two GM norms, so almost there. He's only 18! So he was maybe 9 when I played him.

I've still really seen very little of this town. I've explored on foot a good chunk of my immediate environs but the main part of town to the north, not as much, and we just don't go places. Maybe we should order out a little, we have only done that maybe twice since getting here.

anyway. hope it gets warmer.