Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Manhattan. Keep Out!

Well, we're on the Do Not Travel list again. According to Dave, if it's yellow, we won't be mellow. And we won't be able to go to Manhattan. We'd already addressed this at NYCFL with NFA, which is in even worse straits, not being able to go to any boroughs period. All we'll be hit with is Regis now, because of the schedule adjustments the league made. Still, Regis is a big tournament for us, both LD and Congress. I can't do much, of course. It's really between the school board and the parents. I'll let them duke it out, or not, as the case may be.

Ms. Friedman spoke to us about immigration last night, and it was a big hit. She gave us lots of info, and really knew her stuff. We should have an expert talk on every topic.

As far as the name game is concerned, I now know who Tom is, because he got injured shadow boxing. So he's wearing a little brace on his wrist, and he's the guy with the really tough shadow. (Maybe it wasn't shadow boxing. Whatever.) The Doomed Prophet signed up for the listserver finally, so all's aboard who's coming aboard. I now know who Emcee's sister is. I also got to throw tennis balls at Emcee, which is not something I've been longing to do necessarily, but any excuse to throw things at the team is fine by me. Next week it's newbies only, and I'll drill down further into their identities. Probably without throwing things at them.

I did give out concepts plus V/Cs for novice cases. As I told them, this is a one-time offer. In the future they can come up with their own ideas. But over time we've found that giving them a leg up on the first topic for a couple of weeks is better than not.

Passed all the Yale info to Alan, who I trust will be a tough taskmaster. It's great to have dedicated parents; our team is mostly blest. Which means the kids are mostly blest. No wonder I want to throw things at them.

Today I start sending them bulletins of what they missed by not reading the Times. I always get a kick out of that, because there's always something. I enjoy explaining how to read the paper, I like making the crossword puzzle challenge (I had almost forgotten that, probably because no one's come close to taking me up on it in years). I don't exactly know if any of this works, that is, if I ever get non-Timesians and turn them into Timesians, but it can't hurt. Eventually I'll tire of it till next year.

Tonight I sort out the last of Bump and go public. Maybe. Then I need to update my judge training to include a soupcon of Pffft. Then there's updating the MHL mailing list and synching it with the Bump list and creating an invite for Le Petit Bronx.

And some odds and ends... You know: tending to Little Elvis, keeping Nano warm and snug, collapsing from exhaustion. The usual stuff.

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