Sunday we couldn't sleep in, obviously. We did a couple things to save on time; for example, I showered in the night before, which I just never do anymore. I liked tumbling out of bed, re-combing my hair, and being ready for the day, though; might try it for work sometime. We turned out to have less of a rush than expected for the bathroom, as apparently the estimated 74 other people staying in the AirBnB with us were showering even closer to check-out time than we would. Or were saving their showers for when they got home. As efficiently as we got packed and loaded up, though, we were still running a couple minutes late, especially stopping at McDonald's to get coffee and hash browns and Egg McMuffins, no ham.
We were trying to get there for 10 am, when the facility opened, so as to be best able to catch and deal with anything that might be a crisis. And if we were a couple minutes late, that's all right; not everyone would arrive until, oh, ten minutes past ten. ... Not quite that quick, but, still, more than half the invited women were there early on, and by 11 just about everyone was there. There was one person arriving late, and that was still noon, well before the 12:30 cutoff when everyone had to be in the building or else get dropped.
12:30 arrived, with the full sixteen people present. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger verified everyone's names while I started writing out the first-round tournament sheets. We'd made up some and then learned that PH and AJH had a surplus of the tournament cards for the state that we were welcome to use. Nicer to use something with the International Flipper Pinball Association logo on it, too. I had volunteered to mind the paperwork and direct people about where to go next, a job that started quite slow (as everyone was playing a best-of-seven match and couldn't be done until at least four games were played), got quite busy for a couple hours there, and then petered out as we got down to two and then one pair of competitors still in the running. I felt quite good doing this support work, though; it was fun.
bunnyhugger collected the $20 entry fees from all the competitors; the cash pot was to be divided between the top four finishers, highest place getting the biggest cut. Where this got complicated is the week before GRV had made a donation: an additional hundred dollars to the pot. We thought he hoped this would get more people to also donate money but it didn't happen, somehow.
The extra prize money was an issue only in that the official IFPA rules about how to divide the prize pool gave inconsistent examples. Like, the stated goal was 40%-30%-20%-10%. But the examples given of how to do this included one where the amounts were rounded off and one where it wasn't, and nobody among the advisory panel seemed to understand her question. So bunnyhugger got the bills needed to make an exact split of the moneys and accept that. She'd forgot to bring envelopes so we could present this with class, so, she'd picked some up in town, along with a couple copies of the local newspaper with her article about the tournament.
She also gave out the buttons, commemorating the inaugural Women's Championship, and getting universal acclaim for how neat this was and how much everyone liked them. I don't know how many times over the day she explained how she managed the feat of getting buttons made; they look more impressive than they are to make. (You put three pieces together and press hard.) Which makes it the more baffling that at the end of the night we found a button on the floor, with no one claiming it despite a lot of asking who had lost it. It must have been someone who left early and who, I suppose, doesn't know enough about where it went missing to ask bunnyhugger for it.
And then, it was 1 pm, the designated hour for the championship series to begin in every state and province running one. (1 pm Local Time, that is.) bunnyhugger's first opponent, since the scramble the night before: CY, whose record on the IFPA's web site had her only playing at the one venue, but doing well there: she's got six first-place finishes on her record. bunnyhugger has 16, but has also been playing twice as long. (Even a greater fraction than that, if you discount the year and a half nothing was sanctioned for play.) (I have only ten first-place finishes, by the way.) The question: as #13 seed, was CY an over-rated cream puff? Or an underappreciated power player? Did bunnyhugger stand a chance?
My photo roll has caught up to the State Pinball Championship! So here's some picture from the day before the events described above.
The front room, where everybody set their coolers of food and snacks and such, and tried to find places to set up anything they might want to have to mess around. Also a lot of jackets. Note bunnyhugger's laptop as she had some work to do.
On the right, pinball machines free for non-competition play. And you see over the doorway a TV set up and showing the current match-ups.
Peering through the doorway into the back room, past which you could not touch a game unless you were playing it or maintaining it.
Low-angle shot looking up because I like that sort of thing.
Weird game state! AJH, player one, had a spot of trouble on Hook here as the plunged ball didn't quite register correctly at the start of multiball, and he was not sure what it meant that his score was suddenly 00 instead of the tens of millions he should have had. What it meant was the game was, clumsily, trying to tell him to re-plunge the ball and things would continue.
Row of banners of past state champions: Andy, Andy, Aaron, Adam, Aaron, Alex, and --- off to the right, 2020's champion --- Andy. See what I mean? Also note the four-year stretch where the runners-up were Adam, Andy, Alex, and Alex again.
Trivia: Between 1998 and 2000 China reduced the level of sulphur dioxide in the Beijing atmosphere by 41 percent (from roughly triple world health guidelines for safety to about double). Source: Coal: A Human History, Barbara Freese.
Currently Reading: Popeye The Sailor: The 1960s TV Cartoons, Fred M Grandinetti. Yes, the guy who comments in my WordPress about the 60s Popeye cartoon reviews!
PS: What's Going On In Gasoline Alley? Why does Gasoline Alley have a talking bear? November 2022 - February 2023 Speaking of coal (see my trivia item) here's a bit with Santa Claus.
