Last Tuesday was bunny_hugger's October pinball tournament, another of the charity tournaments to support the area humane society. This one, Fear and Trembling, is the pin-golf tournament, where the challenge is to complete an objective in as few ball plunges as possible. So score doesn't particularly matter, but accomplishments do. The twist in Fear and Trembling is that there's not a single objective for each table, but rather a pair, and you have to choose which one you do first. If you meet the wrong one, ah wel; doesn't matter. Sad thing is this tournament always draws the weakest turnout of the quarterly charity events. We don't know why. It's easy to suppose pin-golf isn't popular except that everyone who plays it loves the way it forces you to play differently , and so often to learn things about the tables that you didn't know, even on tables you've known for years. Some was understandable at least. MWS wasn't able to attend as his roommate K tested positive for Covid-19, another reminder that the pandemic will not stop screwing up our lives until we try stopping it. In the end we only had nine people show up, counting us. On the bright side, we had a well-organized tournament. We've learned from league, for example, that the night flows weirdly better when you order the list of machines in a consistent order, which is bizarre given that it shouldn't be that big a deal. It's not like the bar is that jam-packed. We did discover problems in two of our objectives, caused by our not having the time to test them out, and relying instead on the rule sheet. One of them was from last year's tournament, frustrating us, since why would we have had it last year if it weren't tested out? Well, we belatedly remembered having the same problem last year and failing to correct the sheets since why would we need to fix this after the tournament was done? Tch. In the end, I ended up one of the four people going to finals, beating bunny_hugger by one stroke. She griped that I always did this, and I asked who played in A Division finals this last season of league and who played B. In finals, drawn from a set of the same tables we'd just played --- but played for highest score instead of objectives, something International Flipper Pinball Association rules don't actually require but might as well --- I managed to faceplant with remarkable completeness. Up until the last game, actually, where I managed a respectable enough second-place finish in a match that turned out not to matter; I got fourth place, taking home one of the trophies bunny_hugger had just hours before finished gluing together again. RED and ACE ended up tying for second place, going to a tiebreaker round on The Flip Side, bunny_hugger's small-sized American Girl-branded pinball machine. It's a small game but nobody can think of a reason it shouldn't count as pinball, so it's the traditional tiebreaker at the charity events. Everyone loves playing it, but not for anything that counts. Before starting their match RED and ACE looked over the four trophies, just to see if one of them so preferred third place that it wasn't worth fighting it out. Happily, they did think it worth fighting it out, and played a little pinball. Also the games didn't last long, which is why The Flip Side is such a great game for this. And that's how, despite everything, the whole tournament got wrapped up before about 9:30, earlier than a typical league night manages. Also, the vending machine at the venue did not still have the two-dollar bill (on sale for $2.50), nor did it have the bottles of ranch dressing. It did have a bottle of maple-inspired syrup, which seems like a dangerous thing to have somewhere people can get drunk, that has wood or carpet flooring. Well, that's their business. Now some fresh pictures from the Calhoun County Fair: Silver Streak in-between rides. We loved those lightning bolt pieces at its center. Looking back over rides, including the Sizzler --- not a Scrambler, but another company's ride along the same lines --- and the Ferris Wheel, with lights that were already on but not doing much against that sky. Lovely shadow in the sky cast by the clouds. Birds were back! Not many, but I guess this means that we don't have any worries about avian flu, or we've decided that we should pull a Covid-19 and try to eugenicise as much of the population as possible by making them get it. . Tense negotiations between bunny_hugger and a photo-shy goose. They reach a brief accord. I believe bunny_hugger's side of things is recorded here. Trivia: When first assigned to an Apollo crew, Neil Armstrong was the backup commander for Apollo 9, then a test of the Command and Service Module and the Lunar Module in high earth orbit, backing up Frank Borman. Source: First Man: The Life of Neil A Armstrong, James R Hansen. Currently Reading: Meet Me By The Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall , Alexandra Lange. Sorry, the book mentions ``the 1968 documentary Fresno: A City Reborn '' and I feel like Lange is trying to pass off a Troy McClure project on me.