A final Atlanta report

I'm actually in Bar Harbor, Maine, as I write this on Sunday, just after 10 p.m. I'm not going to blog about my Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia trip here; I'll do that at WorldIsRound.com. But I thought I'd write a little about the final day of bridge in Atlanta.

In a nutshell, we had a solid round of bridge in the third round of the knockouts; it was perhaps the best bridge Dallas and I have played together, and Tommy and Evan were strong as well. Then in the fourth round, at the half we were up by 23 points and feeling very confident. Just don't do anything stupid was our mantra going into the second half. Then the world collapsed. Let's just say that games and slams that should've been bid were bid by our opponents and not by us. We ended up losing by 2 points! It was heartbreaking.

In the evening we decided to play in a single-session Swiss team event, four six-board rounds. Let's just say that I must've been tired. In one hand where I was the declarer, I trumped dummy's good Ace on one trick and then on a later trick led a small trump toward the board and finessed the dummy's Jack after LHO had played the King.

Let's just say that after three miserable rounds, we finally recovered and scored a near blitz on the final round. It would have been much better to have taken the night off and partaken of adult beverages.

All in all, I had a good time in Atlanta. I do keep making the awful mistake of reacting harshly when my partner makes a mistake, and sometimes even when he doesn't but I perceive that he has. In many ways the game of bridge is much like life. I have much to learn in both.

This is my last day in Atlanta; tomorrow I have a 10 a.m. flight to Portland, Maine, so I'm not sure when I'll be reporting again.

If anyone wants to see my itinerary for the week ahead, it's at http://nocloset.net/vacation2005.html. If you have a map of Maine and the Maritime provinces, you can follow my travels with little pushpins if you want!

Yesterday was a good bridge day. We played in a knockout and after two rounds we are still going. In fact, we had very easy wins.

Asa asked for a sample hand, so I'll give an example of one where aggressive bidding got me in trouble but how I brilliantly acquitted myself, thanks also to bad defense. (Non bridge players, skip down a ways.)

I was dealer, all vulnerable, with:

S: K 10 x
H: Q x x x x x
D: x x
C: Q x

I normally wouldn't do this vulnerable, but feeling a little cheeky, I opened 2H. (Opponents passed throughout.) Dallas bid 2NT, asking for a feature, so I should bid 2S, showing the King of Spades, but since my heart suit was so ratty, I decided not to show it, since the likelihood was that he'd never be able to set up my hearts in a No-Trump contract. So I bid 3H, denying a feature, and Dallas bid 4H.

I get a high club lead, and Dallas lays down this dummy:

S: A Q x x
H: J x
D: A K J x x x
C: J

LHO wins the first trick and switches to a spade, since he "knows" I don't have the King, having denied a feature. I play low from the board, RHO plays low, and my 10 wins the trick.
I lead a small heart. Small from LHO, I put up the Jack, and RHO wins with the Ace and returns a club, which I ruff on the board and play a small spade back to my hand. My only hope now is to drop the King of Hearts, so I play a small heart from my hand, covered by LHO, diamond off the board, and sure enough, RHO has to play the King. She returns another club, which I ruff in my hand, play the Q of H, dropping the 10, and claiming my contract.

Here's the bad defense part: LHO was void in diamonds! RHO keeps getting in the lead and keeps playing clubs; if she switches to a diamond after she wins either of her trump tricks, I'm down to defeat!

The other good part was that at the other table, our teammates played in 5 clubs and made it, so we got a huge swing on that board!

OK, for you non-bridge players, continue reading here.

Not much else to talk about. Last night we went to dinner at Ted's Montana Grill. (That's Ted as in Ted Turner.) Their specialty is bison. I had a bison burger. Yummy. Drank wine, managed to relax. Actually, playing bridge was very relaxing yesterday, with the stress of the GNTs behind us. The team that beat us on Thursday got eliminated yesterday, but the Minnesotans who we played against in the first round (and almost beat!) barely squeaked past the team from southern California in the semis and are in the finals against the team from Chicago. All the other Seattle-area teams have been eliminated.

