the timboucher experience

My chess game is improving by leaps and bounds. Have only missed two or maybe three nights in the past few weeks I’ve been here. A couple people here I haven’t been able to beat yet, but I’ve been studying their moves & decision-making patterns & working on stealing their powers. Making simultaneous advances in my carpentry skills. Suddenly struck upon a technique to build a customizable re-usable flippable arch for capturing nice curves that can be repeated in a cartoon. Have never had a blast of creative breakthrough energy hit me like that before in the carpentry world, so I’ve been riding that high for a few days and trying to compound those advances, double it all up on each other. Thinking through chess games and carpentry problems as well as staging issues has zapped my step-by-step logical/logistical mind into high gear which I’m revving wherever possible with a new take-charge attitude. Figure I’m almost thirty, I can see the road ahead, I can use the tools and techniques at my disposal to get what I want and go where I want, or at least to usher in changes that are favorable to my position and strategy on the board. It’s quite here now. Everyone has gone to sleep as tomorrow is matinee day, our first. Last night was the season opener, which was followed by a lovely soiree. Things are humming along, making mental plans to put pieces into place for the fall, gain new skills, shore up old ones, work with people who are better than me, work my ass off, put together a bunch of money, work more jobs in more places, maybe buy a vehicle, start a bunch of side businesses, new hobbies like brewing in the basement (assuming I have a basement). I don’t know, we’ll see how it all pans out as other players make their moves on the board. Should be a good time though. Planning to revisit tenth grade math and re-learn old geometry/logic proofs. Should help both my chess game and my building. Hoorah. Thinking through a new tattoo for the end of the summer, a lily to match the rose and complete the circuit…

Oh, and my 29 and a halfth birthday (Saturn returns) is in three days. One or two days after that, I’ll be playing an executioner onstage here for our production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Yeomen of the Guard. How apropos on a lot of levels.

• “Legends” of 9/11
• Horses
• Letting your fingers do the walking (muscle-memory and physically encoded information)
• Baby, Can You Feel My Chi?
• Simple Dexterity Exercises