2022 Return of the Variants

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Mike

Dairy for 2022. Continue reading →

My notes from 2022 are rather comprehensive. Tournament bridge finally started again in that year. My experiences at the sectional tournaments in New England have been recounted here. The events sponsored by District 25 (D25) are described here.

I decided to organize this blog entry chronologically. Several other major events that occurred during the year received their own entries. Links to those entries can be found in the appropriate month.

I was looking forward to 2022 with hope of a return to some degree of normalcy. Both of the bridge clubs in which I played regularly seemed to be doing fairly well, and tournaments were scheduled nearby at the unit (state), district (New England), and national level. Furthermore my wife Sue, my friend Tom Corcoran, and I had an exciting trip planned for May. Finally, although the U-M football team lost its last game of 2021 badly, it was a gigantic improvement over the team that won only two games in the first year of the Pandemic.

January: On New Year’s Day the temperature reached 50 degrees. I walked five miles outdoors with only one stop. I also found René Conrad’s (introduced here) LinkedIn page.

Ohio State was lucky to beat Utah 48-45 in the Rose Bowl. Both teams had great offenses and terrible defenses.

On the next day I received an email from René. I wrote back to her, but there was no further interaction.

On January 3 I brought the car into Lia Honda because the windshield washers were not squirting. The service guy told me that mice had chewed a hole in the hose. He put in a new one and advised me to put traps in the garage in which the car was stored.

On the morning of the 4th I used the Dealer4 machine at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) for the Wednesday evening game at the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC). I encountered no problems that I could not immediately resolve. On the way home from bridge I bought some mouse traps.

At the Zoom meeting of the HBC Board of Trustees (BoT) the big news was that Linda Starr, the director who had sent out so many clever emails during the shutdown via MailChimp, was resigning from communication duties. I thought about volunteering, but at that point I was still busy with my work for D25.

On January 6 I caught a mouse in a trap that I had set near the wooden chest on the northern wall in the garage.

I suspected that I might be charged by the BoT with finding and/or training a replacement for Linda. So, I asked for and received copies of Linda’s write-ups of what she did in MailChimp. It was certainly nice (and unusual) to work with someone who had thoroughly documented her responsibilities.

The traps for the first two mice were set just to the left of this chest.

On January 7 I caught a second mouse in a trap set in the same spot.

I had ordered a blue sweatshirt with Michigan spelled out in yellow (actually maize) from someone on Espy. I received it on January 8. I already had on that I liked a lot, but the collar and the cuffs were quite frayed, and it was a little too big. The color was right and it seemed comfortable, but the letters were not precisely yellow. They had blue specks in them. I decided that it was close enough, and I did not send it back.¹

On the 10th I caught a third mouse. By then Bob (the cat) seemed to have moved into the new bedroom with Sue. Bob and our other pet for 2022, Giacomo, were black cats. They were both introduced here.

The plain old mousetrap of decades gone by still worked perfectly well.

I cooked carne asada tacos using a seasoning packet that Sue had purchased, but I did not think much of them. In the national championship game Georgia beat Alabama with s fourth-quarter rally. U-M finished third in the final voting, the highest that they have been since the shared national championship of 1997-98.

On January 11 a fourth mouse was executed for illegal residency in the garage.

The computer in the office at the HBC was on the fritz. I had to make the the boards for the SBC game on Wednesday manually. John Calderbank and I somehow finished first out of twelve pairs.

On the next day I trapped mouse #5. In the morning game at the HBC the boards did not match the hand records. Somebody messed up when making the boards

I caught no more mice in the garage, but on the fourteenth I trapped one in the kitchen. They can run but they love cheese too much to hide.

On January 18 Giacomo had trouble getting to his feet. That was also day on which I learned that after the latest rebooking of the cruise for May, Tom was not on the same flights as Sue and I. Tom remembered that we had paid extra to be on the same flights.

Linda had made .pbn files on Tuesday evening for me to use when making the boards. On Wednesday the 18th at 9 am I made boards for the Simsbury game. We had four tables at the SBC.

On the 20th Giacomo was frantic when he could not get to his feet, but he finally made it. He could get around OK after that. Obviously his 19th year is going to be a difficult one for him. He had never been ill or injured. Occasionally he coughed up a hair ball, but that affliction is common to almost all long-haired cats.

On the next day I made a MailChimp “audience” (the MailChimp word for contact list) for the HBC using my laptop. I had to reuse the audience that I had previously created for emails from the president of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA) that welcomed new members.

On January 22 Sue’s cat Bob had for some reason spent the last three nights in the bathtub in which I take a shower every evening. This morning he left behind a turd when he departed. I did not thank him for it.

Tom negotiated with Viking and got us all on the same flights: SwissAir to Budapest and British on the return.

On January 23 I walked nine laps (five miles) wearing a mask in the Enfield Square mall to investigate using it as an option for exercising in foul weather. What a sad place! Hardly anyone was shopping in the few stores that were open. The two restaurants each had one table occupied. No one seemed to be in the movie theater. I encountered a dozen or so walkers, some with dogs! An obese guy in a white strapped undershirt with a shopping cart full of stuff was at the Asnuntuck kiosk. He had plugged in some kind of weird machine. This trip inspired me to keep a rather complete log of my subsequent walks. It has been posted here.

On the next day my left lower back was sore in the morning, but it did not prevent me from walking another five miles.

On January 25 both sides of my lower back were sore when I woke up. If I did not know better, I might conclude that I was getting old.

The Tournament Scheduling Committee (TSC) for District 25 (D25) scheduled another meeting for Wednesday night, the only time all week that I cannot attend! This infuriate me. I complained, but I did not know whom to be angry at.

I learned that Unit 126 (Connecticut) was facing the possibility of holding two major face-to-face STaC² games a week apart.

On the 26th I could barely walk with the pain in my left lower back. For some reason lying down made it worse. I immediately took an ibuprofen tablet. It helped a lot.

On the next day I spent an hour and a half on the rowing machine; the back felt OK.

On January 28 a “bomb cyclone” was predicted to arrive at about 10 pm. I forgot to pay the bill for the Chase credit card because Sue was “checking” the charges. I received a nice email from Rick Cernech. He was living in Florida and was either working as or had worked as a cruise planner.

There was plenty of snow on January 29. I decided while using the rowing machine that the creaking sound that I could hear in my bedroom was really coming from the shelves in the basement directly below it.

Joe Brouillard, a co-chair of the committee that was running the event, reported that the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) had finally posted the schedule for the summer North American Bridge Championship (NABC) that was scheduled for July. The preparatory work that Joe and his team (of which I was in charge of email publicity) did for the NABC has been documented here.

On the last day of the month I decided to try to bleed as many of the radiators in the old section of the house as I could. Since boxes, bags and furniture were virtually everywhere, this was not an easy task. One that I was able to get at in the living room started pissing after I bled it. It was extremely difficult to get the screw back all the way in. The hot water burnt my hands pretty badly, but I finally prevailed.

I watched episode 1 of season 2 of the series “Resident Alien.”³ It didn’t seem as good.as the first season, but I still enjoyed it.

February: On Groundhog Day only five pairs registered for the evening bridge game at the SBC. I had to cancel the game. Eric and I were first at 68% in the morning game at the HBC. In the afternoon game online Sue by tied for first. Her partner was John Willoughby.

In the evening I went to see Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Cinemark in Enfield Square. About ten people were in attendance. I thought all of the performances were quite good, especially Rosa Feola’s portrayal of a more Gilda who was more mature than usual. However, I hated the production decisions in the last act.

On February 5 I sent 20,000 emails for the NABC. I played pretty well but got a bad result at the HBC game with Peter Katz. I realized that I had forgotten to send the invitational email to SBC players on Friday. I set Outlook up to remind me to do so on Fridays and Mondays.

On February 8 I received the toner that I had ordered from Ink Technologies LLC.

February 11 was astoundingly warm—55 degrees. I walked 3.5 miles outside. Sue’s left big toe was very sore from gout.

The next day was 60 degrees! I finished the blog entry on Enfield Square, but I planned to update it as stores closed and (hopefully) opened.

On February 13 I received a mysterious email from Floyd Smith in response to my query about the name of his boss at Stage Stores (introduced here). It said “Sure. She is also on Facebook. Good luck and great to hear from you!”

Two inches of snow appeared on the grass, but the surfaces were clear. I drove Sue to the Urgent Care place on the north side of Hazard Ave. for her toe. They prescribed some drugs for her.

On the next day Sue’s toe was much better. I drove her to heart doctor. The appointment was for 10:15. I made sure that she was awake by 7:45. Nevertheless, it was 10:50 by the time we reached 1699 King St., which is just north of East Windsor. They would not see her. We were home at 11:30. The temperature only reached 20 degrees, which made it one of the coldest days of a very mild winter.

On February 15 I received this email from Floyd: “Suire is her last name. Sorry about that; spell check changed it last time. “

That evening the HBC’s Planning Committee held a Zoom meeting. Earlier I had committed to playing in the Swiss game at the HBC on February 27 with Ken Leopold, Y. L. Shiue, and Frank Blachowski. Frank and Y.L were very good players with a lot of masterpoints.

On the 17th the temperature reached 60 degrees, but it was very windy.

At a Zoom Meeting the D25 Executive Committee (EC) approved the Gala tournament on May 19-22 (coinciding with the dates that I planned to be in Europe on the cruise). The plan was to charge full price for events with lots of hospitality. I abstained; the other representative from Unit 126 (U126), Sonja Smith, did not attend. She may have already moved to North Carolina.

On February 18 the temperature hit 55 degrees in the morning but it fell throughout the day. I had to return the toner to Ink Technologies. I ordered the wrong thing. The company gave me a partial refund of $31 out of the original charge of $78.

On February 21 Russia sent troops into breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine. I walked four miles outdoors in the rather warm 52 degrees. Rob Stillman and Y. C. Hsu agreed to play as the third pair for the Wednesday evening game in Simsbury. Sue will play with Maria Van der Ree.

On February 23 it was 72 degrees when I left the HBC after winning the open pairs game with Eric in morning. An email at 3:00 from Judy Larkin informed me that Ida Coulter could not play. Minutes later Renee Janow and Lucie Fradet asked to play. Sue was too tired to play, and so Judy ended up playing with Maria. I played terribly. I was stressed out from juggling the schedule.

On February 24 Russia invaded Ukraine. I walked nine laps in the mall.

In the Swiss on the 26th we lost our first two matches on flukes. We came back to win the last three by 18, 18, and 20 victory points to finish second out of twelve. YC made 6NT after he underled his ♠A.

March: For Sue’s birthday party on March 2 at the SBC she brought cupcakes for everybody. There were only 3 tables, but we had a good time.

On the next evening Sue and I went to supper with Tom at the Puerto Vallarta Mexican restaurant. The tacos al carbon were not as good as I remembered them. Tom ordered his usual gigantic bowl, which was no longer on the menu. I don’t remember what it was called.

On March 6 I walked 5 miles outside. The temperature was 62 degrees, but I needed to circumvent many puddles from the snow melting.

On March 9 about two inches of snow was on the lawn. The streets had been cleared, but Eno Hall was closed, and so the SBC could not hold a game.

By March 10 I had read the following books from the Enfield Public Library: T.C. Boyle’s Talk Talk; Max Barry’s The 22 Murders of Madison May and Lexicon. I liked Lexicon the best, but they were all good.

On March 18 the temperature hit 76 degrees, a new all-time record for the date. I walked five miles in a tee shirt. I learned that the Xiaos (aged 10 and 13) won the 0-10K Swiss at the NABC in Reno. The two youngsters

On March 20 Sue and I played in the “8 is enough” Swiss with Mayank and Aarati Mehta. Finished in the middle because of a hand in which Rob Stillman and Ronit Shoham bid 4♥ against Sue and me, but the Mehtas let Y. C. play 3♦.

On March 27 there was no pee or poop in the litter box. I brought the box upstairs, and Giacomo took a pee and then lounged in the box. He had never done this before. It was not a good sign.

On March 30 Ken and I won a five-table STaC game at the SBC. Sue and I could not find Giacomo when we returned to Enfield.

The cat’s door as seen from the back yard.

On the next morning I found Giacomo’s body lying in the back yard just outside of the cat door. He had not gone outside in weeks, maybe months, and he had not been downstairs for days. Nevertheless, he must have used up all of his remaining strength to descend the stairs, walk over to the ramp, climb up the ramp to the cat door, and exit through that door.

He was a wonderful cat. I really mourned for him, and I still miss having him on my lap while I watch television. More details about long relationship with Giacomo before the Pandemic can be found here.

In the last few years of Giacomo’s life I apparently became allergic to something about him. Several times I had rather severe outbreaks of hives, and I got the sniffles when he sat on my lap. After he died these symptoms disappeared.

I did the income taxes using FreeTaxesUSA.com. My federal tax was $0, and I received a refund of over $900 from Connecticut.