Sorry, non-bridge-players, for the more bridge news.

It's still humid here, but not so hot as in some parts of the country.

Okay, well, that's all from Atlanta. I'll probably post my "real" vacation stuff on WorldIsRound.com, so stay tuned...

Well, we went down in a blaze of glory...

We did manage to advance to the round of 16, defeating the New Jerseyites but losing in a very close match to the Minnesotans. We were actually ahead of them after 24 boards, but they came back and beat us by 5 IMPs. The NJers battled back admirably from a 43-point deficit after 8 boards, and we only beat them by 12. But the Minners also beat them, so they were eliminated.

Last night we played against the team from Michigan. They were a six-person team, and that was a big advantage for them, because two get to sit out and rest some of the time. Plus we weren't (and mostly that should be read as "I wasn't") in top form. Traveling maybe took its toll, but we (I) made a lot of careless errors. The fact of the matter is that if we (I) had not made all the mistakes, we would have lost by maybe 4 IMPs. As it was, we lost by 47. And, okay, I'll give my teammates some of the credit for some of the mistakes, but I really felt klutzy at the bridge table.

Anyway, the pressure is off, and that's not a bad thing. I was feeling really tense, butterflies in my stomach. Now we can just play for the fun of it. We're going to enter a knockout this morning, and we'll see how it goes. If we don't advance, then we'll just play some pairs events til tomorrow night, and whatever happens, I'm looking forward to my trip to my upcoming travels.

I was hoping to post some photos, but the it was taking forever to upload them, so I guess I'll have to wait to get somewhere with a faster connection.

We're staying at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Atlanta. For a supposedly top-tier business class hotel, it's not very classy. The room is small, there is no fridge, food in the hotel is very expensive and they don't have anything past midnight, which is what time we finished playing each night. We did find a 24-hour diner two blocks from the hotel, so all's well.

To all who wrote back yesterday, either here or via email, it's good to hear from you, and thanks for all the good wishes. Sorry we didn't do a better job of representing District 19.

I'm sitting in a Starbucks across the street from the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Atlanta. The hotel charges $10 a day for WiFi. Starbucks has the T-Mobile network, which also charges, but it's in a building that has a free WiFi connection.

It's Day Two of my vacation, so this is my daily report, I guess. Day One went fine. It consisted mostly of waking up at 2 a.m. for no reason--I could have slept all the way until 3:30, but I guess I was too excited or something--and traveling from Seattle to Atlanta. Flight was uneventful. I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on the plane. I had to look out the window afterwards because I didn't want my seatmate to see me bawling.

It's hasn't been oppressively hot here so far, but the humidity is off the chart, at least compared with what I'm used to in Seattle.

Dallas, my bridge partner, took a redeye and was already in our room, so when I got to the hotel I was able to go right up and not worry about checking in. I took a nap, then we met up with our teammates, Tom and Evan, got dinner at the foodcourt in the Peachtree Center, which is adjacent via footbridge to our hotel, and played a few practice hands of bridge.

We were unsure of how they would run the event. There are twenty-four teams. It turns out that everyone is playing a 64-board round robin against two other teams (32 boards against each team). After that, the top two of each three-team grouping will advance into the round of 16, and I assume from then on it will be 32-board knockouts leading to a round of 8, then 4, and then the final 2 playing 64 boards on Saturday.

We are playing against a team from Minnesota and a team from New Jersey. After the first 32 boards we were down 14 IMPs to the team from Minnesota and up 43 IMPs against the team from New Jersey. (An IMP, or International Match Point, is how they score the event. You get a certain number of IMPs for each hand you win based on the margin of victory on that hand.) At the end of the night we were only down 3 IMPs against the Minnesotans, but our lead against the New Jerseyites was cut to 21.

I think that still puts us in good shape, since we only have to be in the top two. If we go on to win against the New Jersey team and the Minnesotans also beat them, they will be eliminated. If each of us wins one and loses one, then they use the margin of victory to determine which team is eliminated.

