Hannah Rae's Blog, page 11

I love my characters

This is going to be a really short blog because I'm writing the end of a novel that I've been wanting to write for a while now and everything is coming together and I'm honestly really impressed with myself regarding how cohesive this storyline is and how many other storylines come into play... but I digress.

What needs to be said is this: I love my characters. And sometimes, no matter how well I already know my characters and how much I love them, something will happen in a novel that literally brings me to tears.

That just happened.

This novel obviously hasn't been edited. Hell, it's not even finished yet. But I love it. And the above lines are why I'm viewing the world through a puddle right now.

I won't tell you who this is in reference to -- I don't want to give anything away -- but you should know that it's good. This one is really, really good.

Trivia Recap: 1/11

Players: Ben, Hannah, Mary, Darren, Marc, Kristin

Hint of the Day: A Rose

Opening Category: Teddy Roosevelt

 

Dear Gettysburg College,

I know that you gave me a sabbatical so that I could continue to work on my research projects, such as my ongoing work on arithmetical structures on graphs or what happens when you play Chutes and Ladders without any chutes or ladders .  Or maybe to continue to teach myself data science so that I can be better prepared to teach courses in those areas. Or to work on the book I am toying with about [redacted].  Unfortunately, Hannah and Mary had other plans.  They believe that my time – the time that you are paying me for – would better be spent writing blog entries about our trivia matches and that I should do this every week.  And they might even be right that more people read this blog than read my research papers, even though literally nobody responded to the not-so-subtle clickbait I put in the blog  last time and therefore nobody won the glamorous prize that Hannah was going to purchase.  (The answer, by the way, was Springfield).  And I would normally still do the work that I am supposed to be doing.  But then Mary looked at me with her sad puppy-dog eyes saying “please don’t make me write the blog” and Hannah was her stubborn homework-assigning self and, let's face it, Ben doesn’t even really read the blog so was unlikely to write it.  So I agreed to do it again this week.  And we even took a picture early on to make sure that I didn’t need to use AI to generate one this week.

You can tell its not AI because there are the right number of people and we all have the right number of fingers.

 

As you see above, we thought we would have a full team tonight but we had two last minute cancellations.   So we were a bit concerned about how it would go.  However, the Educated Friends were on fire tonight.  With Ben in attendance we felt good about the Teddy Roosevelt question, and with good reason as we knew that his trip to Panama was the first time a sitting president left the country.  The next question asked who the only two MLB players are who had amassed 4000 hits.  Ben and I knew that one of them was Pete Rose, which was also the hint of the day.  We weren’t sure of the other, so Hannah started naming all the baseball players she knew.  This didn’t take very long as she only knows three: Daryl Strawberry, Derek Jeter and Ty Cobb.  She said them all with conviction, and Ben and I quicky rejected the first two, as any baseball fan would.  We did pause on Ty Cobb but after brainstorming a few other names we ended up going with Ichiro.  And yet, the answer was Ty Cobb.  Hannah was right.

We quickly bounced back with three questions about ‘block’s – we knew that the Cell Block Tango was from Chicago, how an NFL referee indicates a chop block, and that Gumby’s nemeses were the Blockheads.  We also knew about Eddie Murphy hosting SNL when Nick Nolte got sick and because Hannah’s favorite movie is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid we knew that Sundance died in Bolivia.

The second round started, as always, with the audio category.  Three songs about monkeys where we had to identify that the artists were The Beatles, George Michael, and Tones & I.  We knew this last one in large part because they had used this song in the audio round a few months ago and Danielle told us the answer then and we remembered it.  But Danielle wanted us to make sure to point out that she only knows Tones & I because of her niece, and she would much rather be listening to the Dave Matthews Band. There were some easy questions about badgers and the Colorado River and a question about the two sodas made by Coca Cola that are in the Top Ten soda brands but don’t have a variation of the word Coke in their name.  We easily guessed Sprite but also correctly identified Fanta.  Who knew? 

The final question of the round was about the movie The Beekeeper and who the stars are.  I had never heard of this movie until Spotify played me the ad the other day and I seriously had to go back and relisten to it to figure out if it was a joke or not.  It's not, and I have to admit it looks like a lot of dumb fun .  More importantly, we knew that the dumb fun stars Jason Statham and Phylicia Rashad so we finished out a perfect round.  And yes, it means we would have had a perfect first half if only we had listened to Hannah about Ty Cobb.

The top half of the halftime sheet had us identifying canned products like Crisco, Lincoln Logs, and Quaker State Oil with their logos removed, and we got nine of the ten.  We actually sort of knew the tenth except we all convinced ourselves that the tuna brand was Sunkist and not Starkist, probably because of all of the soda talk we had just been doing.  Oops.  The bottom half was a bunch of questions leading us to nine-letter words whose first letters ended up spelling out CONTAINER, hinting at the top half.  It was generally clever, but more importantly it meant we went into the second half with an almost perfect score and in first place.

 

You see, it clearly says Sunkist.

