seems like mortal kombat at The Tank...

for those of you who aren't familiar with the classic video game mortal kombat...well you're just going to have to look up the details yourself, because you really should know at this point in life. in a nutshell it's based on a graphically violent tournament with a diverse group of crazy characters...a favorite game of me and sarah back in the day, i taught her most of what she knows, and she's gone on to take out all of her friends foolish enough to play her at that game. thus far she hasn't beaten me, but who knows what the future may hold...

so how does this relate back to The Tank? well in case you're way behind, i will let you catch up with the past several entries of this blog.

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ok good, you should be up to speed now. this past saturday was the Euchre Tournament at The Tank. now the name of this event is somewhat misleading, because although euchre was the originally the singular plan for this get together, it quickly grew and diversified into a number of games/activities and was pretty much a miniature Party at The Tank. we were not calling it a party ever since it's inception, because of the curse issues with the fishes. towards the latter days before the event, damon and i would just spell out p-a-r-t-y...because obviously, the fishes at The Tank can understand the english language, they just can't spell. right.

damon mixing up some of the trademark 'Tank Water'

anyway, we made it through with no casualties (all fishes accounted for), a few surprise cameos (the 86'ers, roldenfolden), some tragic losses (you can probably guess) and entertaining victories (apparently taboo proficiency increases with tank water consumption). here's the synopsis of those events:

- we easily had over 30 people at The Tank over the course of the evening, but were able to accommodate everyone who wanted to play euchre as well as keep things moving. 30 people is actually closing in on the first official tank party, although we're still not considering this one "Tank V"...rest assured it will happen, just not for a while. think of this 'small get together' as a 'bonus' party...kind of like those miniature bonus seasons of Sex & the City (can't believe i used that as an example) or the upcoming bonus season of The Sopranos.

signature point & shoot...with sunglasses.

- how did the tournament work out? well we ended up being happy that people were playing euchre, since things started to pack up fast, and so we had to get people to cards quickly. we had approx 5 games going at once, which was entertaining to see. some people played the best 2 out of 3, others just played one game and moved on. the teams/match-ups were interesting and entertaining to say the least:

Team Bowfin - me and double D, touting ourselves as the inevitable winners of the event over the course of the week. this ended up pretty much how i thought it would, but we'll get to that later.

Team Ralphie - named after the team mascot, Ralphie, the Australian lungfish residing at The Tank; this team was made up of beth and seema, the latter being a relative newcomer to the game, and somewhat of a student of beth & myself.

Team Capybara*** - named after the strange S.American rodent creature and made up of Julia and Andrea, this team was pretty hardcore in that they had official t-shirts and everything. i think they did pretty well too, but i was not around to see it. someday we'll have a 'real' tournament when all these teams get to mix it up!

The Gunderlings - hal and leah, the gunder siblings made up a good team which moved on to eventually win 2/3 against -

Biofish Girls - i just now made up that name, but this team was carrie and christine, former students of mine that had also been doing a bit of talking in terms of who was going to win this thing.

Newbies - Janine, Parul, Rashmi, Amica, Johanna and Brenda weren't necessarily on the same team, but were all 'newbies' who picked up the game to some extent over the course of the party. nice job!

Team "other combination of a person named 'damon' and an indian" - i just made up that name too, but as you can guess this team was made up of damon and gwen. they actually made for a pretty good team...well compared to the other team of similar composition.

ron, AJ, schultz, tim, jeremy, andrea D, jeff, and mike all played as well, but i'm not sure what all occured with those teams...either way, it was a lot of people playing Euchre.

me and james at the revolving restaurant at the top of the westin peachtree plaza (our hotel on the GA aquarium road trip). this shot somewhat reminds me of the poster for the movie 'made'.

how did it end up? well i don't know the full story for all the games, but double D and i had hoped to just play the team that beat out everyone else, sort of like the boss character in a video game scenario. well we didn't do it that way and decided to take on Team Ralphie.

Team Bowfin vs Team Ralphie

and yeah, 17 hands (it was taken out to 9-9 before the last hand) and one frosting-stripped cupcake later Team Bowfin succumbed to the ancient lungfish powers (and maybe beginner's luck?) of Team Ralphie. yup, we lost. it was a heated and entertaining game to say the least, but we definitely bit it. double D and i had several of our mock shouting matches over the course of the game, which apparently didn't scare the competition enough to forfeit the game. seema even referenced the classic (in a star wars sort of way) student-defeats-teacher scenario. crap, i have always wanted to be darth vader, but instead have to settle for alec guinness.

you get the idea.

it should be noted that the references to this match-up did not end at that point; over the course of the evening gwen, christine, beth, andrea, and a chorus of several others had fun bringing it up. i should have known that with all the hype and trash talking leading up to the face/off that we would inevitably lose.

not sure when this was taken, but i was probably thinking about our euchre loss...

believe it or not though(and those of you who are familiar with how competitive i am probably don't believe it), i was ok with this loss. it gave plenty of fodder for eventual jokes, and we were able to move on to some other games...including taboo...

yeah, taboo was even crazier...

BUT i will have to end this entry on a to be continued...it's freaking 3am again and i need to get A LOT of work done this week as well as make it to several meetings, presentations, and a couple social events (one involves linedancing...rest assured there will be no photos taken there). for now, good night & good luck <:><

pics : in case you haven't noticed, some of the pics are from the euchre tourney, others from the spring break road trip to the aquariums.