Hannah Rae's Blog, page 12

My Students are Hilarious!

Yesterday I told my fifth-period kiddos that I went shopping at Marshall's on Tuesday and purchased two new sweaters and a flannel. I wore one of the sweaters yesterday (it was red) but told them that I was would be wearing the green one on Thursday because it's a good color for me and it makes my eyes pop. Then I told them that they should all compliment me and tell me that I have beautiful eyes.

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(See what I mean? It's a good color for me, yeah?)

Today, having forgotten about this conversation, I was pleasantly surprised when my students started trickling into my room and praised my eyes:

"Wow, that sweater really makes your eyes pop!"

"Your eyes look soooooo green today!"

"I can't get over how green your eyes look right now! What a great color for you!"

There are about twenty kids in that class and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM complimented my eyes! It was amazing! I loved it so much! I felt like a million (very green) bucks!

Now I need to prepare some more for my big art show. Maybe I'll see you later at the Garryowen if you swing by between 6-9PM!

A Compliment from Buddy

Yesterday we did a book club for The One You're With at work and we were talking about locations in the setting that reminded readers of Gettysburg and Buddy was there and she told a story and essentially the story was this: Buddy has a favorite coffee shop that is called Three Arrows (there's a chance I might do a book-signing there!) and her parents went there and sent her a selfie with very demanding instructions to, "Guess where we are!"

Buddy's first guess was Three Arrows because it was the right answer, but her parents were drunk on caffeine and forgot where they were and said, "No! Guess again!" So then Buddy proceeded to send a bunch of guesses and she started to get confused about nonfictional v. fictional coffee shops in the area. So she was like, "Ragged Edge. Real or fictional? Bottomless Joe's. Real or fictional?" These are thoughts she had in her own complicated head (ie, the head that makes each recipe in a recipe book in order) and it was just confusing for her.

And that's the blog.

I mean, does the blog need to be more than that? Buddy can't keep fictional v. nonfictional coffee shops straight because I write them so vividly. UNDERSTANDABLY. This is one of the many reasons I love her. And it's (part of) the reason Kick It One More Time is dedicated to her. That Buddy is an absolute gem.

Art's Up, Show's Thursday!

I've been sooooo busy making and hanging art this week! But my stuff is currently on the walls at the Garryowen and opening night is just around the corner: Thursday from 6:00-9:00PM. I'm excited! I think I've already sold nine pieces! And I'm still making more! I've got two cardinals flattening on my desk right now!

Alright. I'm using too many exclamation points. I'll stop now.

In addition to the art on the walls, I've got some Christmas cards that'll be for sale, some little 4x4" canvases that I originally sold on Etsy (but then I shut down my Etsy page because it just wasn't that much fun to maintain), and possibly some prints if they arrive on time... although I'm not sure they will. I'll have some books there as well!

Oh wait. No more exclamation points.

I'll have some books there as well. Nearly all of my art this time around is inspired by my own writing, so it makes sense to sell my novels, right?

Little side note: The One You're With will be available as an audiobook any day now and Cassandra Alling is the reader. SHE IS AMAZING. You know what I'm talking about if you listened to Like A Flip Turn... because she read that too.

I need to actually read my book now because I'm in a reading competition with my friend James and he is currently 89 pages ahead of me and I've gotta catch up at least a little bit. Bye.

(Seems unfriendly without an exclamation point, doesn't it?)

Byeeeee!

Trivia Recap: 11/30

The Players: Hannah (English teacher), Mary (English teacher), Darren (math professor), Victoria (veterinarian), and Danielle (bartender extraordinaire)

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(There were some issues regarding my ability to take a photograph)

Opening Category: That 70s Show

Hint of the Day: Mustang

Here's a delightful treat for readers this week: nearly the entire team is writing the blog! I, Hannah, will be kicking off the experience and then Mary will recap Round Two and Halftime for you. From there, Darren will brief you on the goings-on of Round Three and (potentially) saving the best for last... Victoria will provide a riveting conclusion. She has hinted at the fact that she "might use really a lot of detail." (I will say that she took approximately four napkins' worth of notes!)

