That's what I'll do,

bunny_hugger and I have been playing pinball tournaments in Lansing, of course. But apart from the day I spent at the Sparks Pinball Museum, waiting for Sunshine's echocardiogram, and Motor City Furry Con, we haven't done anything outside our local venue. Pinball At The Zoo, traditionally held in late April, was the first major event lost to Covid-19. This year, it would be the first major event, and the first non-local pinball event, that we would attend.

Though we aimed to get to Kalamazoo for opening, we missed, by maybe a half-hour. I had resolved --- back in 2020! --- to be less competitive and less worked up about my placement in these tournaments. This resolution was greatly supported by the pandemic, of course, and now? My unemployment would reinforce that. First, attending was $17 per day, and while we hadn't planned to go up on Friday, mm, boy, I'm not sure I want to spend $17 I don't have to. Also, the tournament was Herb-style, where you play a slate of games and your seeding is based on your best six games. But each game was $1 each, so the more you pay the more chances of an above-average game. I would end up buying $30 worth of entries on Thursday, and another $10 on Saturday, and ...

You know how there's the pinball legend that playing ``cold'', like, your first game on something in ages (or ever) will be your best? And that you'll do better when you are relaxed and not at all worried about your accomplishments? My experience this weekend is that it was bunk. Oh, I mostly avoided doing badly, although one game of Blackout was spoiled by a phantom tilt (maybe I hit the flipper too hard at just the wrong moment?) that actually tilted through (so I lost two balls instead of one). But that one breakthrough game, the one where I do really well and that carries me into the B Division, as I'd hit in 2015, 2016, and 2017? It never came. Maybe if we'd have come Friday, and if I'd had no fears of dropping another twenty dollars on entries.

bunny_hugger, though, did have one of those games of legend. On Dragonfist, an early solid-state game she'd never seen or heard of before, she put in exactly one game and it was the highest score anyone put up on Thursday. Even with Friday and Saturday, and finals, and some of the top pinball players in the world coming in, her one score remained the fifth-best anyone managed on what is a fun game.

I had looked things over and decided not to put any games on the Classics Tournament. It's as hard as the Main Tournament, for one. And if I should have been able to get in, we'd have had to drive back on Friday night for the first round of playoffs. The only good reason to play would be the hopes of getting a modest number of International Flipper Pinball Association points and better my world ranking, which has been dwindling ever since the pandemic started. But, again, that resolve to stop worrying about competing so. (I'd already resolved that I wasn't going to try to make State this year; some good finishes in, like, Fremont tournaments could get me there. But if we don't get to Fremont, or we don't have good finishes? So be it.)

bunny_hugger put a couple games in on Classics, but what really split her focus was playing in the Women's Tournament. This was on four games, three modern: Beatles (her favorite non-Funhouse game), The Munsters, and Stern's 2013 Star Trek, plus one electromechanical, Aquarius. She would turn out to love Aquarius over the weekend; she really got the hang of how to play it, and got to consistently putting up games that were in range of rolling it. She would finish Thursday, the first day of qualifying, the top seed in the Women's rankings. And while we would watch, Friday, as our standings dwindled everywhere, as more people played and put up their best games on stuff, her seed would only drop to #2, for all the skilled women trying the same quartet of games.

For my part, I would at least have some moral victories. In qualifying, for example, I went twenty games without ever putting up a worse score on one of my tables than I'd already done. (Then I got a frustrating run of five worse-performances in a row, and took a break to get some food and pop.) And on Stars, an electromechanical I have always struggled with, I finally found a strategy for playing. Like, I found where the important shots to make were, and was able to hit what I wanted. I didn't get to the killer score I needed, but my Stars score ended up my highest-place finish of my games. And, on Space Shuttle, an early electromechanical that gave everyone a hard time, I finally started to find where the center ramp shot --- the essential piece for multiball --- was, and began putting up scores about half as good as I can do on The Pinball Arcade simulator. Since the simulator is (almost) always easier than the real table, that's a good level. If I could play any real game half as well as I do consistently in simulation I'd be an A-level player.

So this all is the competitive set-up stuff. What about the stuff that involves, you know, people? That, I hope to get to tomorrow.

My photos have reached the end of Closing Ceremonies at Motor City Fur[ry] Con, which is not to say we're at the end of photos taken. There's milling around after Closing, and then the Dead Dog Dance.

That cherry fox again; they have a really good red.

Folks (including Pakrat) gathered around outside the ballroom after Closing Ceremonies.

bunny_hugger in the center of the action.

Trivia: Ken Mattingly's EVA during the transearth coasting phase of Apollo 16 lasted one hour, 23 minutes, 42 seconds, with television coverage for the whole deep-space EVA. This with the moonwalks brought the total extravehicular activity to 22 hours, 17 minutes, 36 seconds. Source: Apollo By The Numbers: A Statistical Reference, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029.

Currently Reading: The Complete Peanuts, 1977 - 78, Charles M Schulz. Editor Gary Groth.