Pinburgh Friday, the second day of tournament play. We're still running tired and I'm not sure we did figure where to get coffee or a proper breakfast. I know I ended up snacking a lot at the pretzel stand and the snacks built into the convention center's main hall.
I'd eat a lot inside the center. This was the day that ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunny_hugger had her perfect round. And that, later on, I had my perfect round. My round came at the end of a lot of delays, caused by our group being behind some of the A Division masters of the world, whose games all ran long and were delayed some by technical malfunctions that demanded repair jobs. We were so late getting out to lunch that everybody we might've eaten with went somewhere else, and I got a vegetarian burger from the snack stand. This did mean that, ultimately, I spent something like 13 hours straight inside the enormous main hall, and I only realized how much time I'd spent in a single room (and attached bathrooms) when I stepped outside and realized, oh, there was space out there.
There was time, in-between rounds in our D Division, to take in some of the sights. bunny_hugger found a Mouse Trap video game and played well enough to get on the high score table. We also found a quasi-pinball contraption called Ice Cold Beer. It's a nearly vertical table, with a metal post the height and incline of which you can control. The objective: get a ball left to slide on that post to drop into the lit one of dozens of holes. That's a great one.
It's a long day. An exhausting day. A thrilling day, given our two perfect rounds, and that we both get into the D Division finals. It feels to me like all I did was play games, go to the bathroom, get a Diet Pepsi, and then sit until the next round starts. That wasn't all. There was some looking at video games. Some looking at cosplayers. There were even people in full fursuit wandering around, maybe people early for Anthrocon, maybe people who just figure, this is what they need. And looking at people playing with the ToonTown Rewritten props; there's something fantastic about a person just walking around with a little black-dot nose.
In the evening bunny_hugger collected her medal for her perfect round, and I got one too, and we took pictures at the machines that finished the perfect rounds. I think that we joined a bunch of other Michigan Pinball folks for a snack at the bar in the Westin Hotel. Maybe this was another night. Big thing was, it was late and it was a long day and we had a fair hike (uphill) to get to our hotel. And our success in the pinball playing meant we'd both have to get up early for another day in a row.
Trivia: When it started the Civil Works Administration adopted the Public Works Administration payscale: 40 cents an hour for unskilled labor in the South; 45 cents an hour in the Central Zone (Midwest and West); 50 cents an hour in the industrialized Northern Zone. Unskilled laborers could work only 30 hours per week. Source: American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put The Nation To Work, Nick Taylor.
Currently Reading: The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders, Peter Heather.
PS: Crossroads Village!
Putting my camera's low-light modes to the test: photographs from on the train! The Huckleberry Railroad takes one on a half-hour-plus ride through illuminations and here's one of the pictures that came out, Santa dropping at least one present on the way.
From the Huckleberry Railroad turnaround where the ornaments have a 12 Days Of Christmas theme. There's numbered lights for all the Days and half the time the train goes from 1 up to 12, and the other half from 12 down to 1, while the full song plays on the speakers.
One of the handful of other 12 Days Of Christmas displays with a photograph that turned out: 2 Turtle Doves. (I'm really sorry the calling birds didn't come out; I'll try harder this year.) After the turnaround at the 12 Days of Christmas the music switches from Christmas Carols to Novelty Christmas songs.
