What a difference a year makes?

Wow. I came back to this blog to track my progress and saw it had been more than a year since my last post. In that time...

-I had a second daughter
-The first African-American in history was elected president
-The Bears got a franchise quarterback
-The economy went down the tubes
-Anand became world champion
-I played in 10 rated events

That number, to me, is shocking. At my peak, I recall calculating I played in 53 rated events in a 1 year span- more than one event per week. Of those 10 events, one was a dual event (the US G/60 and 30 were the same weekend) and another was a 3-game match. In my college years I would estimate I averaged 35 events a year, at a minimum. Ten events is likely an all-time low for a 1-year span, though to actually go back and sift through all of my MSA records from month to month is a job too tedious and time consuming to interest me.

OK, so, where am I on the path to LM? My last update included all events through the 2008 US Qualifier. Therefore it did not include the following past events:

-2008 Iowa Closed (5 games)
-2008 US G/60 (4 games)

After those two events my rating slipped into the higher 2100s for a good portion of the year- nearly 10 months. I just competed in the 2009 Okoboji Open (results and games here) which will push my rating back above 2200 for the first time in 2009 and the first time since June of 2008. The Okoboji Open was also 5 games, so, the official numbers:

New Rating: 2218
Games Played: 253
Games left: 47