Maybe the tide isn’t turning
I thought things were going better, then I clicked “pubish” too soon and sent out a post with just a photo. I guess I’ll start again, but without the photo.
Yesterday, we played a KO with Manfred and Nick Wiebe. Started out in a round robin, and squeaked through winning one match and losing the other. The evening session, another round robin, another win and loss, but this time we were eliminated on quotient. Not only did I not play brilliantly, even barely adequately, but on a crucial hand I held the AKxxx of Hearts, and led the Ace, which sets the contract. Except that I looked down at the table and saw the heart 3. Somehow I grabbed the wrong card. Declarer gleefully scored his Jack, and his contract, and the match. Then I had to tell my teammates why we lost. It wasn’t a happy event.
Today, Gail was set to land at 8:30, so Mike and I played just the one session side game. We sat down at our table, and Mark “80,000 masterpoints” Lair came to sit the other direction. Mark is a great guy, but who needs to play against him? But he wanted to sit North/South, and I wasn’t giving up my seat, so he went to the director and got another table assignment.
This should be good, you’d think. But then Zimmerman and Moulton, the French and world champions, sat down. Yep, we’d gone from a great pro and his client to two great pros. I was starting to feel like Joe Btfsplk, walking around with a rain cloud on my head.
The good news is that the rest of the field would fit right into most 99er games, I managed to lead, if not brilliantly, at least the card I intended to play, and we won the event. The Frenchmen were 2nd overall, and Mark Lair was 3rd.
Dinner was at a place called 1130, which I guess means something to someone, but I’m not in the loop. The guacamole, pictured in the abortive last post, was excellent, and laced with just a touch of tequila. I’ll be trying that at home. I had something called chicken piccata, which bore no resemblance whatsoever to chicken piccata. It did, however, boast a relatively dry piece of grilled chicken and a very good angel hair pasta with some veggies and a bit of lemon and caper, which was sort of piccata-esque.
After dinner I walked around this cold and deserted downtown looking for a convenience store, but there are none. I ended up at CVS, which was good enough to have a bottle of wine for Gail and some Diet Coke for me. Damned hotel is Pepsi only.
Gail’s plane was an hour late, which Southwest was good enough to alert me to with a text message. She also slipped through TSA Pre-check, so it sort of looks like that’s becoming a standard behavior for the feds.
She’s here now, and has finished her room service dinner. I think I’ll quit typing. See you soon.
Totally Unauthorized 
1130 was pretty good for the joints around the hotel. Decent happy hour, though my favorite was the wings and beer at “The Brick, just down from 1130.
Maybe you can replace Kenny Gee as the king of the Continuous Pairs.