 

The second half started by asking us to identify movies based on descriptions of their opening sequences, and we recognized all three of Blazing Saddles, Austin Powers, and Deadpool.  Despite Adam stumbling a few times on the next question, Mary knew that an epidural is the only anesthesia given during childbirth so we got that question.  I missed the following question but the rest of my team clearly knew that it was pointing us to the sitcom The Middle; however, I did help getting the bonus points by knowing  that it starred Patricia Heaton rather than, as Ben thought, Patricia Arquette.  The next question asked about a 2006 music video where a circus ringleader breaks up a wedding .  Mary and Hannah named several bands that they thought it could be, but mid-oughts music is a definite blindspot of mine so I couldn’t help.  In the end Mary was sure it was Fall Out Boy and we all trusted her because she had a big punk phase.  Or maybe it was a pop-punk phase.  Or emo-pop-punk?  It was something that seemed out of character for our Taylor Swift expert in residence.  In any event, we went along with Mary being sure that it was Fall Out Boy.  But it wasn’t.  It was Panic! At The Disco.  (Am I punctuating that correctly?  I’m almost 50, so these things are hard.)

Fall Out Boy.  Or maybe its Panic! At The Disco.  Or Blink 182?

In any event, we knew that Russia, China, and Brazil are the three countries that border ten other countries, and we all guessed that Wyoming is the only state flag to feature a bison . So we were still in first place going into the final round, which was really Ben’s chance to shine.  The opening question was also our bonus and asked what Joseph Conrad novel was the inspiration for Apocalypse Now.  Ben wants to make sure that he gets credit for shouting out the answer before either of the English teachers on our team, although we all knew the answer.  However, we did not know the name of the lead character so we didn’t get our bonus.  The round continued with questions about Economics and Plantains (not the same question).  When they asked the sports question about which NFL division has three of its four teams going to the playoffs Ben sprinted back to the table from the bar to make sure we knew what the answer was.  And he also was helpful by knowing some facts about James Garfield in the Three Clues/One President round – my notes are sparse, but I think Hannah said one of the clues was “This president loves lasagna but does not like Mondays.”  Speaking of Hannah, I am supposed to point out at this point that her math was correct all night and we were up by six points at the end of regulation.

The final question of the night was a good one: Which US western state capital is only the 27th biggest city in its own state, the lowest such ranking?  I will pause for you to think about this for a minute, and share with you a photo that Hannah sent of what Ben was doodling.

Did you say the answer was Sacramento?  That’s what we said!  But it turns out that it is the sixth biggest city in California.  Did you say Juneau?  That was our second guess, but even though it is only one tenth the size of Anchorage it is the third biggest city in Alaska.  The answer is Olympia, as it turns out.  (Well,  this website  says its 25th.  But close enough.)  So we were wrong.  Luckily for us, a lot of other teams were also wrong (including the Street Sharks, who even have a Seattlite on the team.  Shame on them) so we ended up winning anyways!  Hooray!

Two weeks ago when we almost won I had wanted to choose “2024, the number” as our opening category because for some reason I find that idea hilarious. So Hannah had said we could choose it if we won this week since it is still the first game of 2024.  However, I have watch my son’s wrestling meet next Thursday and won’t be at trivia.  So they chose Dr. Seuss books as the category. 

So, Dear College, since I just remembered that I am pretending this is all a letter to you, I should tell you that we had a very successful night at trivia and beat at least two other teams full of college employees.  And Hannah and Mary insisted that I tell you all about it instead of pushing back the frontiers of scientific inquiry.  I hope that will meet with your approval the next time you consider merit pay raises.

Sincerely,

Darren Glass

Professor of Mathematics 

Pareidolia

Pareidolia is when a person sees something significant (like faces) in inanimate objects. Pip used to do this all the time, and while I sometimes do it, spotting a pair of eyes hidden in an apple or a smile on a birdhouse isn't necessarily a phenomenon I experience daily. However... I did experience it the other day when I went to a party on 12/30.

I was at Christine's house with Rob and Lisa and Buddy. As my student Horseman would say, I needed to see a man about a horse, and since I had my phone in the pocket of my hoodie, I took a photograph of the creepy face eyeing me as I peed:

Until last night, I forgot about the picture on my phone, but for whatever reason, when Darren texted me to ask why I hadn't mentioned to my students that he gave me pickles* for Christmas, I was reminded of this photograph on my phone. So I sent it to him. Darren, however, did not immediately spy the face. Here is our exchange:

As for the pickles... They are dill, and thus equal parts dillightful and dillicious!

Am I an Elf?

Yesterday during first period, my student Horseman* asked me what I got for Christmas this year. I told him that I got a new Trampled By Turtles hoodie and some tank tops and a new pair of sneakers and chocolate. Horseman asked, "Did you get any money?" and after thinking about this for a moment, I answered, "No. I didn't, actually."

"Huh. That's a bummer," Horseman said.

"It is, but sometimes Santa (aka, my dad), forgets to give me money and then surprises me with a check in January or February. I think that's actually what happened last year." And I shrugged, thus concluding the conversation... or so I thought.

At the front of the room, Ash-Master was listening to our dialogue and enthusiastically said to the entire class, "Guys... did you hear that? Ms. Meeson's dad is Santa Claus. Do you know what that means?"

None of us did.

"That means," Ash-Master continued, "that we go to school with an elf!"

