Hannah Rae's Blog, page 18

What a way to start the week!

Quite a while ago, I purchased tickets to see Milky Chance at XL Live in Harrisburg. The plan was to go with Heather and Concert-Husband Phil, but when Arlo and I stopped at Bantam Coffee Roasters for a puppuccino (Arlo endured FIVE SHOTS from the vet that morning!) and a hazelnut latte (just call me Lucy Campbell!) yesterday, I mentioned the show to Alex and Chad and they were like, "Oh, we have tickets for that too." But Chad was thinking about not going, so Alex asked to tag along with us, and of course that was fine, but we needed to find a home for the extra ticket. Brock stepped up, seeing as he is an avid lover of music, but then Chad decided to go and Brock had to get another ticket and it all worked out fine and we had a good group of folks along for the ride.

However.

Phil got stuck in a late meeting and Brock needed to finish a project and Alex and Chad drove themselves... so the ride really just consisted of Heather and me. Which was excellent! We talked about so many things and got caught up on life.

Heather and I got dinner at Zer0day, which I've mentioned before in concert-related blogs. Phillip introduced me to this brewery and I love love love their IPA Casual Ruckus. Heather and I each had one of those and we ordered some dinner as well. I got the jackfruit tacos, which were interesting but not my favorite, and Heather got the crab balls, which are AMAZING (I had them once before).

The best part about Zer0day? We drew a picture to commemorate the evening. For those of you who don't know, my brother The Pip used to draw at the bar all the time. He'd take a big bag of supplies along with him and ask a complete stranger to "draw a line." Then he used that line to create a picture. Heather and I drew our own lines last night, but we did take a big bag of supplies with us to Zer0day. And what's extra cool about it is that I'd never seen Milky Chance, and Heather had never even listened to Milky Chance, but Pip had turned me onto Milky Chance all those years ago. He said, "The name of the band is just gross, but I really like their music." He always said that about them.

This is what Heather and I created:

Heather's going to shade it some more when she has her grey markers and colored pencils, but we were working with limited resources last night. One can't be expected to carry a studio into a bar.

What's also fun about Zer0day is that Phil and Brock met up with us! Phil got the pulled pork barbecue mac and cheese and Brock got the pretzel bites, in case you were wondering.

The four of us had intended to arrive at XL Live in time for TALK (that was the opening artist; you may recognize his song "Run Away to Mars"), but we missed him. When we got there, though, we found Alex and Chad and were in plenty of time for the main attraction, Milky Chance.

I only knew about three or four Milky Chance songs going into yesterday, but then I Spotifyed them all day and realized that I like most of their music. This made for a great concert! Also, here's a fun thing about the band: they are very attractive. For the last song, the band member in the bucket hat (he was my favorite) played the harmonica in, like, the sexiest way possible. He was soooooooooooo into the harmonica. I loved every second of it. I could probably watch a concert of just him playing the harmonica. I would absolutely buy a ticket to that.

Before the harmonica extravaganza, I met a really nice woman named Taryn who looks like my friend Kristin's friend Randi, and I know from communication with Randi that she likes Milky Chance, and then I got to wondering if Randi was actually standing right beside me and I didn't even know it, so I asked. And it wasn't Randi, but Taryn's dad's name is Randy, which is kind of funny, and I think the name Taryn is really cool so I'm going to write it into a book.

Here's another thing that happened last night: The band played a song and asked everyone to "get down." So a lot of people squatted for a few seconds. Phil was one of them. While Phil was squatting and I was not, he shouted from below, "Get down, Hannah! Get down! I'll never forget this!" Because, as many of you probably recall, Phil refused to staand for Caamp when we saw Caamp open for the Lumineers a year or two ago at Merriweather. I divorced him that night... but we've since gotten back together (obviously). In fact, we now have a daughter named Birdie in the Howard County Youth Orchestra. She plays the bassoon.

Anyway. I think it's fair to say that me not squatting for ten to fifteen seconds is very different from Phil not staanding for AN ENTIRE SET. But, whatever. #staandforcaamp #neverforget

Here's a picture of Phil squatting, and another one of him posing with the band's setlist. It was printed on orange paper, and orange is Phil's favorite color, so it makes sense that we seized the photo opportunity, right?

And in case you read this blog and are still like, "Who the heck is Milky Chance?" You're in luck! Here are two videos! One is of a woman's hand dancing to the band as they sing one of their most-known songs, and the other is of the audience singing the chorus of their most-known song.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/58cc22_f47a0938aeba4ca19f89d175c36b79bd/1080p/mp4/file.mp4https://video.wixstatic.com/video/58cc22_71621b2692a740419e31383e01a9adaf/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

And that was Monday. Now... onto Tuesday, which also involves some fun plans! Tune in tomorrow to find out what they are/were!

First-Page Post (#3)

I got back from the beach yesterday. It was fun, as it always is, but the weather wasn't very cooperative this year. However, because I ended up having a lot of time not on the beach, I seized the opportunity and made a lot of headway with my book.

Truth: I had no intention of finishing Dog-Eared Life while on vacation.

Another truth: I didn't finish Dog-Eared Life while on vacation.

Final truth: I did finish Dog-Eared Life when I got home yesterday... and I REALLY like this one, folks.

