travel morning

Today I head to Houston for work, while Sunday I head to North Carolina for work on Monday. Saturday my in-laws visit. I got a form rejection slip from a poetry review in Alabama. The upside of this is that I have poems I can send elsewhere, to complete a submission with a poem I have been waiting to submit. The downside, of course, is that technology renders rejection slips even smaller and less fascinating than they used to be--this one looked vaguely like the tiny strips of phone numbers that one tears off a "bike for sale" flyer on the campus bulletin board. One of the poems I sent there was one I thought for sure was a "keeper", but it has been thrown back. Perhaps I'll keep it in my heart.

My blitz chess rating on FICS is at 1415, so that the first stage in my ratings increase has been achieved. I still want to reach 1600 within eighteen months. I think that practice does make perfect, which does not accord with my usual theories.