In which we rev our engines

I’m breaking in a new P&L at the DJ. That’s always fun. The best parts are: 1) convincing the money people that the creative people (so-called) can trouble their pretty little heads enough to fill in a simple spreadsheet, and 2) designing a simple spreadsheet that actually can be read and understood at a glance that isn’t filled with abbreviations for things that used to be the standard phrase that we don’t use anymore. This sort of thing does keep one's head in the game.

Drawing close to August 1 means polishing tabroom files left and right. I got a room list from the Pups yesterday; they’ve got enough space to host the Summer Olympics, if they get in the mood. Having access to multiple big high schools in the area doesn’t hurt. I might have mentioned that this year LD is back at Hell House, with Friday on campus, which is my preferred combination. If we had been at The Other Place, I would have had to change the geography a bit, to insure that tab, the ballot table and the judges’ lounge were all right next to one another. The further from tab the judges get, the harder it is to find stragglers. One thing that’s the same in both places is the lack of civilization anywhere nearby. If you’re doing debate in any way, shape or form at one of these schools, you’ve got nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. And I'm assuming once again that there will be no wireless, so you don’t even have Netflix. In other words, go to your rounds!

O’C has gotten Rather Large Northern Borough Roman Numeral Something or Other started on tabroom too. What he’s got that nobody else really has is judges up the proverbial wazoo, which means that certain normal ways of handling hires and whatnot are rendered moot. And of course, he has the Jar Jar Midnight Madness Registration, although I think he set it for the wrong midnight. Oh, great. The teeming millions all get their s’mores ingredients and their bonfires and their single malts ready (okay, the kids at the camps probably don’t do the single malts) and it turns out that the tournament opened a day early and it’s filled up already with Brazilian ex-soccer players too embarrassed to show their faces in their home country so all you get for staying up late is a waitlist notice and that bitter memory of Phantom Menace.

All of this means I need to attack Bump in the near future. Feh. Anyone wanna buy a used tournament?