* Horseman is being designated at "Horseman" in this blog because when we read Ordinary Grace and Gus said, "I need to see a man about a horse," Horseman asked what that meant. So now every morning at the start of class, instead of asking to use the restroom, Horseman says, "Is it okay if I see a man about a horse?"

Trivia Recap: 12/28

We have arrived at the final trivia night of 2023, and what a year it has been.  Much of the team was off doing “family things,” but Mary, Hannah, Siri, and I still showed up for trivia.  Despite the fact that most of the usual teams also took the week off (presumably for “family things”), we arrived to a very packed Fourscore (presumably lots of people avoiding their “family things”) and were worried we would have to stand for all of trivia, but luckily a small table opened up just before game time. 

This is not what we looked like at all.  But we forgot to take a team photo again, so we are back in the AI hellscape. 

The opening category was ‘Jesus in the Gospel of Luke,’ which none of us were very optimistic about.  The question asked how many days Jesus wandered in the desert fighting off Satan’s temptations, and Hannah got excited and said “Darren, you know numbers!  You should know this!” I then had to tell her we didn’t cover those numbers in Mathematics graduate school, and that being raised by a Jew and an Atheist I was not going to be any help.  Hannah said we should put 40 because “it feels like a biblical number,” so we did and we were right!

The next question asked about famous Marches and we knew The Ides of March, the Imperial March, and the March of the Penguins so got all our points.  Another question asked what fabric gets its name from the Hindi word meaning dirt-covered and Hannah again came to our rescue by knowing it was khaki.  We knew that G-Men are part of the FBI because Siri loves Leonardo DiCaprio, and while we didn’t know for sure that the Detroit Lions really sucked in 2008 we did know that the hint of the day had been a photo of lions so we guessed that one correctly.

The Hint of the Day

The audio round involved identifying songs covered by Postmodern Jukebox.  We got " Hollaback Girl " and " Flowers " correct, but could not identify the third one despite Mary’s best efforts. It turned out to be " Can’t Feel My Face ."  The next question seemed too easy as it asked about “a brand of taffy” and the answer was Laffy Taffy which seems like poor quiz-writing etiquette and we started to second guess ourselves but so many teams were turning it in quickly that we went ahead and gave that answer, which is good because it was right.  We did well on the next question because Siri knew that Tom Joad was from The Grapes of Wrath and I knew that Bruce Springsteen had written a song about him . Somehow we knew that Granada was the island where Operation Urgent Fury took place, and there was an easy question about Sex And The City to close out the first half.

The top half of the halftime sheet had us identifying photos of famous Jacks and Jackies, such as Mr. Black, Ms. Joyner-Kersee, and Dr. Skellington.  (He did have a PhD, right?)  The second half involved finding words with BALL in them, which I am just now realizing is a New Years Eve ball dropping reference.  It's too bad Victoria wasn’t with us, as we all know how she feels about balls .   But even without her, we identified Ballet as a dance, Thunderball as a James Bond film, Highballs as a type of drink, and  the greatest invention of all time, the cornballer.

As an interesting aside, we have mentioned before how our wonderful host Adam sometimes struggles with the pronunciations of some difficult words like ‘ballet’ and ‘Granada.’  But when he read the answer ‘caballero’ he did it in a seamless Spanish accent that was beautiful.  Credit where credit is due.  Speaking of which, we got a perfect score on the halftime sheet and were in first place by four points after halftime.  Hannah also wants me to point out that her math was correct on our score sheet as we entered the second half.

The second half opened with a question about the singer whose final studio album was Duets 2, released in 1994 featuring a duet with a female rock star on ‘Luck Be A Lady.’  I wanted to put Tony Randall, which Hannah very quickly corrected to Tony Bennett, but then we remembered that he released songs with Lady Gaga which were certainly after 1994 since she was only 8 at the time.  Luckily, I remembered that Frank Sinatra died just after that time (Fun trivia fact: I remember because he died the same night as the final episode of Seinfeld).  We guessed that the female rock star was Joan Jett but it was actually Chrissy Hynde  which I guess Siri had suggested but didn’t fight for.

The next question was in Road Trip Geography: If you start in St Louis you could travel 90 miles north on one interstate or 250 miles southwest on a different interstate to arrive in two cities with the same name.  What is that name?  To help Hannah with reader interaction I am not going to tell you, but one person who sends Hannah the correct answer will get a prize!  The next question was about comic book supervillains and Hannah immediately said we should choose it as our bonus because I was there.  Her logic is sound: as I may have mentioned, I worked in a comic book store in high school and still have several thousand comic books in my garage (hey ladies, I’m also single!) and while I haven’t read them recently I do still watch all the movies and tv shows.  So you would think it would be a good choice.  And I did know that Edward Nigma is the secret identity of The Riddler.  But I could not pull that Max Dillon is Electro, and I don’t think I ever knew that Barbara Ann Miranda is Cheetah  (I know I just said I watch all the movies, but I guess Wonder Woman 1984 was the exception that proves the rule).  So we lost a bunch of points here.  Luckily, Siri had some good logic about why the theoretical planet between the sun and Mercury was called Vulcan, and I did know about Joe DiMaggio’s brothers so we got some points back. 

