Hannah Rae's Blog, page 20

Rock Me, Mama, Like A Wagon Wheel

My dear friend Erin and I visited Jim Thorpe this weekend so we could see Old Crow Medicine Show perform at Penn's Peak. This is a venue I've heard my friends Annie and Brian talk about for years, and from the way it was described, I knew I needed to see a show there. Who better to see than Old Crow?

Although it was my fifth time seeing the band, it was Erin's first, so that was really fun for me!

The venue itself is beautiful. Essentially in the middle of nowhere, it's got a cabin vibe because everything is open and wooden. Erin and I were able to get pretty close to the stage, too, which was fantastic because it gave us a great view of Cory Younts (my favorite musician crush). Knowing that Cory plays piano and spends most of each show on the left side of the stage (his left; my right), we stood on that side. While there, we made friends with some nice teachers who live in that area and talked about educator-related things.

Here's a video of Old Crow playing "Wagon Wheel." I zoom in on Cory each time so you can enjoy his face in more detail. (He has such a nice face!)

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/58cc22_5a374933344a4d1aae2a25144ac03445/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

And here is a video of Cory whistling, because he is such a good whistler!

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/58cc22_dc59598d444a4f529a8f4de5406eb030/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

After the show, Erin and I headed back to our hotel, drank some beer, had deep talks, played "everyone's favorite hotel game" (Erin needs to be the one to explain this), and went to sleep... and the next day, we explored Jim Thorpe! What a cool little mountain town! If you've never been, you should go because there are a lot of fun shops to explore and EVERYONE is friendly.

Erin and I visited a coffee shop called Muggles' Mug, which was Harry Potter themed, where we each got a latte and a scone. My scone was lemon-poppyseed and it was delicious! The latte was really good too! After that, we explored an oil-and-vinegar store where we sampled just about everything there was to sample! I bought some white peachy-pear balsamic that can be added to iced tea. I'm so excited to use that!

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There was a very cool paper store in Jim Thorpe. It specialized in cards and stationery, and was marketed as selling cards for bad people. The merchandise was hilarious! Erin and I laughed a lot.

I forget all the little gift shops we went into, but Erin bought some oil that she can rub into her skin after a shower. It smells like roses, I believe, and has real rose quartz in the bottle. When she finishes the oil, she's supposed to carry the stones in her pocket for healing purposes... and when we later shared this with her husband Matt, he said, "Just be sure to carry a slingshot in your other pocket." I liked that response.

I bought my mom a funny thing for her birthday in one of the little shops, but I can't put it in this blog because my mom reads my blog and today is her birthday (Happy birthday, Mom!) and I haven't given her the gift yet. Visiting that shop was was a fun experience, though, because the lady working the register was hilarious! I asked if she was a reader and her answer was, "Do I read?! I read like a nut!" I told her that I write like a nut and gave her my business card. She's going to check out my books; she said I have an author's name.

One of my favorite parts about Jim Thorpe was the winery. It was Erin's idea to go there and we arrived exactly at noon, which is when they opened. I got a flight and she got a sangria. The girl who served us was named Hannah (spelled the right way, with an H on the end) and said that she hopes to someday be an English teacher. She, too, is going to check out my books. I hope she likes them.

The best part about the winery was that they serve wine in to-go cups! Naturally, we got some drinks to go and continued exploring the town. One of the places we stopped into was a record store and I made Erin take a picture of me holding a Herman's Hermits record. In high school, Herman's Hermits was one of my favorite bands. (Reel Big Fish was the other one.)

See that to-go cup I'm holding? It's wine!

Around this time, I received a text from Nate, who was currently at my house. He and Scotty, my two favorite students, are my go-to guys for watching my animals. Augusta seems to do well with them, which is important since she is funny around people who are not me, and both Nate and Scotty seem to like my dogs. Plus, they always send me a selfie of themselves with the dogs, which I absolutely love!

