Egoddess!

It's been a rough night. I worked like a maniac after I got home from the office to finish up my May, 2008 Chessville column which had been - ever so politely - called for, starting last Friday night. I started the thing three weeks ago but, per usual, at the end of the month crunch with all the news crashing down upon me and trying to decide which stories were most newsworthy for Chessville (well, damn it all, they all are, but then I may as well just copy and paste everything from Chess Femme News and this blog into a monthly article and be done with it - NOT! It would take up a large part of their website every month but, come to think of it, maybe that would be a good idea...) I worked on it Saturday AND Sunday, hours and hours. I didn't even realize that the IDJUTS at Chessville had been writing to me until this morning because they were using an alterate email address (not my primary - although they all bloody well know it). The reason I didn't realize it until this morning is because I DO NOT CHECK THAT EMAIL ADDRESS ON THE WEEKENDS. Well, that's the Chessville men for you. No wonder their website design is stuck somewhere back in the 1907's... Anyway, I absolutely hate this month's column - not because it's lousy but because it is so incomplete and disconnected. So, I emailed Mr. Webmaster (because my former Editor and I no longer SPEAK to each other) and said, okay it's ready. But you see, it's really not, but it's as ready as it is going to be because it's already far too long and has too many photographs of beautiful chess femmes (they're all beautiful in my eyes), and fascinating stories - arggghhh. I wanted to pick up on this month's theme of "fashion" but I ran out of space and time. The running gag (at least, it is supposed to be) is that Xena (who is a sort of action figure avatar for yours truly) does her thing every month and she allows me to snap some photos of her, which I use in the Chessville column, and every now and then "I" appear, as in March's column, where I showed up with my uber-expensive Coach bag and so women's handbags were a theme throughout the column. This month, Xena let me photograph her in a ratty looking pink towel - well - the fashion angles were obvious but I didn't have time to fully develop them and interweave them into the chess stories of the month. Not only that, I left out several interesting match and tournament results. Writing a column is @%^&3!)+. What I want to know is - where is that column that was only supposed to take an hour or two a month? That's what I was promised when I agreed to this undertaking. Ha! Double Ha! Triple Ha! In addition to compiling the chess femme news on a regular basis (which I do for Chess Femme News and when I'm not posting it there I'm posting it here at the blog, and that's all done out of sheer love for the game of chess, the female players I admire so much and just out of plain stubborness) I'm spending between about 18-24 hours each month putting Xena's Chessville column together. Talk about LABOR! Argggh, well, that's my vent for the night. As it's now past 11:30 p.m. and I'm absolutely exhausted, this is all the more I'm going to post tonight.