Tacoma in Minneapolis

By the way, it appears that the Tacoma weather, which was grey and rainy during most of my long weekend there, has followed me back to MN. It apparently picked up some extra moisture on its way across the rocky mountains and the Dakotas, but other than that Minneapolis has been doing a very passable Tacoma impression so far today.

Back from Tacoma

I spent the weekend making what's become an annual Hajj to Tacoma, WA to see my good friend Mr. Hanberg. It's always a pleasure to get out there and hang with him, because it generally means an excellent few days when I get to eat good food, see good movies and play good chess. This time around the menu featured Thai food, burgers and omelets, all of which were fantastic. The schuedule featured a Mariner's game which we left when the M's were losing badly only to find out they staged a major comeback to take the game, a 3 hour play called The Steward of Christendom which was decent but probably should have been about an hour shorter, and screening of Shoot 'Em Up, King of Kong, Stranger than Fiction and several episodes of Heroes.

The King of Kong screening was notable because Steve Wiebe, who is pretty much the protagonist of the film, held a Q&A session after the movie. The movie was extremely well done, and it was nice to get a greater depth of understanding on the whole situation with the Q&A.

Erik and I also played several games of chess. This is pretty much the only time during the year that I play chess anymore, and it's something I always look forward to. I think we played somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 games this weekend. I'm the better player, and I got a couple of cheap victories when Erik didn't see an early checkmate, but he did manage to get two draws and really made me work for the last couple of victories.

The great thing about chess is that it's an equal battlefield. There are no surprise attacks, no extra forces you can call on. Your entire game plan is right there on the board for your enemy to see, and the only mistake you can make is to not consider enough of the relevant possibilities. Kudos to Mr. Hanberg for raising the level of his game and really putting the screws to me in several of our contests. And Erik, here's a link to the pawn power book that I read years ago that helped me out.

Thanks also to Mary, Erik's GF who had moved in since my last visit, for putting up with me for five days.

Weekend in Chicago

I just got back from an excellent weekend in Chicago. Most of my time was taken up by the Chicago Heavyweights Championship, which is a fairly large ultimate tourney that takes place every year just before sections. This is the second time I've gone (and the first with a team I didn't pick up with), and thankfully it was much cooler than the last time I was there.

But I did actually get to see a little bit of the city while I was there. Gregg, Kellie and I left the cities on Thursday night so we could get to Chicago by lunchtime on Friday. We stayed Friday and Saturday night at the condo of a friend of Gregg's. We weren't the only ones, either. There were six people sleeping on futons or the floor of that condo. Fortunately the floor plan was pretty open and there was plenty of space. I was very impressed by the absolutely beautiful view from the balcony, made more impressive by the storm front coming in from the North.

So after getting in for an excellent lunch at a vegan restaurant, we ended up walking into Union Station with a stop at a bar for a glass of amazingly (expensive) trappist ale and later that night riding the L to pick up a massive order of sushi for dinner. All in all a pretty good Chicago experience for only one afternoon.

I am Iron Man

The trailer for Marvel's next big movie, Iron Man, came out today on apple trailers. I think they were supposed to wait until tonight, as it's premiering on several tv channels, but it looks like they jumped the gun (which is cool, since I wasn't going to watch The Hills on MTV).

Iron Man's never been the most compelling of the Marvel superheroes for me, although I couldn't really tell you why. Tony Stark is pretty much the epitome of cool, a billionaire playboy who's a massively talented inventor (replace inventor with dective and you have Bruce Wayne, by the way). But he doesn't have the greatest rouges gallery and I ususally seem to like him more as part of the Avengers or the Ultimates. I thought the role he played in facing off against Captain America in the Marvel mini series Civil War was fantastic, though. I also haven't read the most famous Iron Man arc, where Tony, who's an alcoholic, bottoms out.

At any rate, the new trailer looks good, and I've heard excellent things about this movie so far. The sequence at the end is clearly the equivalent of Spidey swinging through downtown NY in his first trailers.