10 April 1999: Late-Night Bridge

Saturday, 10 April 1999:

Late-Night Bridge

Last night a bunch of folks got together to play Bridge for the evening, and we ended up playing from about 7:30 pm until 1:00 am. It was fun! One fellow, Grant, had to leave early because his wife is ill, but Subrata showed up in time to round out the foursome, and John showed up not long afterwards. When we have five, what we usually do is rotate out the declarer after each hand; I ended up having a lengthy period of time where I was never declarer, which was nice for a while, but eventually I did kind of want a break.

I'm slowly absorbing information on how to play better, especially how to bid better. I'm picking up conventions like Michael's, Unusual No-Trump, and Negative Doubles. When I say "picking up" in this case, I mean those conventions are at the limits of my ability right now. I have, however, more-or-less figured out transfer bids, and in fact woke up Subrata at one point when I used a Texas transfer in one deal. (That was an interesting deal, as there was a big discussion afterwards as to whether or not Texas was the right bid, since we had a chance at a slam. Consensus seemed to lean towards using the lower Jacoby transfers instead, although Subrata seemed to feel it was a close call and that Texas wasn't completely unreasonable. At any event, seeing Subrata sit up, point to my bid and say, "Transfer! I haven't seen one of those in a while!" was worth the price of admission!)

It also seems like every time I play Bridge, two things happen:

I play a hand (often more than one) where I forget that a king has been played, and agonize over some tricks more than I have to. I need to improve my card counting;
I play a hand where I bid up too high, but end up making the contract anyway.

I don't really think too hard about the play of a Bridge hand, but I do pretty well which leads me to think that I'm doing something right instinctively. But of course I could do better. At any rate, I did make a three-club contract last night which seemed pretty unlikely. I think the defenders gave me a trick, but still, a nice feeling.

Often my Bridge cohorts will analyze the play of a hand afterwards; I can follow them up to a certain point, but many of the details are still lost on me. For instance, I'm only just barely starting to perceive how one lead can defeat a contract while another might not. It's a tough game. You only learn by doing - and by screwing up.

There was another game tonight, up in the City (that's San Francisco to us Midwesterners), which I'd planned last night to go to, but this morning I decided I didn't feel up to consecutive marathon Bridge sessions, especially since I realized I had work to do at home. So I called Subrata (who was going to give me a ride up) and bailed. But there will be other opportunities. This just isn't quite the time.

Naturally, I slept late this morning, and sort of struggled out of bed. Then in the early afternoon I did some chores, and talked to both my Mom and Karen on the phone. Karen, it turns out, is going to Oregon when she gets her Ph.D. to become a professor; I'd hoped she'd move here to work at Lawrence Livermore, but it looks like not. (I wonder if the problems Livermore's been having recently with security on their computer systems has anything to do with it?) I think it's a good choice for her, but I think she had several good options to choose from.

I did go out and run some errands, mainly going back to the furniture store to buy that bookcase. Which I ended up not buying, because I saw another one I liked better and wanted to do some measurements at home to see if it would work. It turns out that it will, so I'll probably buy it tomorrow. Today, though, I did buy a new nightstand for the bedroom. Actually, I didn't have an old nightstand; in Wisconsin I'd been using the plastic cubes which are now in a closet holding my gaming stuff, and here so far I'd been using an end table from the living room. This nightstand is taller, had a drawer and shelves, and the top seems to be waterproofed (though I haven't yet tested it), which makes it ideal. I put it together myself, and I think it will work great!

Since I skipped Bridge, I did get together with John for dinner, which was a trick since he wanted a light meal, and I was craving something like ribs. We eventually settled on an Italian restaurant, only to find that the nice one near work had gone out of business in the past month. Argh! So we settled for something a little lower-brow, which turned out to be fine (although not stellar). I did eat a little too much, though, and have felt full all evening.

And I've spent the evening mostly squaring away stuff in my home office. It's still a bit of a pig sty in here, but I'm making progress. I also paid some bills, which is a plus.

So this afternoon I was washing dishes, and I looked out the window over the sink and see a little orange cat-face looking back at me. My train of thought went something like this:

Hey, that's Newton!
Wait a minute, he's outdoors!
Hey, that's not the porch; that's the overhang above the first floor porch!

Yes, I left the screen door ajar and Newton got out and was checking things out. Happily, he let me grab him and bring him back inside. Later in the afternoon I was on the phone to Karen and saw Newton pushing mightily at the screen door, trying to get out again. But I'd properly closed it, and he couldn't get out. Good to know the latch works.

Then this evening I came home from dinner and looked up to see a long-hairs gray cat sitting on the railing outside my door. I called up to him, "Are you teasing my cats, you rascal?" He started to run when I climbed the stairs, but I enticed him to check me out, and then he became very friendly, rolling around on the floor. I went inside and he came and put his paws up on the screen door to look inside - which let Jefferson and Newton see him! They ran to the door, and he backed off, hissed, and walked off. Guess he's not to friendly to fellow felines. My guys, of course, were terribly curious; I think they're just dominant cats and like to see other cats so they can expand their family.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)