Now I'm where I want to be
Though I sat out bunny_hugger's field trip to practice at Wizard's World arcade, I always figured to be there to support her when she competed. But the tournament was scheduled for a Friday, and so I needed to take a day off work. This would be the first day I took off work since the transition between offices, so that I wasn't sure precisely who to ask. But everyone supervising me seemed content with my not being there a little. And the people I actually work with were delighted by the idea of competitive pinball and wished her luck.
We figured to drive out Thursday evening, since the Women's North American Championship series started at 10 am Friday and driving from two hours away made that really unattractive. It turns out it would have been worse than that: Friday saw a snowstorm in Lansing --- it seems to have given around four inches, bringing the season up to 4.1 inches total --- and it would've been snow all along the drive. The real question was whether to set out the minute I was out of work. The advantage of later is that bunny_hugger, bringing our pet rabbit to her parents' for bunnysitting, would have more time to enjoy being around them, and more time to pack and prepare. The disadvantage: Wizard's World would have a tournament at 7:00, their only open-to-all tournament the whole weekend. If I wanted to play competitively, we had to jump in the car and get down there.
Since the pandemic I just haven't been doing much competitive pinball. For all that we drove ourselves crazy in the late 2010s we didn't really do that much, just Lansing, Marvin's, and Fremont leagues, but we cut all but the Lansing league out as a regular thing. bunny_hugger goes to more women's events, but I often stay home, giving her the space to shine on her own and myself the time to putter around not doing much. bunny_hugger has felt bad about limiting my competitive pinball life like that, but she's not limiting me at all. I was content to just hang out at the arcade and play recreationally.
But then ... it turned out that the Thursday night tournament would be on the games used in Friday's tournament. If we didn't play, bunny_hugger might not get last-minute practice in, and on the games in as close to tournament condition as possible. And, you know, it would be nice to drop in on a tournament and see if I still have the old skills.
We got started late, of course. Thursday at work was spent trying again and again to get a quality-assurance database push to work, and it kept on throwing annoying little bugs. At 4 pm I thought I finally had a version that would run, and it crashed partway through. In the hope that this was a fluke I tried to get the database guy to reset the database from the backup and run the script again, but he had something pulling him away for a while and by 4:30 we still hadn't been able to try again. I gave it a few extra minutes as bunny_hugger finished loading the car and then gave up, to learn only on Monday whether that work succeeded. (It was done by the end of the day Friday, but I never got clear whether the version I had succeeded or whether they had to do more fixing.)
Well, one thing and another and we were on the road about 4:45. If nothing went wrong, we'd make it, but one solid patch of construction or traffic jam and we'd miss the start of the tournament. But we didn't encounter any construction or traffic jams, and didn't make any rest stops either (the ride's about as long as that to Fremont, or Sparks Pinball Museum, or Michigan's Adventure, all trips we don't need a break for), and got there with right about twenty minutes to spare. Just what we could have hoped for, especially given that we needed to use the bathroom. We paid our dollars and signed up for our first open tournament in Indiana.
We're almost to the tournament! So let's go back to looking at the fair.
Turkey enjoying a dignified repose and ignoring all the rest of us.
Different angle on the same disinterested snood.
bunny_hugger enjoying another chance at touching a turkey's knobbly head.
bunny_hugger discussing with the turkey the chances for getting an award-worthy photo for next year's county fair?
This sign was now almost too old to appear at the 4H/FFA barn under the rules it promulgates.
The Rabbit sign is correct! See bunny_hugger going in the side?
Trivia: On the 16th of December, 1896, after fourteen months of debate, the city of Buffalo contracted the Niagara Falls Power Company to deliver to the city's Cataract Power and Conduit Company some 10,000 horsepower of electricity on or before the 1st of June, 1897. Source: Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, Jill Jonnes.
Currently Reading: The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, From the Ancient World to the Modern Age, Andrew Whitby.