A lot of other things happened on the last day of March. An oil bill for $780.52 arrived. I brought the litter box, which now is officially Bob’s, back downstairs. While I was doing so, I fell into some empty boxes and bruised my left hand. It hurt, but it was not fatal. The Sony audio recorder that I ordered for the cruise arrived. I played with it enough to feel fairly comfortable using it.

April: On the 2nd of the month M&T Bank took over our previous bank, Peoples United Bank, which had a few years earlier purchased United Bank. United had purchased Rockville Bank, from which I negotiated our final mortgage, as documented here. This changeover seemed to go rather smoothly, and I like the new website slightly better than the old one.

Bob has found the litter box. Thank goodness.

Peter and I won the six-table STaC game at the HBC. On consecutive hands grand slams could be made in hearts. We only bid one of them, but no one else took all the tricks on the other one.

On April 6 the switch for the lights in the basement did not work. Two days later I got it to work, but it was difficult. Eventually this problem disappeared or maybe I just adjusted to the toggle.

On April 11 I received the second booster shot at a pharmacy in Springfield. Sue had already gotten hers

On April 15 I downloaded the VeriFly app that Viking had recommended for my phone and eventually got it to work. This was a complete waste of time, and it stressed me out. It was never needed or, for that matter, useful on the entire trip.

On April18 Ken and I learned that we had been dumped as teammates for the upcoming Grand National Teams (GNT) online qualification tournament by Felix Springer and Trevor Reeves again. Details can be found here. I was not looking forward to the online part again, but I thought that we would have a pretty good chance of qualifying. Playing in the GNT in Providence in July had been my goal for many months, and I had avoided accumulating masterpoints throughout the Pandemic in order to maintain my eligibility. I ordinarily do not hold grudges, but I still feel bitter about this more than a year and a half later.

On April 29 Peter Katz and I won the last Saturday game at the HBC before it went on hiatus. There were only three tables. I faked out Y. L with a terrible overcall.

The huge hump of hair on Bob’s back was an embarrassment to all of us.

May: Something incredible happened on May 2. Sue took Bob to the veterinarian. She learned that the big clump that had been on his back for years was just hair. The vet shaved it off, and it never grew back. How can this be? He would not let us touch it; why was it so sensitive? What cat has that much hair? What made it keep growing for such a long time? Sue said that the vet said that it was just bad grooming. He also said that Bob was at least thirteen years old.

That cat never ceased to amaze me. After his haircut he suddenly liked to be petted, he also became more friendly to me. One untoward result was that I developed very small bumps around my ankles that were itchy and a little painful. I must have been allergic to him or at least his dander.

I downloaded the Uber app for possible use in Vienna to get back to the ship from the opera. The rest of the bizarre preparation for the European cruise has been catalogued in some detail here.

I learned that thirty staff members of Henry Barnard School have Covid-18! I did not realize that the school even had that many employees. The state of Connecticut was showing a 9.4% positivity rate. The good news was that Germany’s level, which I had been following closely, was down by quite a bit. The other three countries on our itinerary were also improving.

The European cruise trip began on May 5. The incredible story of that day and the rest of the journey is well documented here. One thing that is not related there is the fact that the little bumps on my ankles cleared up while I was in Europe. The ones on my right ankle began to reappear in June or July.

On May 23 I mowed the lawn, which had by then become a jungle. While doing so I realized that I had to attack the poison ivy, which was much more prevalent than in 2021. I ordered some Roundup that could be sprayed on the plants from Amazon.

Only five pairs had registered for the Wednesday night game in Simsbury, but I had not yet heard from Lori Leopold. She could usually find a partner on short notice.

The next morning brought another frustrating bridge game. When I got back to the house I needed to cancel the Wednesday evening game at the SBC because only five pairs had registered.

I brought to the Verizon office on Hazard Ave. the Pixel 2 cellphone that had failed me on the cruise. The tech guy at Verizon showed me that the phone was considerably thicker in the middle than on the edges. He explained that this was a symptom of overheating. So, the phone was officially dead. In retrospect I concluded that the transformer in the cable that connected the phone to the outlet in my cabin must have failed to convert the current to 110 at least once on the cruise, and the European current fried the battery or something. I kept the phone plugged in virtually all of the time that I was in my cabin.

We planned on eating at the Kebab House before entering the Cinemark at Enfield Square to see the opera, but it was not open. We watched the rust-belt production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. The character of the priest just did not work. Otherwise, the first two acts were very moving, but the third act was a total mess until Javier Camarena’s outstanding performance near the end. The many interviews during the breaks. were insipid. Sue and I settled for popcorn for supper. Incredibly she stayed awake throughout the performance.

On May 25 I discovered that our mortgage on the house was completely paid off! I was not expecting this news for several months.

June: At some point in June Sue purchased for me a new (well, new to me) cellphone. This one was a Samsung Galaxy S7. It was similar to Sue’s, and so she could sometimes help me with it. A year and a half later I still hated it, but not as much as I loathed the Pixel 2. The Samsung had not ordered any pizzas for me, but, then again, I had not downloaded the Slice app. I could almost never figure out where the app that I wanted to use was hiding, and it randomly plays YouTube videos and other stuff from the Internet. I figured out how to answer the phone in a minute or two, but it took me eighteen months to figure out how to hang up.

On the 1st I learned that Sally Kirtley, the director at the SBC, had tested positive for Covid-19. Ken had to direct at the Wednesday night . Ken and I won easily.

On the very next day Sally came to the ACBL’s walk-through in Providence. I very much enjoyed talking with old friends like Paula Najarian.

On June 13 I received two bottles of Roundup that I had ordered from Amazon. I immediately went outside and sprayed the poison ivy that was growing along the fence on the north side of the yard. Two days later I sprayed the poison ivy again. I wore a mask during both sprayings, and I was careful not to get any on my skin or clothes.

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates to combat the serious inflation that began after the country reopened. Any moron could see that the main culprit had been pent-up demand from the shutdown, and the secondary cause was shipping holdups. Nevertheless, I had to peel a sticker off of a gas pump at Costco that claimed that “Biden caused this.”

I met Mike Barke, a geography professor at the Northumbria University, and his wife Vivienne on the cruise. Mike had recently published a book entitled Newcastle upon Tyne: Mapping the City. As soon as I got back to the U.S. I ordered a copy. It finally arrived on June 17. It was both beautiful and interesting. It made me want to visit the Tyneside area.

The Longest Day game on June 21 at HBC very annoying. There was much too much noise. Donna Feir pressed everyone to play faster and then canceled the last round because the pizza had arrived. This turned out to be a super-spreader event for Covid-19.

From an email from Cindy Lyall, the treasurer of the CBA, I earned that U126 lost $4,000 on the tournament in Orange. Ouch!

On June 23 Mary Whittemore reported that her name was missing from the “Top 200 List” on the CTBridge.org website. I asked the CBA board members if anyone knew why. Don Stiegler sent me a correct list. It showed that many names were missing from the one on the website. Evidently no one knew how that page got updated on the website. Bob Bertoni, who died in 2021, set up the website and, because the unit had no webmaster at the time, did all of the updating.

On June 29 Sue and I attended a potluck supper at Sue’s church, the Somersville Congregational Church. I always feel very uncomfortable at these religious gatherings, but this one was tolerable. After supper we listened to Graham Van Keuren’s presentation on his vacation with his spouse Eric in Israel. I recorded it on my audio recorder. It was a good presentation, but it certainly did not make me want to visit what I considered to be an apartheid country.

On June 30 Dr. Anthony Fauci announced that he had Covid-19 for the second time. This news astounded me. Did he take no precautions? The Pandemic was finally running rampant at the HBC. Only five tables were occupied on Tuesday morning, and the evening game was canceled. Only three tables appeared on Wednesday, and the Simsbury game was canceled. Both of the games at the HBC on Thursday were canceled.

July: The big event of the month was the Providence NABC. I attended most of the event, but Sue decided not to go. I kept notes on my laptop and wrote them up a little later. They have been posted here and here. It was good to see some familiar faces, but the bridge games were not much fun.

The tournament was another super-spreader of Covid-19. Almost everyone with whom I played or associated caught the virus. I almost ripped the driver’s side mirror off of my car, and the hotel rooms were never cleaned. However, I avoided getting the disease. So, in a period of about two and a half months I had survived three super-spreader events—the cruise, bridge at the HBC, and the NABC. I credited my collection of free N95 masks that I had amassed from giveaways at various retailers.

August: I was hoping to have a party at the SBC to celebrate my seventy-fourth birthday. Not enough people were able to attend on the 17th. Instead, I decided that the SBC would have a Christmas party on August 24. Twenty people attended, and so we had five tables and lots of food. The players gave me a $100 Amazon card and $20 in cash. I was a little upset that Sue and I arrived so late because she, as usual, was not ready on time. I had made beef Stroganoff that needed to be heated up in the slow cooker. I crawled under the table and plugged in the pot, but I neglected to turn it on.

On August 26 the refrigerator stopped working. Panic set in. Sue and I resolved to deal with it the next morning. By then it had resumed functioning. If we ever figured out the cause of the outage, I made no note of it.

Throughout the period from my arrival back in Enfield after the cruise up to the end of August the weather had been hot, and I had spent every spare minute working on the journal for the Grand European Tour. On August 28 I finally finished it and sent an email to quite a few people announcing that the journal had been posted on Wavada.org. I was quite pleased to hear back from both the Barkes and the family from Saskatchewan.

A Big Y Express replaced the Shell station.

I noticed that the Shell station on Hazard Ave., which had been operational since we moved to Enfield in the late eighties, was closed.

On August 29 I received a long email from Tom Caputo, whom I had worked with at both Lord & Taylor (described here) and Saks Fifth Avenue (here). He was looking for a job at the age of 60. He asked me if I knew about anything being available. Since he knew very well that I had had nothing to do with retail for at least eight years, he must have been desperate. Maybe he thought that I had kept in touch with people more than I had.

I also received an email from Mike and Vivienne Barke.

August closed with an incredibly disappointing Ocean State Regional tournament in Warwick, RI. I had a rotten time, the attendance was abysmal, and the district lost money. The details have been posted here.

September: On September 13 Bob decided to take over Giacomo’s old position atop the back of the couch in the living room. On the next evening he lost his balance (something that Giacomo had never done in eighteen years) and tumbled off the back. He was in a panic and tried unsuccessfully to climb up the drapes to regain his perch.

On the following evening Bob had clambered back into Giacomo’s old spot. When I seated myself in my chair a few feet away, he obviously wanted to come join me, but he was evidently afraid to land on the pillows that were arrayed on the couch’s cushions. I moved them out of his way. He then descended to the sitting level and, after executing calculations in his walnut-sized brain, made the “mighty leap” to the armrest of my chair. He sat peacefully on my lap for a few minutes. Then he got nervous, peed on me, descended frantically to the floor, and did his “breakdance.” Much more has been written here about the misadventures of this very strange feline.

After sleeping comfortably for a month or more on beds in hotels and cruise ships, I judged that I needed a new mattress. The one that I had been sleeping on was more than thirty years old and was a little too short for me. Sue selected one for me as a late birthday present. It arrived on September 14. The delivery people set it up and took away the old one. Sue, of course, kept the obsolete pieces that held it off the floor. I found them leaning against the bookcase in the hallway. The new mattress was considerably better than the old one, but I still woke up with a backache more often than not.

On September 16 I talked with someone from the town of Enfield about the tax bill that I had received that day. It contained a significant interest charge because I did not pay the July installment. The simple reason for my delinquency was that I had never received a bill. It turned out that the mortgage holder, Peoples United Bank, had payed the portion due in January. The mortgage schedule indicated that five payments were remaining when the bank declared that it was fully paid. I was sent a notice of this, but I was never apprised of the bill from the town that the bank must have received. The lady with whom I talked refused to waive the interest charge. Since the bank that held the mortgage at the time that the bill was sent no longer existed, I did not have any recourse except to pay.

On the same day using my free MailChimp account, I sent an email that I had previously composed to try to improve the attendance of the players with less than 500 masterpoints at the upcoming sectional tournament in Orange.

The bookshelf fell onto the bed in 2023. The light is now attached to a screw in the wall.

On September 17 two items that I had ordered from Amazon were delivered. The first was a reading light that I would be able to clamp to the bookshelf above the new bed. The second was a book by Daryl Gregory entitled We are All Completely Fine. I liked this book much less than the one by Gregory that I had read on the cruise, The Spoonbenders.

Bob had mysteriously disappeared on September 16. He returned two days later and spent all day and night by the stove. Something was apparently wrong with him, but we were not too concerned. His behavior had always been eccentric.

Eric, Motoko Oinaga, John Debaggis, and I finish second out of ten in the Swiss event held at the HBC on September 18. We were the #8 seed. Eric and I bid and made slams on two of the last three hands to win the round by 24. We lost only to the winners—Lesley Meyers, Laurie Robbins, Felix, and Trevor.