Anyway, Nate was checking in to let me know that everything had gone according to plan with the pups and the only casualty was a chewed-up baseball cap. Scotty's, courtesy of Arlo's teeth.

Knowing this, Erin and I set out on a mission to replace said baseball cap... and came up empty-handed. We did discover a shop that was run by two cats, though! The cats sold sweatshirts and t-shirts and socks. There were no humans to be found, but Erin and I hung out with the cats for a good five minutes or so.

From there, we grabbed some food at Molly Maguire's, a recommendation from Danielle on my trivia team. I had my first-ever wedge salad, which was quite scrumptious, and then we got on our way home. As has become tradition on overnight concert excursions, we ran into a tremendous rainstorm on our way back to Mechanicsburg and got stuck in traffic as a result.

That was my weekend. The end.

Trivia Recap: 4/20

This was a weed-themed trivia night, for sure!

The Players: Hannah (English teacher), Mary (English teacher), Victoria (veterinarian), Ben (not a professional baseball player), and Danielle (bartender)

Hint of the Day: Fountain Pen

Opening Category: Daisy Jones and the Six (It was supposed to be about the book, but it was about the show. Lame.)

Round One:

Once we got over the disappointment of Pour House not respecting our wishes to focus on the novel and not the TV series, we aced the first question and moved onto the next... which was A "POT" of Trivia. We got this, but we missed the bonus because it did not occur to us that Chipotle's stock code was POT. All Things Chinese was easy, but I learned that Feng Shui means "wind water." I didn't know that. From Page to Screen was fine -- the answer was Diary of a Wimpy Kid -- but I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of the author. (It's Jeff Kinney, fyi.) Automakers was fine. We got the answer of "Hyundai" but we missed the bonus question. We missed THREE bonus questions in that category, but we didn't miss any actual questions.

Round Two:

Happy 4/20! was the opening category. We always choose the audio clue as our bonus and it worked out. Bob Dylan sang about getting high, Cypress Hill sang about getting high, and Amy Winehouse sang about getting high. In Toys and Games, Ben figured our that W is the last letter alphabetically that appears on the Scattergories die. Good job, Ben! We missed another two bonus points on American Politicians, but we knew half of the answer (Gore) so we got the points. Sport Milestones was about a female racecar driver, and since we all know that Danica Patrick is a female racecar driver, that's what we went with... and it was right. I wore my periodic table shirt, which was semi helpful for the category entitled The Periodic Table. There are five elements (I think) that are five letters long that end with the same two letters. We needed to name the two letters and I believe it was Ben who said it was -ON. He was right. We also had to name the element with the highest number and we didn't get that right so we didn't get the bonus. We missed a lot of bonus points last night.

Halftime:

We got 18/20. The top half of the sheet was fine. We had to identify tv shows depicted in pixelated images. The bottom half was a bit harder: Identify ANY EIGHT independent nations ranking among the 25 largest countries in BOTH population and area. We got 6 of those.

Round Three:

The "S.A." Portion was tough and we missed it. Ben knew one of the three answers, but the other two were mysteries. One was about that old show Rizolli and Isles, which I have watched, but I don't know that name of the actress who's not Angie Harman. I still don't. Sasha something-with-an-A? Whatever. The Animal Kingdom was fine -- we had a veterinarian on our team! -- and of course the question about US State Laws had to do with the first two states that legalized marijuana. (The answer is Colorado and Washington.) Victoria knew the answer to Nonfiction Books because she read half of a book about Henrietta Lacks and was super into the science that was being presented, but then lost interest when the focus shifted to drama. Still, she had enough knowledge to get us the points! And Mary apparently listens to Pentatonix and knew that answer before the whole question was out of Adam's mouth. Again, though, we missed the bonus question.

6-4-2:

Ben was very confident that the second most-populated city on the west coast was San Jose and he was wrong, so we missed those six points.

