To me it look like a leprechaun to me!

Many of you have probably seen this already, but Whit and I were watching it again this morning and howling and thought we'd share it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nda_OSWeyn8

If you think that there aren't millions of people in this country alone who openly believe things just as crazy as this, I will politely disagree with you :)

In other news, the tourney was rough yesterday and I still have a bad taste in my mouth from it. Mostly because they fed us Funyuns. But seriously, I paid for a 4 game tourney and only played 2. I had a bye in the third round, which meant I only was going to get to play 3, but also that I would have to wait around for over 3 hours for my final game. It was annoying. I understand that an odd number of entrants will cause that problem, but I was the only person in my group to pre-register for the tournament - you'd think that'd get me a better setup. I politely complained and they said it was random. Oh well.

The worst part was that I played much like a turd sandwich would play, which is pretty badly. I was nervous and wasn't paying close enough attention in my first game, and I lost a knight on like my 6th move. That, folks, is not easy for even a beginner to do. So, I was really ticked off and had to calm myself down. I even got up and left for a few minutes and had to convince myself not to just resign and go home (it was a good lesson in sportsmanship for me). Adulthood can suck at times! Part of the problem was that my opponent was very good in comparison to me (rated 1598) and I knew I was already done for, after all of that anticipation. I calmed down and told myself that he'd win and that was fine, but I was going to make his brain hurt in the process - and I did. Afterwards he told me that he could tell I was nervous and that he was impressed with how I sat back down and gave him a really interesting game. That was pretty nice of him to say. We also replayed the whole game in the hallway and talked about the moves. He's a retired truck driver, probably about 50 years old, and had some good pointers from me. He said something to the effect of, "You said you play almost exclusively online. I bet not being used to looking at a large board with a person on the other side really felt different and made you play a little differently too. You'll get much better and will gain a lot of points by playing in person more often." My thoughts exactly.

Game two was against a man around age 75 who insisted he had no chance of beating me. I appreciated his kindness but it was also annoying, knowing that he actually had a very good chance. His rating was below mine but he had the white pieces and played extremely well. I actually was more impressed with his play than with my first opponent. The game was straightforward (or "boring"). Neither of us made any blunders, both of us had good goals for every move we made - he just outplayed me very slowly and created a weakness around my king that he did a nice job taking advantage of in the end. He told me it was an interesting game. I'm not so sure - but he was very nice.

I was still disappointed, however, and with Whitney preferring my help at home to about 5 more hours of mall-dom, I told them I was leaving. They have a tourney every month. I said I'd be back in February :)