nationals
clearly, livejournal is a dead medium. the Scandal is everywhere except here, and yet i persist in posting.
so, i went to nationals and i had a great time. i didn't have the stamina or mental energy to try to play games. the new job is hard, moving is hard, selling a house is hard, i wasn't ready for scrabble is hard on top of all of that.
i'm glad that i went. i didn't miss playing at all, which surprised me.
i decided that doing commentary is mind numbingly boring, for the most part. everything starts to look the same. none of the words look like words any more. i was looking every word up to make sure i wasn't screwing up and reporting phoneys when they weren't phony. i know SHILINGI from studying, but i see it on the board with blank S and it looks like nothing at all. also, it's hard to catch interesting stuff unless you basically wander around for at least 20-30 minutes, and doing that every game is much more physically tiring than sitting still at a board 7 games a day. i don't envy Sherrie for doing this for 31 games in a row.
any feedback on my commentary, though, if i do end up doing that again at some event?
that said, it would be much more efficient and probably more interesting to hire one or two or three players to do on the ground twitter/tumblr updates rather than this walk around with a notepad, type into computer with weird link notation, wait for john to upload, then have to go back and fix things and have him reupload, etc. and set up a twitter account for the event and stick it at a station and let players post to it. or do something that gives more players an outlet to update for themselves in a recognized way. or at least make it possible by enabling wifi access for some number of those who are willing to do updates. i think we need to put conrad or someone else who's making good headway in the social media scene on the championship committee.
the social energy of this tournament also felt off to me, but maybe there are just too many factions at this point to navigate comfortably. and more of us are now in contention for actually winning at any given time, so less prone to do the kind of stupid stuff we did years ago as a larger collective.
but there were food highlights! pio pio and hawkers asian street fare and even the overpriced tchoup chop in the resort were quite pleasing. and harry potter was definitely worth seeing, and i'm glad i got to spend a couple of hours on a couple of different days in the park. i do wish i had the energy for disney, but it'll probably be more fun to go with my nephews at some point anyway.
i'll be playing for vegas. i'm looking forward to new york city. i'll do commentary or annotate or something at can am, i guess. who knows what else i'll do this year. i'll figure out how to balance work with play, though, so that i'll be ready to compete at nationals a year from now. and i'll keep trying to figure out how to make more female d1 players.
so, i went to nationals and i had a great time. i didn't have the stamina or mental energy to try to play games. the new job is hard, moving is hard, selling a house is hard, i wasn't ready for scrabble is hard on top of all of that.
i'm glad that i went. i didn't miss playing at all, which surprised me.
i decided that doing commentary is mind numbingly boring, for the most part. everything starts to look the same. none of the words look like words any more. i was looking every word up to make sure i wasn't screwing up and reporting phoneys when they weren't phony. i know SHILINGI from studying, but i see it on the board with blank S and it looks like nothing at all. also, it's hard to catch interesting stuff unless you basically wander around for at least 20-30 minutes, and doing that every game is much more physically tiring than sitting still at a board 7 games a day. i don't envy Sherrie for doing this for 31 games in a row.
any feedback on my commentary, though, if i do end up doing that again at some event?
that said, it would be much more efficient and probably more interesting to hire one or two or three players to do on the ground twitter/tumblr updates rather than this walk around with a notepad, type into computer with weird link notation, wait for john to upload, then have to go back and fix things and have him reupload, etc. and set up a twitter account for the event and stick it at a station and let players post to it. or do something that gives more players an outlet to update for themselves in a recognized way. or at least make it possible by enabling wifi access for some number of those who are willing to do updates. i think we need to put conrad or someone else who's making good headway in the social media scene on the championship committee.
the social energy of this tournament also felt off to me, but maybe there are just too many factions at this point to navigate comfortably. and more of us are now in contention for actually winning at any given time, so less prone to do the kind of stupid stuff we did years ago as a larger collective.
but there were food highlights! pio pio and hawkers asian street fare and even the overpriced tchoup chop in the resort were quite pleasing. and harry potter was definitely worth seeing, and i'm glad i got to spend a couple of hours on a couple of different days in the park. i do wish i had the energy for disney, but it'll probably be more fun to go with my nephews at some point anyway.
i'll be playing for vegas. i'm looking forward to new york city. i'll do commentary or annotate or something at can am, i guess. who knows what else i'll do this year. i'll figure out how to balance work with play, though, so that i'll be ready to compete at nationals a year from now. and i'll keep trying to figure out how to make more female d1 players.