The Pups pend

Nothing like closing a tournament to bring out not only shenanigans but also henanigans and even a few transanigans. Plus there’s a flurry of questions and requests that could have transpired weeks ago that have taken on the sudden urgency of the coach waking up and realizing that the tournament is next week. Oh, well. That’s what makes it fun.

In honor of the last weekend pre-season, Friday I headed up to Saratoga, not for the fourteenth time, a phrase that, in my mind, always follows the name of that town, but for the first time. We started with a visit to a museum in Glens Falls (yes, they have a museum in Glens Falls) showing Georgia O’Keeffe’s work in the Adirondacks at the Stieglitz house. The place was packed to the gills. Obviously GOK is a big draw (no pun intended). After that, the mosey down to Saratoga, which apparently—and deservedly—won an award for the country’s best Main Street. We promenaded up and down a number of times, saw the local sights, blah blah blah. It was all quite pleasant, and every now and I checked my phone to see who was pestering us about what now. Not as much as usual, to tell you the truth. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen.

I sent out a message to the assembled LD multitudes this morning telling them to register their judges on tabroom and to make sure to pref even if they think MJP is the go-to tool of the devil. It will be interesting to see if this year there’s more preffers than last year. The less preffing the better as far as tabbing is concerned, but all these people who whine about what LD is becoming or has become could actually do something about it if they preffed, and when they don’t, everything they don’t like about LD takes another step forward. People just don’t get it. So it goes.

Closing numbers, btw, are pretty much at the building limit, a very good thing. We’ll lose a couple more people due to dengue fever and the ague and whatnot, but mostly they’ll all be there, so Eponymous Matt and Catholic Charlie and I will have our work cut out for us. As usual, I’ll get up there relatively early Friday for a tour of one of the museums (it’s back to the British one this year, with my 2 Pffffters in tow) and then lunch before the games begin.

I’m exhausted already.