Tuesday, January 19, 2010

My Town Monday: Pokemon City Championships in Brighton



Every winter, there are city championships for players of the Pokemon Trading Card Game. (If you don't know what it is, ask your kids. They'll know.) This year, Brighton was able to hold a city championship tournament-- one of 9 in the Michigan/ Indiana area.

As a Pokemon Trading Card Game player, I travel-- with the Hubby-- to as many of the Michigan/ Indiana Tournaments as I can manage. And I have to say, the five minute commute around the "block" to the Brighton City Championships was my favorite commute yet. Beats even the 45 minute drive to Okemos and certainly better than the 2 hour drive to Angola, Indiana (just south of the Indiana/ Michigan border off I-69).

The local paper almost covered the event in a sad little paragraph.

One might notice how crowded the room was. And it was packed. There were about 34 "big kids" as I call us... you know, the kids who are over 16 or so and still play Pokemon. I'm one of those. (I don't even have the excuse of "my kids play" like some of the other players who figured they'd play while the little ones battle it out.) And 16 of the medium sized kids. And about 12 of the little kids. That adds up to 62. We'll kind of overlook the fact that the room capacity was 62-- after all the half-pint kids only count as half a person, right? No? Well... um. Turn out was good at least, meaning there's a good chance there will be another tournament or so held in Brighton.

Oh, how did I fare in the competition? I made Top Cut-- meaning I was in the Top 8 players at the end of battling cards all day. (Though it was some uncanny luck and the fact that another player dropped at the last minute that put me in that spot.)

Yeah, that's me in the black sweater. Nice pic...

Since the library closed, we scooted over to Mancino's Pizza and Grinders. (OMG, Yum!) There, the Top Cut finished battling out. And this is where I lost. Badly. As I expected since I have played my opponent before and nothing changed in our games since the last time this player whooped me.

Brighton Library is a nice place to play, I must admit. Though, apparently, whoever designed the building is a dumbass. The room we are in is connected by ventilation directly to the quiet study carrols. (Yeah-- 62 players in a small space, it's gonna be noisy. Plus, word is one could have yoga in that room and it would seem loud to the other end of the ventilation.) And the hallway outside our room ends in a coupula by the door, which echoes all sounds, such as those spilling from the room and the players who head out in the hall after ending their current round. I'm surprised the lady who organized it isn't banned from the library for life.

Good fun, though. Next tournament-- Michigan State Tournament in Okemos. (And one of the nicethings about the Pokemon game is that you can go to every tournament even if you didn't place or even play at all in the previous one. For some of us, we just go to play for fun, even if we don't do well. (Well, I prefer to win more than I lose, but will take a spot on Team 50/50.)

Pics compliments of Missy (and her husband), one of the Poke-judges and a Poke-mom.







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Monday, January 4, 2010

My Town Monday: Dark and Cold


Short post since I'm mired in grading.

It's about this time of year that people start turning off and taking down their Christmas lights. It's "too late" to leave them up.

But I wish they would.

Fine, fine, take down Santa and the creepy reindeer skeletons. But leave up the little lights. At least in places like Livingston County, Michigan.

See, it's January here. The sun rises about 8am and sets by 5pm. Yeah. The sun only works a 9 hour day this time of year.

So, seeing those little twinkles of white or colored lights is rather nice in the middle of the afternoon when it's already dark out. It provides a little bit of cheery light to contrast the cold, gray/white snow and the bare trees and the gray cloudy skies.

Who decided, anyway, that Christmas ends so early? It's okay to start Christmas festivities a month before the actual event, but less than two weeks afterward, one can be hated by the neighbors for continuing to have their lights on?

It's cold and dark. We really should be hibernating. Since we can't, how about leaving some cheery little lights on, to ward off the winter blues.





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