The 6-point hint on the 6-4-2 question was about what tv show had an instrumental theme song by The Refreshments entitled “Yahoos and Triangles.” I did not know the name of the song, but I did know that the Refreshments did the theme song to King of the Hill  so we got six points and I felt somewhat redeemed.  However, we had lost our hold on first place and were now in second place with an eight point gap behind the Railsplitters.  Luckily, the first question of the final round was about the movie Singles which is right in both mine and Siri’s wheelhouse.  Whether or not it was a coincidence, Adam was playing lots of solid 90’s hits last night which led to a spirited debate about Lisa Loeb’s song "Stay."  I am in the pro camp and Siri is in the con camp, for what it is worth.

We knew that Sisyphus pushes a boulder up the hill and that Bausch & Lomb make contact lenses.  There was an acronym category that asked about the meaning of DefCon.  We spent most of the two minutes allotted complaining that DefCon isn’t really an acronym (although I will say that the internet seems split on this and the OED thinks it is one ) but we knew that the Def comes from ‘Defense’ (and not from ‘Def Comedy Jam’). Unfortunately, we guessed that the Con came from ‘Control’ rather than ‘Condition’ so we did not get our bonus points.  We also clearly were not paying attention in 2023 as we did not know that Danielle Steele wrote her bazillionth novel, that Metallica released their first album in seven years, or that Finland joined NATO. 

Going into the final question, Hannah thought we were 11 points down but it turns out that 139+5 is actually 144 and not 134 as she had computed.  I wouldn’t normally tease her about her math errors but since she made me brag about her mathematical prowess earlier in the blog I figure she deserves it.   For the final question, we guessed that Maverick was the only western TV show to ever win Best Drama Emmy and later have a movie made based on it with the original star, so we got all 12 points for the final.  While all of this helped us do well, it was unfortunately not quite well enough and we still fell one point short of the Railsplitters who won the evening.  Damn you, Maxwell Dillon!

Next week, the staff of Fourscore is taking a much-deserved week off so there won’t be any trivia unless we all just show up at Hannah’s house and start reading questions to each other. 

 

Merry Christmas to Meeeee!

Remember Cassandra Alling who narrated Like A Flip Turn and just recently also narrated The One You're With? Well... she has a friend named Jess who listened to Like A Flip Turn and finished it this morning and this is the message that was waiting in my inbox when I woke up:

Needless to say, that made me feel pretty good!

I sent a screenshot of Jess's review to my friends Mary and James, and in the messages that I wrote to both of them, I said, "It makes me feel like a real author! I wrote something that is worthy of competing with her top favorite books!" To which both Mary and James responded, "Hannah, you are a real author!"

(Here's a funny aside: Mary and James don't know each other at all and have never corresponded with one another directly, but because I am friends with both of them, they are gradually becoming friends. It's a good premise for a book, isn't it? Maybe I should write that...)

Anyway, Jess later tagged me in an Instagram post when she officially reviewed my book and this is what she said:

She's going to give The One You're With a listen as well. My fingers are crossed that she enjoys that one too!

It's been a pretty solid Christmas Eve so far and I have to say that this audiobook stuff has been so much fun! The Way Back and Kick It One More Time are still in the works, but I imagine they'll be available in early 2024. Isn't it exciting?! It just makes me want to write, you know?

Trivia Recap: 12/21

The Players: Hannah (English teacher), Kristin (English teacher), Ben (not a cartographer… although he could be), Victoria (veterinarian), and Christian (arborist) 

This is actually the gang from the After Party because we forgot to take a picture at Fourscore, but at least Harvey was able to join us!

Hint of the Day: The Rodeo

Opening Category: Renaissance (the Beyonce album)

First and foremost, what needs to be mentioned is that when Ben arrived mere minutes before the opening clue was read (as is his tendency to do), he brought with him the scent of an alpine forest. We are talking about an absolute olfactory delight. An overwhelmingly pleasant (and tantalizing!) conglomeration of soft pine needles, shirtless men on white steeds, and little red ships with multiple sails and old spices as cargo. So that happened.

Another thing that should be noted is that Ben found a dried out piece of pork somewhere in the vicinity of our table and (I suppose because he was feeling generous and very much in the holiday spirit) he offered this dried pork-belly bite to the group. It became our centerpiece. I observed, “I’m surprised you didn’t just ate that” because Ben likes to use “ate” when he shouldn’t be using “ate,” but even Ben determined that he wouldn’t ate a dried pork-belly bite that he found on the floor or whatever. And he finally admitted that he wouldn’t ate a cabbage jack-o-lantern that weathered the elements for weeks on end either.

Round One:

The Beyonce question obviously went terribly for us. Mary’s the one who would have possibly known it, but something came up and she couldn’t make it. She had what some might refer to as a “baking disaster.” You see, what happened is this: She ran home after school to whip up a quick batch of chocolate crinkle cookies… but then she accidentally added confectioner’s sugar to the recipe instead of baking soda. And then, wanting to see if she could remedy the situation, she decided to sprinkle the tops of the chocolate crinkle cookies with baking soda, which was obviously the wrong thing to do. 