Round Four:

As seems to be the theme of the evening, Ben got us the points for Peace Treaties, but we didn't know the bonus. Chemical Compounds was simple. Guess what the answer was -- I bet you can! That's right: THC. Thanks to a bartending miracle, we got NHL Teams, and Brand Logos was all about Quaker Oats. It ended up being the Hint of the Day too: William Penn. Three Clues / One Tree was one of those questions where we'd get bonus points for answering early, and Mary was pretty sure she knew the answer was Willow, but none of the rest of us knew that you could chew the bark of a Willow to alleviate pain, but Ben did tell her to trust her gut, but she didn't. So we didn't get the bonus points for that one.

Final:

American Companies was the category and because Danielle is a genius and realized that $57 million was a hint inside the hint, we knew the answer was Heinz. That put us in the lead and we won and since Harper Lee's birthday is next Friday, we chose To Kill A Mockingbird THE BOOK NOT THE MOVIE. Hopefully our wishes are respected this time around, otherwise, it'll be a real slap in the face to Ms. Lee.

Flossing at School

We are reading To Kill A Mockingbird in class right now, and because the majority of my students refuse to do any outside-of-class reading, we listen to Sissy Spacek read the novel quite a bit. It's so strange how a grouping of students can determine the entire personality of a class. For example, my first period kids love the novel. Not all of them, sure, but we've had some really great conversations about the text over the past couple weeks.

Period six has a lot to say too. Granted, period six has a lot to say about everything (they rarely stop talking), but the stuff they have to say about the novel is pretty on-point.

Period two doesn't necessarily love to read, but they do like to listen. Well... maybe "like" is too strong a word, but they'll do it without too much complaint. They like to be doing something else while they're listening though. I refuse to allow them to be on their phones. Some of them follow along in the text, quite a few of them draw, and today, three of them were flossing.

Months ago, I wrote a blog about Dental Disaster (a student in my second-period class) who only flosses when the dentist does it for him. At that point in time, I gave a floss pick (I keep them in my desk) to Dental Disaster, Mr. Joyful, B-ball Bam-Bam, Mr. Sneak-a-Seat, and Sushi for Breakfast. And they all flossed.

Today, months and months later, I sneaked a peek at Sushi for Breakfast and he was pulling a floss pick from his backpack. Dental Disaster turned around and saw what was happening. Sushi for Breakfast mouthed, "Do you want one?"

Dental Disaster nodded gleefully.

Sitting beside Sushi for Breakfast was B-ball Bam-Bam, who also wanted a floss pick. And so, as Atticus Finch interrogated Bob Ewell and tripped him up with the definition of "ambidextrous," my students cleaned their teeth. Now THAT was some serious multi-tasking!

Friday Night's Concert with Phil

Phil made a New Year's resolution (which is odd, because he doesn't really make New Year's resolutions) to see more shows in Harrisburg this year. As his concert wife, I am obviously affected by this resolution, and because I'm a good concert wife, I have actually been doing some research regarding shows in our state's capital.

Friday night marked our first Harrisburg show of the year. We saw a band called Cabinet, whom neither one of us had ever seen before, but whose music we very much enjoy. Annie and Brian were the ones who introduced Cabinet to me. I'm not sure how Phil learned of them. We talked about a lot of things on our drive north, but that wasn't one of them.

Because this was essentially my birthday celebration with Phil, he went all out in treating me! First of all, he offered to drive -- and even picked me up at my house! Second of all, he took me to a restaurant that he had been to before, but that I was unfamiliar with. It was called Zeroday and their Casual Ruckus IPA was so smooth and delicious! Phil got some sort of red-meat sandwich for dinner, I got the fried crab balls, and we split an order of fried baby artichoke hearts. Everything was delicious!

At dinner, we met a couple named Tom and Christy. I confirmed that Christy spelled her name C-H-R-I-S-T-Y and then I shared this with Phil. His immediate response was, "Oh, like our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, just with a Y on the end!" This is possibly my favorite thing that happened all night. I've already written it into a book.