For any non-bridge players reading this, I'm sure it's fascinating.

No photos yet. I'll try to take one of our team today.

Oh, and bye, Scotty! I guess you got beamed up for the last time.

Well I finally resolved my computer problem yesterday after long phone consultations with Toshiba (who made my laptop) and Linksys (who made my wireless router). Both were very helpful, but neither could solve the ultimate issue, which was that the two computers couldn't see each other on the network. I searched MSDN and found a knowledge-base article that talked about my problem. All I can think is that the automatic updates that get downloaded from Microsoft broke something (since it had been working just fine before).

The dishwasher is another story. It turns out that my dishwasher thinks it's still in the middle of a cycle, so I can't use it at all except maybe to rinse dishes (as long as I'm there to shut it off). I don't think there'll be time to deal with it before vacation.

Vacation! I leave in three days. My team had a trial run last night in a team game at SBC, and we came in fourth out of five teams, which is bad, but only because we got blitzed in one round. We won two rounds in very close matches and lost one in a close match.

But the bridge tournament is just a small part of the deal. What I'm really looking forward to is my travels in Nova Scotia. I've been trying to figure out how to do everything I want to do. There's just not enough time to do it all; I know I'm going to have to make some tough decisions and maybe cut out some things I really want to do. But I have to concentrate on enjoying what I do get to see and not worry about what I miss.

It feels like I have a lot to do between now and the time I leave, but here I am relaxing at the Monkeygrind, as usual on Sunday morning. Tonight I'm going out with my friends Cathy and Scott. I must get my house cleaned up, because I do not want to come home from vacation to a messy house. I have one more load of laundry to do, too. But yesterday I bought Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and I started reading it, and now I just want to read it and finish it before I leave, because it's too big to bring with me. I don't think there's any way to read it all in two days (unless I take two days off from work, and that's not going to happen!) so I should just put it down and save it til I get back from my trip.

I bought two other books to read in airports and airplanes and during the lulls in my whirlwind tour of Maine and the Maritimes: Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith. Combined, they will take up less room in my luggage than the Harry Potter book.

I'm hoping I can figure out how to pack for this trip without checking any luggage. It's a tall order, since I'm taking my laptop with me, plus my CPAP machine, my camera, binoculars, books, clothes....

The other thing I want to do before I go is call/email to confirm all my reservations. I would hate to get somewhere only to find out my reservation got cancelled. Especially the car rental and the ferry from Yarmouth to Bar Harbor.

I doubt I'll blog while I'm gone, but I will be posting photos and e-postcards at http://www.worldisround.com, so the one reader of this blog can look there for updates on my trip.

Bon voyage to me!

Grrrr...

Last night was not a good night.

I ran my dishwasher after dinner. Then I was working on my laptop, and I discovered that I couldn't connect on my network to my desktop computer. Further investigation showed that my desktop couldn't see the laptop either. So I called Toshiba, spent probably an hour on the phone with them, and couldn't get anything resolved, but did manage to break it even worse, so that I couldn't get on the internet from either computer.

Finally, after I finished with Toshiba, I got the laptop working again, but I still had no internet connection on the desktop.

Meanwhile, three hours after I started my dishwasher, it was still running. It showed one minute left on the cycle. I opened it. It was still running with water spraying inside. Usually that ends long before the end of the cycle. I started it again and it showed 13 minutes left.

An hour later it was still running and showed one minute left.

So I have a broken dishwasher and a problem with my desktop computer's network configuration.

Grrrrr...

Otherwise, life is swell. A week from today I'll be on my way to Atlanta. We had a good practice session on Saturday, and then on Saturday night I played with David at Rainbow and we had a 69% game. I'm playing tonight with Dallas and tomorrow night with David, and Saturday night our team is playing at the team game. So we should be ready for next week.

I've been reading and trying to figure out what are the must-see places in Maine and Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, I can't pare it down. There's just too much to see, and not enough time.

