I guess I’m sort of obliged to report on the activities of the previous weekend, seeing how it was the greatest collection of debate coaches in one place since the construction of the pyramids. Or since O'C ate dinner alone at Japonica...
I collected CP from his train on Friday. Amtrak was running roughly five levels of Word Welder late, because they lost an engine, but as we agreed, better to lose an engine on a train than on a flight in from Logan. CP put the time to good use, propping up tabroom.com with string and Dixie Cup tops in preparation for having it look like it’s running on August 1, when the first registrations open. As he reported on Facebook, by the way, what I was seeing before, which was bizarrely disturbing, was not what he was working on. I must have gotten cached into No Man’s Land somehow. When he was sitting on the chair next to me in the living room, I got what looked liked the comfortingly disturbing screens of old; actually, they looked a little nicer, although I hate to admit it. I’m trusting that CP will be too busy these next few days to be reading any blogs, so I should be safe.
We popped down to Manhattan on Saturday, and JV arrived when we did to meet up with us. The goal was to give our poor unfortunate Bostoner a taste of a real city. We poked around GCT a bit, then headed up to St. Pat’s, and then MOMA, where we ate lunch. I’ll write about the museum separately, but suffice it to say that we had a lot of fun pointing out our various favorites. We also ate lunch there, consisting primarily of a watermelon gazpacho with pansies floating on the top. There’s a picture on my iPhone, if you happen to steal it at the next tournament and want to see what lunch looked like.
O’C promised to me us at 3ish at the museum, and we were forced to take both JV and CP to the emergency room to revive them from the brain hemorrhages they suffered when O’C actually met us at 3ish at the museum. He’s got the Foursquare check-ins to prove it (but then again, he checked in at 27 other places that day, including the men’s room at the Hilton, and you may not want to sort through them all). With our group now complete, we moseyed, specifically up to see the patented stairs at the Apple Store (beats me why they’re patented: they just look like stairs), the St. Gaudens Sherman statue, Rizzoli’s bookstore (where O’C discovered a book of Star Wars blueprints that was selling for a mere $500 which he just has to have, despite the fact that nothing in Star Wars was real, meaning that the blueprints are also not real, but then again, he’s the guy who gets in line for Cinderella’s autograph at WDW, and as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, not only is Cinderella not real, but the person whose autograph he’s getting isn’t her), and then, after fighting the crowds at Times Square and waiting out a short shower, we walked down the High Line to the Village, and ultimately to our dinner destination. CP, who started the day at about six foot four, was now about five foot ten, having worn his feet out to the ankles. But this is the loveliest part of G Village, all the old winding streets and little houses, and even he was impressed. Dinner, at a Brazilian restaurant, was good, but way too loud. The conversation, almost entirely debate-oriented (and, yes, a lot of it was about you, and none of it was complimentary, as you would expect), was rather hard to follow, unfortunately. I would say that when you get a couple or four debate people together, talk is ripe. I hated to miss a word, but there were a couple of times when they were reaming someone out at the other end of the table and I had to interrupt and get the name, just so I could file it away for future reference. After that, we moseyed some more for gelato, and then headed back home. A splendid time was had by all.
And then Sunday we poured CP back on the train for the hinterlands. Somehow through the weekend I got him signed up to work with me on LD at the Pups, and tentatively to help us with the MHL workshop. Plus he introduced us to aged gouda. What more could you ask?
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