After food and drinks at Zeroday, we headed over to XL Live and arrived just in time to see Cabinet. I took a video so you could experience the energy of the show. Here it is:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/58cc22_98c1a9e5baee41c3820e5628dd611acd/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

This is the second show I've attended in which the band takes "a short little break" in the middle, coming back later for a second set. Cabinet's "short little break" lasted for at least half an hour. When Jack White took a short break between his first and second sets, it only lasted maybe fifteen minutes. In both situations, the second set had a different feel than the first set, and in the case of Cabinet, I preferred the first set more.

During the first set, I was very much reminded of the fictional band that lives in my head, Flannel Lobster. During the second set, I was more "reminded" (this is not the right word, and I'll tell you why in a minute) of a Phish show. The reason I cannot be reminded of a Phish show is because I've never attended one. Several people have told me that I should attend one, and I might at some point in time, but I haven't done it yet. I am going to be seeing Trey Anastasio at Catbird Music Festival this summer, though!

Anyway, that was my experience at my first Cabinet show. I was a huge fan of the fast-tempo tunes and the bearded men who performed them. Bearded men with instruments are some of my favorite things!

Friday Night's concert with Phil

Phil made a New Year's resolution (which is odd, because he doesn't really make New Year's resolutions) to see more shows in Harrisburg this year. As his concert wife, I am obviously affected by this resolution, and because I'm a good concert wife, I have actually been doing some research regarding shows in our state's capital.

Friday night marked our first Harrisburg show of the year. We saw a band called Cabinet, whom neither one of us had ever seen before, but whose music we very much enjoy. Annie and Brian were the ones who introduced Cabinet to me. I'm not sure how Phil learned of them. We talked about a lot of things on our drive north, but that wasn't one of them.

Because this was essentially my birthday celebration with Phil, he went all out in treating me! First of all, he offered to drive -- and even picked me up at my house! Second of all, he took me to a restaurant that he had been to before, but that I was unfamiliar with. It was called Zeroday and their Casual Ruckus IPA was so smooth and delicious! Phil got some sort of red-meat sandwich for dinner, I got the fried crab balls, and we split an order of fried baby artichoke hearts. Everything was delicious!

At dinner, we met a couple named Tom and Christy. I confirmed that Christy spelled her name C-H-R-I-S-T-Y and then I shared this with Phil. His immediate response was, "Oh, like our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, just with a Y on the end!" This is possibly my favorite thing that happened all night. I've already written it into a book.

After food and drinks at Zeroday, we headed over to XL Live and arrived just in time to see Cabinet. I took a video so you could experience the energy of the show. Here it is:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/58cc22_98c1a9e5baee41c3820e5628dd611acd/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

This is the second show I've attended in which the band takes "a short little break" in the middle, coming back later for a second set. Cabinet's "short little break" lasted for at least half an hour. When Jack White took a short break between his first and second sets, it only lasted maybe fifteen minutes. In both situations, the second set had a different feel than the first set, and in the case of Cabinet, I preferred the first set more.

During the first set, I was very much reminded of the fictional band that lives in my head, Flannel Lobster. During the second set, I was more "reminded" (this is not the right word, and I'll tell you why in a minute) of a Phish show. The reason I cannot be reminded of a Phish show is because I've never attended one. Several people have told me that I should attend one, and I might at some point in time, but I haven't done it yet. I am going to be seeing Trey Anastasio at Catbird Music Festival this summer, though!

Anyway, that was my experience at my first Cabinet show. I was a huge fan of the fast-tempo tunes and the bearded men who performed them. Bearded men with instruments are some of my favorite things!

