One is the loneliest number

Oh, Nilsson, you were so right!

Never enter data alone when you're tabbing. It's as simple as that. I know this, but I don't always act on it. Knowing what you should do and not doing it is all sorts of wrong. Morally, intellectually—you name it. Henceforth and forthwith I swear it on my pimp belt buckle: never again. I will grab anyone I can to read ballots and watch me enter them. I have a hundred various excuses why I should not be blamed for the errors at the RR, but I don't buy any of them. Oh, well. Live and learn. Again. (I mean learn again, not live again. If I do come back in another life, I think I'll skip coaching the next time around and concentrate more on the old golf game.)

It was an eventful weekend, in many ways. First off, we learned that BG won't be happening, which is quite a disappointment. I saw a note from their coach saying that they simply didn't have enough entrants to expect to be able to pull it off. But the thing is, coaches are notoriously late in signing up for tournaments, unless they expect a waitlist; it's the nature of the beasts. Even Bump allows me the unfortunate opportunity to reply to about a dozen or so coaches way before the deadline that there isn't enough room; I do this year after year and still people wait till the last minute. I can't make it any clearer that late is a bad thing, but coaches operate on Coach Time. Which apparently, at least to some extent, helped torpedo BG. Too bad.

As a result, we're back in the States business. I mean, we will probably field an entry at least of novices. I had a long talk with Bro J about my latest letter at some point during Bigle X, and he definitely seems to be doing what he can. No one expects changes this year, of course, but changes in the future could be really meaningful for debate in NY. I look forward to it. I do so much want a solid state final at the end of the season; it's my disappointment in not having one that got me going on this in the first place, and not any anger against the folks in the hot seat. So, I'm sanguine that improvements will come.

Tabbing the novice tournament with The Enforcer was a piece of pie. Plenty of judges, to put it mildly, although not as many as the varsity division. We all started out in the high school, which meant in Lynne's classroom. We had begun entering judge strikes on the ride up, since Kaz was in the car with me. We tried to create a set of team blocks to prevent the Singleton Anomaly, where all the singletons hit each other in the random rounds, but the program balked after the fifth block, so Kaz and Father Hahn simply handled the issue manually on the schems (but they did handle it). Once at Lex, Kaz and Fr H did their thing, I did mine, and Chris Palmer, handling Pfft, did his. This was the first time I met Palmer, and we talked a lot later. Primarily we talked about Yale. He works their speech tab, and he's working toward getting them to set a solid limit on all the divisions. I actually told him I'd volunteer to help tab if they kept to 160 entries for which they would have complete access to 40 rooms, and I meant it. I would love Yale if it were manageable. It's a great setting, it's a great time of the year, their parli judges are probably the most capable of the Ivy folks in adjudicating LD. It's their lack of understanding the problems of tournament direction that kayoed them in 2005. If they learn from their mistakes (is there a theme to this entry?) then things could be quite promising for 2006.

While I would like to claim that the Enforcer and I managed to escape the tournament for great amounts of debauchery, on Friday the best we could do was sneak off to Yangtze for some kung pao beef, but that was fine. I really enjoy the E's company; he's one of the few right wingnuts I know who has the armaments to back up his opinions. We tree huggers need more wingnuts in our circle of acquaintances. It keeps us honest. I'm reminded of my conversation with our bus driver back at Lil Lex: he mentioned that he was going deer hunting the following week, and I told him I had one serious question to ask. He pulled himself up and girded his loins, because I guess he thought I intended to vilify hunting, but my question was, given that I can walk out into my back yard and pop half a dozen deer over the head with a frying pan before they even register my presence, what's the difference of shooting them in the wild. He explained, and I was satisfied. I mean, if they are that easy to pick off, where's the sport? In real life, you have to throw the frying pans at them, and that's a lot harder.