Nah. I made that up. Mary’s not a moron; she understands that baking soda is not meant to be sprinkled atop Christmas cookies.

International Holidays proved a great category for our bonus! Kristin was adamant about choosing it and she not only knew Bastille Day was the answer, but she also knew that July 14 is its exact date. The lady knows her holidays! We all knew that the Curies were scientists worth remembering, although I don’t remember the clue, and right after that, we were successfully able to identify the speaker (Muhammed Ali or Mike Tyson) of three quotes. 

Again, Kristin killed it with her knowledge of Christmas TV Episodes, which was the final category of the round. The lady loves her Ted Lasso and before Adam had even finished the question, she was spewing the answer to both it and the bonus!

Round Two:

Christmas Artists was our audio clue, and although Ben recognized Bruce Springsteen and Ludacris caroling like the best of them, none of us recognized Billie Eilish. You know who might have? Mary… sigh

I’ve been practicing my geography skills and country capitals with this new app on my phone, so even I knew Long Island was the answer to North American Islands. College Sports wasn’t great for us. Marc undoubtedly would have known, but he’s lately developed an obsession with basketball. All he wants to do anymore is play basketball and watch basketball and share his love of basketball with young people and travel to faraway places so he can experience different gymnasium floors and hoops and locker rooms. So because Marc’s love of basketball has risen up to take the slot once reserved by The Educated Friends, we chose Michigan instead of Texas. (I am wondering if the hint of the day, rodeo, may have had something to do with this now that I'm reflecting on it...)

Even without Darren, our math skills were on point last night. Not only did I add up all of our points correctly, but we were also able to add the number of days of Hanukkah plus the number of days of Kwanza and we got the answer, which was fifteen. Had Kristin realized that Indiana Jones Potpourri was a category, she would have insisted we choose that instead of the audio clue, but she didn’t realize it and so we didn’t choose it but we still got the answer which was actually a team effort. I’m not an Indiana Jones aficionado, but I am quite skilled at deciphering the thoughts in Kristin’s head, so as she stammered the first syllable of the answer and struggled to name the mathematician we needed, I provided the name “Archimedes” and Kristin confirmed that this is what she was trying to say and with our powers combined, we were like Captain Planet, but instead of saving the universe, we saved our score.

Halftime:

The top part of this was hard because there were random stills from holiday films and we had to identify those holiday films and we missed some. Someone strongly stated “Love Actually” as the answer to a picture from Die Hard and I was confused by this because Love Actually is one of my top two favorite Christmas movies and I didn’t recognize the picture… but then, I haven’t watched Love Actually for a couple years. Ben didn’t closely look at the picture because the person who stated “Love Actually” was adamant about it but if he had studied the picture, he would have recognized the actor as having appeared in Die Hard. But we did get a point that we otherwise wouldn’t have because my one student whose name starts with a P (she knows who she is!) made me watch the trailer for Klaus on Wednesday and Klaus was one of the answers and I recognized it because of P!

The bottom part of the halftime sheet had us doing a sort of word scramble with the letters in “Christmas Time” and for the life of her, Kristin could not wrap her head around how this worked. And apparently neither could Pour House Trivia because they wanted us to use the letters in “Christmas Time” to spell “Minecraft” and there is no N in “Christmas Time…” 

Round Three:

With two English teachers, the Shakespearean Characters question was very easy. Even Ben knew enough about A Midsummer Night’s Dream to know the answer, but unfortunately none of us knew the movie all that well and so we missed the bonus. Musical Instruments was fine–the answer was “piano,” which Ben and I figured out–and Three Clues/One City (Barcelona) went okay as well (although we once again missed the bonus). 

Things fell apart a little bit with Science. You see, Victoria is a scientist… but in the middle of the game she received a phone call that required her to leave for half an hour. The situation is all very mysterious as it involved a locked freezer and no mention of ice cream. But then, Victoria has a pet tapeworm named Spartacus who is technically dead. Anyway, regarding the category and the clue that went with it… The answer was “screw” and Ben said it was “screw,” but the clue didn’t make sense to me because how is a screw both genders? A screw is a male and a bolt is a female, so in my mind the answer should have been “nuts and bolts.” But it wasn’t. So Ben was right, I was wrong, and we lost a point.

Fortunately, Kristin deservedly has all the confidence in the world when it comes to Candy Commercials and is not only an expert on Mentos, but also a Foo Fighters fan! Therefore, we got all of the bonuses (all both of them!) and finished the round with smiles on our faces!

6 - 4 - 2:

Ben and Kristin were really tag-teaming it again regarding the answer (because they both knew it but it was stuck on the tips of their tongues) and I was reminded of the Archimedes thing and then something clicked in my head about what Adam had said about an animated film and I said “Nemo” and that was the answer so we got four points.

Round Four:

Even though Ben doesn’t like the New York Yankees, he knew the answer was Aaron Judge… but again we didn’t get the bonus (which was not Reggie Jackson, but I can’t remember the actual answer). Historic Figures was fun because Ben knew that too, but not until he checked the spelling of a word with Adam. You see, Adam sometimes mumbles his way through a question and we all heard “Rebecca Wolfe” when he actually said “Rebecca Rolfe” and once Ben realized the word was Rolfe and not Wolfe, he also knew the answer was Pocahontas and not Sacajawea. The Historical Figure Section of his brain just clicked and we got nine points as a result!

