Sunday, July 8, 2018

Last night I fell asleep quickly and only got up once at 5:15.  I fell asleep quickly again and woke/got up at 7:30.

Jose is already playing his next to last game which started at 8am this morning.  I should be able to find the result online in the next hour or two.

Teresa and I took a nap from 9am to 10:30.

Jose lost against the woman rated 2025 but he thought he had a win if he’d made a different move on move 16.  Sigh!  He sent me the game but I haven’t figured out how to open it with my chess software.

It’s 11:30 and I’m still waiting to hear from my son as to when and where we’re meeting today.

At noon I finally got a text from Jim.  He’s having a couple of palitos de queso in a nearby café.  I’m going to meet him at Starbucks in El Tesoro mall at 3pm so he can get his t-shirt repaired.

Jose’s last match is against a man rated 1914.  Wow!  What a strong tournament.  I checked his opponent’s opponents and he’s lost to some not so strong players so he might not be on top of his game and Jose might be able to take this guy.

Jose emailed me that he accidentally sent me an empty file so he’ll send me another one.

I left the apt at 2pm, walked over to Exito and quickly caught a taxi to El Tesoro mall.  This driver took the shortest, and thus fastest, route possible and I was at Starbucks 30 minutes early at 2:30.  I had a café mocca blanco while I waited for Jim.  He arrived about 3:10 having problems mainly finding Starbucks.

We found the 2^nd Adidas store but the worker there said that they weren’t able to add the “1” that had fallen off Jim’s “James Rodriguez 10” Colombia t-shirt.

We walked around looking for a restaurant where Jim could get arroz con pollo and he finally settled on the last place we found called Patacon.  He had sea bass with rice and a Coke.

He’s going to call me tomorrow to see if we can meet for lunch.  He went to the restroom and I caught a taxi (no line; no wait) back to Envigado.

I stopped in an almost empty Exito where I picked up the bottle of vanilla extract that Teresa had asked for and a bottle of Aunt Jemima maple syrup for me.

I made myself my last glass of iced tea from the pitcher I had made.  When I was in my teens my family would visit a friend of my mom’s who made the most delicious iced tea.  I have no idea what her secret was.  The only other time I’ve had iced tea that good, believe it or not, was at a restaurant in Kenab, Utah back in 2000.  I’m still trying to find the perfect combination of tea strength, sugar, and lemon.  And maybe I’m not using the right type of tea.

So, to summarize Jose’s games:

·       He had wins against a 1248 and a 1530.

·       He had losses against a 2126, 2000, 2025 and a 1914.

·       And a foreit win against a 2026.

The problem with playing in strong tournaments like this, you lose to much stronger players, beat much weaker players and seldom get a chance to play someone close to your own strength.

T-shirt of the day: Trust no one.