Sue made an appointment at the vet for Bob on September 20. I heard him at some point after 4 a.m. on the 19th. At 5:45 I brought the litter box upstairs and shut the door to the basement, but when Sue woke up Bob was nowhere to be found. I opened the door to the basement. He came in about 9:30, and I shut the door to the basement again.

Before my bridge game on September 20 I placed Bob in the cat carrier, but at some point he somehow escaped. Sue was able to get him back in and took him to his 12:30 appointment. We found out that he had a tumor in his mouth or throat. There was not much hope for him, but the doctor gave Sue some medicine for him. Sue gave him the drops when I got back from bridge and could hold him. He needed them twice a day. I was so involved that I forgot about my Zoom meeting of the HBC Planning Committee.

We probably should have put Bob down when we heard about the tumor. He had always been Sue’s pet. She had to make the decision, and she could not do it.

On the last day of the month I sent a second email for the CBA.

October: On October 3 Sue started giving Bob antibiotics and steroids. He started eating a little better. Sue took him to the vet again on the 18th. He was still not eating much even though Sue was diligent about preparing meals that were both nutritious and easy to swallow.

Southbridge Hotel and Conference Center.

The October 19 Simsbury game was canceled. I drove Sally to Southbridge to check out the hotel that we would be using for the tournament in October, which was named the Spectacle Regional because the hotel was the administration building of the defunct American Optical Company. The ground floor was very modern, but the the playing area not very large. The restaurant, which was called Visions, was not open except for groups.

On the same day Sue’s cousin Robby Davis was found dead in his apartment.

On October 21 I had breakfast with Sue and Mark Davis. Mark was very involved in a gigantic project involving his ancestry. For some reason I have almost no interest in exploring mine. Someone from the Spokane branch of the Wavada sent my dad a lot of research that she had done. Sue got it from him and put it somewhere. I have never seen it.

On October 22 there was no game at the HBC. I went by myself to see Cherubini’s Medea at Cinemark at the Enfield Square. Sondra Radvanovsky gave an outstanding performance in an opera that had not been performed since Maria Callas played the title character. A carnival was set up in the mall parking lot.

On October 24 I drove to the mall for a walk. I forgot my little blue mp3 player, and I wore the wrong shoes. I had to drive back home and start over.. A girl in a red suit made of balloons and a small backpack was walking stiff-legged around the mall. I think that she was supposed to look like an astronaut.

November: The first week of the month was unseasonably warm. On the 7th it was 67 degrees at 5 a.m. and 80 as I drove through Hartford at 1 p.m. after playing with Nancy Calderbank for the first time in the mentorship program. She had asked me to teach her 2/1.

On November 8 I finished writing the Bulletin for Southbridge and sent it to Sally for printing.

In the mid-term elections the Republicans, as expected, won the House of Representatives, but the Democrats held onto the Senate after Senator Warnock won another runoff.

I received a bill from Somers Oil for $798.86!

The hilarious postscript to the Grand European Tour occurred on November 8, almost six months after I departed. Sue and I were in the living room when we heard the unmistakable sound of claws shredding paper. Sue rose from her chain, hurried into the kitchen, and yelled, “Bob, what have you gotten into now?” She snatched a paper bag from beneath his claws. When she looked inside she found the passport for which she had searched for several days back in early May. She should have just asked Bob where it was.

11/23 Sue and I spent Thanksgiving alone. I sent the following email to the Barkes and Steve Flamman:

I hope that you are all doing well.
I thought that you might be interested in this. Two weeks ago my wife Sue and I were watching TV in our living room in the evening when we heard the unmistakable sound of our cat Bob shredding something made of paper in the kitchen. Sue sprang from her chair to prevent further damage. She found that Bob had somehow discovered a small paper sack and had pulled it out onto the floor. Sue retrieved it from him and discovered her current and expired passports as well as a few other items that had been missing for over two years.
Incidentally, I included two photos of Sue unsuccessfully trying to negotiate a deal with Viking on the Day 0 page of my journal and one that she took of Bob on Day 12.
Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S. It is hard to find things to be thankful for lately, but I am definitely thankful for the friends that I made on the cruise in May.

I had more to be thankful for three days later. Michigan defeated Ohio State 45-23 at the Horseshoe in Columbus to win the eastern division of the Big 10 for the second year in a row. They did it without the Big 10’s best running back, Blake Corum. Donovan Edwards filled in for Corum very well. The Wolverines finished the regular season 12-0.

December: A week later the Wolverines beat Purdue in the Big 10 title game 43-21. They have qualified for the four-team College Football Playoff for the second year in a row.

December 8 was the tenth anniversary of our wedding ceremony. Sue and I are about as unhappy as we have ever been. Sue blames her health and various inanimate objects. I blame the house.

Curtis Barton, the president of D25, sent an email to members of the Executive Committee indicating that all senior employees of the ACBL had been fired. He then sent a correction that said that, according to Mark Aquino, who as Regional Director should know, “fired” is not the right word.

On December 9 Sue suddenly screamed, “I hate my life!” I was thinking that I hated our house, which was a pigsty. I also resented that almost whenever I needed something I must ask her where it was. Usually she did not know and said that she would look for it. In addition, we had so much junk everywhere that every time I that I went to get something I must remove four or five other items and then replace them in the right order. The refrigerator, for example, was always full to overflowing. THERE ARE ONLY TWO OF US!

However, as always, I said nothing because I did not want to trigger a tearful reaction or a panic attack.

December 12 brought the first snow of the season.

At 5 a.m. on the next day the weatherman on WTIC AM reported that it was 8 degrees in Granby and 19 in neighboring East Granby.

On December 17 I bought a rib roast. Sue forgot about Tyesha’s confirmation. Then she also bought a rib roast because she forgot her shopping list, and my phone was off because I forgot to turn it back on after bridge.⁵ I discovered that for weeks she had been leaving me voicemail messages that I did not know about. We have become two incompetent old farts.

On December 21 we had five tables at the SBC game. Sue and I arrived too late for the holiday party because Sue went to the store at 4:30 p.m. to buy the fruit that she had promised to bring. The players gave me $130.

On December 23 very strong winds uprooted the pine tree in the front yard. I heard a loud crashing sound at about 5 a.m. The tree fell straight towards our house, but there was no damage at all because the top section landed harmlessly on the patio between the old section of the house and Sue’s garage.

The high temperature the next day was only 19. I got a letter from ConnectiCare. The premium for my dental policy went down from $79 to $56.

We did nothing special on Christmas day. Sue may have watched It’s a Wonderful Life,⁶ but I didn’t.

Crystal Lake Construction, the company that cleared the snow from our driveway and sidewalks chopped up and removed most of the fallen tree. They came back later for the stump.

On the same day I received an email from Mark Aquino about the new training required for directors at sectionals, On the 27th I met with the HBC directors after the bridge game. Peter Marcus, who generally knew these things, had reported that the new rules applied only to events with masterpoint limits in excess of 500.

On the last day of the year Michigan lost to TCU 51-45. Early in the game J. J. McCarthy threw two interceptions that were returned for touchdowns. It was a wretched end to an awful year.

A week later TCU got clobbered by Georgia in the championship game. U-M would have done better, but they probably would have lost.

1. By the fall of 2023 a small spot had appeared on the front of the sweatshirt. It looked like a grease stain, but on closer inspection it was obvious that the exterior had worn thin. I could hide the blemish with ink from a Sharpie pen, but that was not a good permanent solution.

2. STaC stands for “sectional tournament at clubs”. These were games held at clubs that awarded more points, and the overalls included all of the participating clubs. Regular STaCs paid silver points. The points in Royal STaCs were evenly split between black, red, gold, and silver points.

3. “Resident Alien” was originally shown on the Syfy channel. Sue and I watched season 1 and season 2 on the streaming service called Peacock. At the time it was free on Cox cable. Eventually they wanted people to buy monthly subscriptions and restricted the free option so much as to make it worthless.

4. Apparently Peoples United Bank wanted our mortgage off of its books when it was taken over by M&T bank. The five mortgage payments that I saved by this action more than covered the cost of the July tax bill, but someone should have told me that that amount would be due.

5. I did not learn how to put the Samsung cellphone on “vibrate” until much later. It was easy to do but not a bit intuitive.

6. All year long Sue watched TCM during every waking (and many sleeping) moment.

2023 Bridge: The Weiss-Bertoni Award

Posted on July 29, 2023 by Mike

A new award for New England bridge. Continue reading →

The Larry Weiss Award (introduced here) was an engraved silver tray that was presented by the New England Bridge Conference a total of twenty-three times over the period of its existence—1982-2022. The history of the award, including its original criteria and evolution in 2023, is documented here.

In 2017 I won the award. I was very proud of this, but I also pledged to myself that I would make sure that it was given to someone else the next year. The committee that I formed in 2018 voted for Bob Bertoni, who was the District Director. That responsibility left him little or no time to organize a committee to manage the process of selecting the next recipient in 2019. Then came the pandemic, and to make matters wors Bob developed cancer and died in July of 2021.

It did not make sense to try to give out the award in 2021. No regional tournaments were held in New England the entire year. In 2022 I argued in the Executive Committee’s Zoom meetings that the award should again be given out in 2023, and I volunteered to chair the committee again. There was no opposition. The president, Curtis Barton, told me to go for it.

A few months later I discovered that no one knew where the Larry Weiss trophy was. I was not about to call Bob’s widow, Beth, and quiz her about it. Besides, there was only room enough on the tray to squeeze in one more name. So, the EC voted that the award committee should decide on a new award, name it, set up the criteria, buy it, and present it..

When Natalie Bassil won an event in 2015, she asked me to post this photo of her. She hasn’t changed a bit.

I selected committee members in much the same way as I did in 2018. I wanted people who had participated in the post-pandemic tournaments, and I insisted that at least one person be from each district. A few people turned me down or never responded. In the end two EMBA players agreed to be on the committee, Natalie Bassil and Dan Jablonski. The others were Michelle Blanchard, Chris Soares, Lucia Carlisle, Sue Collinson, Dan Morgenstern, and Judy Hyde.

The protocol was similar to what I used in 2018. All of the communication among members would be via email. Nominations would be submitted by the players throughout New England. Two sets of votes would be held. In the first one committee members would be allowed to name three (or fewer) nominees who they thought were worthy of the honor. Then each person would vote for one person from the reduced list.

The first step was to come up with a name and a set of criteria. I proposed the name Weiss-Bertoni Award and added one criterion to the three listed on the Larry Weiss document. “Extraordinary service to promote face-to-face bridge at all levels in New England.” The one thing that I was most adamant about was the phrase “face-to-face”. I felt that online bridge, championed by the ACBL both during the pandemic and afterwards, was destroying the face-to-face game.

I sent an email to each committee member with my proposal and asked them to suggest improvements. The proposal that I attached has been posted here. A few members suggested that two proposals would make more sense. Since I had only been authorized to award one trophy, I did not put those ideas to a vote. Chris Soares was the only person who made a constructive suggestion:

Thank you for a thoughtful and concise revision.
In new Section 4 I’d suggest that
“It would seem to make sense for the committee selecting the current nominee to include the current winner…”
be changed to
“It seems sensible for the committee selecting the current nominee to include the current winner, if possible…”
A bit cleaner and addresses the unfortunate reality of death

I liked her suggestion. Since I could not imagine anyone objecting to it, I did not put it to a vote. So, we now had a name and some good criteria.

Nominations: I asked the new webmaster, Gary Peterson to post an item on the main page of the district’s website to solicit nominations. Players were asked to send nominations with the reasons for their choices to my email account. At the same time I sent an email to all active players in D25. It is posted here.

The response was almost overwhelming. In the end I received ninety-nine emails nominating forty-one players. I nominated five people: Felix Springer, Trevor Reeves, Donna Feir, Linda Starr, and Joe Brouillard. I disqualified two of the nominees. Two people told be that I should be nominated. I told them that I was not eligible because I had won in 2017. One person nominated a woman who lived in New Jersey who, as far as I could tell, had never played in a tournament in New England. Chris Soares nominated someone who had recently died. Since he had been alive for most of the time since the last award was given, I allowed it.

I wrote php code for a webpage on Wavada.org to allow the members of the committee to read what players had said about the people that they had nominated. A link to the webpage is here. I left the nominations open until March 17.

On March 18 I sent the following email to the committee members:

The nomination process is now finished. The last nomination–and it was for a player who had not previously been nominated–came in at 11:53 last night. I was very impressed by the response. I am quite sure that no previous nominating process sparked anything comparable.
I only disqualified two nominations. One was for a player who lives in New Jersey and never seems to have played in New England. The other was for a previous winner of the Weiss award.
I have created a word-processing document for each nominee. Every document contains all the supporting material that was provided by nominators. I will create a pdf file from each of these and post them where each of you can read them. I have written a program that will make it easy to find and open them. I will send the link to this program as soon as all of the pdf files have been checked. I want to make sure that nothing was lost in the transition.
I hope for the evaluation phase to start on Monday. Since I am playing f2f today and tomorrow, it may be a day or so later. During that phase you will be provided time to read all the materials and, if you wish, to send me your thoughts (attributed or anonymous) to add to the pdf files before we start voting. I will provide more details when I send the link.

