Yesterday I received this email that...well...pi**ed me off to no end...

"Jim

Its is with great disappointment that I read this post all the way to the end (nearly anyway) only to find that I am excluded because I live in Australia. I could have added and would have added numerous room keys oh well WTF

XXXX

#R-XXXX"

Excuse me...but this writer has the nerve to end the email with "WTF" and then proudly displays his club membership number? Well, since he asked "What the ****", let me explain WHY the ****:

1) While he may wish to participate and pay the shipping costs from Australia to the next person in the RR located in the U.S., who wants to be the unfortunate person AHEAD of this person who has to pay $16.95 for Priority Mail international shipping instead of $5.15 everyone else is paying to send to other participants located in the U.S.? I don't want to be the one to tell someone they have to eat an additional $11.80 simply because they were unfortunate to precede this person.

2) Participants try to keep things moving quickly. Who knows how long the delays might be for an international shipment to a given country? I do not want such delays in a RR I'm organizing.

3) I "seed" the RR with 100 of my own keys. I do not want to add the additional risk of losing the 100 keys by shipping them to a variety of countries.

Not to sound mean, but it's my party so they're my rules. If you want to organize a round robin and exclude anyone named Silva from participating, go for it.

I'm obviously still a little agitated by this email. I gave serious thought to simply cancelling the RR and emailing Dennis to send it back home once he's through with it, but then I remembered the happiness I get and the participants get from "playing" with the Round Robin.

There's a lot that goes on "behind the scenes" of the RRs and I like to keep it that way. I prefer for them to look like they run smoothly without any glitches. Some of you have received the emails where "modifications" to a given RR are needed, but they're done off the message board intentionally as they don't need to concern anyone other than those immediately affected. I apologize for venting in this case, but if I didn't, it would have been brewing in me for days.

Jim