please celebrate the return of the chess club

The chess club is my favorite thing ever! For many bullet-able reasons. Bullets time!!

• It has taken the place of the void that was left in my life after Mrs. H stopped quiz bowl. So, maybe it was fun to hang in Ms. Stanley's room and answer random questions that we all knew would not really help us in the competition, but there was too much craziness and not enough Quiz-Bowliness. I missed the good ol' days of Freshman and Sophomore QB. This year, for me at least, Quiz Bowl is totally absent. Mainly because of the lack of teacher sponsorship and the scheduling conflicts. I did, however, lament the fact that I wouldn't have my weekly dose of QB fun times. Because that's what they really are- totally fun times. But this Chess Club thing is like the rebirth of the QB atmosphere! I'm the only girl besides Mrs. H, much like it was in the old days back with Sarah and I being the only girls on QB.
• The kids that are in it are the QB type; collectively, we have quite a broad expanse of knowledge. For example: While commenting on the fact that I always thought it was "manawar" or something along those lines, instead of "man-of-war" as Bodnar told us, Harry Appler told me that it was, in fact, "man-o'-war." It made so much sense! The best part about it was that everybody was interested in it, at least to some degree. And Michael O'Melia and Pang and I talked about some Bio while I was studying. (Pang isn't in C-squared technically, because she says she doesn't know how to play and/or always loses, and she was just hanging out watching Teng and Sailor's little brother's game)
• It's just like QB except without the competition or feeling of total inferiority by not knowing the answers to any questions- ever. Haha. I mean, I knew the occasional answer, but still. I can win chess games more often than I can answer a question correctly.
• I like playing chess! Brad and I played a couple games. I definitely needed to get back in the groove of playing chess, since the last time I really played for reals was in 6th grade. I was pretty awesome; I won one of the three tournaments. I'm sure that I'll not win all of these, especially against crazy chess people like Jacob.
  

So, there you have it. Thursday afternoons are awesome. Chess club is awesome. It's funny to listen to Sailor laugh about random stuff, and to listen to Teng and Sailor's brother playing games saying things like "Ohh, man. Are you sure you want to make that move?" and things like that the whole game, and to listen to Michael O'Melia and Matt Welker both discredit their chess skills or something like that, and to listen to all of those freshmen boys be freshmen boys, and to listen to Jacob giving cryptic comments to other chess players, and to have Mrs. H watchign over it all with a sense of satisfaction. Too bad the school year's almost over.