I made two mistakes in posting the nominations. I accidentally left off Ed Rothman, who Chris Soares had nominated. When she complained about it, I apologized, added him, and made sure that everyone knew about the mistake. I also left off Linda Starr, whom I nominated. I did not discover that until later.

The email containing the link and instructions for reading the nominating emails was sent on March 20:

It is time to start evaluating the cases for the forty players who have been nominated for the Weiss-Bertoni award. The official web page for this award is at https://nebridge.org/pages/481/. You can review the criteria there.
I have posted the text of all of the nominations on my website. You can view them through the alphabetical index at http://wavada.org/BAN001.php. When you get to that page click on the button at the bottom labeled “Generate HTML”. A list of the nominees, their units, ranks, and current masterpoints will appear. Beneath each nominee is a list of the people who nominated him/her. To read the text of the nominations just click on the underlined name of the nominee.
I did not edit the nominations except to leave out “thank you” and similar messages. I copied and pasted (as text) all of the messages. So, every message is in one uniform font without bolding, colors, emojis, or other flourishes.
The next step is to record your reactions and send them to me. You can specify that you want the message to be anonymous if you like. Otherwise, I will attribute it to the sender. I will either add the reactions to the bottom of the appropriate document or create a new document for reactions. I have not decided which to do. In either case you will be allowed to read them through the above link on my web site.
After everyone has a chance to digest the nominations and reactions, we will have a preliminary vote. In 2018 everyone was allowed to select three nominees whom they would be comfortable with as the winner. The people who appeared on at least five of these nine lists were considered finalists. The final voting was to select one of the finalists as the winner. Unless someone has a better idea, we will probably do it the same way this time.
Dan Morgenstern has agreed to be on the “subcommittee” that selects and purchases the physical award. If you have strong feelings about it (I don’t), you can contact him directly at dmdockayak@aol.com.
Please let me know that you received this email. I will send it again later in the week to anyone who doesn’t respond.

Discussion phase: On March 30 I sent an email to begin the “discussion phase”:

The nominating process for the Weiss-Bertoni award has ended. Before taking votes I want to solicit information and opinions from the committee members. I know a dozen or so nominees very well and another dozen or so well enough so to greet at a tournament. The people whom I know well live fairly close to me or have served with me on committees, boards, or projects. I would like to know what committee members with different backgrounds and locations think. I am also eager to share some of the “insider” experiences that I have had.
To that end I would like the other members of the committee to—if they want to—send me their anecdotes, thoughts, and feelings about any of the nominees that they know fairly well. I will create a pdf file for each nominee who receives comments from members and post them on the list. Each comment will be attributed to the sender unless it was specified that it was to be considered anonymous. For each nominee the word “Comments” will appear in red beneath the list of nominators if any comments have been received and posted. Clicking on “Comments” will produce a pdf file with all the comments for that nominee. I should have this portion of the web page working by Monday, April 3.
We can then start voting when everyone has had a chance to comment and digest the comments of others. I think that we should be able to do so near the end of April. It’s been five years since the last award; we should take as much time as we need.
Please let me know when you receive this message. I am sending the emails one at a time to try to avoid spam filters.

I was disappointed with the response to the request for additional comments. Perhaps it was a surprise to people that there were so many nominations to read. I read them all. Almost all of them were very short. Hardly anyone listed any details. I added my own comments to quite a few, but only one or two other people on the committee expressed their opinions.

This was, I suspect, another unexpected result of the pandemic. People had not been playing in very many different places. So, they were unfamiliar with the people who were working hard in other parts of New England. I know that I was.

Voting: The first round of voting began on May 1;

The participation in the “discussion phase” by the members of the Weiss-Bertoni committee was somewhat disappointing to me. The discussion phase in 2018 was more lively. Several committee members this time said that they were not very familiar with any of the nominees. Perhaps this is symptomatic of the isolation imposed over the previous three years.
It is May now, and we should start voting. Please send me a list of up to three of the nominees. They should be people whom you would be most comfortable with as the first recipient of the Weiss-Bertoni award. The criteria have been posted at https://nebridge.org/pages/481/. The list of nominees, including descriptions by the nominators and comments by committee member is stall available at http://wavada.org/BAN001.php. A few additional comments were added over this last weekend.
Please try to send your list to me this week, if possible. I will tabulate all of the votes and come up with a short list of finalists. I still expect to present the award at the Board of Delegates meeting in June.

The following people received at least one vote in the first round of voting: Karen Barrett, Joe Brouillard, Lois DeBlois, Yan Drabek, Donna Feir, Bob Gaudet, Kim Gilman, Tim Hill, David Metcalf, Sue Miguel, Ed Rothman, Bob Sagor, and Caroly Weiser. Sue Miguel and Joe Brouillard received more votes than the others.

This email for the final vote was sent on May 9:

Thank you very much for participating in the process of selecting the first winner of the Weiss-Bertoni award. Thirteen nominees received at least one vote in the elimination round. Two candidates received more than the others. So, the final choice is between Joe Brouillard and Sue Miguel. Please send me your choice of one or the other.
If you wish to review the nomination materials or comments, they are still available at http://wavada.org/BAN001.php.

The final vote was very close. It was 4-4 as I awaited the final vote, which finally arrived on May 18.

The new trophy: My original idea was to procure a tray that resembled the original Larry Weiss trophy as closely as possible. It was round and silver-plated. There was enough space on it for the name of the award, a phrase that described it, and twenty-four name-date combinations. If we gave it out every year, I would be 98 when it was full, and no one would ask me about it.

I spent many hours on the Internet looking for such a thing. I was pretty sure that the original, which was in my possession for an entire year, was at least eighteen inches in diameter. I found nothing that exceeded sixteen inches, and those trays all had ornamentation on them that would have greatly reduced the available space.

I asked for some time at the Executive Committee meeting. Of course, I was last on the agenda. I asked for a budget and/or help in choosing the new trophy. People were very eager to end the meeting. In the chaos of the last few seconds Sue Miguel, Peter Marcus, and (I could be wrong about her) Carolyn Weiser agreed to “take it offline”, which I interpreted to mean that they would form a subcommittee and take care of it.

I asked for a volunteer from the awards committee to join them, and Dan Morgenstern said that he would. I did not forget about the trophy, but I stopped researching. I received the following email from Dan on April 8:

I am out of the country until 4/25…I won’t be able to comment .
Also, none of the folks who volunteered to come up with a gift have been in touch…I am thinking a small individual plaque rather than an engraved plate.
Hope you are well!

This was what he wrote when he returned on April 28:

I have been away in the South Pacific for the past month, little or no internet.
Anyway,sorry about the slow response.
I haven’t heard from Peter Marcus ( I think he was going to lead the trophy choice team).
If we chose individual plaques, I would think they would be the same from year to year…no decisions needed.
I am a bit surprised at the lack of comments, other than yours…you might think the nominators would want to post…
I know most of the top players, other than Mark Aquino, I don’t know that most of them have done much to popularize bridge. I will look more closely at the list…

I resumed my research. I discovered that, depending on what we wanted, we could spend less than $100 or more than $1,000. I needed a budget. I wrote this email to Curtis on April 25:

As I mentioned before, I have little confidence that the subcommittee that volunteered at the end of the last EC meeting is doing anything to procure the physical Weiss-Bertoni award. Can you tell me what I need to do to get a budget for purchasing the trophy?

Here is what he replied:

We’ll discuss it at he next EC meeting (Saturday PM). If you have an idea what a suitable trophy would cost, that would help.

When I told him that we were in the process of voting, and I intended to award the trophy at the Board of Delegates meeting on the morning after the EC meeting, he told me just to get what I thought was appropriate.

I then asked Sue to help me with the project. She spent even more time on the Internet. As I did, she gave up on getting an appropriate tray. She did, however find a trophy with places for attaching a pretty large number of small engravings for winners and one big one for the name of the trophy. I liked it, and she negotiated a very reasonable price of about $150 including the shipping and engraving costs.

The vendor was Crown Awards. All of the engraving was done perfectly, and Sue assembled everything. I thought that it was very classy.

Presentation: The Board of Delegates met on June 25. Between twenty and thirty people were assembled. As always, I was last on the agenda. I made the presentation from my seat in which I was surrounded by the only other participants from Connecticut—Paul Burnham, Peter, and Sue.

I described the process that I used to select the nine committee members. I told everyone how pleased I was with the enthusiastic response to the solicitation for nominations. I held up the trophy for everyone to see. I told them that Sue had done most of the work in acquiring it. I said that if they liked it, they should compliment her. If not, they should keep their opinions to themselves. Then I read the name on the trophy: “Joe Brouillard”.

Joe was clearly stunned, but he wasn’t speechless. He gave a short acceptance speech. I was so happy for him.

General announcements: I had scheduled an email to go our to all active members of D25 at 10:30 while Sue and I were battling the traffic back to Enfield. It was short enough to post here:

Three members of the awards committee told me that they had enjoyed the experience and liked the trophy.

I also asked the webmaster to post a blurb that I wrote about it, and he did.

2006 March: Sue and Mike Spend a Week in San Diego

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Mike

Animals and more opera. Continue reading →

In the summer of 2023 I spent more than a day gathering information from every source that I could think of to try to determine exactly when Sue and I took the trip to San Diego. At first I thought that it was in 2002; I even wrote about one thousand words based on that assumption. I later found evidence that made me place it as late as 2009. As I was in the process of rewriting this to reflect the new date I came upon a set of Word documents labeled SD01 through SD07. They contained the notes that I had taken while on the trip, and they were dated. So, I can say with no fear of contradiction that the trip began on Thursday, March 23, 2006 and ended on Wednesday, March 29.

The notes were evidently intended to be expanded into a readable write-up of the trip and then, along with a sampling of photos, posted on Wavada.org along with my other travel journals. Evidently I must have gotten either busy or lazy; the readable journal never was written, and nothing was ever posted.

The good part is that the notes were a lot better than the septuagenarian memories that I would have needed to tap. Unfortunately, the photos have been lost. If I had integrated them into a journal, I would still have the best of them.

On the same day that I found the notes I rummaged through the bottom shelf on the bookcase in my office and found a paper bag with the imprint of the San Diego Opera on it. Inside was a receipt for the opera tickets, the program for the performance that we saw, and many other items from other places that Sue and I had visited. I would have preferred to find my photos, but this find greatly increased my enthusiasm for working on this entry.

Preparation: In March of 2006 we had two cats, the youngster Giacomo (introduced here), and my best buddy Woodrow (introduced here). The notes stated that Woodrow “purred in my ear”, which is how he often told me that it was time to get out of bed. We planned on leaving the cats alone in the house for a week, but we were not worried about them. Woodrow was well past his prime, but he was very self-reliant and quite tough. Besides, if things got bad, they could go outside through the cat door and make mischief. Sue’s father-in-law Chick Comparetto¹ promised to look in on them to make sure that they had food and water. Woodrow was not afraid of strangers (or anything else). He would certainly greet Chick at the door and ask to be petted. Giacomo in those days was quite shy. Chick probably would never lay eyes on him.

I had a Frommer’s guidebook for San Diego that I purchased in 2000 for the business trip that I took with Denise Bessette in 2000 (recounted here). I did not use it much then, but I must have researched it much more thoroughly in 2006.

We planned to meet up with Marva Whitehead, whom we had met on our first trip to Italy in 2003 (documented here), for dinner on Monday. To pay for the trip we were using my frequent-flyer miles on Delta, my Hilton Honors points for the hotel stay, and my frequent-parker points at Executive Valet Parking for a spot near the airport. It was actually a pretty economical trip.

Would you expect Charlotte to be on the left on a trip from BDL to ATL?

The notes said that we brought Sue’s backpack/suitcase purchased for the 2003 trip to Italy, the duffel that IBM had given me in 2000 and the cats had baptized shortly thereafter, a suitcase held together with duct tape, and another backpack that contained my computer. Sue also probably brought an assortment of bags to use as carry-ons. I brought my camera (a small Cascio point-and-shoot digital) with some ability to zoom. Sue may have brought her camera, too.

Sue had arranged for John Bolling, a former IBM employee with whom she had worked in (or maybe even before) the early days of TSI, to meet us at the airport in Atlanta during our layover there. Our plane to San Diego did not leave until 6:18PM.

Denny’s closed for good in 2022 after 45 years.

Thursday March 23: Our first stop was at Chick’s house. Sue gave him the spare key to the house. We then ate brunch at the Denny’s on Elm St. at a little after 10AM. For some reason we made two trips to the bank (or maybe one each to two different banks). Sue sent an email to Marva just before we left.

