A few things to update:

I was posting about the reunification match between Veselin Topalov and Vladimir Kramnik for the World Chess Championship in October but unless you were truly following the match on your own through official sources I kinda-sorta left you all hanging...! 

The match ended up with a tie score of six points apiece, so things went into tiebreaks.  It was in this phase that Vladimir Kramnik emerged the victor and was crowned the unified World Chess Champion by FIDE (World Chess Federation).

Here is some video of the last seconds of the final (tiebreak) game of the match, and the moment Kramnik clinched the title! (In Dutch):

http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/nos/nieuws/2006/oktober/video/20061013

 

Bridget and Rowen have of course returned from their trip to Florida.  They had a wonderful time and I wish I had been able to go along.  We are planning on going to visit Bridget's parents again over Thanksgiving.

 

It looks like that in addition to my duties as an instructor with Kid Chess, I will now be part of the Kid Chess IT team.  There are a number of new projects about to get underway, the first being a migration of the Kid Chess website and online content to a new ISP and server space.  I am very excited about this, not only because of the increased responsibility, but I also pick up a couple of extra hours a day working on these projects, further increasing my pay!  And I can do much of the work online at home!  This reduces the pressure on me to find other part time employment in the mornings, although I will probably still having to find something.  I have still been actively checking out options, but many prospective employers have little flexibility with even their part-time schedules.

Originally, I was going to be a Customer Service Rep in a virtual call center environment, acting as an independent contractor and being incorporated.  It was going to require me to have a quiet space to work with no restrictions.  This was going to be quite doable during the mornings once Bridget was at school and Rowen was at daycare...and once summer rolled around, we were going to change daycare providers to ahve Rowen away during the days in the summer to continue the trend.  Once Bridget became pregnant, however, I came to realize I was not going to be able to pull this off in the home environment we have.  We live in far too small a place and will have no space to work like that. 

Now, that being said, I can still find work from home, doing legitimate things like medical coding and/or transcription...but that would require some time, effort and some significant financial backing.  Check out this link for more info:  http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/CareerManagement/story?id=2441875&page=1

I have also looked into temp work...I have my employee file up to date with the local Randstad office just in case something comes up.

I have also been considering options on teaching chess by giving private lessons, but the new angle is checking with the retirement communities and nursing homes and seeing if any older folks would be interested in private lessons and also some group lessons...you are never too old to learn...!  A couple of hours a week would pay well.  I need to get more research done on this.

Today I took Rowen to the Mt. Berry Square Mall here in Rome for Trick or Treating.  Many of the merchants and vendors dress up and hand out candy to the kids that come.  However, there were noticeably fewer that participated this year, and that was disappointing.  I saw some interesting costumes, though...especially with the adult costumes!

Rowen's Halloween costume this year was Peter Pan...his Grammy Reinwald made it over thirty years ago for Bridget to wear, and we were afraid that Rowen would not fit into it by next year, so we felt that it was now or never...

I took a few photos of Rowen in his costume with my cellphone camera.  Have a look at my pride and joy dressed up as Peter Pan: