More Philadelphia cheese

Aside from occasionally braving the four winds to battle my way over to Starbucks, I didn’t leave the building much over the weekend. That whole food court in the basement thing, including the great crepes place, mitigates the need for much roaming about unless you absolutely want to do so. If it had remained warm, I might have felt otherwise, but those trips fueled more by a desire to pick up the Times than the need for coffee were more than enough. And yes, this last Saturday was indeed a tough puzzle. If I were a giver-upper, I would have, but I’m not, so I didn’t, and I solved it. But I’ve got a few scars from it, let me tell you.

One problem we had was that the printers that the Quakers provided did not speak fluent Mac, and although CP banged around in the guts for a while and got them to at least spew forth ink, I couldn’t print from Vegas Elvis out of TRPC for love nor money. So, it was create pdfs and port them over from the Dark Side and print them out of MacOS, which is a pain, but at least it worked. On the assets sheet, in hindsight I’m more than happy to have decided in advance not to schlep around Philadelphia with my traveling tab printer, what with the 800 stairs leading out of the trolley stations. A little of that would have gone a long way, or at least longer than I personally wanted to go.

While we were doing our bit, I was of course following the progress of my couple of Sailors who insisted that they were better off in Harvard. Unfortunately the P’s C did not complete his set of quals for TOC, but he made a valiant effort. The Panivore did take top speaker, which is nothing to sneeze at, but then again, my sole novice did likewise in her division at Penn. Not bad. I learned this week that said novice has no truck with Facebook or Twitter or any other of that few-nangled fom-toolery. I find it interesting that I apparently have on our team probably the very last social network holdout under the age of 40. Maybe we should start a pool for when she succumbs. There’s money to be made in this.

Speaking of money awards, I guess I should acknowledge that the Qs saw fit to give yours truly a service award, which is a little embarrassing but it is a nice honor. Of course, I really am only in it for the money, the lack of which continues to disappoint me. Let me remind you: I run a clean tab room. But not for lack of trying. Feel free to drop off your bribes at any time. No contribution is too small. Really. Just don’t let Kaz see you, otherwise she’ll no doubt want a matching gift. As will CP, Chavez, JV and O’C. Hmmmm. Forget what I said about small contributions. We’ve got a lot of mouths to feed here. Big contributions only, please.