We drove in my Saturn to Executive. The guy in front of me in the line there asked the clerk about the company’s points system. He had paid only $4 per night by using prepaid coupons. It was nice for once to be the one who was going on vacation. Usually I was the stressed-out guy on a business trip, and everyone else was giddy about their upcoming vacation. It was an even better feeling this time because I had amassed enough points to pay for the car’s entire stay.

Our itinerary called for us to leave Bradley at 1:55 p.m. and to change planes in Atlanta. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. For once there was no problem getting through security. Because of problems in Atlanta we did not actually leave until 2:41. Sue made short work of an ice cream cone while we were waiting.

The flight from Bradley to Atlanta was completely filled. Sue volunteered to take the middle seat, but she was quite uncomfortable. She learned that the guy next to her was going to Costa Rica to photograph wildlife. I had made this trip so many times that it was like riding a bus for me.

Somehow John Bolling found us in the gigantic Atlanta airport. He had a job there working for AirTran Airways². He told us that he did not like his assignment at all. He had reportedly lost twenty-five pounds in five weeks.

I bought and consumed a gyro and some curly fries while we were waiting for our plane to depart. It did not do so until 7:15.

The plane to San Diego was also very full. No meal was served on the flight, but we did get drinks and a package of snacks. I selected trail mix, Later the flight attendants brought some Gouda cheese spread, and crackers plus some kind of buttery shortbread stick. One passenger was a guy from Italy. I was impressed that the stewardess was able to converse with him in Italian.

Sue watched a movie on the little screen on the back of the seat in front of her, “The Family Stone,” with Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Keaton, and Dermot Mulroney. I was in the middle seat. I undoubtedly brought something to read, study, or play with, but the notes did not mention anything. The guy next to me brought absolutely nothing with him for diversion, and he did not avail himself of anything offered by the airline. He just sat there.

Nothing held together with duct tape appeared on the carousel.

Although we gained three hours during the flight, it was still 9:30 by the time that the plane’s wheels touched the ground. When we arrived at the baggage claim area, I was amazed that our luggage was not there. This NEVER happened to me on business trips, and on this occasion both of our flights departed late. It was hard to imagine how Delta had screwed this up.

Sue was upset about it. It did not bother me a great deal. In the worst-case scenario we might need to wear the same clothes for a day or two. Only one person in San Diego knew us in San Diego, and we were not scheduled to see her for a few days.

We told the people at baggage claim that we were staying at the Hampton Inn in Kearney Mesa. They said that they would deliver the bags to us there.

We walked to the Avis counter and picked up our rental. Our vehicle was a blue Chevy HHR that, according to a form that I found in the bag, had been inspected by someone named Otis. I had seen one or two of these cars before, but they were still an oddity if March of 2006. I was not impressed. It had no pickup at all.

We found our way to the Hampton Inn in Kearny Mesa. By then it was nearly 11:00, which was 2AM Enfield time. I had never had a bad experience checking in at a Hampton Inn. This clerk was unenthusiastic, but he seemed competent. We told him that Delta would be delivering our luggage, or at least we hoped so.

We quickly went to sleep, but for once we hoped to be disturbed during the night.

Friday March 24: The bags were delivered at 1AM. They appeared to be in no worse shape than when we had checked them.

All Hampton Inns provided a free breakfast buffet. Sue likes to go to restaurants for breakfast, but the selection at this hotel was pretty good. This was a good deal for people who can tolerate plastic silverware and are not picky about how their eggs are cooked. I had scrambled eggs and biscuits, fruit, and cereal. The setting was very elegant by Hampton Inn standards.

Our plan for the day was to visit the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park³. The name was slightly misleading. Although the park was affiliated with the zoo, it was located in the San Pasqual Valley east of Escondido. It was thirty miles north of the zoo.

We had a very beautiful day for our visit—74 degrees and sunny. We drive north through a naval air base and then east through the back country. We drove by an ostrich farm, which was a first for me, and a few places where visitors were allowed to pick their own oranges.

The park was huge. It covered 1,700 acres! The animals at the park were not, for the most part, kept in cages. Rather they were kept in groups in areas that resembled each one’s natural setting. The easiest way to see a lot of animals fairly quickly was to take the monorail⁴, a two-car open-air train that made a clockwise circuit around the entire park.

The park was not too crowded. We picked up a map of the park and a list of the shows and their times. We also picked up pamphlets that described two sections of the park, Heart of Africa and Condor Ridge. The former contained the vegetarian animals that resided on the savannas. The latter contained animals from North America.

There were a few empty seats on the monorail. We took Frommer’s advice and sat on the right. The trip lasted a little less than an hour. Each train had a guide who explained over the intercom what area of the park we were passing and what animals were visible. In a few cases she needed to direct our attention where some of them were hiding.

The train ride was great fun. We saw three separate types of rhinos. At one point the guide told us about some kind of Japanese animal that was in a culvert directly beneath the train. We passed through lots of different terrains. We even saw mountain goats and bighorn sheep in the Condor Ridge section, a bonobo playing with a basketball, and a giraffe doing the splits in the Heart of Africa.

We could see a balloon ride that we did not take. There were also trucks that you could ride in. Their main purpose was to feed the animals, but visitors could pay to tag along.

My most distinctly remembered experience occurred near the end of the monorail ride. The guide told us to be very quiet as we were approaching a new exhibit. She warned us not to make noise, because it might disturb one of the park’s newest resident, a bobcat. We need not have worried; I doubt that any noise we made would have disturbed a loader manufactured by the Bobcat company.

After the monorail ride ended we stopped for some food. We purchased an apple, banana, muffin, a bag of $4 potato chips and a $4 glass of Diet Coke. I also got a refill for only $1. In 2006 these prices were outrageous.

I think that we walked up to Condor Ridge, which is in the northeast corner of the park. My notes say that we saw a bald eagle, some prairie dogs, and a porcupine.

Somewhere in the park we saw all of the following. I probably took photos of all of them.

Gorillas being fed some oranges.
A hummingbird and a bustard.
A sleeping warthog.
A meerkat colony. One was on guard; the rest were underground.
A bird show. I wrote: “Pete and girls. Forgot about the parrot act.”
An elephant show with two performing pachyderms, Mary and Cookie. The trainer’s name was Brittany.
“Poop from egret.”

I loved the Wild Animal Park even more than I had loved the San Diego Zoo six years earlier.

We ate supper.at the Pampas Bar and Grill⁵ in SanDiegoVille. Our waiter was named Pedro. I ordered a ribeye and mashed potatoes. Sue had a strip steak with sauce and rice. The vegetables were understandably meager. Argentinians are notoriously carnivorous. A guy played the guitar and a harp while we were dining.

The vacation was off to a great start.

Saturday March 25: The plan was to spend the entire day in San Diego. The weather cooperated. It was around 70 all day long, and it was sunny.

We ate breakfast in the hotel again. I had sausage and scrambled eggs, with biscuits, fruit, and cereal. The baseball team from Westmont College in San Diego was in the dining room at the same time as we were. Their uniforms had maroon trim. They reminded me of UMass’s colors. I had stayed at many Hampton Inns. I had never seen a breakfast area so crowded. Sue and I had to eat at little table.

The next line of my notes says: “Convoy St. Target: _______. Big dip to get in. Drove past Home Depot Expo Center.” I am not sure what to make of this. There is a Target in Kearney Mesa, but in 2023 it is on Othello St. There is a Home Depot Design Center in San Diego, but it is not near the hotel or Target.

Balboa Park was our first touristy destination of the day. The park’s website calls it, “San Diego’s ever-changing, always amazing, 1,200-acre back yard.” I distinctly remember having trouble finding a parking space along the side of the road. Several women were reserving spaces for their husbands. When I finally found one I had difficulty maneuvering the HHR into it. It was quite a bit larger than my Saturn, and the visibility was not as good.

The main thoroughfare, which is reserved for pedestrians, in Balboa Park is El Prado. The notes describe it as “very nice”, and the photos that I found on the Internet certainly confirmed that. On both sides of it were museums, hotels, restaurants, and other elegant places.

The notes state:

Railroad museum. Wooden trestle bridge. Imperial valley. Junkyard dog. Barrel falling off of truck. Pushing truck uphill.

I assume that the first two words referred to the Model Railroad Museum that was located in the basement of the Casa de Balboa building on El Prado. Although a flyer from the museum was in the Sand Diego Opera bag, I don’t remember anything about it.

Sue had her own N scale model train layout that she constructed on the ping pong table in our basement in Enfield. Someone bought a Lionel train set for me when I was very young. My dad and Joey Kuchel set it up in the basement when my family lived in Kansas City, KS.

Evidently we saw all of the following somewhere in Balboa Park: “Palm reader, bicycle taxi, guitar and flute.” None of these references rings a bell. I distinctly remember not getting my palm read in San Diego or anywhere else.

I did not find a flyer from the Natural History Museum, but we must have gone there. We saw a movie about Baja California and a skeleton of an allosaur.

I reported “lots of interactive stuff for the kids.” Don’t ask me what “Dave in white coat in bathroom” referred to.

I have no notes about the tram that went around the park. It was free, and I found a flyer for it, so there is a good chance that we rode on it for a while.

Try to imagine the Moreton Bay Fig Tree with seventeen less years of growth. That is what we saw.

Our next stop was at Sunset Cliffs Natural Park. I probably had some very striking memories of this stunning location, but all that I wrote was, “Sucking face. Woman with cigarette”.

I found handwritten directions to Old Venice Restaurant on the back of an advertising piece from Avis that was in the bag. We ate a pizza and a very good salad for supper there. The pizza had prosciutto, chicken and basil. The notes stated that the restaurant was near Shelter Island, which is really a long peninsula.

I remarked in the notes that the people in the restaurant were too good-looking. We ate our supper on a wobbly table outside. Darren was the waiter’s name. I didn’t record the amount, but I am pretty sure that I left a tip.

When we left the restaurant I noticed a small ding on the passenger side of the HHR. Dings on rental cars can be costly. I had to hope that Otis had made a note of it when he inspected the vehicle or that whoever inspected it when we turned it in was equally negligent.

I forgot to bring the good map that I had ripped out of Frommer’s in 2000. I found myself on Rosecrans road and couldn’t figure out how to get on the freeway. I also ran a red light. The notes did not state whether the malfeasance was accidental or deliberate.

Another great day!

Sunday March 26: The plan was to drive to La Jolla, Coronado Island, and Old Town in San Diego. I wonder how much I used the Frommer’s book to select the itineraries. My choices do not closely agree with “Frommer’s favorite San Diego experiences.”

Sue might disagree, but I found the weather to be less than perfect. Clouds kept the temperature in the sixties all day. That’s light-jacket weather for me.

We had the usual breakfast at the Hampton—eggs and biscuits, fruit, and cereal. They also generally provided at least two kinds of juices and plenty of coffee.

We stopped at Target again. This time we picked up some two-liter bottles of Diet Cokes and some snacks. These items were much cheaper at chain stores than at locations attractive to tourists.

La Jolla was less than ten miles to the west of our hotel. I anticipated that we might have difficulty finding a place to park, but I was wrong.

Sue and I walked down to the beach We saw the aggregation of seals that Denise and I had enjoyed so much in 2000, but the only thing that I wrote about the experience was that the rest rooms were “crummy”. My dim recollection is that it was breezy at the cove.

We walked into town and strolled around for a bit. It seems incredible, but I reported that we could not find the Best Western in which Denise and I stayed. I did take note (and probably photos) of two dachshunds.

We did not take the 26-minute route from La Jolla to Coronado Island that is shown in the map at the left.

We were in no hurry, and so we drove through San Diego down to Chula Vista and then over to Imperial Beach at the south end of San Diego Bay. from there we took the “Silver Strand” up to Coronado.

The notes indicated “6$ at beach”. Maybe that was what I paid for parking. All beaches in California have always been open to the public.

I remember that there were protestors at the incredibly elegant Del Coronado Hotel, but I do not recall what the issue was. We had lunch al fresco. It consisted of leftover pizza from Old Vienna and food that we had purloined from breakfast at the Hampton Inn.

We walked up to the legendary hotel and even went inside. I could not believe how many bellboys they had. I kept waiting for one of them to shout, “Call for Philip Morris.”

Afterwards we stopped at a place called Moo Time Creamery for some ice cream. For some reason we ordered three types of ice cream. The notes stated that Sue really liked the double chocolate and the pear sorbet. I preferred the stracciatella.

Moo Time had a statue of Elvis and another one of a cow. I found a photo on the Internet.

I am surprised that I even tasted the ice cream. It has never been my favorite food, and, if the temperature was only in the sixties, I was probably shivering while I ate it.

From Coronado we drove to Seaport Village, which was on the eastern side of the bay, so that Sue could do some shopping in what its website calls “14 acres of fine waterfront dining, entertainment and world-class shopping in the heart of beautiful San Diego”.

