It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. (I think that’s how a song goes.) The temperature plummeted 20 degrees overnight. I caused that weather change by getting air-conditioning installed at home.

Some of the good news attached to longer, colder nights is our upcoming unit holiday party. Sunday, December 14, we will have a potluck dinner beginning at 5 p.m., followed by a unit game for stratified pairs beginning around 6:30 p.m. We will be using one of the bigger rooms at the Campbell Community Center. If you’ve attended before, you know what fun these are. A rare time when day and night game players mingle and you can attach faces to the names on the walls of the club. (Not the bathroom walls.) Look for more information to be posted at the club. Please sign up to bring food or drink to the potluck.

We are also offering a special STAC game the night before, Saturday, December 13 at 7 p.m. Spread the word. It’s hard to find a club game on a Saturday night.

At the Santa Cruz sectional the following unit members earned stratification tops: Bruce Luttrell, Eric Yang, Annette Powers & Lynn Yokel, and Fung Bao & Raja Smadi. The winning Swiss team included K.-P. Cheng, T.-C. Yang, and Jeffrey Hu.

Those who played in that tournament have some stories to tell. On Saturday afternoon the movement got tangled up and we had to make new boards halfway through the game. Fortunately there were hand records describing both sets of boards. On Sunday the power went out in the immediate area during the third round. The room was well-lit enough to play on for another round, when the power was restored. Imagine recording team scores and posting new table assignments with no power. Battery-powered laptop computers saved the day.

At the El Cerrito sectional Rose Meltzer’s Swiss team took first, while the team including Shih-Ming Shih and Gigi Spinazze was first in their strat.

The new year is just around the corner and several classes will start for beginning and intermediate bridge players. For more information about these classes, contact Lynn Yokel at lyokel@sprynet.com.

Though I have more column space, you won’t find me reporting on club games. All those results can be found on our website at www.sjbridge.org, where you can also find old Forum columns and other more useful information.

If you want to read more news or gossip here, you need to let me know what it is at (408)-379-7717 and rayyuenger@starband.net. Th-th-th-that’s all, folks.