Saturday the E and I moved to some grammar school, where we had a lovely large library to ourselves where we could hear the rain falling on the roof with the force usually associated with Armageddon. We couldn't even pretend to escape for debauchery this time, since we were the titular adults in charge, so lunch was the cardboard box that some pizza had once traveled in. It wasn't good, but there was plenty of it! Plenty of Diet Coke in the judges' lounge, too, and DC is the fuel that really runs tournaments, as anyone can tell you. The Huds didn't exactly tear the place apart, but Termite managed both to break and to solidify his new nickname. He really was using the teddy bear with the termites example. Where do people come up with this stuff? After octos we headed back to yet another school for the winding down, rejoining the Pfffters and the Varsity tabbers. Remarkably enough, the tournament ended about 9 or 9:30, which must be some sort of record, enabled by the 4 single-flighted Varsity rounds the previous day. The Sailors, as Noah called them, left around 8:00 or so, into the miserable weather that was arriving from the west, so miserable that some parent woke me up on the cell phone in the middle of the night to ask where the tars had gone, and I wondered for the bazillionth time why my gobs don't exactly explain to their p units what the plans are. How would I know the wherabouts of the swabbies (is that enough synonyms for sailor to shut you up for a while)? Call your a.b. yourself (there: I threw in one extra; I don't do crosswords for nothing, my friend). Oh, well.

I never did get much of a chance to chat with Noah, aside from listening him to him rant about the end of debate as we know it. Given that I slept very little the first two nights, I lay awake thinking about the end of debate as we know it myself, and I have some ideas. I'll get to those in a day or two. So, I still need a larger shot of Noahification; it will come soon, I hope.

Just to establish if, indeed, this is the end of debate as we know it, I visited a couple of the RR rounds. One was rather excellent, Tim v Matt, both arguing quite well that it is NOT the end of debate as we know it. Tim's aff about urbanization may lack a link to reality (really!) but it's meaningful, and both debaters argued clearly and strongly. And they both do very well everywhere they go. Thank goodness! There's hope yet that all is not lost.

Sunday night at dinner I sat next to Case and Rhoads and we talked about this and that, shopwise, especially about developing novices, and I picked up some good advice. I also managed to have the brainstorm of all brainstorms. Every year we start our novices on the track that NFL randomly lays out for us, to wit, the Sept-Oct resolution, quickly followed by the Nov-Dec. It is mere coincidence if these topics are actually good for training newbies. So why not take a topic that IS good for training newbies, and start them on that? Every year, which would mean that you as coach would be able to develop training based on a predictable starting resolution? And run it through November (or maybe even December). I realized that I have the authority to pull this off, as long as I can get a few others to agree. Which means that the heads of the families need to confab. Lynne is the head of the Massachusetts territories; I run New York, and we're both on board with this. That leaves the City, and Don DeMichele, who I do think will agree. My leaning is toward the no-gov/opp-gov. Lynne was thinking free speech. Whichever. We'll narrow it down, pick one, and go on from there.

If they only paid me, I'd really be earning my keep around here.

If there was any high point to the weekend, it was trying to get into my frozen-over car Sunday night. The only ingress was the hatch, through which we unceremoniously tossed Craig in the hope that he could break through from the inside. Eventually we got one back door to open, and after an ad hoc game of Twister we managed to get the old Zamboni started. We drove around for a while just to see if anything else would de-ice, but without much luck. After dinner I drove CLG to Alewife, which helped some, and then it didn't get all that cold Sunday night, so by Monday morning three out of four doors worked. And three out of four ain't bad.

For the ride back we had the extra added attraction of Claire, for reasons I won't trouble you with, although she seems happy enough to share them on her own. Much Spades was played, since we now had 4 passengers, plus much singing of Disney songs, which were an unexpected hit. And a new rule was established: If "It's a Small World" comes on the box, you can't skip it. It's the price you have to pay for all the good songs.

Back home, all was calm. Until I read my email. About which more tomorrow, since I would imagine the soap opera has continued (I haven't checked my mail yet today, since I can live without the stuff for hours on end and never notice).