Things that are Happening

1. I am running another tournament at apterous.org; calling this one the Winter Closed because (a) it's close enough to winter for me and (b) it's a closed tournament (based on rating). A little smaller than the Summer Open was (45 total, compared to I believe 48 for the Summer Open, counting only distinct entrants). The side speed event is another 30 (but pretty much the same people). I deliberately made these as self-running as I could (hello Holland system!), and you can watch them vicariously at their own website (thanks Google sites!). Yes I did do that with the championship division pool names, thanks.
2. Speaking of tournaments, the World Mahjong Championship is coming up in about ten months. I haven't qualified here (there are 20 spots for "the rest of the world" -- non-Europe and non-Asia) and am not even sure who is verifying those qualifiers. (The official site says that the "national mahjong organizations" are setting the standards. What the national mahjong organization is for "the rest of the world" I'm still working on. The US mahjong association doesn't seem to have anything up at the moment.) There are also 5 spots for online qualifiers, which might be more likely; although even there I haven't played a serious game of mahjong for about ... four or five months? I'm not sure my membership at MahjongTime is still valid. (Checks... I was able to log in just now so that's good.)
3. The hybrid class is progressing, slightly. I was not at all surprised when a grand total of one person appeared to have done the hybrid work for the off day last week (out of a class of 20-ish, depending on how many people have (been) dropped). Why some of these people agreed to a hybrid class when they don't have a computer or internet access I'm not sure.
4. Did not die in the storm this weekend, even though I was in Virginia Beach at the time. We all got caught in a game of chicken (IMO) since the site of the awards banquet didn't want to lose a lot of money by canceling on us, despite the fact that they were flooded at the time (we had to drive out via the golf cart track, since the road was gone) and we didn't want to lose a lot of money by not showing, despite the fact that it was sheer lunacy to go (since they were flooded at the time). I think I will continue to resist promotion so I don't have to do this again next year.
5. I now have a new debit card to replace the one that got misappropriated over Halloween.