I see the blog hosting site Bloglovin’ is sending out notices again, so, who knows?, maybe they’ll send an alert about this again. I should be so lucky! I don’t have a lot to say, or a lot of time to elaborate on whatever I could say. But I want to get something out there to test the notification process.
I had a lucky spell this month, but it seems to be receding now. First I bought a keno ticket and it won $50. I bought another one and it won $41.50. Then another that won $308, then one that won $134. After that I won fifty or so a couple times, but the thrill was gone after the 308. I put a bunch in savings and pocketed the rest. Since the flurry of winnings, I have bought a few losers so I’m cutting back while I’m still ahead.
Next weekend is our big chess tournament. We haven’t had one in three years, and the response has been crazy. Normally we get around 60 players, but this year we could have had double that, but we cut registration off at 100. I have no idea if that many players will fit in our building or if there are enough chairs and tables. It should work out, but the potential for disaster is moderate. Every day I am bombarded with emails and queries, and some days I spend literally hours responding to people and transferring money. My last weeks of summer are blowing by. The guy who usually helps set up this event is having cognitive troubles, so I have done way more correspondence than normal, and I don’t know if I want to do this every year by myself. Although, to be fair, the TD I talked into helping is doing a lot of the organizing of the tournament itself, so I can be thankful for that. I complain about this event every year, but the truth is it takes me out of my routine of sitting on the sidelines. And without this sort of disruption in my life, I would stay cozily in the shadows.
I had a conversation recently with a blogger named Sherry Cassells, who writes a blog called Feeling Funny. It’s sort of like this blog (except more polished) – it’s a day to day blog of thoughts and stories, with bits of fiction she’s written added in. I highly recommend it to anyone. One thing she said to me that I am wanting to adopt, is the idea of changing this blog’s name to eightbeer_shakespeare like my email address. I have to admit, it’s catchier than Teflon Ghost for sure. When I used to walk around reading meters I would avoid getting drawn into long, time-sucking conversations with people by being so intentionally bland that people lost interest in me immediately. The downside was I often heard a snippet of their life’s story before I bored them away. So months later I would sometimes encounter the same person, and I would say something like “How did the operation on your mom’s hip turn out?” and they would be shocked and swear they never met me before etc. In my mind, I was comparing my disappearing act to the mafia boss ‘Teflon Don’ who no one could get a criminal charge to stick to, except I was more like a teflon ghost in that no one ever saw me before either. It’s sort of a sad name. If I can figure out a way to change it without deleting the 100 or so posts I’ve written, I probably will.
I’m through rambling for now. I will now resume my life as a stress case who is organizing a medium sized event and studying for a career-altering test he doesn’t really want to take. Can’t wait to see if anyone gets a notification!