Physics Lab; Smiling; Office Depot; Chess Club

I went to my first 8 AM Physics lab today. It lasted about 30 minutes, and about 10 of that was waiting in line to have my picture taken. It’s for the professor to remember our faces. And I failed to smile. But due to the long line, I decided not to make any attempt to have my picture retaken. So if anyone ever sees that picture, please note: I intended to smile more. I think it makes me look better and more approachable. At least I hope it does.

I want to expand on my third new year’s resolution. Smile. My goal is to smile more. Not only does it make me happy, but it makes other people happy too. Often it makes me look silly. And so I hold it back. I’m embarassed and thus choose to hide my happiness. Or I’m not really happy and thus I don’t want to smile. But I want to change that. I’m going to smile no matter what. (Admittedly, that’s an exaggeration; I’m only going to try to smile a lot more.)

Earlier today, I also went on my farthest running trip yet: all the way to Office Depot, about 1.1 miles down Figueroa. J.Lo came with me. He’s simply amazing. He runs six+ miles a day, and he offered to come with me. Plus, he let me borrow his backpack so I could easily carry stuff back. He’s an awesome person. I bought some binders and a pack of dividers. That’s the first step to completing New Year’s Resolution No. 1: getting organized. I’ve thrown the papers into the appropriate binders. Now to actually do some labeling and then some work.
Well, I just got back from the USC Chess Club. It was awesome! Today is the day I can officially say that I actually have some confidence when playing chess. I just need to move faster. I also noticed that, when concentrating on a game of chess, the intensity can be so great that I get even warmer than I do when running two miles! My face and hands get really warm. Tonight I almost started sweating. And even though I was really cold when walking back to the dorm earlier today, when the sun was still out (although it was setting), I was warm and not cold at all on the way back to my dorm at 10:50 PM. Such is the nature of chess.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I burned as many calories playing chess as running (and when running, my breathing is a limiting factor; with chess, there are no limits).