We had our Grass Roots National Tournament on April 23. Thirty-one peggers came out to play, from as far away as Virginia (Hi Rick!). Cathy Perkins was able to come and join us, and for her efforts, was rewarded with a coveted 29 hand – courtesy of our own Ernie Hodgson. Steve Hooker also made an appearance, we’ve missed you, Steve! And we also had a new person come out to play competitive cribbage for the first time – Welcome to Robert Hewett! Though the cards were decidedly unfriendly to some, they were very nicely behaved for others. I’ll have the full results up on the GRNT page on this site soon. I'm starting the post with the current standings this time because I finally got the GRNT entered into the site. It took a while. After a couple hours on the computer, the peepers say jeepers and dive under the lids. BUT, it appears that with JUST TWO WEEKS LEFT in the regular season, Jeff Raynes has already broken the 300-point barrier, and is leading the East in GRPs. The next closest person is 18 points behind. The Northwest leader is also behind Jeff, at 314 on the season. The leader in the Central has 339, which is definitely attainable for our soon-to-be-repeat-champeen. Looks like Southwest is going to rule the roost with their 1-2 leaders at 394 and 382, respectively. A #3 finish overall seems like it could be in the cards for our own Mr. Raynes. Go get 'em, Jeff!!! Note, this is unofficial; the GRNT results haven't been "officially posted" yet. Soon, my pretties. OK. Back to the blog... Know who was busy? On this day? Back in 1742? Elizabeth of Russia. She crowned herself Empress on that date, in the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow. I didn’t know one could declare oneself Empress. I may just try that. The celebrations for the coronation of Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter I and Catherine I, lasted two months and were distinguished by an unprecedented luxury. As a result of a palace coup toward the end of 1741, Elizabeth of Russia ascended the imperial throne. Exactly five months later, the Empress of Russia was crowned. A Chief Marshal and a Master of Ceremonies were specially assigned to arrange the celebrations. When developing the script of the celebrations, the list of state regalia was enriched with the national flag, the state sword and shield. Coronation cortege of the Empress including a dozen carriages, decorated with gold, brocade, velvet, surrounded by hundreds of horsemen, moved slowly to the Kremlin down the streets bordered with regiments holding flying colors. Persian and Turkish carpets were hanging from the windows of houses. For the coronation itself, a new imperial crown had been specially made. The empress laid upon herself the robe and the crown, handed over to her by Archbishop Ambrose, as regalia belonging to her by direct inheritance. After the greetings and salutations, which lasted three days, began balls with masquerades, Italian opera, fireworks and dinners. During the meal in the Faceted Chamber, sang the Italian Choir located in the corners of the room. From May to June in Moscow were magnificent balls, masquerades. On this date in 1901, New York Governor Benjamin Odell Jr. signed into law a bill requiring owners of motor vehicles to register with the state. It also mandated that the every automobile or motor cycle bear “the separate initials of the owner’s name placed upon the back thereof in a conspicuous place, the letters forming such initials to be at least three inches in height.” Owners were expected to provide their own identifying letters, and in those early days there were no restrictions on materials, style or color. Some used metal house letters on leather or wood, others painted the letters directly on their vehicles. On May 2, the Times reported that 17 people had already applied for licenses and a man named George F. Chamberlain would receive the first one. By September the Tribune reported 715 had applied, and licenses totaled 1,566 by the beginning of April the following year. But, as the number of cars and drivers increased, the painted-on-initials system began to fail, for a simple reason: There were just too many people with the same initials. Hence, the modern license-plate. On May 15, 1903, the state legislature passed a new law requiring the New York Secretary of State to assign each registered owner a number that would be displayed on the back of the vehicle. And that same year—though New York drivers would have to provide their own plates until 1910—Massachusetts became the first to distribute state-issued plates. On this date in 1990, the Hubble space telescope is placed into orbit by space shuttle Discovery on the STS-31 mission. The mission featured the deployment of Hubble, the first of NASA's Great Observatories to reach orbit. STS-31 was the tenth launch of the shuttle Discovery. On board were astronauts Charles F. Bolden (pilot, NASA Administrator 2009-2017), Steven A. Hawley (mission specialist), Loren J. Shriver (commander), Bruce McCandless (mission specialist) and Kathryn D. Sullivan (mission specialist, NOAA Administrator 2014-2017). It was deployed from the shuttle in a slow and purposeful dance orchestrated by the astronauts and the shuttle’s Remote Manipulator System arm. Two weeks later, it started to send back scientific data. Images started arriving in late May 1990 and did show improvements over Earth-based telescopes and previous space telescopes, but quite soon, it was clear that something was terribly wrong with the telescope. It would not focus point-like objects like stars into tiny brilliant dots. The photos it returned were a little hazy – a little, but enough to be very worried. It was soon discovered that there was an aberration on the space telescope’s primary mirror. After the first servicing mission to Hubble in December 1993 by astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour, where instruments were traded in and out to correct the optical flaw, the world soon reveled in the flood of spectacular images and spectral data giving new insights into the existence of black holes, into the lives of massive stars, and into the fine structure of the atmospheres of giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn. We took up the entire space we were allotted with 23 players in-house. We paid out 6 places and 3 teams. We had a couple of guests join us, and boy were we NICE to them! While we didn't let them take any points, we did let them take some greenbacks.