Dog-Eared Life is Russo's story, but it starts out with Bas, because everything band-related MUST start out with Bas. It's just how these things work in my head. It's a pattern that I must follow. So, you're not gonna get much Russo with today's first-page post, but I thought I'd give you the first page of Dog-Eared since it's pretty much all I've been thinking about for the past several days.

Here you go!

The exhaustion seeps straight through his muscles and into his bones. His arms feel as though they’re attached to hefty dumbbells; his legs ache with fatigue. Unable to snatch more than a few minutes of sleep on the band’s flight from Chicago to Philadelphia, Sebastian Porter would like nothing more than to be horizontal.

A pillow would be appreciated, but not necessary.

He stifles a yawn and searches the area for his bandmates. Bert and Finn stand near the conveyor belt, waiting for a new belch of luggage to spew from the mouth of the tunnel, and Russo is meant to be off somewhere securing a rental car. “A fuckin' big one,” Bert had demanded, “because we’re gonna need room for all of our equipment.”

Scheduled to participate in one final show later this evening, the boys of Flannel Lobster hadn’t accounted for the many obstacles they would encounter upon entering (and then attempting to exit) Salt Lake City’s airport. One delay after another ensued, eventually resulting in a roundabout route to reach their home state of Pennsylvania.

If things had gone according to plan, they’d already be back in Lake Caywood, resting up before venturing down to West Virginia for Flannel Lobster’s much-anticipated performance at Off the Grid. There had been the brief consideration of landing at a more southern location, but as it was, the men needed to stop off in the south-central town—if only for an hour or so. Lucy had their costumes, after all, and while Finn had made the suggestion that she simply drive down to meet them, Bas refused to consider it. “She’s expecting us at the house,” he’d argued. “She’s got the costumes laid out and the makeup ready to go. I don’t wanna switch things up on her this late in the game. Can’t we make it work?”

And so they’d flown into Philadelphia instead of Harrisburg.

It will make for a longer commute back to Lake Caywood, yes, but if things fall into place from here on out, they should arrive in West Virginia with time to spare.

Still, Bas reasons, he should keep his girlfriend in the loop, and so fishing his cell from his pants pocket, he highlights her name and initiates the call.

Lucy answers on the second ring, and while the greeting she speaks is only two syllables in length—a simple “Hey, you”—Bas is somehow able to perceive two things:

1. A lack of enthusiasm.

2. An uncharacteristic level of fatigue.

“Hey,” he echoes, stifling a yawn of his own. “You sound tired.”

“So do you.”

“Yeah, well… I’m essentially running on fumes.”

“Are you in Harrisburg?”

“Philly,” he corrects. “We’ll be rollin’ in hot and ripe… None of us has showered since yesterday morning; I’m apologizing in advance.”

The giggle Lucy volunteers is faint but detectable. “That’s alright. Smelly or not, I’m looking forward to seeing you.”

Trivia Recap: 6/8, Smoke Plume Edition

Players: Mary (English Teacher), Darren (Math Professor), Brock (A/V Stuff), & Ben (Teacher & Blog Author)

The team is once again handicapped. Hannah is vacationing, Alex is coffee-ing, and Phil is B.O.D.-y-ing. And the miscellaneous players were nowhere to be found. Perhaps, team Educated Friends could overcome the limitations.

The last-week winner’s choice category was French Surrealist Poetry. However the question provided enough context (a piece of Mel Gibson dialogue in Braveheart) that the team found its first points because the answer was “FREEEEEDOOOM!!”

Q2 (Bonus Q) asked the team to identify the film franchise led by Harrison Ford into its fifth iteration and to identify the subtitle for bonus points. Easy points. Q3 asked the team to identify 3 words with the letters “BUST” somewhere sequentially. “Combustion” (humans can’t do this), “Buster” (Posey of the SF Giants), and “Robusta” (a type of coffee) achieved full points and a bonus for team EF (we may have wrote Robusto, but maybe not . . . ironic that the team was missing its coffee shop owner). Q4 was the first falter. Do you know the amount of seconds on the NBA shot clock? It’s 24, but we thought it was 30. That flawed thinking limited the second part of the question contributions from math know-it-all Darren. Q5 (Medieval Times) asked about some Pope’s order to take back Jerusalem and we knew it was the Crusades, but the team was unable to successfully identify a year within the range of time in which the first Crusade mission took place (1096ish). At the end of round one, team EF was in decent, but not super shape.

Round two led off with a question (Bonus pts.) about TV theme songs. It was competitive reality TV theme songs though so some members probably disassociated from life during this moment (right team?). In miraculous fashion Darren identified “Survivor” and Mary identified “Dancing with the Stars” to earn us the points. However, we, like all but one team couldn’t identify the third one for bonus points. Q7 asked teams to identify a brand, developed in the 1960’s, that is synonymous with plastic sandwich bags (Ziploc) which the team earned points for. Q8 (my favorite of the night) asked teams to identify the two countries in South America named after a person. The answer was Bolivia (Simón Bolívar) and Colombia (Christopher Columbus). Check. Q9 (MLB player nicknames) looked for the answer to who earned the nickname “Mr. November” during the 2001 MLB Championship. I instantly wrote down Randy Johnson because I knew the D-Backs won that year. I was also sorta thinking about Mark Grace. However, Darren went to Derek Jeter right away which was correct. I don’t remember his heroics during that series, but they lost, so it seems a little ridiculous to earn that nickname when you didn’t win the series. Q10 asked participating teams to identify the two elements represented by two vowels on the periodic table. The team all knew gold (Au), but was unsure of the second. Darren suggested Ei for Einsteinium, but that was wrong. It’s Eu for Europium. I suspect if someone wore a periodic table t-shirt to the competition, it would have helped.

