The first week of September was going to be bridgeless
anyway – we were going to motor over to visit my youngest brother in Michigan –
but everything got blown off course when one of our beloved cats – Tosh –
suddenly lost the use of his hind legs and, two days later at the emergency
animal clinic, we had no choice but to put him down.
Grieving deeply and having canceled my partners for the
week, I stayed away from the tables except for a dismal pair of short games –
low 40 percenters – with Wednesday partner Celine Murray, who’d forgotten we
weren’t going to play. (Since then, Airport Bridge Club manager Bill Finkelstein
has abandoned his experiment at running two 18- to 20-board games every day but
Sunday. I’d been looking forward to it as a master point bonanza, but many
people just didn’t get the hang of it and complaints were abundant.)
Finally, on Friday, I ventured over to Canada to play in St.
Catharines with Selina Volpatti (whose husband of 50-odd years passed on just a
month ago – and, jeez, here I’m so bent out of shape about a cat). We improved
upon our previous week’s effort – 50.26% was good for third in the B strat
North-South and 0.26 of a master point in a 15½ table game.
Partnerless on Saturday, I nevertheless returned to the
Airport Bridge Club. Paired with Paula Salamone for a series of hands that
encouraged and mostly rewarded exuberant bidding – slam bid and made in our
first round – we finished first in B North-South with a 54.17% score. This
being a month of double points at the club, it was good for 1.02 master points.
I’m still bereaved, but things are starting to look brighter.
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