I had difficulty finding a place to park. I must have let Sue off and parked in a lot rather than on the street. The notes said, “Hard to park. Meet at four. Brought Sue the ticket.” I interpret this to mean that I was given a ticket so that the HHR could exit from the lot, that I brought the ticket to Sue, that I planned to mess around somewhere while she shopped, and that we would meet up somewhere at 4PM.

The rest of my notes about Seaport Village were difficult to decipher: “Smoking outside of jewelry store. Arabs. Cat.illacs.” I was evidently impressed by the number of boats in the nearby marina. I also saw quite a few sailboats in the harbor. In 2023 I have no memories of this place, but Sue’s only clear memory of the entire trip was that she bought her favorite earrings there.

From Seaport Village we probably took I-5, which in Southern California is called “The 5”, north to the Old Town section. Old Town is a State Historic Park. The website describes it this way:

Five original adobe buildings are part of the historic park, which include museums, unique retail shops, and several restaurants. The Historic Plaza remains a special place for gatherings and historic activities. Visitors can also experience a working blacksmith shop, enjoy music, see or touch the park’s burros, and engage in activities that represent early San Diego.

I reportedly was very lucky with the parking. The word “Closing” is mentioned in the notes. Perhaps the “unique retail shops” had closed for the day.

We toured the area for a while and then decided to eat supper at Café de Reyes. We ate outside. The weather was perfect for Sue, and I got to sit by the heater. Our waiter was named Daniel, and the busboy was Jorge. The clientele seemed to be equally divided between Mexican-Americans and gringos. There were free tables when we arrived, but it got pretty crowded after we sat down.

For an appetizer we ordered quesos fundidos, which was a plate of goat’s cheese and sausage. The notes indicated that I had “combination #1 and a very large margarita.” The combinations are no longer numbered on the restaurant’s online menu, and so I cannot say what it contained, but I did call the supper “very nice”.

The notes also specified a “lady making tortillas with scrunched-up shoulders.” It didn’t specify whether she worked for the restaurant or not. I assume that, despite the word order, the shoulders belonged to the lady, not the tortillas.

When we returned to the hotel we were both dead tired. Sue contacted Marva by phone or email. We saw commercials on television for Congress to replace Duke Cunningham, who had resigned in 2005 for taking bribes from military contractors.⁷

We also learned that although the UConn men lost, the women won.

Monday March 27: This was the zoo day. For photos of animals (including the pandas) from the trip in 2000 look here. The weather was beautiful until about 1:30PM. It became chilly after that.

My breakfast at the Hampton was sausages with cold hard biscuits supplemented by fruit and cereal. The notes indicated that I took photos of the grounds around the Hampton. You will need to imagine the basketball goal and what the “Shriner stuff” might have been.

The zoo was located in Balboa Park. By this time I was familiar enough with the area that the drive there was a stress-free experience. We arrived at about 10:00. I parked the HHR near the sidewalk between aisle 4 and 5. From there it was an easy walk to the entrance. We did not need to stand in line because we already had tickets.

We made a beeline for the panda exhibit. There was no line at all. We got to see the six-year old that had been a baby for my first visit as well as the parents.

We then took the moving sidewalk up to the polar bear exhibit. Only one of them was out, but he put on a show for us. I remember that half of the exhibit was water, and you could easily see the bears when they went for a swim.

We got a bird’s-eye view of the park from the Skyfari ride. It had been included in the price of the combo (Zoo plus Wild Animal Park) tickets that we had bought. Denise and I did not do this. My recollection is that she was not good with heights.

When we were back on terra firma we walked down to visit the tortoises. One of them appeared to be horny. After that Sue went into the lizard and reptile mesa; I think that I stayed and took more photos of the amorous tortoises. We both then spent a little time in the reptile house.

We then went to see the orangutans in their new home. The notes indicated that I took good pictures of the baby. It was painful to write the last sentence. I have got to find those photos.

We ate lunch in the Treehouse Cafe, which was definitely aptly named. The photo at the right provided a good indication as to how hilly the zoo was. I ate a chicken Caesar salad with some chips and coke. Sue had clam chowder in a bread bowl and chocolate layer cake.

While we were eating the temperature dropped like a rock. The notes do not indicate whether I brought a jacket, but I probably did.

The gorilla enclosure allowed us to be within just a few feet of the mighty apes. The notes indicated that I was very impressed with the size of the silver-back’s thighs.

We next saw the hippo, but I was unable to snap any good pictures. The water was too dirty.

The flamingos did what flamingos do.

I think that the “express bus” that we took was similar to this one. The park now has a Kangaroo Bus that is a double-decker.

We then took the zoo’s express bus from stop 3 to stop 4 so that we could see the giraffes and the other hoofed animals. One of the giraffes was only two days old, but it was already pretty steady on its feet.

Sue was disappointed that we never saw any meerkats. We viewed their exhibit from three separate vantage point, but they all stayed in their burrow. It was a good thing that we had seen the sentinel at the Wild Animal Park. If not, she might have insisted on extending our stay in San Diego until she saw one.

We reportedly saw all of the following:

A horny wallaby.
Bactrian camels.
Some very active koalas.
Both Asian and African elephants drinking from a fountain.
Llamas.
Pigs.
Capybaras
At least one tapir..
A peacock that had flown up on a roof.
Quite a lot of topiary.

We enjoyed supper with Marva at the Imperial Mandarin Chinese restaurant. I had wonton soup and spareribs. Sue also had wonton soup and moo shu pork, which was apparently a specialty of the Imperial Mandarin.

One of the rear doors on Marva’s car did not work. After noting this fact I included the phrase “Simply Marvalous”.

We drove to the Black Angus steakhouse for drinks. The bartender’s name was Ryan. I had Scotch on the rocks. The notes stated that someone had a lemon-drop martini. I have a hard time believing that it was Sue. She usually ordered a Scotch if I did.

It is telling that the notes included absolutely no mention of the conversations. Either I was not paying attention, or I figured that I would remember it without prompting.

I must have had only one Scotch. I managed to pilot the HHR back to the Hampton without any difficulty.

Tuesday March 28: The original plan was to go to Sea World. However, it rained lightly all night long. By morning it looked pretty good, but the forecast was for rain all day, or at least all afternoon. We therefore decided to skip Sea World. The new plan was to make return trips to Balboa Park and Old Town.

For breakfast we ate egg pizzas (that’s what the notes said), fruit, and cereal.

This time we had no problem parking in Balboa Park. We saw busloads of kids and also witnessed a group of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans in blue warm-up suits.

I do not know what to make of the phrase “Bridge over Park Rd.” There is a famous bridge in Balboa Park, and there is a Park Blvd., but the one does not go over the other.

We saw a cactus garden and a rose garden. I also noted a pair of sneakers in a tree.

The people in the park that day were interesting. I saw a guy with a flag, and I overheard another guy who said, “I should have shot him again. I should have shot him four times.”

We visited the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, and I picked up a daily schedule there and a flyer for an IMAX film about Greece. There was quite a bit of interactive stuff for kids in the area of the museum called Kid City. A few of the devices appeared to be broken. We watched a presentation on television entitled “Origins in Space”. It was about NASA and particularly the Hubble Space Telescope.

I don’t know why the word “Einstein” was included in the notes.

Sue and I enjoyed a cappuccino at Galileo’s Café inside the center and then watched an IMAX movie called “Greece: Secrets of the Past”. In the theater there you lean back and watch the film on a dome. I don’t think that this was a particularly useful way to learn about Greece’s past.

The statue of El Cid did not look much like Charlton Heston.

We saw a Venus flytrap, among many other species, in the Botanical Museum.

We walked past the Mingei International Museum, which promoted folk art and crafts from around the globe. We did not go inside.

We drove to Old Town again for a late lunch. We had tacos and a burrito at the Alamo Mexican Cafe. It got quite chilly. Sue wrote postcards, and I mailed them. The notes stated, “Alamo closed up.” I interpret this to mean that the patio area was closed because of the weather.

On our way to the car we found a store that was offering 50-65% off the regular price. The notes did not say what they were selling or whether we went in.

We drove back to the Hampton and took a nap so that Sue could stay awake during the opera, and I could prevent cartoon characters from appearing in the last act, as they had during the performance that Denise and I attended.

This time the San Diego Opera was presenting on a performance of Carmen by Georges Bizet. Both Sue and I had seen traditional productions of this opera several times. I owned a CD of the opera that used Bizet’s original version that included dialogue, not recitative. Every performance that I had seen had used recitative, which, in my opinion blunted the impact of Carmen’s personality.

We also had season tickets for the Hartford Stage Company when Mark Lamos, the director, was the artistic director. Both of us were quite sure that his Carmen would not be a traditional one, and we were right. The program for the opera contains 56 pages, but there is not a word about the production. The setting had been moved from Spain to an unnamed Latin American country and from the late nineteenth century to the thirties or forties. This really did not impact the arc of the story line much. Of course, gypsies were rare in Latin America, but it was not that hard to suspend disbelief. The famous Anvil Chorus did not seem anachronistic in this environment.

All performances of Carmen were sold out, but the two seats next to me were empty and at least one woman seated near us left after the first act.

I don’t remember whether I enjoyed the performance or not. The only detail that I remember was that one guy in the audience wore shorts. If it had been the dialogue version I feel certain that I would have mentioned it. The review in my notes was terse: “Liked Micaela. Good chorus. Great acoustics.”

It took a very long time to maneuver the HHR out of the parking garage. That’s often part of the price one pays for attending one of the ABC operas.

Back at the Hampton we enjoyed a late supper of leftovers consisting of moo shu pork and combination #1.

Wednesday March 29: When I traveled to the West Coast on business, I always returned on an overnight (“red-eye”) flight. The times of our return flights were not specified in the notes, but we obviously spent most of the day getting from San Diego to Enfield.

I woke up with quite a bit of energy and decided to go for a run. After a few minutes it started to sprinkle, and I returned to the hotel.

Since getting food is always somewhat dicey on airplanes and in airports we decided to treat ourselves to a full breakfast at the Spice House Café.⁹ It was less than a mile from the hotel. We had veggie frittatas and “gyros meat”, which I presume was lamb The portions were enormous. The very nice waitress, whose name I did not record, kept the coffee flowing. It rained quite hard during breakfast, but then it cleared up.

We returned to our room at the Hampton Inn, packed our things into the HHR, and checked out. Sue, needless to say, brought leftovers.

I stopped for gas at an Arco station. The pump wouldn’t accept my ATM card¹⁰ for some reason. I went to a nearby Chevron station that accepted the card. We then drove to the airport and returned the HHR to Avis. Either they did not notice the ding, or they didn’t care.

The notes said, “Raining in Salt Lake City.” So, we evidently changed planes there. I had been in that airport at least once before, but it is the only place in Utah that I have visited. The other states that I have missed (as of 2023) are Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, and Alaska.

We ate leftovers from breakfast on the flight from Salt Lake City to Bradley. There was plenty of time for Sue to watch a movie. She did not ordinarily like science fiction, but maybe “Aeon Flux” with Charlize Theron was the only thing that was available. I worked on sorting and editing my photos, the B4 deck¹¹, the notes, and playing bridge on Bridge Baron.¹²

Both our bodies and our luggage arrived at Bradley International intact. It was probably pretty late; we lost three hours in the air. I called Executive Valet, and they sent their bus to bring us to their lot.

As always, my Saturn¹³ was running and parked near the door of the office. It was a little disconcerting that the “Service engine soon” light was on.

No trip was over until we verified that the cats were OK. As the Saturn entered the driveway we saw a grey tiger-striped cat in the yard. This was not a good sign; he was not one of ours. Woodrow, as expected, greeted us as soon as we went through the door. He showed me that there was no cat food left in the gravity dispenser. I poured some into the metal plate that the cats ate from.

Giacomo made an appearance the next morning. The entertaining and exciting trip to San Diego was officially completed.

1. Sue was married (but estranged) when I met her in 1972. Her father-in-law, Chick Comparetto, lived in Enfield about a mile from our house. He looked after our cats on most of our big trips. His obituary can be found here.

2. At the height of its popularity AirTran operated 700 flights per day, many of them passing through Atlanta. It was acquired in 2011 by Southwest Airlines.

3. The park was renamed San Diego Zoo Safari Park in 2010.

4. In 2010 the monorail was replaced by a set of wheeled vehicles with similar capacity.

5. The restaurant closed in 2019 after twenty years in business.

6. Give the kid a break. His parents could not find the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.

7. Are you surprised to learn that he was pardoned in the waning moments of the Trump administration?

8. You do not need to go to San Diego to be entertained by the zoo’s polar bears. You can watch them on polar-cam.

9. The Spice House Café closed its doors for good in December of 2018. It had been in business for twenty-six years.

10. Perhaps the most puzzling thing in all of the notes is the fact that I used an ATM card to buy gas rather than a credit card. By that time I paid for everything with credit cards in order to amass points. I had separate American Express Cards for Hilton and Delta. I had used them to earn enough points to cover most of the costs of this trip.

