Losing Your Queen

I got a little too aggressive playing chess last night. Five minutes into the game, I was wrecking havoc on the enemy lines. It was great.

I was feeling that this might be a blow-out and my opponent might never play me again:( But I can not throw a game, it never seems right. (I’ll cross that bridge if I ever have kids)

Never fear! Moving my queen out, I took the pawn in the third row. Jason took my queen with the adjacent pawn. WITH A PAWN!

…so the game ended with two kings, rook and a bishop on the board.

I was hoping for a stalemate.

It got me thinking of the importance of protecting your resources. I took my queen for granted and assumed she was invincible in the face of danger. So to can we take our spiritual life for granted. We can assume it is invincible in the face of warfare.

How wise are your moves this week?

Día Final

I’m at the public library using a computer that is, surprisingly, running Windows XP.

We shipped the seed this morning. The last official things I need to do is check out of the parado and fly home. Since we are leaving the parado at 3:30 in the morning, it does not leave me much time to play.

Actually, I am studying most of this afternoon—BCHM 765—because of a big exam next Friday. Yesterday was my fun day. I slept in, relaxed, and snorkeled. The snorkel trip was three afternoon stops, supper, and a night stop. The night trip was the best. We went to phosphorescent bay! It was truly indescribable. Visit http://www.biobay.com/ for a slight glimpse of the phenomenon. The pictures on that link were taken at Vieques PR. I visited Phosphorescent Bay that is just East of Parguera PR. The bays are very similar in the structure with salt flats, limited fresh water, small ocean mouth and mangoves trees. Somehow the these factors affect the dinoflagellates. Vieques is slightly brighter.

Remember, those pictures were taken with long exposure. In real life, it is very much unlike the pictures. It would be like trying to take pictures of miniature fireflies by standing still and letting millions flash their lights and calling resulting blur the light of fireflies. The light is very distinct and “naturally” (undisturbed water) occurs much like fireflies in a field. The density is about that of the stars in the sky.

When you swim through it, think warp speed.

Well, the snorkeling was great and the work is finished. I’ll be back on the mainland soon and hope to return next year.

Puerto Rico

I am here, sitting behind the front desk of the hotel that we’re staying at. Mitch has been coming here for the past 6 years or so and knows all those things that you should know when you travel some place. And he knows all those people that make life easier and better—like when you want to bum the internet off them.

Work has been going very well. I will be dreaming of numbers on packets tonight. All day I have been writing 1059-3, 1059-4, 1061-1 etc. and have sore fingers because of ripping the bags open….

What am I doing you ask? I am on working over my spring break. As a graduate student, my life is connected to Kansas State University. So when my boss (Mitch) asked me to help harvest over spring break, I readily accepted. Now I am here at our winter nursery. Yesterday we finished harvesting everything from the field and now we are threshing it. We should finish tomorrow and do paperwork on Wednesday and ship of Thursday. I return on Friday. Need to run.

Kersh <><
Parguera PR

Pooh

I went to the library last night.

I picked up another Pooh book titled ‘When We Were Very Young’. It is a poetry book, filled with quirky verses about things that don’t really matter but matter very much so.

I also grabbed some reading material for the long plane ride over spring break. I am so excited about next week.

Puerto Rico here I come!