Round One (Hannah):

I was actually in the bathroom when the first question was read. I had a really good shrimp po' boy for dinner (it's a weekly special, so if you'd like to try it, you'll need to do so immediately; do not pass go, do not collect $200... go directly to Fourscore now) but it was kind of messy and I got the delicious cajun remoulade sauce on my fingers. Hence, me being in the bathroom at the time of the first question. I couldn't hear anything Adam said, but this didn't matter because Mary binged That 70s Show when she was in college and Darren has seen some episodes as well and they therefore figured out that the answer was Laurie. I have no idea who Laurie is, but I will say that when they mentioned his/her name, my thoughts went immediately to Laurie from Little Women because I've always found him to be very endearing and adorable. The next category was Geography Commonalities and I was wishing Ben was there because he might have been willing to draw a map on a napkin. Lately he's been cantankerous about map drawing and only "draws them in [his] head" , which is frustrating for many reasons. One, because it's impossible for others to view the map in his head, and two, because I collect his napkin maps and have big plans to do something with them... but his lack of cooperation has had a great impact on the outcome of this project. *sigh* Despite not having Ben and his mental maps, we did come up with the last four letters shared by something like seven Asian countries. The answer is -stan and we got that, but we didn't know the biggest country that ended with -stan. Mary suggested Afghanistan and I agreed with her because I recently finished A Thousand Splendid Suns. I strongly disliked it; it took more than two years for me to read it and it was just... a lot of abuse of women. I loved The Kite Runner, but I did NOT love A Thousand Splendid Suns. A bunch of things happen in that book, though, and it made Afghanistan sound incredibly large because of all the events that occurred, so it seemed likely that the country might be the biggest -stan country. It's not though. Another country is the biggest and I don't remember what that country is. Kazakhstan, I think? Chemical Potpourri was next and I didn't wear my periodic table shirt but it didn't matter because which child of the 90s doesn't know that hydrogen peroxide can be used to bleach hair in the sun? Darren knows a lot about TV Robots so that category was quite easy: The Jetsons have Rosie, Star Trek has Data, and there's some other robot in a show called Mystery Science Theater 3000 that I knew nothing about... Go, Darren! You really are a mathmegician! We chose In the Crayon Box as our bonus category and that ended up being an okay decision, but we did miss the extra two-point bonus. There are four four-letter colors in a standard (bigger-sized) box of crayons and one of them is plum. We needed to name the other three colors (gold, blue, and grey), but instead of gold we wrote pink and that's what lost us the two points). At the end of Round One, we had 32 points. Not too shabby, eh?

Round Two (Mary):

Today, I have the honor and privilege of writing about the second round of trivia on November 30, 2023. I feel as though I was awarded this task to impart some very important life lessons to Hannah’s readers and you will have to keep reading to learn what these valuable insights are.

The round began with the audio question of the evening asking us to name artists that performed songs that dealt with gratitude and being thankful. Originally, we thought we would have to name songs with the word “thanks” in the title and we were well-prepared, however, we were wrong. Thankfully, Danielle and Darren were able to name John Denver and Bette Midler as the artists of the first two songs. Unfortunately, even though I am a Kelly Clarkson fan, we were unable to name her as the third performer. The second question Darren knew without it being read since it was the hint of the day. He knew the college team nickname was the Mustangs. Ben’s absence was greatly felt for the next question which was about political parties. We were able to name the Whigs as the correct party, however, we could not name the fourth Whig president for our bonus. Which left us wondering whether or not Ben would have known the answer. Darren texted in the team group chat after trivia where it was confirmed that Ben could name the remaining Whig president that we needed. If only he would have come to trivia to help us. The next question was about American Companies and Darren once again knew it right away. The final question was about Alfred Hitchcock films. Hannah and I have both seen several Hitchcock films and felt confident going into the question, but we disagreed on the actor that starred in North by Northwest. I thought that it was Carey Grant, but Hannah thought it was Jimmy Stewart. I did not advocate and defend my suggestion, so we went with Hannah’s answer. However, Jimmy Stewart was wrong and Carey Grant was right. Since I cost us those points by not standing up for my original answer, I was nominated to write this portion of the blog.

Halftime:

For the top of the sheet, we had to name films and television shows whose titles included the word “love.” Unfortunately, we missed Love and Other Drugs and another film in which Elizabeth Olsen stars and whose title I still can’t recall. The bottom was left up to me to complete with some assistance from Victoria. We were to determine which artists have topped the Billboard Hot 100 this year. Of course, Taylor Swift was mentioned first and I definitely got that right. However, we incorrectly identified Nicki Minaj as a chart topper this year and once again, I failed to advocate and defend my belief that the Weeknd did indeed top the Billboard Hot 100.