Trivia Recap: 4/13

The Players: Hannah (English teacher), Brock (very talented artist and marketing expert), Mary (English teacher), Darren (math professor), and Danielle (bartender)

Opening Category: WWE Entrance Music (Audio Question)

Hint of the Day: Barrel

Round One:

The WWE category was awful and we lost a point. After that, we did fine. Here's what it looked like:

Song Inspirations. The answer was "Sweet Caroline," which was easy, and the bonus was Fenway Park, which Brock and Darren knew. What's Your "M.O."? Microwave Oven, Michelle Obama, and Magnum Opus. Last Word/First Word. Michael Clark Duncan Hines. Darren knew this straight away. The man is brilliant. Name That Author. Mary Shelley. We named her alright, but didn't know when she was born. Or when her book was published. Or something like that.

Round Two:

The "First" Question of Round 2. All of the songs had "First" in the title, which proved to be a little tricky. Brock called "First Cut is the Deepest," but Danielle had to help us with "First Date" (freakin' Blink 182... that band is so nasally! BOTH singers sound like they're holding their noses while they sing, even though Ben only thinks the one guy is nasally) and "First Class." Presidential Potpourri. Teddy Roosevelt. We all knew that one. Even Brock, once he got back from the bathroom. NFL Players. Brock got this for us because he'd seen it projected on the bar's TV earlier that night! Animal Kingdom. Elephant seal was the answer. Mary knew it and I agreed. US Geography. Arkansas borders Texas and Louisiana, but we didn't know it was called "The Natural State."

Halftime:

This was the worst bonus sheet in the history of Pour House Trivia. On the top, we had to identify actors and actresses with the same initials (the initials being E.B.) and on the bottom, we had to determine whether the listed countries were former U.S.S.R. members. Miraculously, we got 19/20 on the sheet, but I did write a note to Adam letting him know that the halftime sheet was absolutely atrocious.

Round Three:

Athletic Namesakes. Jim Thorpe was the answer, which I knew immediately, and Mary knew he was from Oklahoma so we got a two-point bonus. Broadway Musicals. I knew Wicked was written by Gregory Maguire so that was easy. Three Clues/One Word. Dutch was the answer. We got it thanks to Danielle. TV Actresses. Being the Seventh Heaven fans that we once were, Mary and I both knew that Jessica Biel played Mary on that show. The Periodic Table. Thank goodness I wore my periodic table shirt because it came it handy!

6-4-2:

Did you know Mel Gibson was born in New York? Me neither. It took us three clues, which means we only got two points. Oh well.

Round Four:

Shakespearean Characters. Thanks to The Reduced Shakespeare Company, Mary and I knew this. Othello and Desdemona were the answers. A+B=C. Darren and I (and maybe Brock too; I forget) knew The Spin Doctors sang "Two Princes." And then Mary and Darren figured out the second half of the question, which involved five presidents, and since two plus five is seven, seven was the answer. We wagered seven points on it, obviously. Famous Females. Mary's love of British royalty got us Diana Spencer. Name The Game. Barrel of Monkeys! Brock was soooo excited about this one, having called it earlier in the evening. He barely allowed Darren time to record the answer before he ran it up to Adam. An "Egg"cellent Question. We ended up getting this answer correct, but the category was pretty stupid.

Final:

I forget the question, but it was about someone who is beautiful -- like, one of the most beautiful people -- and who also won an Academy Award. I actually forget the answer too. We got it wrong, but we still won, and next week's opening category, courtesy of The Educated Friends, is Daisy Jones and the Six, the book (not the film) by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

A Strange Occurrence in Room 107

Room 107 is my classroom, which is where a strange occurrence took place today. But before I get into this story, let me backtrack to tell you a story from my youth...

A very long time ago, I experienced an ear problem. Essentially, my ear felt sort of clogged, and sort of crunchy. Like, there was something crunching around inside it. I got a Q-tip and do you know what I found? A tick! The memory of it, decades later, still creeps me out. Therefore, I'm always slightly paranoid when I experience a similar ear problem to this day (even though it's usually water that's acting as the clog).

Today, while rubbing my left ear in homeroom, I realized that it felt just as it does after I've gone swimming and not jumped around enough to eliminate the water from my ears. Having not gone swimming for quite some time, however, I deduced that the problem must have been caused by my morning shower.

