Now I'm 18K...and 1K...

Well, the American Go Association's new ratings are out, and my rating is finally up to 18 kyu! I was 10-7 in tourneys I entered as 19 kyu. I hope I can do well enough at my new ranking to earn another promotion. I was going to enter one last weekend, but the lack of a new ranking, combined with being exhausted after getting back from China with a cold, dampened my enthusiasm enough to keep me from going. My next tournament will either be the end of January (if I feel like driving down to Richmond) or the beginning of February.

In other news, I've earned Premier Executive 1K status on United Airlines. What is 1K status? Well, originally United only had two characters to signify status, so 1K=100K=100,000 miles. I like to think of 1K as "1 thousand hundred miles". So did I really fly 100,000 miles this year? That seems like a lot (around the world 4 times). Not really. United gives a minimum of 500 miles for each segment flown. That policy padded my stats a little, but the real bonus is the 150% credit for first and business class. (There was one penalty, where if you take a 1-stop, United only gives you credit for the direct routing. That cost me 70 miles.) I added everything up, and by the end of the year (after flying back from Arizona), I will have actually flown "only" 95,960 miles. The new status is, I think, what got Christina and me upgraded on our flight out here to Arizona, so it already seems to paying dividends.