Weekend Posting

With our week of vacation only a week behind us, it seems a great deal longer, especially as the paperchase for the adoption of our daughter is heading into the final furlong.

My wife is taking a red-eye train from Philadelphia to Washington DC to visit the British Consulate, the State Department Authentication Office and the Consulate for the Peoples Republic of China, in what I can best describe as akin to the "Amazing Race" or a bizzare treasure hunt that I attempted a month or two back, only to fall at the last fence. Lessons learned from my trip (that took two trips) Taney is prepared!

At least returning to the office, I was relaxed on Monday and worked my way to being so relaxed by Friday morning that pulling myself out of bed was a challenge. Or perhaps this could have had something to do with a cool night, no humidity and the chance to sleep deeply.

Politically speaking, I have taken the current election build up with more than a dash of lightheartedness. John Kerry has had a challenging week with anti-Kerry adverts produced by members of his "band of brothers" that he fought alongside in Vietnam. They are vocally not supportive of his candidacy to the point the Kerry campaign are asking the media not to show the advert with veiled threats.

Switch into sattire gear, go and visit www.jibjab.com and run the animated "This land is your land" skit with GW and John Kerry, a cast of other familiar faces and three purple hearts. In what has been a cut and thrust political week this is the ideal thing to put us all on an even keel.

Chess. When I was about eight, my granddad taught me how to play chess. He and my Nana that Christmas gave me a chess set that my Nana had carefully glued felt to the bottom of each of the red and white pieces so not to scratch the beautiful checked board my Granddad, a master joiner had made for me. Switch forward a few years, to eleven and twelve, I remember being a member of the St. Mary's School (Hendon) Chess Club, where I recall a fellow student Parvez Kahn (apologies for incorrect spelling) would wow a room of eleven year olds by playing multiple games with his peer group.

Sporadic chess playing followed, until I started heading to the Canaries for holidays with by good friend Trevor, who I recall beat me at every chess game we played.

This week, using technology, I have started to play again with my brother-in-law Mac author of his blogs that as I have mentioned previously we aspire towards only to fall. Playing over the net has its drawbacks, it is not as social and takes forever to play a game. Next Wednesday he & I will be getting together to play in the traditional way face to face across the board for a friendly game. I admit, I am looking forward to the pleasure of playing again. Mac has chess tournaments under his belt, so I am certain that I will learn much from playing this great gentleman.