In which we engage in chevriculture

Today’s front-page advertisement on my Kindle is for a book entitled “How to Breed Goats and Manage Gestation: A Simple Guide.” This strikes me as the perfect e-book to settle in with on those long winter nights. I’ll be ordering copies for myself and everyone I know. My previous goat-raising books have all been way too complex. I’ve long needed "a simple guide" to get through the worst of it. Especially the gestation.

Speaking of tabroom.com, which is to raising goats as oatmeal is to satellite navigation, I notice that Franz Kafka has come out in favor of the application. This has led to a number of bug jokes on Facebook, of course, but I tend to favor the Trial line of humor. I won’t bother providing any examples, as I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of doing so yourself.

The blizzard of 2016 hit the chez pretty hard, but despite getting enough snow to gestate a goat, we had little hardship. I sat around all weekend with my feet up, watching movies and reading magazines and cooking nice meals. I would not have been doing any of this at Columbia, and worse, I would have been continually pestering the Paginator to stop doing them and go back and run congress, which traditionally employs much movie-watching and magazine-reading and meal-cooking in its hardworking tab rooms. Preferential ballots, I’d be muttering under or maybe even over my breath. Preferential ballots!

NYC was, of course, hit even harder. If there had been no snow, cancelling the Gem tournament would still have been the right thing to do, given the forecast. That there was record-breaking snow was simply the icing on the goat. We’ve been working with the Gemmers to come up with a backup plan. Something about that should be forthcoming soon. More when the time comes.

And through it all, there’s been the Brotherly Love tournament, which is very much beginning to heat up. TBAs have gone the way of all goats, and now we’re finalizing rooms and hiring judges. And, each in our own private way, praying for a non-repeat of this weekend’s snow event. Losing one tournament may be regarded as a misfortune; losing two looks like carelessness.

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