bunny_hugger and I would not make it to the Michigan State Championship Series for pinball for 2018. We knew this before the end of 2017 and while it saddened us, we had good reasons and I'll get to them ... this month, I think.
But there was still something to play for. If bunny_hugger could earn enough International Flipper Pinball Association ranking points in the last week of the year she might just place high enough to go to the Women's World Pinball Championship. It's hard to get many points at once, but she had an ace in her pocket. The Blind Squirrel League, our pinball mine on the west side of Michigan, was having monthly and league championships on Boxing Day. A strong finish in both, and her Women's World competitors not having so much, could put her in range to get an invite.
Boxing Day was pretty snowy, though. We couldn't be sure, but the traffic maps suggested the westside was difficult to get to, and we told AJH, running it, that we couldn't make it. He promptly announced that he was moving league and monthly finals to Friday. It's nice to feel wanted.
Friday it was going to snow too, although the weather forecast was for flurries and intermittent snow showers. The intermittency would never turn up; it snowed steadily, enough to extend the two-hour drive each way by an hour.
In these sessions, well, there's a group of like six to nine people who're always there. There's a first round that knocks the group down to a final four. And there's a couple patterns that keep happening. bunny_hugger is in a group with AJH or PH, both incredibly strong players. And often with me, a moderately strong player who does well in this venue because I tend not to be rattled and there's usually a weaker player I can overtake.
And bunny_hugger didn't make it into the final four for either the monthly or the league sessions. I did, which was a waste of good play, since it's not like I could get into the Women's World Championship. And I already had enough IFPA points to make it to the state championship, had I been able to go.
The snow made the ride back even longer than it could otherwise have been.
Trivia: In 1841 the Assam Company appointed its first medical officer to care for the British tea merchants in that part of India. He died of fever a year later. Source: Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire, Roy Moxham.
Currently Reading: Mapping in Michigan and the Great Lakes Region, Editor David I Macleod.
Tense moment in the finals on Aerosmith.
So freaking much of Aerosmith is this or else rage-tilting the machine because it gives a lot of tough bounces.
The gorilla who's so ready to go if this pinball tournament would just finish up already.