So after reflecting on this portion of the evening, I want to leave you with these three pieces of wisdom:

You should be grateful (especially for good friends who know more about sports and music than you do and for the fact that Ben will be attending trivia again to help us with our presidential knowledge). You should always believe in yourself (especially if you feel like you know the right answer to a question that could gain your trivia team three points in a very close trivia game). Don’t keep making the same mistakes because you may find yourself writing about a specific round of a trivia blog because this is the one-thousandth time you knew the correct answer and allowed yourself to be talked out of it and lost your team points. (I know that this is not statistically correct. Don’t get annoyed, Darren. I’m writing an example of hyperbole.)

Round Three (Darren):

Darren here to talk you through round 3. Coming out of halftime we were in sixth place I think. We had done well, but I guess a number of other teams were doing even better. In this round, we had been tempted to choose “3 clues, one number” as our bonus category because as a mathematician I do know a lot about numbers. But I also know that there are an infinite number of numbers so I discouraged people and also I really don’t like to use the “3 clues” categories as a bonus for reasons that are really boring and which I have to re-explain to my teammates each week. And it’s a good thing we didn’t as we didn’t know either the chemical number of Boron or Joe Dimaggio’s number. Luckily, we were able to figure out that there are five states that border Virginia, so we got the question right even if we did not get the bonus points.

There was a question about the wise herb in the mint family that Native American smudging rituals use to cleanse places that we got right for several reasons, and another question about electricity resistance although Adam did not let us answer that the unit was simply Ω and made us put ‘Ohm’. While Victoria and I debated that answer, there was some kind of drama where Hannah saw a spot in Mary’s eye and Mary started to get concerned and went to the bathroom (which you may or may not know was a recurring theme of the evening, depending on what other people write) to check it out. This would have been fine, except that the category we chose as the bonus was Country Music Artists & Their Songs and we only chose it to rely on Mary so the rest of us started to get panicked as Adam read the question and she was putting her own medical interests and sight more important than the team. We sent Hannah to go fetch her, at which point Mary calmly walked out, sat down, and said “Martina McBride”. Which was in fact the correct answer.

The last question asked which two countries the antemeridian line goes through and my teammates got a little slap happy and started discussing whether or not Antarctica was a country. I did not let us put that answer as I had never heard of a penguin Prime Minister, but the ones we put were no more correct, making this the only question of the round that we missed.

6-4-2:

The 6-4-2 round asked about a Star Wars character and the 6 point clue said that Kelloggs had released a cereal named after this character in 1984. My gut really told me that there was a cereal called C3P-O’s but then I started to second guess myself that this was from the Admiral Ackbar’s Snack Bar video (which is ironic if you watch the video). But no, it was in fact a real cereal ( watch this commercial !) and my hesitation meant we didn’t turn in the answer until 4 points like all the other teams since we all knew who Anthony Daniels was. So despite our good showing, we did not make up any ground. Will we on the last leg of the race? I will hand you over to Victoria to fill you in.

Round Four:

Hello all you cool cats out there. This is your friendly neighborhood Skoogmasta flex presenting Round 4 for your reading pleasure. So, this round started out in the bathroom. I could hear Adam reading the question just as I was flushing. ‘That’s okay’ I thought. He’ll read it a second time. I washed my hands as fast as I could, then started the dryer just as Adam started repeating the question. EGADS! I rushed out in time to hear something about a painter and a Greek God. Thank bananas, our team was on it.

They came up with Smudgy Half Shell Venus. No idea what that means. Then the debate was between Davinci and Michealangelo for the painter. We went with Michealangelo, but the painter was called something like ‘Bocciball’. 90% sure that’s correct. Anyhue, on to the next question- A sporty first word-last word. Adam was about to give an example when the entire bar started to list his typical schpeal. He was a step ahead of us and used an example about what Santa says attached to the name of a Chinese president. It was Ho Ho Ho Xi Jinping. This made Adam chuckle.

The sports question was about a Raiders quarterback in 1982 and a 1991 NBA Rookie of the year. Darren came up with Ray Allen Iverson. Sadly, the first name of the QB was incorrect. This was obviously Ben’s fault as he was AGAIN missing from trivia. Darren agreed and stated we could blame Ben for that one.

The third question was about Ancient History. None of us were quite confident in this. The question was about a battle in Athen’s Greece in 490 B.C. where a man ran over 25 miles to warn a city of the incoming army. Hannah shouted, “Wow, that’s almost a marathon”. Darren said ‘No shit’ with his eyes, and wrote down Marathon. We weren’t sure who was the opposing force to the Greeks in this battle but guessed incorrectly the Ottomans (answer was Persians). Then came dog breeds for the fourth question.

