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Just an update on the Las Conchas fire…

I’ve received a few emails from folks wondering if I’m in the path of the fire that’s threatening Los Alamos county and the lab.   I appreciate the concern, very much!  But I’m comfortable and safe.  I don’t live near the Las Conchas fire area.  Please save your good thoughts and prayers for folks in the path of the fire.

(I actually live much closer to the Pacheco fire near the ski basin in the Santa Fe National Forest.)

I’ve just been instructed that I’m not to come to work tomorrow.    

The Las Conchas fire, which started in the Jemez mountains just this afternoon, is already burning so badly (thanks to this afternoon’s 50 mile per hour wind gusts– now you see why I complain about wind all the time) that they’re closing LANL tomorrow.  And they’re talking about evacuating the county. (That part doesn’t effect me, because I don’t live in Los Alamos county.)

The Pacheco fire, to my east, continues burning up the Santa Fe National Forest, very close to the ski basin.

When I bought my first house a few years ago, I owned very little furniture worthy of my new home.  I had a few things—a couple lamps, some dishes, way too many books—but aside from one antique dresser, I didn’t have anything in the way of actual furniture that absolutely had to come to the new digs with me.

Not even the bed. 

Here’s a bewildering coincidence that relates two of my recent blog entries.  This came to my attention a few days ago, while I was watching Bobby Fischer Against the World.  At the time I just about fell out of my chair.  (I’m clumsy that way.)  But, true to form, I’d forgotten to mention it until something reminded me this morning. 

In my previous post, I alleged that the chess world abounds with stories of…Well, let’s call them “eccentric personalities.”

I realized that might have been tarring things with an awfully wide brush.  I don’t have any concrete evidence that rates of mental illness are higher in the high-level chess playing population than in the general population.  There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that some elite chess players might be a bit bent.  But the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”, as the saying goes.  I’m not the first person to wonder about a correspondence, so perhaps somebody really has found a correlation. 

In the meantime, I dug up some anecdotes about great chess players of the past.