The half-time sheet required teams to identify the celebrities depicted in bad tattoos on the top. Team EF got them all, but shout-out to me for knowing the bottom left was Rachel Ray (pulled that one from my subconscious I guess). The bottom was a typical matching question asking to match authors to their debut novels. Is it common knowledge that there were two Brontes? Mary was cooking on this from the time the sheet was laid down which earned a perfect 20/20.

Round three, Q11 (children’s literature): This children’s book starts with some kind of quote about a farmer grabbing his ax to slaughter a pig. Mary knew it was Charlotte’s Web, which made sense. Q12 (health care) asked teams to identify a medical system started by a German immigrant. My mind went immediately to Kaiser Permanente for somewhat obvious reasons and that was correct. Q13 (3 clues, 1 word) was a good question (I don’t remember all the clues). We got it on the second clue and it was “Odyssey”. And then came Q14 on governmental agencies. I take a lot of personal guilt for how this went down. First, I suggested this be our bonus question. Second, Brock and I talked the team into going with the FBI and not the US Marshals for an answer to which agency is responsible for the witness protection program. Mary had made the correct suggestion, but didn’t advocate enough to overturn our gut instincts. That’s trivia! Q15 asked about international singers and was a question about a solo dude from BTS and Mary got the answer, but we failed the bonus. At this point, we are second place, but trailing by a good bit to the Street Sharks.

6-4-2: Name the actor portraying William Hale in the new Scorsese movie Killers of the Flower Moon. The team was torn between Dicaprio and De Niro. EF waited on clue two which landed the answer of De Niro. 4 points.

Q16 (world geography): Basically, which two countries border the Strait of Gibraltar? and ! Points earned. Q17 (cajun cooking): Paraphrasing, what is the weird name of the Cajun dish which combines white rice and chicken giblets? Darren knew this to be “Dirty Rice” and it sounds delicious! Q18 (triple 50/50): Which movies earned an Oscar nomination or a Razzy nomination? The answer had to be one or the other. Indecent Proposal was a Razzy, Pearl Harbor was an Oscar (apparently for sound), and Fifty Shades of Grey was a Razzy. Team EF got it correct, but personally, I think Indecent Proposal is the best film. Q19 (90’s trends) asked about a trend started during an episode of TV titled “The Orthodontist” or something like that. Mary knew it was “the Rachel” hairstyle. Q20 (College Basketball) included another stumble. What team, who beat Duke, was the only team to score over 100 points in a NCAA championship game? And, who was the coach? I don’t think any team got this correct. It was UNLV and Jerry Tarkanian.

Final Question (International Organizations): What 70s pop song shares its name with an organization started by George Williams in 1844?

It’s the YMCA, team EF got it right, but it finished 1 or 2 points behind the archrival Street Sharks team. Second place equals more beers though. Next week’s first category is “David Sedaris.”

What Books Are You Taking to the Beach?

I'm at the beach.

Avalon, New Jersey.

I'm here with my friends Annie, Amy (my other mother), Theresa (my other other mother), Buddy, and Nicole. Don't think it's safe for you to break into my house and steal my dogs or my cats or Harvey or anything either, because my favorite students of all time, Nate and Scotty, are housesitting for me.

Anyway, back to the beach.

Theresa stopped by my house the other day when she saw me out doing yard work and asked, "What books are you taking to the beach?" I love that she asked! I love that I go to the beach with people who REALLY put a lot of thought into which books they'll pack.

Here are our current beach reads...

Hannah:

Watch Us Shine by Marisa de los Santos ("She's my very favoritest author and I am LOVING the book so far and I can't wait to read more either later tonight or tomorrow... on the beach!").

Annie:

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand ("Perfect beach read with engaging characters that puts you in the summer mood right away").

Amy:

A Room Full of Bones by Elly Griffiths ("I am intrigued by the exhumed coffin and I can't guess what's in it yet").

Theresa:

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson ("An eye-opening account of the Blue people of Kentucky and Cussy's dedication to bringing books to the underprivileged").

Buddy:

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk ("I can't wait to talk about the brain aspects with my psychology classes!").

Nicole:

Running Through the Words by Hannah Rae ("It's really fun to read it with the author in my presence").

And that's today's blog! There you go, folks!

I Love My Mom

Last night I went to Annie's house to look at an empty spot in her garden and give her advice about what to plant. The answer? Hostas. I'm gonna give her some when we get back from the beach because I have many and can easily divide them.

Anyway.

Annie made delicious fish tacos, which was coincidental because I just finished LISTENING TO (that's a story for another day) Like A Flip Turn yesterday afternoon and Lydia has fish tacos early on in the novel. So while Annie and I were eating fish tacos, I received a text from my mom that said this:

Obviously, I then checked my email and discovered a short recounting (a blog, if you will) of my mom's evening with her Siamese cat Poppy. (Pops was a gift from me, I might add... and she's a nuisance.) Essentially, though, my mom wrote today's blog and didn't even know she was doing it. Isn't that funny? Here it is:

"Sad Story About A Puzzle"

by Nancy

I was within about 150 pieces of being done with this Wysocki puzzle and having so much fun listening to my book - I know you thought this puzzle looked boring, but it was really fun - when Pops decided once again to dip her paw into my wine glass. She tipped the glass and my full glass of Chardonnay was so quickly absorbed by the puzzle pieces. The layers began to separate and I knew that there was no hope. I yelled at her and she ran and is still hiding. I take full responsibility for what happened. I am the adult here.

