I got a couple chess books in the mail. Watson's two books on mastering the chess openings. I read over the intro stuff for the first volume while on the train because it didn't yet require a chess board. It seems masterful so far. A modern answer to Reuben Fine's The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings that actually does, in fact, give you the ideas behind them. I think after getting these books, I have enough material on all aspects of the game to last me several years of concerted study (well, I have the third volume on pre-order, but once that comes out...) - though some detailed books on particular openings might eventually be useful when I'm at that level. Previously, I felt I had enough on the endgame and enough in terms of annotated games collections, possibly enough for tactical study. I recently acquired what I think should be enough for strategy/middlegame play. All I had for the openings was the Fine book and MCO for reference.

I want to go home.

The people I watched Animaniacs with were surprised at how risque it was compared with how they remembered it. I was like, duh. I suppose I was a bit precocious, but I always got those things. Some of the characters and sketches were always a bit annoying to me and still are, but the general quality is fairly high. This and the Bullwinkle stuff is enough to keep my occasional - perhaps biweekly - need for television of some sort satiated.

Honestly, I really need to tackle annotated games more often. It's just so much easier to tackle tactical tests. Right now I'm performing at about 60-65% on my tests of level 50 and above on CT Art. I wish I had some metrics to compare against. And I need to play vigorous opposition more often.