Well, there are worse problems. Like a broken dishwasher and a messed-up computer....

I'm at MonkeyGrind Espresso. This has become my "hangout" on weekend mornings. I come with my laptop, order a triple grande Americano with no room and a spinach/egg/havarti muffin. It comes to $5.89. It's never very crowded; more than once I've been the only customer sitting in here. I can always get one of the two tables that are next to an outlet.

You'd think they'd get to know me, but each time could be my first time for all the familiarity they exhibit. I envy Troy and John, living in Nyack, where they become friends with the proprietors in all the little shops and restaurants. I don't find Seattle to be a place where that happens easily. But maybe I'm not a "regular" at enough different places.

Maybe burying myself in my laptop makes me seem disinterested. Or maybe it's because, with the exception of the older German-accented woman (who, I learned, is the mother of the owner), everyone who works here is a young, slim, female, and they all just run together in my experience. I can't distinguish one from another.

But I like coming here because it's just four blocks from my house, and I can sit for a few hours, do the NY Times Crossword Puzzle, and do some writing. Diva Espresso is a nicer place to go, but it's always crowded, and I don't know if they have wifi.

This afternoon I'm going to Dallas's house to have a practice session with our team for the GNTs. Then tonight I'm playing bridge with David at Rainbow. Tomorrow I'm getting together for brunch with Kevin. Somewhere in there, I must clean the house.

I already did the Thursday puzzle. (I can never do the Saturday puzzle--it's way too hard--and rarely the Friday one either.) Now I need to end this post so I can get back to work on the novel.

My letter was published in the Seattle Times on Saturday. I don't know if anyone read it. No one I know reads the Seattle Times. Hell, I don't read the Seattle Times. It was just a fluke that I happened to look at their editorial page on line the other day and saw their piece on the estate tax.

It wasn't exactly a festive fourth, but it was nice. I had a couple of friends over and we sat outside and barbecued and then watched the fireworks on TV. They were pretty decent fireworks; I'm sure they would've been spectacular in person. But battling the traffic and the crowds just doesn't seem to be worth it.

Poor Rose was a nervous wreck last night. She doesn't handle the noise very well. Next year I should see about getting her a doggie tranquilizer from the vet.

I had a run-in with the Discover Card folks on the phone the other day. I called to find out about my cash-back bonus, and they told me that my card doesn't have one. I used to have one, so I asked her about it, and she told me that they switched me to my current card at my request because it's a lower-interest-rate card. I explained to them that I would never do that because I pay my bill in full every month. Then I asked to talk to a manager, and she infuriated me even more. She said that I said I wanted a lower-rate card. I told her that was a lie, and then she denied saying it. I told her to cancel my account.

Then I found a Chase Visa card that offers a cash-back bonus.

Something nice: I got an email yesterday from April McClure. I believe April was finishing her junior year at Eureka my last year there, or maybe she was a senior. She was a music major and a member of the Madrigal Singers. She's now married with a young baby, and she's a pastor at a small church in northern Illinois.

Here's a snippet from her email:

Many, many times I have wished that I would have been a better student under your tutelage, and that I would have been able to appreciate your leadership while it was available. I thank you for it, if tardily...

It is so gratifying, after all these years, to be appreciated for a contribution I made to the life of one of my students.

Something awful: Sandra Day O'Connor has resigned from the Supreme Court. This is not the same as Rehnquist resigning. Whoever replaces O'Connor will most likely move the court solidly to the right.

When Bush got reelected and I considered moving to Canada, everyone said by the time I could actually get residency there he'd be out of office. But his legacy on the Supreme Court will survive him, and this frightens me no end.

I'm reading The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth. In this novel, Charles Lindbergh is elected President in 1940, defeating FDR. Lindbergh establishes an agreement with the Hitler regime and keeps us out of the war. Some Jews flee to Canada, which accepts them with open arms. It's not so easy now. But something keeps making me think I should do it.

Cheers to Canada for legalizing same-sex marriage! (And Spain too!)