The soggy puzzle pieces were quickly scooped up into a State Store bag and deposited in the trash.

Henceforth, when drinking wine while working on a puzzle, I will use a heavy untippable glass which I've placed on a tray. Or perhaps I will give Pops her own saucer of wine.

I know that you're with Annie. Hope you two are having a great time together.

Trivia Recap: 6/1

The Players: Darren (mathematician and guest blogger), Ben (not a minor league shortstop), Alex (coffee shop owner), Victoria (veterinarian), and Brock (creative marketing genius, according to Hannah).

Hint of the Day: a goat

This week, Hannah and Mary had to watch students graduate and go to some dumb party so they couldn’t play trivia with us. But we still fielded a great team and even though Ben had agreed to write the blog he changed his mind so once again you are stuck with me, Hannah’s readers. On the other hand, Adam was back after his week away and apologized for missing trivia last week.

The opening category was the Irish Language, and luckily for us Brock knew that if someone walks up to you on the streets of Dublin and says “Slainte!” they are asking you to have a drink with them. We rocked the ‘What a Bummer’ category with our combined knowledge of bumblebees, Dagwood Bumstead, and albumins, and then Victoria explained to us how you administer antibiotics to bumblebees which was really quite interesting. We know about British parliament and mimosas and even remembered that the lead in the movie Son-In-Law was Pauly Shore but we did not remember that the woman in the movie was Carla Gugino, which were the only points we missed all round.

In the music category we recognized songs about brothers by Elton John and The Black Keys, but not by some country artist which was the first time of the evening that we were sad that we didn’t have Mary’s trivia knowledge to help us out. The next question asked “The logo of the production studio named for which comedienne featured a kitten purring to parody the MGM lion.” I was pretty sure the answer was Mary Tyler Moore (MTM studios) but the rest of my team was too busy bickering about whether ‘comedienne’ was really a word or if Adam was saying ‘comedian’ and eventually I just put it down and luckily I was right!

In the next category, Ben knew that the largest National Parks in Montana and Alaska both started with the word ‘Glacier’, although he also thought that Glacier was the only national park in Montana, forgetting the other 11 including a little park called Yellowstone. Victoria was extremely confident (and correct) that Zyrtec was the name of an antihistamine and was telling us the dosage for different breeds of dogs, and we knew that David Beckham played for the LA Galaxy when he came to the US but were torn about what team he left in Europe (the answer, as I suspected, was Real Madrid).

The top half of the Bonus sheet had us name famous sinister characters from movie stills, and we knew nine of the ten but it turns out that Kathy Bates’s character was not actually named ‘Mrs. Martha Misery’ as we guessed it was. On the bottom half we had to name the musical artist who released each set of three albums and we got all of these, thanks in part to the fact that Mary has mentioned to some of us this independent artist that she loves who released albums such as “Red” and “1989”. I think we were all a little ashamed to know so many Justin Bieber and One Direction albums, but it got us points and we were in great shape after halftime, in second place only three points behind the Street Sharks.

The third round also went spectacularly, as Ben remembered the Eddie Murphy romcom Boomerang , and I knew that Apollo Anton Ohno was the three-named athlete who has won more winter Olympic medals than anyone else in history. Alex helped by remembering the book Corduroy, although she also thought that Funny Face won best picture, which it did not. But Gigi did so we still got our points. There was a Norse mythology question about what animal pulls Thor’s chariot, only they also told us the scientific name. Victoria picked up on the fact that it included “Cabra”, Brock remembered the chariot from the movie, and I realized the hint of the day all of which led us to the same answer of Goat. (Loyal readers may recall that this is the second week in a row where the knowledge of the word ‘cabra’ helped get us an answer. We are onto you, Pour House!)

So we had a great night and we placed second, just three points behind our nemeses.

Good night, everybody!

Oh wait, you want to hear about the fourth round? Would you believe me if I told you there was no fourth round last night? I guess not, eh? Well, loyal readers, it did not go so well for the Educated Friends. It took us until the 2 point clue on the 6-4-2 to know that Van Gogh was the painter who accidentally painted garlic instead of an onion (or maybe it was the other way around). We did not in fact know that Uranus has 28 moons named after Shakespeare characters. We also did not know the name of the board game that features a spinner and which is (allegedly) the longest continuously sold board game, having been available since 1860. Or rather, we thought we knew that it was Chutes and Ladders which would have been the Billy Ocean-est moment ever because right before trivia started Victoria was asking me about my mathematical research and I told her about a paper that I wrote about playing Chutes and Ladders with different size spinners so I knew that game had a spinner and I knew it was old. Unfortunately, depending on how you count it is either too old (dating back to ancient India) or not old enough (it was only marketed commercially starting in 1890) and it was not the correct answer, which was The Game of Life. To be fair, Brock had suggested this answer but we thought that game couldn’t be nearly that old and Chutes and Ladders was stuck in my head from the earlier conversation. (Incidentally, while double checking some facts here I got sucked into this really interesting New Yorker article about The Game of Life and I recommend it!) The kicker is that we wagered nine points AND this was our bonus category. ARGH.

