Chess Regional & Shopping

Today was a tough one for Cameron.  He had signed up to play at the chess regional in Hammond since he would be in Florida for next week’s tournament in Goshen.  There were five players in his division and he was ranked third overall.  He played the highest ranked player first winning that match.  He lost the second and then tied the third giving him 1.5 points.  Normally they would have played a round robin tournament.  They didn’t this time, however, and instead gave some players byes.  That wouldn’t have mattered on the scoring if they would have awarded them a half point for a bye as usual, but instead they gave them a full point.  Thus, players who only played two matches scored higher than Cameron.  That was frustrating for Doug as only two players qualified for state out of regional.  According to the typical scoring patterns in chess, Cameron should have been awarded the second place spot.  He wasn’t and thus missed out on going to state.  Cam wasn’t too disappointed, but was a little frustrated.  

That wasn’t the only frustration in Cam’s day.  While he was in Hammond he watched IU get blown out by Maryland.  I didn’t watch the game, but from the posts on Twitter it sure sounded ugly. Cal texted me as soon as it was over “FIRE ARCHIE!”  He wasn’t the only one that felt that way.  Cam tried to defend him, but in the end was just too disappointed with the loss to say much about it.

While the guys were gone, Meg and I went shopping.  It had been quite some time since we had spent the day together like that and I really enjoyed it.  We first had lunch at Portillo’s and then stopped at the mall and Target.  On our way home we also ran into Michaels and Walmart to get supplies for our upcoming trip to Disney.  I dropped her off at Nick’s before leaving Goshen as they wanted to eat dinner at Outback tonight.  

I made it home about an hour before Doug and Cam.  That gave me enough time to unpack the van and pick up before they arrived.  Doug made spaghetti and lasagna for dinner tonight.  Afterward we played cards and then watched the Patriots gave.  That brought another disappointment for Doug as they lost a close one.  With all of the talk about Tom Brady retiring it may  well have been his last game.  Cal was excited, however, as he had picked the Titans to win all along.  We received several texts about it from him as he was watching the game in Tennessee with Cameron Adams.