jianantonic | (no subject)

So over the past 24 hours, I've given this blog address to several people that I like and respect. People who, I hope, like and respect me. My feeling was that it's easy enough to google me anyway, and once a person knows I'm a blogger, it's only a matter of time until they find me if that is their desire. I'm aware of the public nature of this journal, and I am generally sensitive to that. But what my readers need to know about me is that I am not really a private person. I keep other people's secrets and I don't blab about things that could get others hurt or compromise my standing at work and the like; but I really don't keep any secrets about myself, and if you're the kind of person who doesn't feel comfortable knowing things about me that wouldn't come up over dinner, well, I suggest you move on. Just sayin'.

So, the weekend.
At Thursday's club game, some friends mentioned they had extra space in their condo if Ahren and I wanted to go down a day early and stay overnight. Perfect. We were going to just go on Sunday and skip Saturday for financial purposes, but this worked out very nicely, so we took them up on their offer. We played in both sessions on Saturday, though I don't know if you can call what we did in the morning session "bridge." We held some cards and occasionally moved some papers around on the table, but other than that, we were just taking up space. We were discouraged, but stayed in the open game for the evening session and placed a very respectable 5A/2B/1C for 1.59 silver. Then the fun began. The ladies we were staying with agreed that Olive Garden would be nice for dinner, and we got directions from the concierge at the playing site. Ahren and I followed Nancy, who made three U-turns and broke several traffic laws in going the five miles from bridge to dinner. The service is ridiculously slow at the OG, but that was fine as it gave us time to review all the hands from the day. Ahren and I were the resident pros and that dinner conversation definitely inflated both of our egos.

When we got to the condo (after a couple more wrong turns and traffic violations), everyone was tired and went to sleep pretty much immediately. I didn't sleep too well, though, because our room had a ghost. It was a harmless ghost, except that it kept waking me up. Okay, I'm not sure that I actually believe in ghosts, and I can't say I was frightened by the night's goings on, but you tell me what it could be. The light by my bed kept turning itself on. No matter how long I waited to do something about it, it would always turn itself off as soon as I started to reach for it. I guess it could've been worse.

The next morning, we talked Swiss strategy over breakfast and arrived early at the playing site. Our teammates were Mike from MD, who had played on our team in Silver Spring, and his regular partner, Kevin from Arlington. I'd seen Kevin around but never officially met him; he was the only life master on our team, weighing in at 388 masterpoints, so we were well within the limits of flight C. We drew a very shaky flight B team for the first round and easily disposed of them - 36 imps, I think it was? Anyway it was a blitz, which made me a bit nervous because it meant we'd get paired up against another team that had blitzed in the first round. Turns out, I had nothing to worry about, because Ahren and I brought our A game. We won the next round by a bunch, too. This was followed by a close loss, which Kevin blames himself for. I stop short of blaming my teammate, but I will say Ahren and I didn't do anything to cost us the round, so as long as it's not our fault, I'm not upset about it. We still earned 8VPs in the round, so it wasn't a disaster, anyway. The next round was nothing short of a meltdown; but it was nice that we all imploded in the same round. You can't do worse than 0, which is what we earned for the match, and we picked up the pieces quite well after lunch. The next round was a tie, which would've been a 1 imp victory if Ahren had counted properly, so I was a little steamed at him for that, but we were still above average on the leaderboard and I was content with our performance so far. We finished the day with two more wins - one good and one fantastic. I was so proud of myself for finding the right lead in this auction:
I held three queens in a pretty flat hand (I don't remember it exactly except the club suit which was Qxx), and the auction had gone like this - I'm second seat:
1NT - p - 2D(transfer to H) - p - 2H - p - 3NT - p - 4H - p - 4S(shows a control) - p - 6H. I'm on lead and don't want to lead trump. Ahren has had the opportunity to give a lead directing double against diamonds and spades and he didn't, so I led small from my club suit. The dummy has Kxxx, and the declarer plays the K to Ahren's A. He plays the J, which wins, then returns to my Q for down two. Granted, declarer misplayed when he laid the K on trick one, but it's still down one on a club lead, since Ahren will win his J at trick one and A at trick two. Our teammates got a spade lead and made 6 for 17imps for us. We won the match by more than 20 imps all told, so it would've been a win regardless, but that board gave us enough for a higher place and something like 2.03mp on the day. And that last team we beat? One of my uncle's regular teammates, of the world class variety. Awesome.

So that was the bridge. Also noteworthy is that I couldn't walk all weekend. My leg just got worse, to the point I was afraid I may have broken something and would have to cancel my entry into the Golds Total Body Transformation contest (have I written about this yet?). I was in serious, serious pain. It got worse before it got better, but yesterday it started to improve, and I feel fine with the limited movement I've had so far today, so I'm still going in for training this afternoon, but I'll probably ask that we avoid legs for today. I'm going to be cautious with it and I'll consult with the trainers at the gym - if they think I should get it checked out, I will, but it seems that it was just a muscle strain, so I imagine it'll be 100% within a few days. I can only slightly feel it today and I'd say I'm at about 90% already, but very cautious and unwilling to test it.

In case I've neglected to mention it...I signed up for this Total Body Challenge at Gold's. It starts today. I go in and get my picture taken in my underwear for the "before" shots and get all my measurements done. For the next 12 weeks, I'll see my trainer once per week, and I'll follow a diet given by a nutritionist. I'll have to measure portions and write down everything I eat, and this diet? It is very specific and very strict. I'm honestly not looking forward to it, but I'll stick with it because of the accountability factor. Having to show records of everything I eat and all of my workouts to my trainer each week will keep me on track. I don't like to disappoint anyone.

So in the week leading up to this, knowing that it'd be my last chance for things like pizza and all you can eat buffets and candy for a while, I totally gorged. I'm kind of disgusted with myself, actually, but as of today, it's officially behind me. Onward ho with the healthy living.

Peace.