Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Debate: Moving right along

First of all, I’m glad to see that the Pope will soon be tweeting. Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything to say that isn’t irretrievably offensive, so I’ll keep my mouth shut.

The thing about tournaments is that, an hour later, you’re ready for another one. Just as the Tiggers are finishing up, the Gem of Harlem kicks into gear. They’ve got plenty of people registered, although there seemed to be some inadvertent slippage off the waitlist. CP reset it back to zero for me. The Gems are meeting today to begin getting rooms, always a tough process for them. I should start pulling people off the waitlist by the end of the week, starting with the long-distance folk (but not the long-distance folk that last year blew us off in favor of doing the NY club scene or whatever, or the long-distance folk who didn’t pick up their Sunday morning ballots at the Tiggers, etc., etc.) and the reliable friends of the tournament. One big problem will be assembling the tab room. I was hoping to corral CP himself, but he’ll be doing sleepy time down south, and Catholic Charlie is going all Catholic on us with some CFL meeting (no doubt discussing the Pope’s tweets). Oh, well. I’m not worried. I just need to find out who’s going to be around.

Coming up this weekend is Ridge. Nice and compact after sending people far and wide last weekend, although the numbers are pretty high. I’ve been going to Ridge for a while, perhaps from when it first started, and always liked it. I remember in the beginning when Dario was still there and the computers would turn off automatically at 10:00 pm and we’d unexpectedly lose all the data; this was before we all had more laptops than we know what to do with. I remember the year we tried the Indigo hotel, with smell-o-vision or whatever it was, and no one could find the place. I’ve always enjoyed the look on Y’s face when any of the tabbers slipped out to grab a latte or something down the road, as if we were abandoning him to the wolves. As far as tournament management is concerned, it’s a Machine, with Ridge kids everywhere doing what they’re supposed to do (or else, I guess, Y feeds them to the wolves). And one high point is this hidden little burger and shake place downtown. I’d highly recommend it, but if I told you about it, it would be even more crowded, so you’re on your own.

Tonight we’ll meet at Sailorville (last week was cancelled for yet more bad weather—we have not had a good run this season) and talk about the new topics. I like the subjects, but I’m not yet sure one way or the other on the PF wording. As for LD, it’s so old it’s got a beard, but there’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s as solid as the day is long for the endless stretch that is theoretically Jan-Feb. On the home front, we’re also champing at the bit to do a new TVFT, where I want to talk about Academy. We had thought of doing it on the fly at the Tiggers, but as always, there really wasn’t any fly to do it on. Oh, well. We’ll get to it, probably next week.

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