Literary Names wasn’t great for us and let me tell you why: We didn’t get the points. The question required us to name two of the three Karamazov brothers and since none of us knew we were just coming up with solid Russian names. Ivan and Boris and Vlad are the ones we went with, but while we were listing them, I said, “What’s the name of that hot Russian gymnast?” And Ben thought this had absolutely nothing to do with anything, but I was trying to come up with popular names, you know? And then I came up with Alexei and we didn’t use that as a name… but it was one of the Karamazov brothers’ names and if we’d listed that, along with Ivan, we would have gotten the points. 

This is Alexi Nemov. Cute, right? You should see him on the bars...

Dog Breeds was obviously our bonus category and something bad almost happened because The Educated Friends know things about dogs that Pour House Trivia does not… like that in 2003 the name of the Jack Russell was changed to Parson Russell by the AKC. And it wasn’t enough that we had a veterinarian on the team–we had to prove this fact with the internet. So in fact we were the only team to get the answer right… but everyone who said Jack Russell also got the points.

Triple 50/50: Christmas Movies was fine because we used a technique that was smart but I’m not going to share it because our competitors may be reading this blog.

Final:

The question had something to do with a President who outlawed Christmas trees until his son Archie did something important to change his mind. And maybe bears were also crucial? I forget. The answer was Teddy Roosevelt though. We came in third and next week’s opening category sounds hellish. It’s something about religion…

Trivia After Party:

Kristin and Ben came back to my house after trivia. I gave them a tour of my basement and we talked about books. Then Ben left because he had a full day of work on Friday. Kristin hung out and then Darren showed up! Darren hadn't been able to attend trivia because he was visiting with his friend Willem. Willem owns a pickle farm in Idaho. Only rarely does he make it back to Adams County, but he returned for Christmas this year and so Darren deemed Willem a worthwhile reason to skip trivia. He brought me some pickles though!

Shortly after Darren arrived, Phil and Brock made an appearance! Phil and I were wearing matching shoes but I didn’t take a picture. I’m going to write a blog about our shoes in the near future though. 

Something important that happened at the after party is that we learned Gettysburg has a record store and that it is not called Sweeper Pete’s. In fact, it is called Sweet Repeat and it’s going to be changing locations because the cigar store is relocating to another town altogether! (I have never frequented the cigar store before so this really won’t affect me.)

That’s a wrap. I’m sick of writing this blog.

Fun with panoramic photography!

Trivia Recap: 12/14

The players: Darren, Hannah, and Victoria

Blog-writer: Darren

The opening category: Dungeons & Dragons

The hint of the day: Sand

 

So as you can see from the above, we were somewhat short-staffed tonight.  Among sick kids, holiday concerts, sporting events, and undisclosed commitments (I’m starting to wonder if Ben is a spy?) we could only rally the three of us to play. But we were committed to being there anyways, especially since we missed last week because of Hannah’s art opening.  (Did she mention that here? ,,  ,,She’s kept it very quiet )

In any event, it was a lovely night and we ate and drank well.  We kicked off the night by trying the goat cheese balls encrusted in pistachios with a cherry reduction, and I will tell you that it was very delicious.  Hannah was sure that Victoria would like them because she likes Scotch Eggs which are the same shape, and her logic seemed a little suspect to me since most people base their food preference on taste not shape, but in any event Victoria did like it and said “yes, I love all balls!” This was verified when she ordered a Yule Mule cocktail where the alcohol came separately in a little ornamental ball.

Speaking of the special food items that Four Score was serving tonight, they also had their Colombian chef prepare a special Colombian Fiesta platter that I ordered and that was very good.  Locals, I don’t know how long it will be around but especially that sausage was worth running over to get.

Finally, at the end of the night we decided to celebrate by having one of the special holiday beers – a coconut caramel stout – and while I think we all agreed it might be too sweet to drink a lot of, it was the perfect nightcap to a fun night.

 

Thanks for reading and see you all in 2024! 

Oh, wait?  You also want to hear about the trivia game?  Well, suffice it to say that wasn’t quite as good as the food.  The night started off strong as I did in fact play Dungeons & Dragon in middle school (I know, its so out of character for a mathematician who used to work in a comic book store and is single) so I was able to pull out of my memory that Intelligence was one of the character attribute.  We all knew that the game where you might play cards saying Skip or Reverse was Uno, and even though ,,  ,,there are literally hundreds of sequels to Uno  (my personal favorite is ,,  ,,Uno Flip ) we guessed from Adam’s snickering that the one he had in mind was ,,  ,,Dos.  

The third category involved coming up with words that start with “CAT” and we knew that a catamaran was a boat and that Catalina is a location in the movie StepBrothers, but it turns out that the University of Vermont mascot is not the Catheters so we did not get our bonus.   We knew where MLK led bus boycotts, but we could not name any women’s basketball coaches since Landon wasn’t there.  Still, the opening round was good. 

