Reston July 4th Regional

I'm too old for this stuff. Playing bridge Sunday somewhere further than Atlanta, traveling home, and working Monday is annoying enough. When that's at the end of a week of high level bridge followed by copious amounts of late night activities every day, it's a real struggle. At the Reston/DC regional, it was another big step toward being respected as a ligitimate contender at the highest levels of bridge. Despite a couple of major distractions, I managed to play pretty well all week as Sean and I (with Daniel Korbel and Jonathan Steinberg) won about 100 points, just behind Meckwell, Krzyzstof-Grzegorz, and Joyce-Jenny. We faced them head-to-head twice, winning in the final of the 1st KO and losing in the semi-final of the 3rd KO. Fortunately, that semi-final loss was on the afternoon of july 4th so we were able to have the evening off to participate in normal July 4th activities.

So, why was I distracted? I felt kind of bad all week about being at the tournament rather than at the hospital with my dad, where the doctors apparently were screwing things up. I also felt bad about leaving Winter in a kennel and about lying to Allie about where she was in hopes, I guess, of avoiding these emotional subjects. I also had that butterflies in the stomach feeling you get when just getting to know someone really special. It's been awhile since anyone has had that strong an effect on me.

I actually missed having Winter with me at the tournament. Simply having a dog to take care of stops the drinking and partying while it's still fun. The jogs and trips to the dog park physically make me feel better and limit going out to dinner, which also is probably healthier and more conducive to good bridge in the evening. We saw the Rodwell's dogs there quite a bit, and while they're cute, they aren't nearly as fun (or demanding) as my husky.

This weekend I plan to go through all of the scorecards to find something blog-worthy. Our slam bidding was so much better than it was in Greenville - only 2 or 3 disasters all week, including the first board of the second half against Meckwell (we had a 28 imp half time lead): We bid to 6S, knowingly off 2 key cards. We did have a 10 card fit and some 32 hcp. The K was onside so it rolled in. The Poles duplicated our auction to the slam off 2 keys but then proceeded to not take the finesse. Also, I think we played as many redoubled contracts last week as I had in my whole life. This led to a terrible score (-1000), 2 great scores (+760 twice), and one only slightly bad score (-200).

Not much in the way of bridge until the Atlanta NABC starting 3 weeks from today. I think I'll be staying in the suburbs or possibly commuting from home and hour and a half away and foregoing a lot of the evening hangouts so I can get my daily dose of Winter.