Thursday, September 12, 2013

Check, Please. I Mean, Check-Mate

For Christmas last year, Tiffany's mom Patty gave us a hand-painted Peruvian chess set. It's beautiful. The pieces are stored inside the board, which opens and shuts like a box.

Tiffany and I don't know anything about chess. That's not true. I did love the movie Little Man Tate, and my mom's stepdad showed me how to play once or twice as a young girl...you know what, I really feel I must stick with:

Tiffany and I don't know anything about chess. But we decided to play a few nights ago.
While I was finishing the dishes, Tiffany found an app that explains the rules of the game and also lets you play against an unknown, unnamed, virtual competitor. When I came out of the kitchen, she was sitting with her phone in front of her face, giggling:

"Oh, shoot," she said. "He got me!"

"Tiffany, let's play."

"Yeah, hold on.. it's so nice because he suggests moves for me...Whoops! Bad move!"

"Do you want to, like, play a real person?"

As beautiful as our board is, it's not quite regulation. Tiffany didn't have all her pawns (little kneeling men), but she had three bishops (slightly taller, non-kneeling men). So we made one of her bishops a pawn by coloring a "P" on his underside.

The app said the player using the white pieces always goes first. But our Peruvian pieces are reddish and blue-ish. Except for my two rooks, which were grey and looked kind of like the ghosts in Pac-Man.

"You go first," I said. "You're wearing a white t-shirt."

Early in the game, things went poorly for Tiffany.

"Is that your queen?" I asked politely.

"Yes, I think this is her hair."

I took her queen with my knight (a bucking horse).

Tiffany's knights were actually llamas. And she lost them not too long after her queen when she put them in spots diagonal from my pawns.

The app said kings are weak because they can only move one spot at a time. But Tiffany's king was even weaker because even though the app specified that kings can capture, he failed to take my bucking horse both times he was next it.

"I need suggested moves," Tiffany said.

Ultimately, our kings were a couple of spaces apart in the middle of the board by themselves. I began to wonder if they might negotiate a peace accord underwritten by their humans' incompetence. 

But then suggestion-less Tiffany moved her king right next to my ghost.

(Full disclosure: Tiffany beat me in about 5 moves the next night.)



Sunday, September 8, 2013

Halloween: No Rush Orders

I was never huge on Halloween. Asking people for things still makes me uncomfortable, so I always felt a bit awkward about ringing the doorbells of even neighbors we knew and holding out my pumpkin-shaped bucket. Also, I watched a lot of "Unsolved Mysteries" with my brother and was terrified of ringing the doorbells of people I didn't know. 

I gave up the holiday much earlier than my friends, preferring to stay at home and pass out candy with my mom.

The 5-year-old daughter of our friends is another story altogether.

Julia loves Halloween. 

On one of our recent visits, Julia told Tiffany and me she was going to be a celebrity this year. She pointed to a picture of a girl in a silver-sequined dress on a well-worn page in her Halloween catalog (did you know there are Halloween costume catalogs?). 

"Cool!" I said, "I wore a dress just like that for prom one year."

Julia looked at my soccer shorts and tanktop and raised her eyebrows. I think she may have been slightly impressed.

I pointed at a cowgirl on another, much less well-worn page.

"I was a cowgirl once," I said. "Maybe I'll be a cowgirl again this year."

"I wish you had told me sooner," Julia said solemnly. "Then we both could have been cowgirls."

Now it was my turn to be impressed.

"We have plenty of time," I said, thinking I could make her a cowgirl in a couple of hours. A hat. Some boots. A bandana. Yee-haw. 

She shook her head and smiled at my ignorance of the time it takes to assemble a proper Halloween costume. There were shoes to consider, she explained. And make-up. And the perfect bag.

"Maybe next year," she said kindly, turning back to her sequins.