Pre-release!  The venue was an aircraft hanger located beneath the main concourse of the Philadelphia convention center and the room was fucking huge.  But, we were still only able to use a 100′ x 100′ area despite having been able to hold three concurrent cricket games in the remaining space (barring pillars).  I arrived at 7:00 AM and it sounded like a family of wookiees had been trapped in the duct work as the first four hours witnessed noises akin to a dying sperm whale with a upper respiratory tract infection.  This was fine as the concrete on concrete acoustics made it such that I heard the echo of one of farts during build somewhere in the middle round 1.  I always thought farts were like mythical duck quacks and emitted no echo, apparently not.For once, the union cleaning crew actually cleaned the room as we went, dispelling the belief I had that by the end of the day the detritus from multiple booster drafts would coalesce in foil and plastic tumble weeds that would sweep up unsuspecting players, not so.  At lunch, I successfully purchased less than an entire cake from the Amish bakers, but was saddened as a 1/4 cake only costs 40% less than a whole one.  On the way back, a woman asked me for spare change as she hadn’t eaten in two days by her recounting and then I remembered the iron law of charity:  never give money to someone with a DKNY handbag and Sennheiser headphones.

The day ended unremarkably with Mike McGee fucking up my rounds like it was his job and I played 5-Color a bit.  Tom Folsom now owns a Kitty Splitter.  How do people play 5-Color without cat stickers?