Today's Bridge: Dan H. and I teamed up against Brent and Bruce, the less frequent players. We started with a 3H, but missed the follow-up 3D pre-empt. For their part, they missed a makeable 3NT, then followed with a 2S pre-empt that made four. I rather liked my defense in the notrump, though. I had S A-J-2 H 10-x-x-x D K-x C K-Q-J-8, and Brent had bid five hearts and four spades while Bruce bid diamonds and diamonds. I started, naturally, with the king of clubs into the jaws of S x H x D A-Q-J-9-x-x-x C 10-x-x-x. Brent took the ace of clubs and cashed five hearts - a bit squeezed on the last one, I chose to throw the little club, even though he'd thrown all of the clubs from dummy and established my eight. I needed that two of spades. Then he crossed to dummy with a finesse, and in a pattern I've seen him fall for previously, he led the queen, handing me the king, rather than taking the only chance he had. Back in hand, I assumed that cashing my three tricks would give him the rest, so I exited with the carefully-preserved two of spades. If I could find Dan with the ten, the uppercut would promote my jack. He did even better, coming up with the K-Q. I overtook the queen, obviously, and claimed the rest. It may not be a brilliant defense, but I was proud of it.

Everything else today was pretty rotten. My CPAP failed to auto-start last night, so I slept without the air pressure for a few hours before manually turning it back on. I got into a big argument with a racist bigot on Twitter, then burned the bacon I was cooking for breakfast. I still managed to get out a bit earlier than usual, only to get to work and find that the gate was closed. Fortunately, I know the detour route well enough, but it adds an extra fifteen minutes or so to the trip. When I got to work, there was a boil order for the building (for the entire base, I think), which didn't really affect me but adds to the tone of the day. The project lead asked me to send information to someone, but I forgot her name and he forgot to remind me when I asked him. I tried to catch up with him later in the day, but never managed. I forgot to pack carrot sticks with lunch, and the sandwich filling I used made a big mess. The lack of cell signal at work finally overwhelmed my phone, and in addition to running nearly out of power (it died just as I got home and was about to plug it in), it got so hot that its temperature management program kicked in. I had mixed results with the work I was doing, most of which was to figure out how to do something and report back to the lead. At least I figured it out in the end, but it took a while. I guess the rest of the day hasn't been too bad, but all the little things added up, and it didn't help that I got a bit of depression along the way. It happens.