Permission to come aboard, sir!

So maybe we have a couple of new Sailors. It’s hard to say. Two impressive recruits showed up last night, but one of them was ambivalent, having some sort of other stuff comprising the semblance of a life, and the other one for all his natural desire to argue about everything hasn’t yet taken the magic step of sending me the starter email. I promised them the stars and the moon, audiences with the great crowned heads of Europe, free bus rides to Lexington and Monticello and Newark, but nothing seemed to work. It will be interesting to find out how many Speechonauts return tonight. Sanguine I’m not, as they say (whoever they are).

All is quiet on the Puppian front. Presumably MJP is going well; no one has complained that the rankings aren’t working. CP has suggested that we use Google Voice for collecting data from the judges, which we may do, but now it looks as if we’re going to be based in one building for all of Saturday and one other building for all of Sunday, so by the time we get people trained Friday night to text us results, we won’t need them to do it anymore. It’s nice not to have everyone scattered to the winds over a broad campus. One is so much more likely to get the results back in a timely manner. But certainly with the Tiggers, where far-flinging was the rule, having the Voice account was dramatically useful, and timeliness held. You’ve got to love all these modern conveniences.

The People’s Champion wants to tab a tournament. I can’t imagine why, but I’m happy to bring him in when an opportunity arises, maybe at an MHL, especially if we don’t have any novices for him to cover as a judge. Lord knows that at the MHLs we are often a hand or two short in the back room. I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve had to run out into the street and haul a homeless person into the building to help us out. A cup of coffee and a baloney with Velveeta sandwich and you’ve got a friend for life.

Jules and the Nostrumite have sent me the next episode of Nostrum. Recording it tomorrow will be tough, so I’ll have to try to get to it tonight after the Speechonaut session. Forgive me if my voice is a little scratchy after trying to convince the folks at the meeting that life isn’t half as miserable as they think it is. Unless, in fact, it is. We’ll just have to see who wins the convincing contest.