The next question was a Triple 50-50 about which battleships went back into commission after WWII, and the two that Ben had a good idea of we got wrong and the one we randomly guessed we got right but that didn’t get us any points. Luckily, I did know what country used Drachmas as currency and several of us knew that Keenan and Kel were on All That and Good Burger, but by that time our fate had been sealed and we had slipped to sixth place.

Mathematically, we could have still come back because we were only 17 points down and we felt pretty good about the category ‘Historical Americans’ for reasons that we aren’t supposed to mention in the blog, but the final question was “This woman, who died in Connecticut fifty five years ago today, was known as ‘the First Lady of Courage’”

(As a side note, I almost always review the famous birthdays and death anniversaries as I sit at Four Score waiting for people to arrive, but I didn’t tonight in part because Victoria and I started talking about my research. Just think how differently the whole night might have gone if it hadn’t been for that one conversation)

In any event, we debated between a few people none of whom seemed quite right, such as Rosa Parks and Susan B Anthony, before settling on Eleanor Roosevelt. But the correct answer was Helen Keller. If you didn’t know that, don’t feel too bad because no team got it correct, meaning we ended the game in sixth place. Not a great showing for the Educated Friends. This was also when Ben decided he didn’t want to write the blog after all because he was just too disappointed in us.

Hannah isn’t coming back again next week, but she did promise she would send us photos so that we don’t forget what she looks like. Hopefully Mary will take a turn writing the blog so that you don’t have to listen to me again. Until then, Happy Summer!

Better Late than Never... Guster!

Two Sundays ago, my concert husband Phil and I experienced a very cool thing at Merriweather Post Pavilion: Guster, performing with 110 students who are members of the Howard County Youth Orchestra.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Guster, you should look them up because they're really quite fun. You may know (because I may have said it before) that I have an affinity for bands from Massachusetts. Dispatch... The Mighty Mighty Bosstones... Dropkick Murphies... Bella's Bartok... Guster... It just seems that good music comes out of Massachusetts. Maybe this has to do with the Berklee College of Music? I don't know. But what I do know is this: Guster is fun and the guy who plays bongos, Brian, is INCREDIBLE.

The show at Merriweather was on a Sunday night and tickets were only $25. Therefore, Phil and I would have been stupid to pass up the opportunity. And from the perspective of an educator, I just thought it would be beyond cool to watch as 110 students had an experience of a lifetime. And it was.

The story, as I read it on Instagram, went like this: Some kids reached out to Guster and asked if the band would be interested in headlining a show with them on May 21 at Merriweather Post Pavilion. Guster, being the good sports that they are, were like, "Sure! How many kids are we talking about? Ten? Twelve?" And the kids answered, "One hundred ten." They spent the following weeks learning the music, and then had ONE rehearsal with Guster the day before the show.

I've seen a lot of shows at Merriweather -- it's one of my favorite venues -- but the place was EMPTY when Phil and I got there. It was super cool! Like, here's an example of how empty it was: I went into a bathroom that was being cleaned by three women and no one else was in there. A bathroom being cleaned during a concert?! Unheard of! I was the only other person in the room!

And here's another example, this one with video proof: Phil and I discovered an area of the park that we'd been to on several previous occasions, but had never noticed the artwork on the walls because we were usually being shuffled through that narrow area with about three hundred other people. I sent this footage to Annie because I knew she'd enjoy it:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/58cc22_43350515ed614caaaeab477275d3257f/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

As for the actual concert... It was great! The band's lead singer, Ryan, is HILARIOUS. He always has phenomenal fashion sense and that Sunday was no exception. He was dressed to the nines, wearing pants printed with roses and a nice jacket. He also had a new pair of boots on his feet (which Phil found very intriguing because Ryan actually brought a back-up pair of shoes on stage in case the new ones resulted in blisters). The story behind the new boots went something like this: He explored Columbia, Maryland, earlier that day and stumbled upon a thrift shop. In this thrift shop, there was ONE pair of shoes... and wouldn't you know the shoes were his size?! Hotdog! He obviously had to get 'em. They had a neat little gold plate on the front that looked like it might be tasseled. At one point during the show, said boot came untied and Ryan asked the orchestra to improvise while he made up a song about tying his boot. It was excellent. Not quite as catchy as "Fa Fa" or "Happy Frappy" or "Amsterdam" or "Barrel of a Gun," but still catchy nevertheless.

Speaking of "Happy Frappy"... I had completely forgotten about that song, but Guster reminded me how much I love it and now it's (currently) the final song on my playlist for the book I'm writing right now, Dog-Eared Life. (I'm almost done; I think I'll be finished in another week or two.)

Another great part of the concert was when Ryan went into the crowd and continued to sing (and swear) while weaving among the fans. His mic had a cord and I am still amazed by the length of this cord. I wish I had a video of him walking absolutely EVERYWHERE with it. I know it doesn't come across as funny in this recap, but trust me: the audience was in tears.

