So, anything happen while I was gone?

I had a nice 6+ week vacation in Ottawa/Kingston in Sept/Oct.  Played some in the Ottawa regional but mostly just visited with my family.  I got to meet my delightful niece Isidora, who just turned 4, and reintroduce myself to my charming niece Serena, who is 5 (and who I hadn't seen since she was learning to walk.)

The Ottawa regional was a bit of a flop.  Played in the first KO with a pickup pard from the maritimes on a team with Linda Lewis and Mike Cappelletti Sr.  We won both halves of the 3-way in the evening (knocking Jeff's squad out of the event in the process) and then the next morning drew the 'Godzilla' team in the event, featuring Gavin & Curtis, with John Hurd and Kevin Bathurst thrown in for good measure, captained by Beverly Perry.  My pard had a shaky first set, misdefending a couple of partscores, but otherwise the squad was solid and we were only down 10.  Unfortunately we had to play against the 4 pros in the 2nd half.  We had a HUGE 2nd half at our table though, win 20ish with no minus positions.  Alas, our teammates brought back a lose 15ish card and we had only clawed back 4 IMPs to lose by 6.  The Perry squad went on to dominate the regional, winning every event they played in. 

After the narrow loss our squad talked about playing in the KO that was starting that afternoon and I initially agreed but then some bickering started and I backed out.  Lo and behold Jeff and Paul showed up looking and so Mike and Linda ended up with a decent pair (while I went home and helped change the storm windows.) 

I made several more trips to the partnership desk that week but there really wasn't anyone loose.  So that just meant more family time.  A trip up to the cottage (my favorite place on earth) on Sunday when the weather turned warm (relatively speaking) led up to the final Swiss on Monday.

Peter and I had talked about playing at some point, but he was booked with Wayne Perrin that day.  Since I was partnerless they went ahead and hooked up with a couple of locals, Richard Soderstrom and Michael Baggott.  Then John (Zaluski) was overheard asking if anyone was looking (this was just before game time) because his Dad had just flown in from China the night before and wanted to play.  So I would be playing with Ed on a 6-bagger.

Since Ed had not arrived yet, the sitout for the first match was a no-brainer.  We played against a B squad featuring Wayne's (fairly long-ago) ex.  Needless to say, we lost.

Ed arrived and we won both our matches fairly comfortably.  Then it was our turn to sit out again and once again we lost.

If memory serves, we were 2-2 at the break with 2 largish wins and 2 narrow losses, which left us okay on the 20 point scale as long as we won out.

I think we blitzed our 5th match and then we had to decide who would sit out when for the last 2 matches (7 total.)  Since Ed and I had won all of our matches and lost all of our sitouts we felt like we at least deserved a random chance to not be the pair that sat out 3 times.  We flipped for it (whichever coin didn't match got the 3rd sitout) and Richard and Michael retired to the peanut gallery (they had only sat out the 3rd match at that point.)

Match 6 was against Jonathan Steinberg, John Zaluski and company.  They'd had a good tournament and were probably the best team in the field (Perry's squad had gone home the day before.)  I had a rough set with a lot of tough decisions (mostly bidding) that just didn't work out.  Ed was less than stellar.  I was not a happy camper.  But the boys brought back a monster and we tied. 

With a match to go one team had already clinched first but we were well positioned to take 2nd if we blitzed.  I don't remember much from that match.  We won by 15 or so.  We ended up one victory point ahead of the 4th place team and one victory point behind the 2nd place team.  Sigh.  At least we beat Steinberg, who was 5th.