The Mahjong Tournament and the Election Results

By the time this is published we should but might not know the winner of our presidential election. I say 'might not' because Trump is planning to gum up the works with charges of fraudulent voting in Republican led states so they won’t have to declaration a winner, and if they can drag it out long enough then it will be up to the party leaders in those states to award the electoral college votes to the candidate of their choice. Same playbook they tried and failed to do with the last election only this time they're operating on steroids with a money infusion from the richest yo-yo in the world---Elon Musk. But with any luck this entire paragraph will get filed in folder labeled "Worried For Nothing!" However, even if a clear winner was declared on Tuesday on election night, I doubt we'll see Trump concede the election and we certainly won't see the end of his drama machine until after January 20th is in the history books and we have a new president installed. God help us if he wins. Edit to add: He did win and I'm sick to my stomach over the fact that I'm living in a country that puts so little value on character that they'd re-elect a scumbag like DJT. 

It's been a busy week with the highlight being my Mahjong Tournament which happened to coincide with UTI which added a level of an anxiety wondering if I could sit for four 30 minute games and then beat out the other tournament players for a choice spot in the restroom line during our five minute breaks in between games. I managed to win the latter race that most people didn't even know we were running but I came out of the tournament with a score of five (and dry underpants). I'd won one game with twenty-five points in round two but prompted lost twenty of my points in round three. No one scored super high. Two tied for first place with 70 points each. Our sister campus took first and third place and one of our ladies placed second.

It was a lot of fun and a lot of work of which I did 97% of since it was my idea and about half the ladies had to be coerced, sweet-talked or strong armed into taking part in it. The only help I had was the day of the tournament with setting up the room and game sets and with registration of the players. Judging by the feedback I got everyone had fun, though. Everyone left smiling, laughing and thanking me and of the twenty in attendance ten went home with a prize that ranged from $15 each to $5. At least four ladies in our Mahjong group offered to chip in for what I spent on the tournament but I turned them all down. "Next time," I told them, "now that everyone has had a taste of what a tournament is all about, we can spread the cost and the work around." But I might not live long enough to see that happen since our sister campus is already talking about hosting our 2nd annual tournament.

I wish I could share some photos of the activities but the continuum care facility hasn't posted any on their Facebook page for me to nab. We all had to  sign a paper when we moved in to give them permission (or not) to post our photos for their marketing Facebook page and so I know those photos are always fair game for me to nab. Others that were taken that day, I don't feel right sharing because a few ladies living here are fearful of Facebook…and email….and computers...and phone calls from numbers they don't recognize. But the picture to the left is of me at the tournament, looking happy it was over and that nothing went wrong. I didn't work in the wedding floral business for twenty years without learning a few things about long-range planning and making a lot of moving parts fit together.

The photo to the right is a sample of some of the documents I had to create for the tournament---score sheets, table rotation cards, name tags, tournament instructions and rules and welcome notes---and the photo to the left below is of the registration table after just about everyone had already checked in and taken their packets. Oops! 

Our CCC's photographer was on site so I didn't bother taking any pictures other than these two. Like so many of the 'jobs' here in independent living, she is self-appointed. She and her roommate/wife are our self-appointed newsletter publishers. They both taught graphic design at a local college and they've spoiled us with a first-class, four-times-a-year newsletters that always include biographies of a few residents.

When they were doing a photo shoot of the winners and me at the end I hoped I wouldn't embarrass myself before they finished and I could get to the bathroom. I did do an E-Visit with my doctor a few days before the tournament but the medication prescribed didn't help. An hour ago I went to the doctor's office to pee in a cup but it will take 48 hours for them to grow a culture so they can target a medication more precisely. I was hoping to be able to swing around to the drug store to pick it a new prescription on the way home. Boo Hoo! 

But on the good side I finally figured out how to get my face back on my smart watch after the time change. You shouldn't need to go through so much frustration for something as simple as that! It took me deleting and re-installing the app on my phone several times and standing on my head while singing I'm a Little Tea Pot. This watch will take my blood pressure and tell me how many hours I sleep at night vs how many times I get up to pee but it does not like Daylight Savings Time. Go figure!  ©

Until Next Wednesday. 

Netflix Favorites and Flops and other Entertaining Things

I just finishing listening to one of my all-time favorite books, West with the Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge. My book club will be discussing it November forth on my recommendation and I'm anxious to see if others like the story as much as I do. It's probably my forth time listening to it and I enjoyed it every bit as much this time as the first, maybe more. Multiple exposures to favorite books or movies are like that. You pick up on nuances you missed the first time around and you are more apt to enjoy the build up to the the climax in the story, knowing what's a head. I won't bore you with a full-on review of the book. I did that back in 2021 here in an entire post devoted to the giraffes.