Sometimes Phil brings me to tears with the clever ideas he comes up with. For example, he decided that since we are concert husband and wife, we should have a concert child (since nearly everyone at this particular performance was there to support the kids in the orchestra). Phil wanted our daughter's name to be Gertrude, but I suggested Birdie, and he liked that so that's what we went with. And when other parents were cheering for their children, Phil also cheered for ours! Sometimes, when the camera zoomed in on a particular girl, he'd whoop, "Yeah, Birdie! You go, girl! We're so proud!" So that was fun. Phil really makes me laugh. If you don't know Phil, you should try to catch him at a show too -- he's worth it. ❤️

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/58cc22_177bce18024349ad9f91d186d64dd062/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Trivia Recap: 5/25

The Players: Hannah (English teacher), Brock (creative marketing genius), Darren (math professor), Danielle (bartender), Kristy (assistant principal), and Steph (special education teacher)

Opening Category: British Invasion

Hint of the Day: A broken heart with a band-aid on top of it

Darren was the first to arrive at Fourscore last night (other than Danielle, that is, who works there) and he texted to let me know that the DJ was a lady! Adam had told us last week that he would be gone for a week --- it's all very mysterious --- but the lady did a nice job. She played all of the audio clues a minimum of THREE times and she didn't play music after the audio clues, thus giving contestants a chance to think without other music clogging our thoughts. I really appreciated that.

Round One:

I was pretty confident that I would do well with British Invasion and we therefore made it our bonus category. We did do well, but it was largely because of Steph, who really knows her bands! I grew up listening to 50s and 60s hits, but I admittedly always forget who sings "House of the Rising Sun." The answer is The Animals, but my instinct is always to say The Zombies first. Darren, Steph, and I all knew The Kinks, and Steph knew the third band, The Hollies, even though we only needed two. We didn't even get a bonus for knowing everything! Sad. MLB Hall of Famers was fine because Brock knew the answer was Babe Ruth (he fortunately corrected Darren, whose instinct was to say Hank Aaron), and then both men figured out the bonus (Boston) together. They said it was an easy question, but I didn't have any idea about any of it. Starts with GN was easy and we basically knew the answers going into it. I mean, how many words can you think of that begin with GN? I came up with gnu, gnat, and gnome. Gnat was the first answer and gnome was the second. The third ended up being gnarly, which earned us a two-point bonus, but since LITERALLY EVERY TEAM got all three answers, that didn't set us ahead at all. Concepts of Science was an oddly worded question, but Darren and Brock determined that the answer of friction was correct. I, however, only ever associate dynamic and static with types of characters. I am, after all, an English teacher. Get this, though: Even though I am an English teacher who doesn't watch many films, I did know the tagline for Erin Brockovich. How about that?! Granted, Darren knew it too, but it was a big event in Educated Friends experiences! Darren knew the director was Soderbergh, which earned us a bonus, and so Round One ended up being great for us because we didn't miss a single point! Go team!

Round Two:

Pour House Trivia really struggles with the definition of alliteration... but they did okay this time. The first category, another audio clue, was titled A Little Alliteration and we had to identify three songs with alliterative titles. "Heartbreak Hotel" was recognizable by most, Steph knew the the band for the second clue was Led Zeppelin, but not the song, and I knew MIA's song from many years ago is called "Paper Planes" because I once made a piece of art (paper airplanes flying across the canvas) based on that song and sold it at Garryowen at my second art show. Anyway... that category earned us fourteen points. Magazines was next. I went to the bar to get another beer at this point and a fairly phenomenal thing happened while I was there, but it has nothing to do with trivia and everything to do with Hannah History, so that's a story for another day. While I was away from the table, however, my team earned another seven points by knowing the answer to the question was Us Weekly. I think Darren said that either Steph or Kristy knew that one, but I'm not sure because I wasn't there. US Geography was okay. We honestly would have benefitted from Ben being there, because Ben is an expert on things like geography and presidents because of his job. He is not a doctor or a lawyer or a dog groomer or a dolphin trainer or an army general or a film director or an actor or a reality TV star and for that reason, he is very schooled in certain content. We got the points, but not the bonus, and then moved onto Ancient History... Ugh. Coincidentally, Kristy was once upon a time a history teacher, but her expertise falls within a twenty-year realm and none of the twenty years that she specialized in were asked about last night. Therefore, we did not know the empire that was required of us and lost a point as a result. SNL Hodgepodge was easy enough, though, because Darren was playing trivia at the college last week and had an identical question! He right away knew the youngest and oldest SNL hosts of all time: Drew Barrymore and Betty White.

Here's a random little story that occurred around this time in the night. Danielle stopped by and commented on my Trampled By Turtles hoodie and asked if I was going to Del Fest. I was not, but I should have gone because Trampled By Turtles played there LAST NIGHT. While I was AT TRIVIA. I could have been at a show!!! And what's more, her friends MET TRAMPLED BY TURTLES IN THEIR HOTEL! I would like to meet Trampled By Turtles ANYWHERE. I want to tell Dave Simonet (whose middle name I know, thanks to the contract I have) that I love his lyrics and his writing in general and that he inspires me to make art. And I want to talk to Dave Carroll (whose middle name I also know) about his dog Truck.

Halftime

This week's bonus sheet was difficult. The top was fun because we had to match the actor/actress to the animated character that he/she voiced... but the bottom was not especially enjoyable. There were lists of things, with a thing missing from each list, and we not only needed to figure out the pattern of the list, but also the item that should have been included. We lost four points, giving us a score of 16/20, which is low for the Educated Friends. Despite this, we were in the lead going into Round Three.