The second round was also good, as we identified all three songs in the audio clue – “Ballroom Blitz”, “Barely Breathing”, and “Bad Blood”.  Yes, we got the Taylor Swift question even without Mary, although Hannah was skeptical.  The next question was about the chemical that makes skunk spray smell bad and Hannah was wearing her periodic table tank top so Victoria started lifting up Hannahs sweatshirt to see and dear readers I am sorry I did not get a photo of that moment.  Of course, while Victoria was undressing Hannah I just wrote down Sulfur because I didn’t need the periodic table for that one.  I continued my hot streak by knowing that Shetland was likely to be the region of Scotland that grew small horses.  We all knew that The Good Place was the NBC sitcom that popularized the term shirtballs, and I  knew it was created by Mike Schur, in part because I am a regular listener to ,,  ,,his podcast  – in all seriousness, ,,  ,,the holiday episodes  are normally the highlight of my Christmas season, even if you don’t care about sports at all.  Oh, but you still want to hear about trivia I guess?

The final question was about a comedic actor that had a bunch of different love interests with names they gave, none of which I can remember because we didn’t recognize them at the time.  One was a Veronica and I knew there was one by that name in Anchorman, so we guessed Will Ferrell because we didn’t have a better guess.  Or at least Victoria and I didn’t.  Hannah had suggested Adam Sandler even though she had no idea what movies he had those love interests in or could really name anything about it so we overruled her.  And, as you can probably guess, she was right.  We said she didn’t have a good reason but she insisted that I include in this blog “My GUT told me.  And my HEART!”  About half an hour later she realized that the hint of the day being sand was about this question, and I said if she had thought that earlier I would have gone along with her.  She said that the hint subconsciously affected her gut.  But we only lost one point on this so it wasn’t a big deal.

The halftime sheet had us identify different kinds of pastas, which we did pretty well on except that we switched rotini and rotelle.  And the bottom half had us come up with a bunch of phrases that had the initials F.F.  We could not come up with what kind of Flyer was the name of an old sled, and we didn’t know the supreme court justice (You know who would have known the supreme court justice?  Ben.)  But we knew the Foo Fighters and Farrah Fawcett and Folsom Field and so while it wasn’t a great round it wasn’t horrible.  Still, at half time we were in fifth place. 

The third round is where things really started to fall apart  Despite the fact that we knew that today was the anniversary of The Clash’s London Calling and we knew something about the purple heart and we got lucky by guessing that Madam CJ Walker made her money in cosmetics (although Victoria really wanted us to put that she was a sex worker), we did not know the name of the 2007 Bjork album that shares its name with a river in Ghana, even though Victoria really tried to find it on Hannah’s world map socks, and this time I did get a picture.

The final question of the round was about what 21 st  century movie had Kate Winslet say “Meet me in Montauk” and we totally blanked on any Kate Winslet films.  We put The Reader because we couldn’t think of anything else, but unsurprisingly that was not correct and as soon as we heard the answer I started kicking myself.  Speaking of kicking myself, in the next round we were asked to name the US Senators who are officially independent and I could not come up with Kyrsten Synema’s name even though I could totally picture her.  You know who would have known that?  Ben. There’s also a good chance Ben would have known the name of the arena that sumo wrestling takes place in and Landon definitely would have.  And even though we knew the authors of the books that Handmaids Tale and Game of Thrones were based on, we did not know who wrote Bridgerton, which again showed that we needed Mary even if we do know something about Taylor Swift without her.

On the positive side, we did not fall into a trap in the 6-4-2 question where they wanted us to say that pumpkins were the largest gourds rather than watermelons.  And we were able to name both European countries that have E as the only vowel in their name (can you?).  The ‘medical slang’ question was about a term that is the common name for allergic sinusitis even though your body temperature doesn’t raise.  As a medical professional, Victoria started scribbling and I think she may have even been drawing chemical symbols trying to figure it out but I don’t really know because I just wrote down Hay Fever and turned it in, which Hannah thought was the funniest thing ever.  Or maybe that was just the coconut caramel stout.

In any event, we were in 6 th  place out of eight teams going into the final category – Hannah wants to make sure I point out that this means we were in antepenultimate place because that is her favorite word of all time even though she has yet to use it in one of her own books – but technically we were still in it.  And the final question was about the 90’s movie where a bunch of people sat around a diner discussing “Like a Virgin.”  We knew that it was Reservoir Dogs  but so did everybody else so we did not end up in the money.  But what do you expect when there were only three of us?  Still, we had fun and isn’t the real victory the balls we ate along the way?

My Friend Chris, the Musical Genius

Remember my friend Chris whom I met at the Garryowen when he played there with his band-at-the-time Bella's Bartok? And I took them home with me after building an invisible brick wall and communicating with my friend Buddy regarding the pros and cons of taking six strange men home with me? And Buddy said she'd come back, see if her gut told her they were safe, and then if her gut was like, "It's safe to leave," she'd leave but call in the morning to make sure I was still alive? And this all seemed like a good idea so I took the guys home with me and they spent the night and made breakfast for me in the morning and a friendship was formed? Yeah, so Chris is plugging away at narrating The Way Back for me and he sent me two funny emails this week regarding the progress of the novel. I will share the highlights with you...

