Monday, 1/20/2020
Hah, look at that date. Can’t wait for October 20th.
Went for a run, routine normal. As noted a few days ago, because FOPAL was supposed to be closed for a week, I’d agreed to play in the 3rd Monday Duplicate Bridge game, which I normally dodge because I like to work my section at FOPAL on Mondays.
Craig had dragooned, excuse me recruited a total of 12 players, so three tables, 24 “boards” (pre-made hands), starting at 10:30 and not finishing until nearly 3pm. That’s a lot of bridge. My partner was Colin (who was one of the first people whose name I learnt after moving in here), the 90+year old guy who skipped his regular tennis game to play bridge today. I’m afraid I made one, maybe two bidding mistakes that cost us dearly. He was nice about it.
When bridge wrapped at 3pm, I thought I’d go take a look-see at what was happening at FOPAL. I had been told that the new carpet (carpet-tiles) would be installed tomorrow, the 21st, so I supposed there was some prep work going on.
Oh my yes. Thing is, other than sale day, every aisle in the main room is littered with boxes of books. I cleaned up the couple of boxes at my computer section, and then joined several other people working at getting everything either out of the place — to a small storage shed where we tetris’d in an amazing amount of stuff, folding tables, boxes of this and that, and to the bargain room. There was still quite a few boxes on the floor, but there were also quite a few wheeled carts. So we loaded boxes onto carts. The plan is that tomorrow, they will just keep rolling carts away from a section at a time, and rolling them back after the carpet tiles are down.
So I spent a couple of hours helping with this physical work, then headed back arriving just in time for supper. I sat with Kay and Don, and Helene, and Mary whom I hadn’t met properly yet. (Mary number… there are 6 plain Mary’s in the resident directory, plus as many Mary Ann/Beth/Grace’s. Oh well.)
A year ago I had toured Channing House, and wrote up a lengthy account of that, on the 20th did critical drive-by’s of two other places.
Random things my mind pops up #327: as I was leaving FOPAL I said to somebody, “well, I only stopped in to see what the condition was.” And my helpful mind, which this morning couldn’t remember the word “duplicate” (what kind of bridge are we playing, again?), started reeling off the lyrics of “Just Dropped in (to see what condition my condition is in)” by the First Edition from 1968. Goodness what a time capsule that video is. Long hair, white go-go boots! I had no idea that was Kenny Rogers. Everybody knows him from “The Gambler” (gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em…) which was from ten years later.
Codgerville 