Round Three:

As is common with Pour House Trivia, the third round was random and weird. Darren knew the answer to Name That Actress (Anna Paquin) and also had a humorous anecdote to share. It involved a friend of his (another professor) who had Anna in class, but wouldn't allow her to miss a day, and so Anna had to drop the class. When the professor friend shared this with Darren, though, Darren pointed out that Anna had to miss class that day because she was PRESENTING FOR THE GOLDEN GLOBE. Actually, now that I write that, I'm not positive it was the Golden Globe... I mix up all of those big award ceremonies. But it was something like the Golden Globe Award. Ask Darren if you see him; it's a good story. Next was Legendary Creatures and Brock got Chupacabra, which was helpful. The Third Question was the third category and we did figure that out. We missed 2022 Sports Champs, which asked us about the WNBA (which absolutely no one one the team follows), but earned points for Historical Islands because Darren knew where Napoleon was exiled. He did not know that Napoleon was also exiled to Saint Helena, so we missed the bonus, but we were still doing really well at this point!

6-4-2:

The six-point clue required us to know the name of the company in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Darren thought that answer (we knew it was a color) might be red. But then we waited for four-point clue and we learned that it was a reddish-brown color and also had something to do with Taylor Swift. Now, had Mary been in attendance, we would have known this, but Mary was not in attendance. Mary sometimes chatters on about her love for Taylor Swift, though, and sometimes I pay attention to these chatterings. I had a vague remembrance of "Maroon," and though I did say this to the group, Darren did not agree that the color maroon is brownish. Darren was wrong, however, and the answer was maroon and so we didn't get it until the two-point clue.

Round Four:

Musical Trios was alright. I forget who knew the first answer (Beyonce), but Danielle saved us with Mike D from the Beastie Boys... and I'm pretty sure Darren knew Neal Pert. Commercials and Products asked about a product called Tareyton that advertised with black eyes and people fighting not to switch. We had it narrowed down cigarettes or something else, and Darren was on the fence between the two, but then Danielle came over and said that she's pretty sure it was cigarettes and we went with that and got it right. From Page to Small Screen was easy enough: It asked about American Gods, I believe, and who wrote it. Both Darren and I knew it was Neil Gaiman.

Side Note: If you are in need of an audiobook, I recommend just about anything by Neil Gaiman because he reads his own stuff and has such a nice voice!

Insect Ecology sounded a little bit daunting, but Darren and I know our butterflies (apparently) and were confident with the answer of monarch. And then the last category was a bust --- Soft Drinks --- because we were all leaning toward ginger ale, but then Danielle came over and said, "I think it's Mountain Dew," and some people were opposed to that idea because they couldn't believe that Mountain Dew had been out as long as the clue suggested, so we didn't put in our answer early enough to earn the two-point bonus, but we did get it right and at the end of the fourth round, we were in the lead! Of everyone! We were in the lead by two points!

And then everything went to shit...

Final:

Sports Geography was the final category, which is absolutely zero fun, but we waged all of our points anyway.

Question: Other than New York and California, what is the only state with two teams in all four major leagues (baseball, basketball, hockey, and football)?

And then we narrowed down the answer to two possibilities, Texas and Florida, and even though we were this close to going with Florida, at the last second Darren changed it to Texas and that was the wrong answer and we came in fifth and that was that.

My Classroom is a Coffee Shop?

Today, some of my students (periods one and two) and I did a fun thing. We had a read-aloud party!

What's a read-aloud party, you ask? Well, it's when the teacher (that's me!) brings her books to school and the students bring snacks to school and then the teacher reads aloud to the students while they eat their snacks. How fun!

I read the backs of all the books to my students and then each class chose what they wanted to hear. Period one was all about The Way Back. Mr. Personality was like, "Yo, Miss. I think the first one be what we wanna hear. I ain't sure about that last one... but that first one? Yeah. You read it to us! Go, girl!" So I read the first chapter of The Way Back, with HILARIOUS commentary from Mr. Personality the whole way through, and then when I got to the end of that, My Name's A State said, "I think you should read a chapter from every one of your books, Ms. Meeson. In order." So we moved onto Like A Flip Turn and got as far as that initial introduction between Jenny and Petey Goode *Swoon!* before the bell rang.

I let the kids who were interested enter their names in a raffle to receive a signed copy of The Way Back and I'll admit that I was pleasantly surprised that so many of my students wanted to win a copy of my book! (I told them they could only enter if they actually promised to read it this summer.)

In period two, the kids voted to hear the first chapter of Running Through the Words, and when I reached the end of Chapter One, they voted to hear Chapter Two. How fun is that? Period two got to meet Sebastian *Swoon!* and Lucy, so that was very fun. And then Extra Vowels in Her Name was like, "You should let me borrow that book for the summer." But I didn't... because that's my copy and if my Buddy ever buys copies of it for the school library, Extra Vowels in Her Name can borrow it there.

I drew the name of the winner after all of the kids from periods one and two entered, and I was soooooo pleased with the girl who is receiving the free copy because she tried to bring this amazing watermelon-strawberry punch to school today and on the walk between her house and the building, the container she was carrying broke (it was glass) and so she had to get rid of the beverage. (Drinking shards of glass is a bad idea.) And it looked so delicious! So I hope that even though Walking Smoothie had a rough start to her day, the free book helps.

Anyway, that was a fun start to my day. And a couple times later in the afternoon, while standing in the hallway, a students would walk by and say, "I love your writing, Ms. Meeson!" It was just really nice, you know? I feel as though I shared something pretty personal and very cool with these teenagers who have been in my life for the past nine months and they were really kind and receptive. It was nice. It made me feel really good about myself and my job and my writing. ❤️

Trivia Recap: 5/18

Hello readers! It’s Mary, back for another trivia recap!

