lighter news
After Rascal died, my dad had a moment of weakness and said that it would be all right to let my other cat, Tiger, out of the basement and into the rest of the house. My future roommates should be relieved to hear that she has been pretty well behaved and not nearly the pest that she was downstairs. She hasn't even tried to escape. She usually sleeps with me, which is nice, and she jumps into my lap to be petted randomly throughout the day, which sometimes startles me. She and the dog have been getting along O.K. They are really funny together--I don't think Buddy has been able to take a solid nap all week, because he is so worried about where the cat is. He chases her a lot and tries to sniff her, but she hisses, growls, and eventually swats at him, and he runs away. Buddy isn't particularly happy about it, especially because he gets thrown out at night now when I go to bed instead of much later when Josh goes to bed. I leave my door open for the cat to come and go, and I can't fall asleep with them fighting. Sometimes it wakes me up in the morning when mom lets the dog in--if she closes my door first, the cat freaks out and wakes me up trying to get out, but if she leaves it open, the dog comes in and started whining.
Yesterday she scratched Josh, he says for no reason, but I wasn't there so he might have deserved it. And last night she became obsessed with sticking her head in a vase of flowers and knocked it off the desk. I have that on video, so if anyone wants to see it they can email me. Other than that though, very well behaved, and it's nice having her around so much, especially now that Rascal is gone.
In other news, Mom and I played in the swiss team tournaments at the bridge club this weekend. Swiss teams are pretty cool--two teams of two pairs each play each other, and depending on who wins and by how many imp points, you get between 0 and 30 victory points. If you get 25 points, the other team got 5, and so forth so that 30 points are awarded in the match. Then the two teams with the most victory points play each other, and the two teams with the second most points play each other, and so on.
The neat thing about swiss teams is that luck is even less of a factor there than in duplicate bridge. In duplicate, the whole room plays the same hands that you do, but sometimes--especially on Monday night when the people are novices and mess up a lot--pairs get scores that they shouldn't. You might stop bidding at 3-Spades on a hand that can only make 3-Spades, but maybe another team in your direction bids to 4-Spades and the defense slips up and lets them make it, and they get a top board from it. Now, those defenders get a bottom, which makes sense, but now your score is only in second when the 4-Spades bidders should have gone down.
In swiss teams, though, it's different. Team A, pair 1 sits north-south and plays against team b, pair 1 east-west, and at another table team b, pair 2 plays the same hands against team a, pair 2. So if you make the right choice to quit bidding at 3-Spades, and your opponents bid 4-Spades and the defense lets them make it... well, the defense was YOUR teammates, so you can't complain when your team gets penalized.
There are some other interesting differences, but I feel I've gone on too long already. Let me just say that we won two matches, tied a match, and lost three matches on the bid game on Saturday, and on Sunday we won three and lost three, for a total of 2.3 points this weekend. Most of the matches where we did badly, it was our teammates fault--mom and I played really well this weekend--which in my opinion is more fun than the other way around.
Yesterday she scratched Josh, he says for no reason, but I wasn't there so he might have deserved it. And last night she became obsessed with sticking her head in a vase of flowers and knocked it off the desk. I have that on video, so if anyone wants to see it they can email me. Other than that though, very well behaved, and it's nice having her around so much, especially now that Rascal is gone.
In other news, Mom and I played in the swiss team tournaments at the bridge club this weekend. Swiss teams are pretty cool--two teams of two pairs each play each other, and depending on who wins and by how many imp points, you get between 0 and 30 victory points. If you get 25 points, the other team got 5, and so forth so that 30 points are awarded in the match. Then the two teams with the most victory points play each other, and the two teams with the second most points play each other, and so on.
The neat thing about swiss teams is that luck is even less of a factor there than in duplicate bridge. In duplicate, the whole room plays the same hands that you do, but sometimes--especially on Monday night when the people are novices and mess up a lot--pairs get scores that they shouldn't. You might stop bidding at 3-Spades on a hand that can only make 3-Spades, but maybe another team in your direction bids to 4-Spades and the defense slips up and lets them make it, and they get a top board from it. Now, those defenders get a bottom, which makes sense, but now your score is only in second when the 4-Spades bidders should have gone down.
In swiss teams, though, it's different. Team A, pair 1 sits north-south and plays against team b, pair 1 east-west, and at another table team b, pair 2 plays the same hands against team a, pair 2. So if you make the right choice to quit bidding at 3-Spades, and your opponents bid 4-Spades and the defense lets them make it... well, the defense was YOUR teammates, so you can't complain when your team gets penalized.
There are some other interesting differences, but I feel I've gone on too long already. Let me just say that we won two matches, tied a match, and lost three matches on the bid game on Saturday, and on Sunday we won three and lost three, for a total of 2.3 points this weekend. Most of the matches where we did badly, it was our teammates fault--mom and I played really well this weekend--which in my opinion is more fun than the other way around.