11. I can’t be certain, but this probably refers to a deck of flash cards that I created for quizzing myself on Italian vocabulary. The English words were sorted alphabetically, one card per word; the Italian word or words were on the back. The B meant that deck contained English words that started with the letter B. They were sorted alphabetically. The 4 meant that this was the fourth deck. There were at least ten thousand cards in total. I went through the entire set of decks more than ten times.

12. Bridge Baron was a terrific software product that facilitated the learning of bridge, both play and conventions. I had Bridge Baron15 on my laptop. The last version of the software that could be installed on your computer and run without the Internet was Bridge Baron29. In 2023 the app Bridge Baron Gold is still for sale.

13. The Saturn lasted until the end of the year. I traded it in for a beautiful sapphire-blue 2007 Honda Accord coupe.

2005-? Wavada.org

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Mike

My very own website. Continue reading →

In 2003 Sue and I took the “Best of Italy” tour sponsored by Rick Steves. I then wrote a journal compiled from the notes that I had recorded every day. After I was satisfied with the results I assembled them into a pdf file called “How I spent my Italian vacation” that I shared with other tour members and a few other people. That document is posted here.

The programming tools: During this same period IBM discontinued support for the Net.Data product that I had used to write the software for A^xN (introduced here), TSI’s online clearinghouse for insertion orders from advertisers to newspapers. Instead, IBM had agreed to offer the php environment that had been developed by Zend¹. I had previously learned about php from Ken Owen (Introduced here). He had told me that I could create and run php programs on my Windows computer for free by downloading WAMP, which stands for Windows (operating system) Apache (HTTP server) MySQL (database) php (scripting language). I downloaded it to my PC, set it up, and used it to write a little problem management system for TSI that was actually used for several years.

I had already learned that in order to do programming for the Internet that accessed a database you really need to know five languages: HTML, JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), SQL, and a scripting language to fit all the pieces together. I had books that documented the first three. I soon discovered that books on php and MySQL were not necessary. The syntax of each was thoroughly documented online, and answers to every question that I had were easily found using google. I never had to ask anyone for help.

The first project: Sue and I had planned for another trip to Italy in 2005. This time we invited our long-time friends Tom and Patti Corcoran to accompany us on another Rick Steves tour, “Village Italy”². I intended to take notes and assemble them into another journal. This time, however, I wanted to do it a little more professionally. I purchased a Cascio point-and-shoot digital camera, mostly using points from one of my credit cards. Since I wanted to allow others in our tour group to be able to enjoy the journal, I needed to build a website. I knew how to do that on an AS/400, but I wanted projects like this to be independent of the business, and I was not about to buy an AS/400 and try to run it from my house. I wanted someone else to manage the site for me.

I did a little research on the Internet. A company named iPower seemed to offer everything that I needed at a fairly reasonable price. Its tools seemed to be well documented, and, especially for the first few years, the technical support was excellent. My first contract with them was signed in July of 2005. I might have had a free month or two before that.

I decided to name the website Wavada.org. Wavada.com was available, but I had no intention of using the website to make money. I wanted to a place to noodle around with Internet programming (my personal computer, which at the time was a laptop) and a separate place where I could show some of the things that I had developed to the world.

I needed some tools on my PC to let me edit the text and images. I had previously downloaded TextPad, a “shareware” (free but with requests for donations) product that was better at editing text than the program that came with Windows. I purchased a copy of UltraEdit, which could be tailored for use with the color-coded and spaced text of php scripts, and Paint Shop Pro, an inexpensive program for editing image files. My plan was to do all of the development on my PC and, once everything was working, upload everything to Wavada.org using either File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or the File Manager program that iPower provided.

The first journal: My first big project used php to create one web page for each day of the 2005 trip. I created a folder named Images and inside of that folder a folder the trip (VI). Inside the trip folders were folders for each day (VI01, VI02, etc.) and one each for the full-page version of the photos³ and the page (VI00) describing the preparations and the travel day. I later wrote a php script that was included at the top of the code for each trip that. This contained all the common scripts for handling layout and navigation as well as the unique elements such as character sets for foreign words.

A separate php script for each page contained the code necessary to display the page. Most of the necessary functions were stored in a file named JournalFunctions.php. A file named JournalSetup.php contained other settings. These were all “required” on every page. Styles were stored in JournalStyle.css and JournalMenuStyle.css.

For the most part the original design worked fairly well. One difficulty that I had no way to anticipate was that the Unix version on the iPower servers was more sensitive to capitalization than the Windows version. I had to be careful with the file names assigned to images.

Twenty years later I find it astounding to report that I completed all of this within a few months. To each member of the tour group I sent an email that invited them to view the finished product on Wavada.org. Quite a few of them looked at a good portion of the journal and responded that they really liked it.

Other projects: I needed to design a home page. I knew that I wanted to have a huge wave as the background so that people would know how to pronounce the name Wavada. I found a photo of with very high density that depicted a monstrous wave better than I could have even imagined. It was on the Internet, but I don’t remember the location.

iPower offered an incredible array of free features that were associated with the website. The two that I made the heaviest use of were email and WordPress. I only needed to create three or four email accounts, but I made good use of them. I made Mike@Wavada.org my primary email account. Much later I created another account called Yoga (the name of my laptop at the time). Email sent to the Mike account was automatically downloaded to Outlook on my desktop. The Yoga account was not. So, I could send or forward emails from Mike to Yoga for activities (such as ZOOM meetings) that required the laptop.

I also set up an account for Sue, but I don’t think that she ever used it.

The other free feature that I employed a lot was WordPress, the software that I used to make this and hundreds of other blog entries. The oldest object in the WordPress section of Wavada.org is from 2010. However, I don’t think that I made much use of the product until March of 2012. That is the date of the oldest images that I uploaded. I might have written a few earlier blog entries that contained no images. An incredible number of these images—and a few other files—were uploaded during the pandemic and the subsequent months.

At first the home page for Wavada.org simply contained links to the few items that I wanted to allow the public to see. I changed the format dramatically when I discovered a widget that was available in google’s jQuery library. This allowed me to present the table of contents in an attractive tabbed manner.

I wrote a large number of programs concerning the game of bridge (introduced here) for my own use. For a while I maintained a complicated set of programs that I wrote to keep a detailed record of the bidding agreements with my partners. Eventually I decided that this was too much work (as of 2023 I had played with 141 different partners). I also created online programs for displaying an article index for topics covered in the Bridge Bulletin (posted here) and for providing game plans for challenging declarer problems (posted here).

I figured out how to parse the pdf files for hand records from bridge games. I created a database of these hands so that I could establish probabilities to associate with certain bridge situations. For example, I determined that Losing Trick Count⁴ was more accurate at predicting the number of available tricks at game level or lower than point count that has been modified as suggested by Marty Bergen in his Slam Bidding Made Easier book. However, the opposite was true for higher contracts.

I started to attend Wednesday evening games at the Simsbury Bridge Club in 2004. At some point I created a webpage for the club. It was still in use in 2023. The link is here.

As an adjunct to my job as webmaster I created a database of bridge players throughout North America on Wavada.org for District 25 of the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL). That story has been chronicled here.

I adapted the code for the travel journals to create online pages for each chapter of the book that I wrote on papal history entitled Stupid Pope Tricks. The book is posted here. The story of the Papacy Project that led to its creation is chronicled here. I also posted in the same format Ben 9, my historical first-person novel about Pope Benedict IX, here.

1. In 2023 this product is still offered for the i5 operating system. Zend has been purchased by other companies a few times.

2. The journal for the 2005 tour is posted here.

3. I used the same file names that Cascio provided with the letter b at the end. For later journals I dispensed with the uploading of the smaller versions of the photos and instead uploaded a full-page version of each image and used HTML to specify the size displayed in the journal. I also changed the naming of the images in the daily folder to be meaningful.

4. Losing Trick Count is explained here and elsewhere on the Internet and in print.

2014 TSI: The Smooth Landing

Posted on December 16, 2022 by Mike

The closing of TSI. Continue reading →

People have often asked me whether I was retired, and, if so, for how long. I have usually told them that I never exactly decided to retire. In 2014, however, TSI’s clients made it clear to me that it was time for me to quit.

That year was definitely a turning point in my own life. I did not rate the events and decisions of the early months of that year as a genuine crisis—unlike the four others that have been detailed in this project. During the previous several years I had seen the trends developing, I had explored every alternative that I could think of, and my financial position was good, at least in comparison with its state before the late nineties.

By late 2013 Denise Bessette, my partner, had moved from Stafford, CT, to Cape Cod. She was working from home with occasional trips to East Windsor. We could communicate by email, telephone, or through messaging on the AS/400. During this period I was 65 years old; Denise was ten years younger.

The cause: The precipitating event was a letter received in late 2013 from one of our contacts at Dick’s Sporting Goods¹, a long-time user of both AdDept and A^xN. I cannot find a copy of the letter, but it was basically an announcement that Dick’s had contracted with a media buying service to schedule and purchase its newspaper ads.

Other AdDept users had previously made similar decisions.² At RadioShack (discussed in detail here) the decision coincided with dropping the use of the AdDept system entirely. The advertising department there used it to place, manage, and pay for advertising in hundreds of papers, but it never used many of the other modules. Nevertheless, one of the employees most closely involved confided to me a few months after the outsourcing that she thought that they might have made a mistake.

A few years later Belk (described here) outsourced its newspaper buying. Unlike RadioShack, Belk by that time was using AdDept for a very large number of tasks besides scheduling and purchasing newspaper ads. Denise Podavini, the financial manager for advertising, never considered dropping AdDept. Moreover, when I explained to her that TSI would be losing a large source of revenue from Belk’s newspapers that had subscribed to A^xN³, she voluntarily authorized TSI to increase the maintenance charge to cover the difference. That reaction astounded me.

By 2013 most of TSI’s department store clients had been absorbed by Macy’s, which had then consolidated into one office in New York City. At that point that office was using neither AdDept not A^xN. Dick’s outsourcing would have little effect on the income from AdDept. It might actually have given us a custom programming assignment or two. However, it would certainly mean the loss of all the revenue from Dick’s papers that had subscribed to A^xN. There were over a hundred of them, and losing them would cost us thousands of dollars every month.

When we received the news from Dick’s my immediate evaluation was that this was the death knell for TSI. Denise was quite surprised at my reaction. We had worked together for thirty years, many of which were quite lean, and she had never seen me give up when the company faced a challenge. She spent a week or two manipulating possible projections on spreadsheets, but she finally came to the same conclusion that I had.

The plan: Denise and I met several times after working hours or out of the office in order to come up with a plan that treated our employees, Jason Dean and Ashley Elliott, our remaining clients, our vendors, and ourselves fairly. We began by making a list of things that we certainly needed to resolve:

A termination date for A^xN and support for AdDept.
A plan for the employees.
Taxes and other governmental issues.
Our lease for 7B Pasco Dr.
Letters to AdDept clients.
Notifications to vendors.
Disposition of assets.

We scheduled an appointment with our accountant, Tom Rathbun. As it happened, he was planning to retire. So, our news pretty much coincided with his plans. He provided us with a list of items that we needed to do to assure that we fulfilled our obligations to the government. We decided to terminate A^xN and software support for the AdDept product on July 31. That would provide four months to whittle down the accounts receivable and accounts payable for the final closing of the books on November 30, 2014.

The employees: Even before we met with Tom, Denise and I had decided to let the employees work until March 31 or to terminate as of January 31 and receive a four-week severance package. They both took the severance option. Denise had expected both of them to stay, but I was not too surprised when they resigned. I was amenable to either option. The severance option was actually a little better for TSI. We saved money on payroll, and it offered an immediate opportunity to sell more of the office equipment sooner.

We wrote letters of recommendation for both employees. Here is the one that Denise wrote for Jason Dean:

To Whom It May Concern,
TSI Tailored Systems, Inc., is a small company that has provided intricate and extensive software systems to businesses large and small since 1980. Jason Dean joined our staff on October 15, 2007 as a programmer analyst and quickly became an integral member of our programming and support team. In 2010 he was promoted to lead programmer analyst. Jason worked on the development of new systems and the modification of existing systems in free-form RPGLE, SQL, BASIC and CL on IBM midrange business systems. Development was focused on a comprehensive data base system for retail advertising clients. His responsibilities also included program testing and documentation, client support, and a myriad of in-house support tasks.
Jason’s performance on the job has been uniformly excellent. He is well-organized and has extremely high standards for the quality of work produced. You can depend on him to consistently deliver sophisticated applications that meet those standards, and within or well in advance of project deadlines. He quickly and easily comprehends new strategies and technologies. He is an outstanding quality control tester. His methods steadily test both the functionality and logic of the program with robust data sets. His diligence has called out a number of subtle issues during the development cycle. Jason also had the opportunity to train and impart those standards on a new programmer, the results of which were outstanding.
Jason’s ability to handle client support is impressive. He is very adept at posing the necessary questions to extract information required to resolve client issues. He consistently maintains a positive, professional and helpful attitude even when dealing with a difficult caller. He won consistent praise from our clients.
Jason’s termination had nothing to do with his job performance. Business conditions necessitated that we take steps to close the business.
I unhesitatingly and without qualification recommend Jason Dean for any similar position. I would be very happy to talk with any prospective employer about his work at TSI. I can be reached at Denise_Bessette@cox.net or 860 386-0700 (through July 31, 2014) or 508 760-2847 (home).

