Let’s see, let’s see, let’s see.
First of all, of course, there’s the annoying stuff, like the school that always insists on leaving before fulfilling their judging obligation. Same school every time, same look of wonder in their beady little eyes when we tell them they can’t do it, same reluctance on my part to let them into future tournaments where I’ve got any control because who needs the aggro?
And then there’s also that one school that didn’t show up at all. They also didn’t show up at Monticello. They are on the waitlist for the Tiggers, and I’m running the waitlist. I mean, what are the odds of that working out in their favor? The problem with getting yourself on my bad side is my ubiquity. I may be right or I may be wrong, but regardless, I'm the one pushing the buttons. Sacrificing the occasional goat to me can’t hurt.
I did start the novice events with a pretty negative complaint about what their predecessors had done in the past to cost me a whole wing of the building. Not these people, but their schools, and this could be the last time, yadda yadda yadda. I warned that I would be patrolling the halls to look in on them, which turned out to be remarkably easy as each door has a big window, or I could walk on the path outside and look in from there, so I didn’t have to disrupt anyone. Everyone seemed to be behaving. The only thing negative I heard was one idiot judging with his earbuds in, but I looked at his ballots and they were fine, so presumably he was just too dumb to take them out and was actually listening to the debaters and not his favorite G-pop groups.
A couple of new programs have survived so far, having debuted at the First Timers’, and are doing quite well. This is very nice to see. It’s hard enough just to keep body and soul together when you’re starting out, but to actually take some trophies? That’s an achievement. Usually by now the programs that peeped out at the first dawn have burrowed back in for another time. This is good.
O’C, as has been stated numerous times, only was able to stay for half the tournament because his associate, the G Man, was getting married. I like to thank my tabbers with a nice bottle of wine for their efforts. For O’C, it was a nice half-bottle of wine. There was also no Cruz Award this year, but I did find a menopause video for him to carry him over to next year.
As I said yesterday, I’ll eliminate the award ceremonies for the Varsity next year, but I’ll still keep one for the novices. I’ll do it down at the grammar school, which has a right-sized auditorium. The thing about novices is that the jokes either work really well with them (the word “orgasm” had them falling in the aisles) or else they look at me like I’m speaking Ardhamagadhi. They also liked my shout-out for Mitt Romney, probably because it’s the last time they’ll ever hear anyone do so. See ya, Mitt.
The Sailor runners seemed to be doing a good job; whenever I saw one, they were working. There were a couple I told to watch some rounds who apparently felt that this was the equivalent of snorkeling in quicksand, but I don’t necessarily chalk that up as my loss.
I am happy to report that we were awash with retirees. We threw all of them into LD at one point when we eked out a single-flighted round (there’s still blood on the library floor), but the ones who wanted Pffft mostly got it. We had a great alum dinner on Friday, when I wasn’t too exhausted to appreciate it, at India House, of course. We had some leftovers that we gave to Michelle to give to her male roommates at the funeral home, who will, apparently, eat anything (and live anywhere). Much discussion of living at a funeral home ensued, but for me, having had friends in grammar school and high school both who did exactly that, it wasn’t much of an issue. I’ve also had some neighbors who I would have preferred that they were dead—much quieter that way—but for some folks, this was pretty odd. Not so odd though that Olivieri, who was going to stay with me, opted for the House of the Dead instead, because of access to an iron. I mean, it’s not that I don’t have an iron in my house, but not at that time of night. Maybe it’s another sign of aging on my part: I just can’t feature ironing after bedtime.
The next day the daughter came up and we picked out a Christmas tree and ate Greek food and saw Wreck-it Ralph. And Bump was over for another year.
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