We chose this as our bonus since we are all magical at dog breeds except Darren. The question was about a breed used in the Alps to rescue people stuck in the snow. Darren said, “EVEN I KNOW THAT.” Yepperooni, it was a St. Bernard.

The final question was an over/under TV question. We had to list which TV series was over or under 3 seasons. If we got all three right, we’d get the bonus. The shows were Weeds, Firefly, and NipTuck. Mary and Darren knew that Weeds was over 3 seasons, Firefly was less than 3 seasons, and I knew NipTuck was over 3 seasons. We nailed it. Mary said that “well, between the four of us…” Hannah corrected this to “AMONG the four of us.”

There was a pause before the final question which allowed Hannah time to perfect her art of drawing squiggles. Darren commented that she might want to stick to the art that she was good at, but Mary and I both agreed we would purchase a squiggle from Hannah if one appeared at her upcoming art show this Thursday at the Garryowen in town.

Meanwhile, Darren confessed that he had been stealing Hulu from one of his friends until one day the password mysteriously changed. When he asked his friend’s wife about it, she said Hulu must have changed the rules. Eventually Darren was able to pressure his friend into a full confession. He had intentionally changed the password because they kept kicking each other off the subscription when the other was watching. I will never lie to Darren.

We decided to wager it all on the final question since we were in fourth place and we assumed Streetsharks were going to ‘Streetshark’ the last questions (aka, bet it all and lose). The question was about the only non-Disney owned or associated film that appeared in a list of top ten animated films. Mary and I considered Roger Rabbit, but Darren came up with Shrek early in the game. With some light debate, we finalized Shrek as our answer. Surprisingly, Streetsharks didn’t Streetshark, but we did also get it correct and ended up in second place.

At the end, Hannah tried to take a picture of us, but it was as if she had never used a phone or camera in her entire life. After many failed attempts, she decided the best idea was to try to shoot the most difficult setting on her camera-phone, the Panorama. The Panoramic picture came out with her looking akin to a racoon with deepset dark swirly eyes, Mary with a blurry smile, Darren looking normal, and me also looking normal.

(I [Hannah] tried a panoramic photo; it didn't work)

(Our text exchange after the evening's events)

The End

Lake Caywood

I haven't written any blogs recently because I've been busy making art, but just today I finished this piece and my back is really sore as a result so I'm not jumping straight into another piece... but I am writing a blog about the art I just finished that I've entitled Lake Caywood.

If you've read any of my books, there's a good chance you're aware of my favorite fictional town Lake Caywood. Named after a guy I had a crush on when I was just a kid, Lake Caywood is essentially Gettysburg if Gettysburg had a large lake in the middle of it. Some (but not all) of the establishments existing in Lake Caywood are based on restaurants and shops in real-life Gettysburg. Unfortunately, most of the food (I sure do like to write about food!) is not available at the real-life Gettysburg restaurants as many of the menus referenced on my pages are actually inspired by meals prepared by my mother Nancy and other mother Amy. If you're lucky, maybe they'll invite you to dinner. Short of that, I don't know what to tell you...

Anyway, this piece that I created today is what I imagine the shoreline of Lake Caywood to look like. I was inspired by Twist, a character from Like A Flip Turn, and Mama Mallard, who begs for breadcrusts as a treat for her ducklings.

I did a number on my back thanks to Lake Caywood. The detail in the birds' feathers required a hell of a lot of cutting (I'll bet I went through about twenty X-acto blades to make this one) and the background required an equal amount of tearing. My posture is not always the best while completing these tasks, but an artist's gotta do what an artist's gotta do, right?

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There is undoubtedly cat hair in this piece because both Harvey and Kip insisted upon offering their assistance. I did not capture a photograph of Kip at work, but here is Harvey. He made it a point to chase strips of paper, nibble my fingers, and bat things off the counter. He is an asset... but not necessarily when it comes to creating art.

Once Lake Caywood flattens for a while, I'll seal it and prepare it to hang at the Garryowen next week. Its size is 20x20", which isn't ginormous, but it is a decent-sized piece. The last time I did anything large and insanely detailed like this was a floral octopus for my mother. That piece is REALLY big. And it took a really long time. And I'll bet I went through 35 X-acto blades in cutting out all those flowers!

