Woman Candidate Master

Last Friday I coughed up 50 euros to FIDE and as of today I am officially a Woman Candidate Master.  I had really mixed feelings about this.  Players like Judith Polgar make a strong argument that the womens' titles are worse than useless, actively harmful in fact.  And I managed to earn the title by dropping about 50 rating points (mostly to 11-year-old Josh Grabinksi, who will doubtless put them to good use)--but thereby reactivating a 27-year-old FIDE rating.

On the other hand, it's good for my morale, and might get me some freebies at chess.com.  And I have, except for the last day of the Oregon Open, been playing at close to Expert strength.  I've beaten some titled players in Online Chess as well.  My playing strength isn't ridiculously far off what the title implies.  (Washington State's other WCM is an 1800 player, though a young and rapidly improving one.)

The real goal is NM.  That is going to take a lot of improvement.