The Players: Hannah (English teacher), Mary (English teacher), Darren (math professor), Ben (not a physicist).

Opening Category: The Flintstones

Hint of the Day: Tiara/Crown

Round One:

Hannah was excited for the first category because she studied Flintstone trivia in preparation. However, in her studies, she did not learn that Fred Flinstone’s boss was Mr. Slate so we lost a point. The team knew that Mount St. Helen’s was the volcano that erupted forty-some years ago for our first U.S. history question of the night. Ben knew that the volcano was in the Cascades. The next category was Over/Under and we made it our bonus. The first question was about the area and perimeter of a square; Darren knew the answer was over 100 right away. Darren, having lived in Texas before, knew there were over 100 counties in Texas, and we made a lucky guess in knowing you needed less than 100 seconds for some sort of bowling question. I don’t know much about bowling so I didn’t really understand that question. Idioms was the next category. I knew the name of the disciple for the idiom was Thomas for Doubting Thomas. We finished the round knowing our science fiction television shows by knowing the slogan for Heroes and one of the actresses that starred in it.

Round Two:

To open the round, we had an audio question about stately music. We knew the songs “Oklahoma,” “Ohio,” and “Tennessee” and got all of our bonus points. Darren and Ben knew about the Concord airplane for the next question. Sports questions are usually our weakness, but Ben knew that the current NBA player for the 76ers was Embiid. We did not get the bonus. I said to go with Kentucky as the college that Embiid played for, however, it was Kansas. Physics was my least favorite subject in high school and when it came up as a trivia category, I was not thrilled. Ben knew that Enrico Fermi was the physicist known as the architect of the atomic bomb. Darren knew the subtitle for the Superman movie that was a box office bomb of the 1980s, but there was much debate about the name of Lex Luther’s nephew in the film. We listed names that started with “L”. Hannah suggested Lenny but we thought that Lucas seemed like more of an 80’s name. We should have trusted Hannah because Lenny was the answer!

Halftime:

The top half of the halftime sheet consisted of us identifying famous people who had directions (north, south, east, west, up, down, left, and right) in their last names. We struggled to identify two of the ten and lost those points. However, we aced the bottom half of the worksheet and knew the nicknames of several U.S. cities.

Round Three:

Food Brands was the category that started the round. We knew the rhyming cookie brand was Famous Amos but we missed the bonus which was the first name of the man that created Famous Amos. I knew that the Pixar film that features three triplets named Hamish, Harris, and Hubert is Brave. Another interesting piece of trivia about Brave is that the author, Maggie Stiefvater, who wrote The Scorpio Races, which is a novel that Hannah and I teach, wrote a novel that is a sequel to the film. It is called Bravely and it’s on my list of books to read this summer. The third category for the round was called “Crown Me” and we knew that King Charles’s coronation took place in Westminster Abbey, we knew what a Claddagh ring was, and we knew that Crown Royal was made in Canada. Darren knew the answer to the Concepts of Science Question which was the God Particle. Unfortunately, we did not know the answer to the final category which was our bonus. We had to figure out the title of the new Apple TV show that was about a woman who discovers that her husband has another secret life. I thought that it was The Stranger Beside Me. However, Hannah remembered that was the title of a book about a woman who used to work with Ted Bundy. I then remembered that we had talked about that book before and that is where I got the title from. The correct answer was The Lies He Told Me and Jennifer Garner stars in it.

6-4-2:

Before the first clue was read, Ben was trying to convince us to turn in an answer for the six-point clue no matter what. That idea was quickly pushed aside when the first clue was read. We had to name the state that was the halfway point between the North Pole and the equator and the Prime Meridian. It took us to the two-point clue to figure out that the state was Wisconsin.

Round 4:

We did not start off the round on a good note. We did not know the hip-hop artists that performed the song “Princess Diana.” Ben of course knew the answer to the second U.S. history question of the evening which was George Marshall. Darren and I both knew the mother-daughter duo of Diana Ross and Tracie Ellis Ross. Surprisingly, we got another sports question right which was identifying the Lynx WNBA team. One of the highlights of the evening was when Darren immediately answered the question for the Three Clues One Word category. The question asked to identify the last name of an actress who played in Facts of Life and another clue involving math. Darren laughed as he wrote the answer and took it up right away. When he returned, he said, “That’s the sweet spot of my knowledge base: 80’s sitcoms and math.” He even drew a venn diagram to demonstrate this but Ben threw it away before we could take a picture of it. Obviously, Darren answered the question correctly with the response, Fields.

Final Category:

Ben must have been in a gambling mood because he was encouraging us to wager twelve points for the final question since we were in second place. However, when we discovered that the final category was sports geography, (our two worst categories combined!), Hannah and I told Darren to do the math and figure out what we needed to guarantee that we would place. Darren wanted it to be on the record that we did the math because Phil always wants us to strategically calculate our wager as well. Darren thought Phil would be proud of him, so he texted him in our team’s group chat to let him know. Ben also wanted us to note for the record that he continued to insist on wagering the full twelve points despite that the category was sports geography. The final question was read and Ben knew that the country with the largest land area to not host a summer Olympics was India. We ended up coming in second place.

The opening category for next week is British invasion music and it will be an audio clue.