Trivia Recap: 11/16

The Players: Hannah (English teacher), Mary (English teacher), Darren (math professor), Ben (not a firefighter), Danielle (bartender)

Opening Category: Ned Flanders

Hint of the Day: Madeline

The most important thing to occur at trivia last night actually occurred just before the opening round. We were all discussing the holidays and being annoyed that Adam the DJ was playing Christmas music. Mary loves Christmas but even she felt like the music choice last night was less than stellar. Personally, I believed it to be atrocious. In fact, I may stop attending trivia for the month of December because it was seriously NOTHING but Christmas music. And it mostly wasn't good Christmas music. Adam played that stupid donkey song, and then he played some other horrible songs, and then he decided to play a Thanksgiving song and the one he played was that terrible one by Adam Sandler. And then the bad music just kept coming... and coming... and coming... And my ears hurt.

I have a penpal named James and I was actually telling him about my ears when I got home from trivia. Sometimes when I'm at my house I'll get a ringing in my left ear. It only happens at my house and it only happens in my left ear. I told James about it and he thinks it's probably because I have gone from a loud place (i.e., trivia) to a quiet place (i.e., my house). I think this makes sense because sometimes my left ear also rings after a loud day at school.

Anyway, we were talking about the holidays and how Christmas is rushed into by pretty much everyone and I made the comment that I only just threw away my jack-o-lantern cabbage that Victoria had carved for me and Ben said, "I would've ate it." Obviously, Mary and I both stared at him as if he had fifteen eyeballs or something. We said, possibly in unison, "What?" And Ben repeated himself with a shake of his head, "I would've ate it." At that point, I corrected his grammar. Then Mary pointed out that if he'd eaten it, he'd probably be sick because it sat on my front stoop for weeks and was in the sun and the rain and was all dried out... but Ben insisted that he "would've ate it." So my PSA to you is this: If inviting Ben to a potluck dinner... be wary about indulging in his contribution.

Round One:

This was fine. I struggled with math, as per usual, but ultimately did okay. The categories were Ned Flanders (obviously), European Geography (we missed the bonus, but got the points), Food Fit for a "Man" (this was fun; all the foods began with MAN), Human Organs (speaking of ears... that was the answer!), and Animated TV (Darren came up with Thundercats and that was the right answer!).

Round Two:

"Good Music" was good. Every song had the word "good" in the title and these were the answers: "Honey, I'm Good," "Only the Good Die Young," and "It Was a Good Day" (which Danielle knew). Other categories included Name That Actor (Mary did), College Basketball Legends (Ben and Darren figured this out), Political History (several people knew this; it was an oxymoronic title in that the answer was Democratic-Republican), and Old School Tech (Darren knew half of this).

Halftime:

On the top, we had to identify comedians. On the bottom, we had to match stock codes (I think that's how one would describe it?) with the companies they represent. We got 17/20.

Round Three:

Mary and I knew the answer to Children's Literature was going to be Madeline because of the hint of the day... and it was. Historic Titles was fine (Kaiser; it's also bread); Song Characters sucked. Once again, Adam had that stupid Christmas music playing and it messed up the lyrics in my head. We had to name the occupation of the people in the songs and I love Bon Jovi's "Livin on a Prayer," but Adam was playing his stupid holiday trash when I got to the part about Gina working the diner all day and so we mixed her up with Johnny (Ben did too; this was not just on me) and listed dockworker instead. And I'm still bitter about it. Where is this Statue? was the next category and we missed it. Tennis Time we got half right.

6-4-2:

The answer was Vermont and we got it for four points.

Round Four:

Classic TV was kind of hard and Darren got Maverick but we didn't get the other one which was, I think, The Rockford Files. The next two categories were good for me, though, because of Pip. I'm not someone who watches a lot of movies, but he once made me watch Warm Bodies and that was the answer to the Romantic Comedies category. Then the next category was Video Games and the answer was MarioKart but there was a bonus question about which console was the original console for MarioKart and Mary and I both thought it was Super Nintendo but Ben thought it was N64 because he didn't think SuperNES had games that went forward and not just left to right. But Mary remembered how the game fitted into the console (from the top) and I remembered the controller used to play the game. I even drew a picture:

Needless to say, Mary and I were right and we got us the bonus. Ben redeemed himself in the field of Botany though, knowing much about rubber plants. Ben in fact owns a rubber plant that he's had for seven years now. He keeps it on the windowsill in his bedroom and tells it goodnight before climbing under the covers each night. The rubber plant's name is Christopher Bedford Williamson Jeffers. The last category was We Share a Last Name! and the answer was Black but we got bonus points for knowing the first names that went with that last name: Jack and Hugo and Rebecca.