But before I leave that book behind I can't resist sharing one of my favorite passages. It speaks to me and about me every time I try to come up with something meaningful or at least entertaining to write: "In a long life, there is a singular moment when you know you’ve made more memories than any new ones you'll ever make. That’s when the moment your truest stories---the ones that made you the you that you became---are ever more in the front of your mind, as you begin to reach back for the you that you deemed best…[but] what I hadn’t noticed was that my mind was wearing out, too. Even the memories a body holds most dear become like scratchy old phonographs records played too long, fading in and out with little sound and even less fury.” 

Today when I sat down to write I knew I wanted to do a post about some of the Netflix fare I've been consuming. I binge watch about an hour and a half every night and I'm running out of stuff that holds my interest. One of the better binges I've done this month, though, was Your Honor. IMDb says this about it: "A judge confronts his convictions when his son is involved in a hit-and-run that embroils an organized-crime family." If ever there was a series that is a cautionary tale against lying this is it. One lie quickly mushroomed into bigger and bigger lies and bigger and bigger crimes until just about everyone involved was either dead or in jail by the closing episode. I like stuff with strong cliffhangers that keep you guessing from one episode to another and for that reason Your Honor held my interest. 

On the lighter side a ten episode binge called No One Wants This was a good 'palate cleanser' following the mayhem in the above mentioned Netflix series. The trailer labels it as: "An agnostic sex podcaster and a newly single rabbi fall in love; discovering if their relationship survive their wildly different lives and meddling families." The viewer is left at the end to be a little dissatisfied, not knowing if they will get their happy ending. Or maybe it just hinted at happy ending to leave the door open to another season?  Whatever the case, with its quirky characters and half hour episodes I binge-watched it in three evenings. Another series I tried for a total of nearly five full minutes before I knew I wasn't into gross, creepy, sick crime stuff was Dexter. If you watched it and liked it don't tell me. I don't want to judge you.

Another night I watched Netflix movie called No Pressure, filmed in Poland and it's about ten years behind in what American audiences are used to in terms of acting, etc. A reviewer called it "Old Wine in a New Bottle" and I agree. Fans of romantic comedies have seen this storyline of a big city girl who comes back to the country to save the family farm and ends up falling in love with a neighboring farmer/chef/wealthy man---whatever---a million times. I'm sorry, every time I try a foreign made movie I get either bored or hypercritical. 

Not that American film makers have left that tired plot behind. Hallmark Christmas movies have a giant portion of big city lonely people spending their holidays in small, mid-western towns where they find their forever person. I say 'person' rather than guy or gal because in 2022 Hallmark went woke and featured one movie with a gay couple finding-love-over-the-holidays. One movie out of their 170 Christmas movies that year.  The Holiday Sitter was the first ever Hallmark movie where a gay couple was the center of the action.  In 2023 Hallmark added two more LGBTQ movies to their Christmas/love lineup and I'm quite sure this turtle-slow trend is giving the Karen's of the world ulcers and contributing to their sky-is-falling dance against 'the gay issues' in our political arena. I'm so sick of Karens and Kens who want to ban books and movies. And if they insist of doing that why not start with banning the ones that give murderers tips on how to get away with their obsessions? Prioritize love over violence for crying out loud! If a teen or younger kid accidentally sees or reads about someone making love to someone they truly care about that isn't going to scar them for life like watching or reading about a psychopath dismembering a person they've been torturing for weeks in an underground cell. <Rant off.>

Yes, it's Halloween today but the Hallmark Christmas movies have been making their presence known for a few weeks already but I generally don't watch Christmas movies until we get our first snowfall. Then I'll pig out on their sweetness and goodwill toward mankind and the memories of finding love they churn up inside me. It's the only time of the year I consistently select the Hallmark Channel. I am nothing if not a creature of habit. ©

Until Next Wednesday...

Mahjong Tournaments and Presidential Election Mailings

Can you feel the excitement building? I'm not talking about the election two weeks and a day off. That's more scary than exciting. I'm talking about my baby that is due October 30^th.  The 'baby' being a mahjong tournament that I've single-handedly orchestrated between our Continuum Care Campus and our sister campus. Gutsy of me, isn't it, considering I've never been to a mahjong tournament and don’t have a clue how they work except for what I've been able to glean off the internet. The only saving grace I have in all this is the fact that none of the twenty players taking part in the tournament has ever been to one either. 

