“Sunday Picnic, Chess, and Frisbee”

Sunday afternoon, Corinne took a nice, long nap, and I went over to Gary & Ellyn's for a cookout with "whoever wants to show up with some food." (I brought a half-dozen jalapeño hamburgers, and some tortellini salad, all made by Corinne.)

A bunch of us sacked out in the living room in front of the Red Sox game while we waited for the food to cook. Thankfully, that didn't take long: watching regular season baseball on the tube is painfully boring.

After we ate, Darren challenged me to a game of chess at the table by the pool. I haven't played in a couple of years, but the only person I may have played against more often than Darren was Simon. (Simon and I played many games per day for a couple of months, Darren and I have been playing since we were teens.)

I started off well, capturing some of his key pieces and a number of pawns. He made a strong comeback, and had me on the ropes for awhile, even predicting (numerous times!) that I'd be in checkmate within two or four moves. We were frequently interrupted by people asking incredulously if we were "still playing the same game!?" My patient and completely fallacious response was that Darren takes a really long time to move. :-D Actually, in the old days I would take so long to move that he would either play another game with someone else (concurrently), or read a book!

In spite of his bold predictions, I staged my own strong comeback and nearly had the game sewn up... until I made a completely stupid move that resulted in instant checkmate. I should have used Darren's magical "undo" feature to make my bad move go away (ahem!), but instead I just conceded defeat.

After the game, Jed joined us for some frisbee in the front yard for about 45 minutes. Then we had supper, followed by more frisbee with three of the young'uns (Tommy, Tamar, and Autumn) doing very good imitations of Monkeys in the Middle. The festivities didn't end until it was almost too dark to see the frisbee about to hit you between the eyes.

All that throwing and chasing of the frisbee resulted in some really stiff, sore muscles. Monday morning, my right pec was on fire, and my right ankle hurt enough to make me wince just going down stairs. :-) It was worth it.

(Added an hour later: I'm so forgetful! One of the reasons I posted this was because Darren-the-lefty told me this morning (in an email) that his left arm was so sore he had to drive with his right.)

It's too bad we only have one vehicle. I didn't find out until later that Corinne wanted to go to the picnic after her nap, but didn't want to ask me to come get her. (There's another one, same place, next weekend...)