Final:

We got this right. The clue had something to do with the first picture being a doctor slapping a baby's bum and we needed to name the magazine. The magazine, in case you don't know, is Life. (My mom and her family were once in a publication of Life, just so you know.)

We got third place, which isn't too shabby, and next week's opening category is That 70s Show.

Hannah Rae on the Big Screen?

Maybe someday, but today I went to the Community Media studio in New Oxford and was interviewed for the small screen! It was suprisingly fun and will air at some point in December. I'll let you know when as soon as I find out.

Anyway, Amy Ann (she works there) asked if I'd be interested in being one of the interviews she was planning to conduct and I jumped at the opportunity. Why not, right? Maybe I'll sell another couple of books or attract some new fans of my art. It certainly can't hurt to talk about my process and how much Gettysburg has impacted my writing.

Amy Ann asked about both my writing and my art, but she also wanted to know about my teaching. She was at my book signing at Bantam and was quite surprised (and pleased) by the number of students who came out to show their support. I obviously couldn't use their names in the interview, but I talked about how much it meant to see them at my event and how I think it's important to include them in things like book signings and art shows. After all, if my ultimate goal is to eventually secure a book deal, isn't it a good idea to let them see the efforts that go into achieving such a thing? If (when) it finally happens, it may end up looking like it's happened overnight... but such will not be the case.

The bottomline is this: this afternoon was really fun and now I have a new experience under my belt!

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Friday Favorites: What they are and why they matter

Last year, I had an idea.

In truth, I have a lot of ideas and they happen all the time and sometimes my head can be a very overwhelming place as a result. I'm usually pretty good about immediately acting on my ideas, though, which helps to keep things under control. So last year when I had an idea to create some Keystone-prep materials for my sophomores, I got straight to work and Friday Favorites were born approximately fifteen minutes later.

Every single Friday, my students--both the sophomores and the freshmen--take something known as a Friday Favorite. Essentially, a Friday Favorite uses the opening page(s) of a book I love and pairs those page(s) with an annotation activity and a constructed response.

In the week leading up to Halloween, the tenth-graders read an excerpt from Stephen King's It and had to analyze the importance of rain while the freshmen read an excerpt from Robert Bloch's Psycho and were required to prove that Norman Bates is definitely psychologically abnormal. I have such a fun time introducing my students to books and authors, you know? They've sampled The Help by Kathryn Stockett and The Martian by Andy Weir and The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware. In the weeks to come, they'll read an excerpt from Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and John Irving's The Cider House Rules. They're being exposed to so many different types of literature, old and new, and every now and again one of the students will ask to borrow the book! A few weeks ago, The Singing Artist (that's one of my students) borrowed Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures. This past week, one of my nonreaders borrowed my copy of The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. Some other students have also snagged copies of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, William Kent Krueger's Ordinary Grace, and Lisa Wingate's Before We Were Yours.

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In addition to improving their analysis skills while experiencing new reading material, the students receive other rewards as well. Every time someone scores a 15/15 on his/her paper, that student's name is entered into a drawing. Each week, both a freshman and a sophomore receive a $5 gift card to a venue of their choice. Mary and I have spent a lot of our own money buying these gift cards because we think it's important to reward our students, but sometimes parents and other faculty members contribute to our fund as well! And several local businesses have gone above and beyond with their generous donations. Mr. G's, Garryowen, Bantam Coffee Roasters, The Ragged Edge, Mamma's Pizza, Fourscore, and Olive Garden have all contributed gift cards in the past.

Some businesses are unable to donate gift cards... like Starbucks and Marshall's and Dunkin. And Amazon. The students love Amazon gift cards! If you find yourself frequenting a location that you think the sophomores and freshmen at Biglerville High School might enjoy, and if you happen to have an extra $5 in your purse or pocket, consider purchasing a gift card that can be added to our stash. I did some shopping this weekend and stocked up... along with so many new stickers! (My students appreciate stickers every bit as much as a chance to win gift cards, so I take my sticker acquisition incredibly seriously.) Check out this haul:

(I'm super excited about those fish stickers... they're puffy and kind of shimmery and I think they're going to be very well-received!)

I should probably add that after implementing Friday Favorites last year, my sophomores did an absolutely amazing job on their Keystone Exams and actually THANKED ME for making them do Friday Favorites each week because it helped them to feel prepared for the big test. So in addition to gift cards and stickers, they also receive passing scores, which is perhaps the best thing of all! Yay!