Since I learned how to play about two and a half years ago I've been lusting after attending one of the big city tournaments that attracts hundreds of players, some lasting two days long. Or maybe playing in one of the cruise ship tournaments where thousands of people from all over the world can find a game to play any time of the day or night when they aren't sightseeing the Caribbean Islands.

Can you believe it, my tiny tournament has generated twenty documents for the day. Everything from custom score cards to name tags to the list of prizes I've accumulated to award to the winners---Ten in all plus satin ribbons. Some of those prizes will end up as random drawing prizes but I wanted to be prepared for ties. Our group wasn't keeping score of our games before I came up with the tournament idea and I've been surprised by how often we have ties at the end of an afternoon of games. We've also had to unlearn a few House Rules and learn a few National Mahjong League rules. But the other campus has had to do the same. My point-person at the other campus said she's been trying to get her ladies to play by League Rules for a couple of years and she loves that this tournament is giving her an excuse to teach them. People going down to Florida in the winter can come back with crazy House Rules and they get adopted to the point that players often don't know the difference. It's common, if you can believe the "chatter" I see on the four mahjong Facebook groups I belong to. Getting us all on both campuses to play by the same set of rules was the very first step I took on this tournament odyssey.

The Life Enrichment Directors at both campus are as excited as I am. Ours is providing water bottles, cookies, ink pens and two of the prizes and their campus is providing free transportation. My biggest challenge has been figuring out the table rotations so that most of the players get to play with most of the other players but making sure that with each game players plays with at least one person from their own campus. I'd be ashamed to admit the number of hours I spent trying to come up with an algorithm that works for these table rotations. Finally, I enlisted the help of a statics and math major/college grad student who works here as a waitress when she's not in classes. She said she loved the challenge and the funny part is we both came up with the same algorithm! But it took me two weeks and her one weekend. And I wasn't trying to re-invent the wheel. I did try to find an algorithm for table rotations already worked out online but I discovered that my tournament is too small for that to be available. 

Okay, enough about that. How about a report on our get-out-the-vote effort here? The twelve (known) democrats on campus and I have been writing letters and postcards two and three times a week. So far we've written over 500 letters and 100+ postcards. The day this blog post goes live will be the last day we'll do them and we're aiming for 600. The letters are sponsored by the Sierra Club and the postcards were for the DNC. We address the letters by hand and add to a pre-printed paragraph that tells the recipients where and when to vote. It's interesting that they have us write five non-partisan letters for every five letters we write supporting Kamala for president. The non-partisan ones go something like this: "Voting is easy. I find that if I make a plan to vote I'm more apt to get to the polls. I believe voting is important. Every vote cast is a voice heard and every voice heard helps shape our country. Please use the immense power of your voice and vote to help protect our country." 

The partisan letters---at least the one I chose to copy---goes like this: "I believe the state of our democracy is at stake. I am voting for Kamala Harris because she has a strong track record for protecting our environment. I also want a president who prioritizes decency, honesty, freedom and respect. I hope you will go to the polls this year and help protect our country and the planet with your vote."  

These letters are going out to just Pennsylvania and Michigan voters who are registered but don't always use their voting privileges and who are also present or past members of the Sierra Club. I don't know if they have any real influence on those who get the letters but it feels good to be doing something---anything---to help get Kamala elected. We can't elect a man who recently said that the January 6th Insurrection at the capital was a "day of love." We can't elect a man who literally tried to over-throw our constitution that day and has no respect for the Rule of Law. I've also seen a lot of people spiraling down into dementia and Trump's is on full display at each of his rallies. If his fans are honest with themselves, they see it too. Or maybe they listened to him a few days ago when he publicly admired the size of a pro-golfer's dick and they said to themselves: "Yes, this is the kind of man who should be the leader of the free world---a disgusting, vile and dangerous pot stirrer who prioritizes himself above all others." I hope not. I hope fence sitting Republicans will put country before party and put a stop to the drama that Trump churns out day after day.

I truly do want a president who prioritizes decency, honesty, freedom and respect and Kamala Harris is more qualified than any man who has ever run for the office in the past, having serviced in all three branches of the federal government---the legislative as a U.S. Senator, in the executive branch as Vice President and in the judicial branch as Attorney General of California. There are 29 countries where women are their heads of state. It's about time we added to that statistic.

This concludes my unpaid political announcement. ©