In which we are collegiate (with no apologies to Fred Waring)

I went to the Collegiate Round Robin this weekend. Aside from a drop-off of a trophy last year, I haven’t been since it was the Vassar Round Robin. One thing I noticed right away was that it wasn’t in Poughkeepsie, which meant schlepping down by train rather than driving up by car. Honestly, I prefer the train. It’s much easier to sleep than while driving, for one thing. And my last visit to Vassar, for the MHL and Invitational last year, was sort of traumatic. The sight of all those hot dogs…

Anyhow, for those who have never been there, Collegiate, which is older than any school you can think of and apparently once had Socrates as a teacher until they sent him out once to make a coffee run and he never returned, is a real warren of a building, or actually a number of buildings. You are greeted in the cafeteria by a handwritten menu left over from Per Se down the road, offering a fine selection of entrees that don’t even come close to debate ziti, mystery meat or sloppy joes. Apparently the wine list is a bit light on Bordeaux, but you can’t have everything. Sometimes you just have to settle for a Californian cabernet. Sigh. From this one might get an idea that the place is just too too, until you read the sign on the ladies room door explaining what ladies are and why they get to use this bathroom and you don’t. Normally I don’t read the signs on the ladies room door, and I assure you I wasn’t considering availing myself of that particular facility, but sometimes you’ve got to stop and smell the roses.

I had helped Aracelis set things up on tabroom, and I was there pretty much just to hang out after that. RRs are pretty straightforward, after all. Judges were a tad tight, and tabroom couldn’t really assign them after the first couple of rounds, but it was easy enough to do manually, starting with the hardest to place and working outwards. We hit a wall at one point, but a reboot and a slice or patience seemed to do the trick. CP claimed that there was no system outage, so I guess there must have been a system outage. (Not that I don’t believe everything CP tells me…) He was out in Chicago introducing more suckers disciples to the glory that is his program. One new feature that didn’t work was a notification of when all the ballots were in, which is nifty for an all e-ballot situation, and he seemed to get that working by the end of the day. Nice. Of course, we won’t be doing e-ballots in the depths of Hell House this weekend at Yale. I was considering doing them on the campus on Friday, but going on and off and on again seemed like too much of a reach at this point in the life of tabroom. Maybe next time.

Anyhow, the tournament ended, as most do, and it was a Lake Highland closeout, so I got to take a nice walk from the upper west side down to GCT, and then a nice nap on the ride home, and a pleasant time was had by all. Aracelis managed to cop a couple of tons of leftover meat and potatoes from Saturday night, so look for barbecue sauce stains on her fingers for the next few weeks.