Friday Night Tournament: The night we went boxing in Solla Sollew.

... where we had no troubles, or at least very few.

Don't worry. The rest of the post will not be done in Seussian rhyme. The last thing I need is a torch-and-pitchfork-wielding mob showing up in the comment section.

Not that I felt in any way, shape or form that we were in for a trouble-free night. In fact, the omens were all pointing in the opposite direction, and that direct application of Murphy's Law on the proceedings would leave the night a massive shambles. To begin with, there was the problem I alluded to in my last post. After a long, fruitless all-day wait for signups, Karine informed me that a lot of people hadn't seen the notice I had sent, despite the fact that these things usually get routed to email when one is off of SL. Karine re-sent the notice and, sure enough, it failed to appear in my inbox.

Not encouraging.

But after that conversation, names started coming in. Eventually, my eyes stopped rolling back into my head, and I managed to reduce the speaking of tongues to a low murmur. But I still went into the event with a sense of foreboding: Something was going to go wrong. It had to.

Much to my surprise, not much did.

Not that there weren't a few key-slapping slizzards to contend with. First and foremost was the fact that regular card girl/timekeeper Fionna Bracken was having computer trouble and couldn't make it to the event. Having been there myself, there was little we could do about that beyond hoping the trouble would be resolved soon, and casting about for a temporary replacement. Happily, JoJo Nightfire stepped in to temporarily assume card girl duties for all of the matches except for, obviously, her own. The (not unpleasant) sight of our Lightweight Champion strutting around the ring in a snakeskin bikini* had me scratching my head a bit, but then I figured, hey, we needed her help, and if Laila Ali could do Dancing with the Stars...

Our signup difficulties had us down to a lean number of four fights on the card. But aside from a between-round crash on the part of Tony1 Tenk during the opening fight with Juliette Pashinin (from which he quickly recovered), SL largely behaved itself.

And similarly, without the dragging delays caused by crashes and unexpected absences due to same, we were able to keep the crowd engaged and interested throughout the entire event.

So, overall, a good night. Hopefully that, more than SL's hiccups during the singups, was the actual omen of things to come.

* - on sale now at the Averlast Store