1st Place: Fran Ward, with a 17/8/+100 2nd Place: John Morch, with a 16/7/+172 3rd Place: Ernie Hodgson, with a 15/7/+55 4th Place: Jerry Gooden, with a 13/6/+36 5th Place: Joe Greiner, wiht a 12/6/+29 6th Place: Jeff Raynes, with a slightly dirty 12/5/+51 1st Team: Guest, Russell Brauer (11) and Heather Chilsen (10) 2nd Team: Kristy Haught (11) and Guest Ray Cross (8) 3rd Team: Larry Phifer (10) and Andy Wagner (9) Better than Bernard? Our buddy scored 10 points this week. See ya'll Monday! ~ Jennifer
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I had laser eye surgery just after the start of April, and last week, I was unable to see well enough to drive so I missed Club. Jeff did a great job and got everything updated, but I was in no position to use the computer for any amount of time until over this past weekend, and I had 18 or so GRNT tournaments to process, so I worked on that instead. My eyes are slowly getting to their new normal, and I can tolerate the glow of the screens for longer periods of time, which means I should be able to provide my usual brand of weekly posts again next week (yay). Here are the results from last week, for the 17 folks who came out to play on April 11 (thanks again, Jeff!). It appears the cards were either kind or not, no in-between. First Place: Jeff Raynes, 18/8/152 Second Place: Joe Greiner, 15/7/85 Third Place: Jeff Seidenstein, 13/6/48 Fourth Place: Larry Phifer, 12/6/78 Fifth Place: Kristy Haught, 12/6/17 Teams were: 1st: Frank Abernathy (11) and Heather Chilsen (10) 2nd: Fran Ward (12) and Jerry Gooden (8) Were you Better than Bernard? Our ol' buddy had a 7. This week, we had 22 people come out. Here are our prizewinners: First Place: Liz Henderson with a 15/6/85 Second Place: Joe Greiner with a 14/6/46 Third Place: Jerry Gooden with a 13/6/55 Fourth Place: Mike Due with a 13/6/42 Fifth Place: Jeff Seidenstein with a 13/6/24 Teams were: 1st: Pete Amacher (11) and Al Robinson (11) 2nd: Larry Phifer (12) and Steve Podolsky (10) 3rd: Allan Simpson (12) and Jennifer Johnson (8) How'd you do against Bernard? He scored 9 points this week. Full results for the past two weeks should be up on the website. Here are the current standings, with the past two weeks' worth of GRPs figured in: There are only a few weeks to go in the season (and our GRNT this Saturday at 9am); let's get pegging, everyone!! Hope to see most of you on Saturday! Ciao for now, ~ Jennifer Glen brought cookies to celebrate his birthday, but he had to earn his birthday "present" -- he scored 12 points this week. Way to go, Glenn! This week's entry is not going to contain its usual history lesson -- I'm having laser surgery on my eyes this afternoon, and didn't have the foresight to pre-write this week's entry. SO, we'll skip right to the... We had 21 peggers come out to play tonight -- and it's a good thing the Carolina game was later in the evening or we may not have had room to play! It got mighty loud by the end of the evening, so some folks split before the dollars were distributed. Never fear, I am holding them safe. Five places and three teams were awarded the cashola last night. First Place: Ernie Hodgson, who is WAY past due for a good night, with the best 14 of the night -- 14/7/+3 Second Place: Mike Due, who is back visiting with us for a spell, with the second best 14 of the night -- a slightly dirty 14/6/117. Third Place: Jeff Raynes, with the better 13 card -- 13/6/95 Fourth Place: Jerry Gooden, keeping pace with Jeff in the overall standings with a 13/6/43 Fifth Place: John Morch rounding out the top prize winners with a dirty 13 -- 13/5/62 Better than Bernard? Bernard Whitfield scored 10 points last night -- do what you must with that information. 1st team: Glenn McMahon (12) and Joe Greiner (9) 2nd team: Heather Chilsen (11) and Bernard Whitfield (10) 3rd team: Allan Simpson (11) and Pete Amacher (10) The current top-10 standings are below: With only five weeks left in the season, plus the Grass Roots National Tournament at the end of this month it looks like we've got our battle for Club Champ narrowed to just a few members. Jerry has the best chance at unseating the current champ, but don't count Frank out! Of course, these fine competitors can only make headway if Jeff starts to get bad cards... "Popcorn" matches for sure over the next few weeks! That's all I'm gonna do for today. I've still got to process the Spring Fling results and generate the report for the ACC, so once I do that, I'll post all the event results, but for now, I'm going to sign off. Hope to see ya'll on Monday! ~ Jennifer |
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