I believe I mentioned this before, but Chris is writing music performed by Flannel Lobster (who happens to be my favorite fictional band). I've not shared "Uptempo, Down" yet, but I will... and it will be included in purchases of The Way Back when that novella is released. Exciting, yeah? I know! Chris is excited about it too, as alluded to in one of his most-recent emails: ,Also as I get into the parts of the book where everyone seems to love and sing along to "Uptempo, Down," my brain keeps being like "Everyone loves my song, even Piper's MOM, and of course she does, I wrote it to be enjoyed by all!" and having to slap myself and be like "No, these are characters in a book. The book came first." It's a hilariously strange feeling.

Chris and I have lately been talking about Hozier. I've enjoyed Hozier since I learned about his existence when "Take Me To Church" took over the airwaves. He's so tall and so, so cute! He's got those curls and that great nose... I love him. Turns out, Chris loves him as well! In fact, Chris loves him more than I do! And he agrees with my opinion of his looks: ,My friend Mary and I might go see Hozier in upstate NY in like... May. Vague plans. More to come... And I agree that he is ADORABLE. And so tall... Sometimes people don't agree with me about how attractive he is, and it just blows my mind. There really is a whole diversity of thought in the world, isn't there?...

Last but not least, this is my favorite bit of our recent correspondence. If you've read The Way Back already, you know that Chet Abbott is operating a coffee shop with his sister Lara in the small city of Radio Park, Oregon. The coffee shop is aptly named Cup o' Mud Buzz, which I thought up myself. (I really enjoy naming and writing about restaurants; The Way Back has so many great eateries, if I do say so myself!) Anyway, Chris apparently loves Cup o' Mud Buzz as much as I do because this is what he wrote: Martha and I have been wandering around this holiday season singing "Little Drummer Boy" except replacing the "pah-rum pah-pum-pum" with "A cup-o'-mud-buzzzzzz." It's also exclusively how we refer to coffee now. You've ruined us.

So, happy holidays to all.

That's today's blog, folks! Fun things are on the horizon... and working with Chris makes it EXTRA fun!

Things Overheard in the Classroom

I'm not entirely sure how much noneducators will appreciate this blog... but while my fifth-period kiddos worked on their short stories today, I recorded what they said. And it's pretty funny (in my opinion).

It’s funny ‘cos you’re ugly.

Who? Who? Who?

What should I call my story? I think I’m gonna call it “The Irish Kidnapper.” Think that’s good? Nah. Actually, that doesn’t have much to do with my story.

Like, as soon as I look on the page and see a bad word, it bounces around my head and gives me a concussion. Like it goes into my eyes and then is in my head and just [shakes head vigorously] but then it goes out my ear and at that point I’m like, “Wow. I can’t read that book.”

Fatty the Hatty Ratty.

What are you reading?

What is that called? Is it just “He hits the ball?”

Okay, one second.

I changed the names. Want to read it?

No.

That’s so mean.

I’m trying to finish mine.

Did you ever recover from all those calves I made? I have an idea.

That don’t look like work to me.

It looks like you really have a lot done here.

I have a page and a half.

Why is your sensitivity so high?

What about “The Boy Who Saved Ireland?”

If you read mine, you can clearly tell.

“Petridge Pan.” Like “Peter Pan,” but “Petridge Pan” because he’s from Ireland.

Oh, man… It’s right on the tip of my tongue.

Did you read my story yet? Hey! Having read my story, what do you think I should call it?

“The Great Kidnapping.”

That’s actually so dumb.

Wait. We have to come up with the story for ours? I mean, wait. Not the story.

Did you get it again?

It was an accident.

Please stop laughing. Stop. Stop. Stop it. 

What’re we doing in Spanish today?

This online thing. It’s graded, but not really. It’s just for practice.

People constantly power their computers off.

I’m your friend, definitely. 

If I had to give this a title… Wait. Do I put the title and my name on the story?

I could probably give some suggestions.

Would you like to read it?

I’m gonna actually read it this time. Do you see where it’s at? Good.

We don’t need your hands on the track pad.

I seriously missed so many commas.

I need butter. Wait. Do you have any soy beans? 

I have fourteen.

I need them for my next boat order. 

Is he still going through our trash? 

I forgot.

Did he make it scratch the case? Did he break it?

You’re a liar.

Let me look.

I’m not seeing anything.

Yeah, but he’s the one who said he couldn’t see when the lights were off.

What’s your story about? Is it about a wedding?

He basically got offered five thousand dollars to blow up the wedding.

Would you do it?

What did you say?

But then we have to, like, decrease the font.

What’s going on with your mini-golfer guy? Did he disappear down a hole?

These conversations are so boring.

There’s a sea monster under the water.

His wife came out of the water.

Don’t be talking about him like that! That’s his grandpa!

I only know her from the song. Dolly Parton. 

I heard that song the other day.

Is his first name James or Jim? Because on the paper the other day, it said Jim.

Is Jim even a nickname for James?

Dialogue and such!

Can you please stop talking to me?

He’s in a bit of a mood.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Just kidding.