CatNuts

CFL Grands was Saturday. Oy, as the Catholics are wont to say.

O’C and I did LD and Pffft, 24 (I think) in the former and 14 or 16 in the latter. The nice thing is that you can take LD judges and put them into Pffft, although you really can’t do the opposite. We did so by accident just once, to great chagrin all around. But mostly we did things pretty well. The problem is that you have to find 3 judges for each flight, and can seldom find anyone who fits everywhere, and often you can’t find anyone who fits anywhere. So you have people going from this room to that room after flights, and in one case even one flight of LD and a second flight of Pffft in the same round. Tabbing magic! And tabbing nightmare. Fortunately, whenever things got really tough I was able to turn to O’C and see his empty chair as he went off gallivanting. He is the gallivantingest person I have ever met. Catholic Charlie, at least, was there when I needed him (I do a great DI when I’m trying to convince a reluctant judge to get the proverbial tail in gear). JV was doing speech, and was always available, except when an irate Scarswegian parent came storming in; they all had dinner reservations with Hillary and Bill or something. We always just directed them to Joe. God knows where he’d disappear to (and I mean that literally, this being CFL). Talk about great instincts.

(I don’t want to make it appear as if I haven’t been known to disappear at opportune moments at various tournaments. But this is my blog, so we’ll keep that to ourselves.)

Having a blizzard in advance didn’t help. Since my personal Piers is non-existent, I had to blow up the driveway through about ten inches Saturday morning, and my CRV was game until the last few feet, which required enormous backing and forthing for some reason, but eventually I landed on the road, which had most recently been ploughed by the town’s municipal Piers back in 1924. Still, I was able to collect Ewok on his corner, two Grabos halfway up their street, and Emcee at the edge of his snowy development. We were on our way with little ado from that point, with only the occasional icy spot on the highways. Parking around Stuy was non-existent, and I ended up in a garage that charged—wait for it—$50. And this was no jacked up, one-day-only, blizzard rate. This was their regular stay for the day. Fifty bucks. That’s two-thirds of an iPod Shuffle. Oh, well. At least the drive home was clear, with Japanese food to cap it off.

As for the day’s forensic entertainment, the debating (as compared to the cranking, and you can read his comments to this blog if you doubt that designation) Grabowitz managed to qual, so it was worth the effort. The other LD Sailors pulled in a decent share of ballots, but not quite enough for Texas. In Pffft, on the other hand, I think we need work. I’ve got some ideas I’ll share with my Pfffters tomorrow night: they’ll need them before Districts. Pffft strategy seems so elemental to me I may have been forgetting to explain it to anyone. I need to make up for that.

Sunday I spent pretty much the entire day prepping for Districts. I’ve filled out all the cards, sorted out the numbers, got everything about 50-75% ready. But there’s still plenty of details to work out over the next few days. The good news is that if you get Congress set up, you have the Friday morning while Congress is running to get everything else set up. More details on that as I collect them, but at the moment we seem to have enough congressfolk to do a Senate and 2 houses (whew!), so we’re okay there, and the rest of the Red Light District story remains the same, although we are loaded for the Wunn and Only when he arrives, with both barrels ready to blast self-protective ammo.

Don’t you just love the drama?