Tuesday, November 28, 2017

3017/11/27 - Jealousy

As I mentioned in a previous post, my wife Val’s ex has become one of my best friends. And the fact that Zeh and I can be friends without any jealousy has worked out well over the 6 years that I’ve known Val. 

Even early in the relationship I remember overhearing Heloisa at age six telling her friends at school “I have two daddys!’ That melted my heart. 

Anyway I’ve always seen Zeh as Heloisa’s father, rather than Val’s ex-husband, and he has proven to be an excellent dad, and does his share of parenting. It’s really nice to have the help and we have become one happy family. 

I often think that if my father wasn’t such a jealous man, he would have been proud of me. 

I remember after returning from a successful climb of Denali, we showed my parents a slide show. As they were leaving my house, my dad leaned into my ear, and instead of giving congratulations, he said “l owe you for this. Next time you come over our house, I’m going to make you sit through two hours of golf slides.”

Sunday, November 26, 2017

2017/11/26 - Team Chess

This might seem a little strange, but my wife Valeria’s ex-husband Zeh has become a best friend of mine. He’s here at the house at least four times a week, helping Heloisa with her homework, having dinners with us, cycling with me, and best of all, playing what we call “Team Chess”.

We play together against a random player on Chess.com under the handle “TeamHeisenberg”.

When we started earlier this year in March, Zeh was very much a beginner chess player, barely knowing how the pieces move. But he saw me playing all the time and expressed a desire to learn. 

The problem with teaching someone chess is that it’s no fun if the student never wins, and it’s no challenge or fun for the instructor to just let them win. So I came up with the idea of us playing together as a team. We could discuss our moves and strategies. In the beginning it was just me explaining my plan, but soon Zeh was suggesting alternatives and catching my blunders. 

This worked out great because we either both lost or both won the games, but never against each other. In fact in the ten months and 91 games we have played, we have yet to play against each other. 

And we have found that together we play better than either of us alone. In other words, both of us also have separate accounts on Chess.com, but neither of us have a rating as high as TeamHeisenberg does. In fact TeamHeisenberg’s is 200 points higher! 

And in eight short months Zeh has been playing, he has reached the 62.7 percentile among the millions of serious players on Chess.com. 

Saturday, November 25, 2017

2017/11/25 - Just a tip

Here’s a tip. If you really want to here my “crazy” shit, follow this blog between the hours of 11 PM and 6 AM. That’s because the following morning, I usually wake up and delete whatever I wrote the night before. 

I’ve actually been writing a lot every night, but the next morning I wind up deleting it all. And I keep wondering why I’m even doing this. 

Thought for tonight... I’ve been switching from seat-to-seat all my life on the Titanic. Maybe I should just go to the bar room. 

Friday, November 10, 2017

2017/11/10 - Dear Louie CK

Dear Louie,
You were once my favorite comedian. I loved your jokes. I memorized some and repeated them. I recommended you to my friends and family, including my pre-teen step-daughter.
Then you did the the “Horace and Pete” series. The cast was great, but the story was one one of the most depressing that I’ve ever watched, and you played the leading dark cheerless role. 
The thing is, you were so fucking good at it, so convincing, that I couldn’t believe that isn’t the real you. My opinion of you changed forever and I could no longer see you as being a funny guy. I had the same reaction to comedians Jerry Louis after seeing him drunk on the tellethons, and Michael Richards after hearing him spew racial hate. 
And now this... How can I get this disgusting image of you out of my head? How can I look at you without seeing you jerking off in front of unwilling women. 
You’re a pig Louie. 

Goodby,
Steve