Friday's Book-Signing

I had a book-signing at Bantam Coffee Roasters on Friday night and nearly sold out of books! The turnout was way bigger than I was expecting and so many of my students showed up to support me! It was astounding! I'm still so astounded!

Percy played his clarinet in front of the coffee shop to help promote the indoor event. He propped a copy of The One You're With in his case and collected quite an impressive amount of tips while his teachers sat inside, toasty and warm, sending him Gray Ghost* hot chocolates to periodically thaw his fingers.

Haha was there as well and do you know what she brought with her? An entire bag of books for me to sign! I think Haha is my youngest fan... and possibly also my biggest fan! She had her family in tow and they were lovely.

Members from our school's NaNoWriMo club made appearances, along with kiddos from my classes and kiddos I taught in the past. It was just really something, you know?

Kathy stopped in very briefly since the latest novella is, after all, dedicated to her!

All in all, it was a really great night and I was very tired the next day. Not too tired to avoid art-making, though... which there will likely be a post about later this week!

*Coincidentally, The Gray Ghost is a book by Seckatary Hawkins and is referenced in To Kill A Mockingbird and is pretty much the reason why the whole story even occurs. And Percy loves To Kill A Mockingbird almost as much as I do and wrote a killer paper about it that earned him a 100%.

Trivia Recap: 11/2

I would like to start by thanking the voters. It really meant a lot to me that you voted my blog from last week as better than Victoria’s version of the evening , and I was heartened to see that you rewarded my positive version over the smearing attacks and negativity in hers. I would also like to thank the real heroes – the teachers who have meant so much to me and to America’s children over the years and who obviously do so much more for society than lame-ass veterinarians. I would like to thank my son, who after I told him that I won grunted in a way that I can generously interpret as being interested in me. And I would like to thank my parents, and Pour House Trivia, and my college roommate who sent me this ,Onion, article that these blogs remind him of. Truly, it was an honor just to be nominated, where by “honor” I mean “mild chore that Hannah assigned me to do for her own amusement/laziness.” Winning is a prize in and of itself, but I am also happy that I won real prizes. Well, sort of real prizes. As promised, Mary provided me with a collection of goodies from her desk drawer, including a bunch of stickers, some Milano cookies with a sell-by date of June 2023, pencils and highlighters, a stuffed hedgehog (I asked Mary what its name was and she said “I don’t know…how about Desk Drawer The Hedgehog?” So Desk Drawer it is. I hope that she put more thought into her son’s name.) But there was also a note.

Just some of the prizes I won. I hid the cookies so that my son didn’t eat them and get sick.

The note said “Congrats! You did such a great job with the trivia blog, you get to write it again this week!” Which is why I am here with you again, loyal readers. So jump in for another Trivia Recap.

The Players: Darren, Hannah, Mary, Landon, Ben, Mary’s sister Rachel.

Hint of the Day: A map that we think is pointing to Monaco.

Opening Category: 60’s One Hit Wonders (Audio)

The Blogger: Darren, but that should be obvious by now.

This week we took an actual team photo, so you will be spared the AI Hellscape that I had to use last week.

As you recall, we won last week and Hannah had chosen 60’s One Hit Wonders as the opening category. Much as in some previous weeks, Hannah wanted me and Mary to study. Friday morning she texted us and said “I think we all need to search 60s one-hit wonders on Spotify and listen to them this week. I’m starting with a 60s/70s playlist and this is the first song for me. Please text this thread with your first songs so I know you’re participating.” Mary quickly responded with Sandy by Larry Hall. I pointed out that Hannah assigns a lot more homework than most of my other friends, but told her she was worth it and then sent along 96 Tears by ? and the Mysterians. Hannah and I sent each other a couple of other clips during the week but generally felt pretty good about our preparation for the opening question. Which turned out to be about a band led by a frontman who used a punctuation mark for a name and whose only top 20 hit had a number in its title. Yes, I called it and we were off and running!

Ben had wanted to choose Rivers as our bonus category because he “know[s] an above average amount about rivers.” We didn’t listen to him but it turns out that he knows that the Nile is the longest river in Africa (insert joke about ‘denial’ here) even if he thought its colorful tributary was the Red Nile rather than the White Nile. Landon knew about sand wedges in golf and we all knew about different forms of power and Mary made a hail Mary (puns intended?) correct guess that there are five books in the Torah.