The letter that I wrote for Ashley was posted here.

The clients: I composed a short letter to the AdDept clients and mailed it on February 28, 2024, at which point I was the only person left in the office. Here is the text:

Denise Bessette and I have worked together for almost three decades. During this time we have taken great pride in our ability to provide first-class software and service to our clients at a reasonable price and first-class treatment of our employees and vendors. We have changed the business radically a few times to respond to various circumstances, but we have never sacrificed our basic principles.
Recent events now necessitate another change, one that we definitely regret. Two factors have made it impossible for us to continue doing business in the way that we have in the past. The first is the consolidation of the retail business. In one case thirteen of our installations collapsed into one and then, ultimately, none. The second is the trend toward outsourcing. The latter has led to the collapse of our Internet insertion-order business, on which we have come to rely. We were already running a very lean operation. There is nothing left to cut.
Therefore, we both feel that we have no choice but to shut down TSI as of July 31, 2014. We will do our best to provide the very best support of the AdDept system’s day-to-day operations through that date and even implement whatever programming changes are required on the same basis that we always have. We are definitely willing to act as consultants to help design a transitional process and to fill whatever other roles you feel are appropriate. If you wish to use AdDept beyond the above date, you are, of course, free to do so, and if you want one of us to provide some kind of support, it may be possible to make arrangements on an individual basis.
We both think that TSI has had a great run. We wish that it could continue forever because we really have enjoyed working with our clients to provide a system that provided them with what they needed to prosper.
Best wishes for the future.

As far as I know, no one asked for help designing a transition process. Some users may well have asked Denise for help. I have occasionally wondered how they coped with the situation.

Hundreds of papers received the orders for ads like these through AdDept and AxN.

After receiving the letter someone from Dick’s called us to assure us that they had not intended to drop the AdDept system. We explained that the problem was not AdDept; it was the imminent loss of revenue from the many newspapers that had subscribed to A^xN. Evidently no one at Dick’s had ever considered this ramification.

I have no information about how long any of the companies that were still using AdDept in 2014 continued to use it after July 31.

I did not write to any of the newspapers, but I did stop billing them for the subscriptions to A^xN after July 31. I was still receiving checks from a few of them through November. At that point I wrote off everything that was outstanding.

The lease: We had arranged with our landlord, Rene Dupuis (introduced here), to stay in his company’s building until July 31. Because a lot of equipment and furniture remained in the office in the middle of July, I asked Rene if we (i.e., I) could stay one more month. He said that because TSI had been an ideal tenant for such a long time, he was happy to accommodate us. Our section of the building was empty by August 31.

During the last month or two Rene brought one or two people up to TSI’s office to examine the property. I do not remember the name of the company that ended up renting it, but the lease was signed while I was still working there.The company even purchased TSI’s antiquated telephone system for $500.

Tax issues: TSI had been paying sales or use taxes to several jurisdictions. I found a copy of the Letter of Good Standing signed by a machine for Deborah Chandler, the Tax Collection Supervisor of the Compliance Support Unit. It stated that TSI owed the state of Connecticut nothing.

I also found a copy of a letter that I wrote to the state of Mississippi that stated that we had done no business there and that TSI was closing. No one replied to the letter.

I was not able to follow all of the dealings with the IRS, but in June of 2015 I definitely received two checks with income tax refunds for payments that TSI had previously made.

Tom provided me with all of the forms that I needed to file with state and federal agencies. None of them were difficult or time-consuming.

Furniture and equipment. I wore many hats in my time working at TSI. The most ill-fitting was probably the last one: used furniture salesman. I took photos of everything and placed ads on Craig’s List. To my great surprise I rapidly disposed of nearly everything. I probably should have charged more, but we had bought almost all of it second-hand many years earlier.

I found a list of the major items that I sold and their prices:

The desk in my office with one of the phone units.

Item	Price
Conference table	80
Black cabinet	50
Kitchen table, chairs	80
Three cabinets	133
Sales office desk	25
Twelve side chairs	125
Four trash cans	2
Cabinet	40
Black desk	25
Cubicles	100
Denise’s desk	25
Phone system	500
4-drawer cabinet	125

The biggest coup, aside from the sale of the telephone system, was the fact that I was able to get rid of the five-foot high⁴ dividers that were used to form cubicles. I was thrilled when a man whose wife (or maybe mother) was opening a dance studio in Windsor Locks almost directly across the Connecticut River from TSI’s office in East Windsor offered me $150 for all of the hardware. On a Saturday he drove a pickup towing a very long and flat trailer to the office. He and another fellow came upstairs, disassembled the cubicles, carried the individual sections down the stairs, and strapped them to the trailer. He thought that he got a bargain. I was afraid that I would end up needing to pay someone to take the dividers away.

The total that I received was $1,310, which I split with Denise.

I also remember giving out two very large plants to one of the guys who purchased the trash cans and some other mundane things. He took the plants that Eileen Sheehan-Willett had nursed from near-fatal neglect to monstrosities and put them in his truck. He was thoughtful enough to wait until he was out of sight to throw out the plants and save the pots.

I found the following notes in an Excel spreadsheet called equipment.xls:

The 515 server was sold to Saks Inc. for $2500 on 7/31/14.
The 270 server, color printer, Dell PC, scanner, and backup hub were taken by Mike on 7/31/14. The 270 will be scrapped when the company is closed. It has no market value.
The black & white laser printer was taken by Denise on 7/31/14.
Fax machine and copier were donated to a local church on 7/31/14.
Two dot matrix printers with no market value were donated to the New England Bridge Conference on 8/31/14.
All other equipment was scrapped on or about 7/31/14.

The 270 and 515 were iSeries (i.e., AS/400) models. The 270 and the other equipment were transported to our house at the end of August (not July) in a truck that my wife Sue borrowed from her friend and bridge partner, Jan Bailey.⁵ The equipment resided in my office for a few months until TSI’s books were closed, and I was pretty sure that I would not need the server. It, the backup hub, a twinax display, and a snake’s nest of cables have rested peacefully in the basement and are still there in 2024. The color printer, which supported two-sided printing, the scanner, and the PC lasted for quite a few years before they were scrapped or recycled somewhere.

A few other things made their way to our house. The kitchen at 7B had a microwave and a small refrigerator. The former is still in use in 2024, but the circular plat no longer spun around. It was due for the junk heat. The latter was given to David Basch, the grandson of another of Sue’s bridge partners, in exchange for doing the heavy lifting in the move. A small shelf and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase were moved to my office at the house in Enfield. A good many smaller items also made the journey back to Enfield.

The largest item that I neither sold nor brought back to Enfield was the Uninterruptible Power Supplu (UPS). The UPS was a large battery with outlets for several power cables. Our AS/400 and a few other devices were attached to it. The UPS could provide enough electricity to last for a few hours.

Power failures were not unknown in Connecticut. Denise and I discussed purchasing a generator, but we could never justify the expense. We only experienced a couple of power failures in the nearly fourteen years that TSI’s headquarters was in East Windsor, and the UPS was sufficient to to get us through them.

The UPS was very heavy. I carried it out to my car and transported it to a nearby dumpster. It was all that I could do to lift it to shoulder height and drop it in.

The one-man show: From February through August I drove into East Windsor every morning. Every evening I drove back to Enfield. When I arrived at work I checked to make sure that all the equipment was working. I encountered absolutely no hardware problems. Once a month I sent out invoices for software support and for A^xN subscriptions. I usually ate lunch in the office by myself.

The highlight of the day was when the mail came. If there were any checks, I processed them in our home-grown accounts receivable system and then deposited them in the bank. I was often amazed that newspapers that I was fairly certain were no longer using A^xN continued to pay for the service. I attributed this to the fact that so many newspapers had outsourced their processing of accounts payable to an outside service. TSI’s bills seemed to slip through the cracks of the approval process.

I spent most of the rest of my days sitting at the PC. I already had a pretty good command of HTML, JavaScript, php and MySQL. I did a lot of work on the NEBridge.org website, and it was also during this period that I got the idea of maintaining a database of ACBL members who resided in District 25 (New England). Allan Clamage (introduced here), who served as the editor of the website, told me how to download roster files from the ACBL and set it up so that I had the authority to do so. The details of the database are described here.

The other major project that I worked on was my historical novel about Pope Benedict IX. The story of its genesis and why it was posted on Wavada.org but was never at Barnes & Noble is described in some detail here.

In some ways I wished that I had been a history major and gotten a PhD. Then I probably would have found someone with whom I could discuss my ideas about eleventh-century papal politics. On the other hand, I should remember that I only became interested in the popes in the twenty-first century, and I finished grad school in the seventies. Moreover, my interest in the eleventh century was a byproduct of a rather random introduction to a somewhat obscure ninth-century pope named Formosus.

I did not take a vacation in 2014, but I did go to quite a few bridge tournaments. This was the period during which I implemented a system of posting photographs of winners of regional events on NEBridge.org webpages. I called those pages “Winners Boards” because the background that I used looked like boards. I kept that feature up through 2021.

At about the same time I also began sending emails promoting the regional tournaments in New England. At first I composed the emails myself and sent them through my Wavada.org account. When I got blacklisted as a spammer, Bob Bertoni came to my rescue. That harrowing situation was described here.

The regional tournaments in 2014 were the first to include meetings of a committee that was known as “The B’s Needs”. It was initially chaired by Ausra Geaski, the president of the district. I attended every meeting.

The initial purpose of the committee was to recommend ways to make the tournaments more enjoyable for Flight B players, those with too many points to play in the “Gold Rush” events that were limited to less than 750 masterpoints. These people found themselves up against people with many thousands of points and years of experience. It was not generally a pleasant experience.

Over the next few years the committee produced a large number of suggestions for making the tournaments more attractive to B players and to everyone else. Many of them were implemented, and there is very little doubt that they had, for the most part, a profoundly positive effect on the tournaments. I took great pride in what we did as a group and what I personally implemented. This activity provided a purpose to my life at a time when I really needed one. It made me feel that I was using my time and skills to make life more enjoyable for people who shared one of my principal interests. Most of my contributions were cast aside in the post-Pandemic environment, and it saddened me greatly.

I found some materials about this committee. I have posted Ausra’s minutes of the meetings in Newton, MA, in January (here), Cromwell, CT, in February (here), and Nashua, NH, in September (here). I have also posted here the notes that Allan wrote up about the group’s first few ideas.

The version with a possible career in mining was the best.

While I was occupied with closing down TSI Sue had knee-replacement surgery on both legs. Afterwards she spent several days getting rehabilitated at Suffield House. I went to see her every evening. On one evening my friend Tom Corcoran joined us, and we played a game of Careers. Sue had to remind me of this event while I was in the process of writing this entry.

September.through December: For the last three months I ran what was left of TSI from my office at the house. I still received payments from newspapers almost right up to when I closed the books for good at the end of November.

I still had some communications with Tom Rathbun in December of 2014, but after that TSI has been nothing but a source of incredible memories. The process of closing it down was somewhat complicated, but I don’t remember making any serious mistakes.

1. Details of the installations at Dick’s Sporting Goods have been posted here.

2. I am not sure why these companies made the decisions. It is possible that the media buying services claimed that the fact that they represented several large advertisers would give them more clout in negotiating with newspapers. They may also have been able to claim more expertise in choosing between papers in the few markets that had more than one.

3. In theory it would have been possible for TSI to construct an interface that could be used by media buying services. We had written many interfaces to both send and receive records in other modules. However, the information that A^xN required from AdDept contained four different types of records: headers for ads, special instructions at the header level, individual ads, and special instructions for individual ads. Could we persuade the buying service to send records in that format? I considered it unlikely in the extreme even if we did not charge them for using the service. Even if they were persuaded, we would have had to devise foolproof ways of dealing with errors in their files. Moreover, the process of fixing errors would need to be very efficient. Time could be of the essence. It appeared to me to be a nightmarish situation.

4. I am pretty sure about the height because I remember being just barely able to kick my right foot up and rest my ankle on the top of one to stretch my quads before running.

5. Jan Bailey, Ginny Basch, and Sue were regular participants in an unsanctioned bridge game that was held on Thursday evenings in Somers.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: Wavada.org

2022 Return of the Variants

2023 Bridge: The Weiss-Bertoni Award

2006 March: Sue and Mike Spend a Week in San Diego

2005-? Wavada.org

2014 TSI: The Smooth Landing