“Nothing.”

“I think you may have something here.”

Thus, with a week in the books, some random musings …

- I did laundry last week and I realized that a good chunk of my clothes the past 2 years are now somewhat useless. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t buy too many new clothes recently. I’ll keep the iron, though, just in case.

- It’s going to be tough to motivate myself, but I will get around to it. Working with deadlines and meetings meant there was external pressure to get stuff done. Hopefully I can kick myself into gear this coming week. Of course, with tournaments approaching (I will take off in about 5 weeks) that will serve as an external push if I can’t get myself going.

- I’ll give myself a pat on the back for my parting gift. I ended up going with the Koss foldable headphones instead of the Sennheiser PX-100s because of the more supra-aural design and better sound leakage protection. The sound quality is slightly inferior in my view, but nothing easily noticeable and the protection it’ll give those around me from my music is quite useful. Throw in some quality music (Lupe Fiasco and The Roots) and a pair of good books, and I’m surprised how far $87 went.

- One of the books I got was Watchmen, a graphic novel by Alan Moore. I never was a big comic-book reader and haven’t read too many graphic novels (Tintin was good; The Dark Knight Returns is highly acclaimed, and while I thought it was good, but I wasn’t super-impressed), but Watchmen was really good. I had got the recommendation from an old Chronicle article (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/22/DD48V60PV.DTL) that I had bookmarked and stumbled back upon when thinking of what I might want to buy.

- Oh yes, and my first chess training purchase. It was quite odd to buy a few chess books and then realize that it’s all covered. I have a bad habit of collecting books and never reading them, but hopefully I read these even though they will essentially be free. Bingo!