The audio clue was our bonus in round two and it was a different format: Adam played a clip of a tv show, a movie, and a song all from the same year and we had to guess the year. We all recognized Oceans 11 and Fear Factor and s recognized several of my teammates knew the song (which I didn’t know then and don’t remember now) and while we couldn’t quite remember if they were from 2000 or 2001 we eventually guessed 2001 and were correct. The rest of the round was pretty easy as we knew about New Zealanders being called kiwis and Outer Banks and Pulp Fiction, and we knew that Einstein was the scientist that Time Magazine named Person of the Century. For bonus points we could have named the runners-up and we tossed out lots of names – Hitler! Churchill! -- We ended up putting down Martin Luther King but it was actually FDR and Gandhi, both of whom we (Danielle, specifically) had mentioned but passed on. Oh well.

The halftime bonus sheet started by asking us to identify ten famous faces. That was it, no theme or anything. This was pretty easy and we quickly got them all. The bottom half was much more challenging as we had to match the celebrity with the magazine they appeared on the first cover of. Mary and I knew a couple of these (Wonder Woman on Ms, KD Lang on Entertainment Weekly, John Lennon on Rolling Stone) and then guessed a few more from context clues and then made a wild guess on the last two, but somehow we got a perfect score and were in first place going into the second half!

The second half started with a round with three words that each started with M, ended with M, and had a third M in the middle, including a religious branch (Mormonism), the p in p=mv (Momentum), and an artistic movement (Minimalism). Next up there was a zoology question. You would think we would totally ace that since we have a veterinarian on our team, right? Oh, but check that list up above again, dear readers. Victoria bailed at the last minute tonight and left us high and dry when it came up animal questions. Luckily, Mary knows all about bats and figured out that they use echolocation to locate things with sound. Ok, maybe it wasn’t that hard a question anyways. But I think it showed us that Victoria’s talents are not as unique as one might suspect and her blog-writing skills are at best the second best on the team. We finished up the round by successfully naming Taraji P Henson and Peyton Manning and that Bad Bunny has a song called Monaco, not because we know anything about Bad Bunny but because of the hint of the day.

I think the NFL question was around the time that Hannah got bored and started doodling increasingly elaborate doodles.

We really hadn’t been sure what to choose for our bonus category in the fourth round. Ben wanted to choose World War II History, but we didn’t trust him even though in the end he knew the name of the invasion of Normandy as well as the general in charge. We had considered both Brand Name Beverages and Lets Go To The Dentist and in fact we knew about Yoo-Hoo and impacted molars (two separate questions) but we hadn’t chosen them as our bonus either. Hannah had suggested going with “The Masters of Horror” because she thought it might be horror novels but we all thought it was more likely to be horror movies. And in the end it was, in fact, about identifying the Stephen King novel from the name of the protagonist and we aced it. But we hadn’t chosen any of those as our bonus categories.

Instead, we chose Crime Shows. Now, Hannah was the one who pulled the trigger on that choice but she wanted me to give the following disclaimer: Hannah refuses to take full credit for this decision because Mary was the one who said “Between all of us, I think we’ll know it.” And Hannah remembers this clearly because Mary should have said “among” instead of “between” because there were more that two of us. But she didn’t correct her. In any event, that is what we chose and none of us could remember the name of the cop show that Jennifer Lopez was in or the name of her now-deceased costar. Hannah remembered it had ‘Blue’ in the title and Mary knew that the co-star was a white man with a plain face and brown hair who normally plays bad guys, but somehow that was not enough to point us to Ray Liotta or Shades of Blue.

He does have a plain face and plays a lot of bad guys. And he is white.

We therefore went into the final question tied for second. And the category was mountains, so Ben felt confident. And, when asked what country Mount Logan is the tallest mountain in, he confidently said Australia. And I confidently wrote it down because, after all, Ben knows an above-average amount about rivers so the same is probably true of mountains. But unfortunately none of that confidence was warranted and Australia was not the answer and Canada was and so we fell out of the money. Sigh.

Next week I am not sure if there will be a trivia blog. I will be volunteering at the Adams County Giving Spree , which those of you who are local and able should use as a chance to donate money to the many great organizations in our community. Mary will be at a comedy show . Landon has work stuff. Ben was noncommittal and I think that Hannah was just pouting. Maybe we will have Chat GPT write a trivia blog for us instead.

Bonus Photo: Its not clear if Ben really didn’t think to flip the phone around when taking the selfie or was just joking, but here was his first attempt.