I fiddled some more with my ear. I could hear something in there... like water.

Well, folks, it wasn't water. It was a Harvey hair! Somehow, my perfect kitten had deposited a perfect hair in my ear and it was just stuck there creating a weird clog-like experience. Isn't that so bizarre? I know! It's the first thing I said to Harvey when I got home today. He was waiting for me in the kitchen, rolling around in a patch of sunshine and giving me squinty I-love-you eyes. I said, "Harvey! Do you want to hear something wild that happened today? I found one of your hairs in my ear! It felt super strange. Did you know a thing like that could even happen? Me neither!"

Harvey remained unfazed. I love him so much.

50 Shades of Confusion

I follow quite a few book bloggers on Instagram. In addition to reviews, some of them post some really clever things. Two of the things that are currently very popular are:

Reels (videos) where the "bookstagrammer" pretends s/he's reading a really smutty scene in a novel and then captions it with something like, "My face when I read that one-liner that makes my jaw drop." Because apparently smut is what sells and secures literary agents. Aesthetically-pleasing screenshots of images/captions promoting fictional boyfriends (aka, male characters in works of fiction).

Yesterday I thought to myself, "Self... your characters (not just the male ones, but all of them) are pretty great. Why can't you create some aesthetically-pleasing screenshots and images/captions promoting Bas and Bert and Juli and the rest of the gang?

I decided that I could.

I got Mary to help me and we promoted the sh*t out of Bert. And I posted all of Bert's wonderful traits on social media (Instagram and Facebook) and do you know how many people care? Like... sixteen. It's so disheartening. Bert would rather talk to a woman and get to know her. He values friendships and feels lousy if he hurts someone. He's a genuinely kind person... and the majority of readers would apparently rather be reading about a man who ties his woman to the bed and gives her a safe word and treats her like a piece of meat rather than a human being.

Anyway. If you're someone who would rather be treated like a person and enjoys reading about men (and women) who treat one another like people, then you might be interested in checking out a novel in which Bert Robinson makes an appearance. (He makes a BIG appearance in Running Through the Words since this is his book.)

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Happy Easter (to you) / Happy Birthday (to me)

Yesterday was my birthday, which is exciting enough as it is, but in addition to turning older, I also released my latest book, Running Through the Words. How exciting is that?!

Technically, Running Through the Words is a sequel to Just Whistle, but you don't need to have read Just Whistle in order to pick up this new one because I intentionally write all of my books so that they're able to be read as standalones. That means you can start with Running, read Just Whistle afterward, and still be ready for Running's prequel, Kick It One More Time, when I release it later this year! You'd better get reading, eh? Here's a link to the new novel: BUY IT NOW!

Here are some other wonderful things that happened to make this year's birthday fun and memorable:

The Educated Friends represented! Darren brought the trivia (a deck of cards with questions about the 90s) which proved to be ample amounts of fun. As per usual, he and Ben knew nearly every answer, but Brock and I did alright as well. Even Mary and Alex, the babies of our team, were quite knowledgeable! Buddy (whose birthday is ,tomorrow,) brought a delicious pimiento cheese spread. For those of you who don't know my Buddy, this is how she operates: Buddy loves to cook, but she only makes recipes from the cookbooks she owns and she only makes the recipes in the order they appear in said cookbooks and she only ever makes each recipe one time... even if she loves it. She's a quirky character, which is why my character of Axa Montague is modeled after her. (Axa makes a guest appearance in ,Running Through the Words,, in case you were wondering.) Chad was there! Chad is half of Alex-and-Chad fame, owners of Bantam Coffee Roasting, and he had never attended a party at my house before, so it was fun to have him! Nate came and brought his parents! Probably not many teachers can say that their favorite student pops in periodically, sometimes unexpectedly. Probably most teachers can't say that their favorite student's ,parents, also pop in unexpectedly at times. Nate's appearance yesterday wasn't unexpected, but I did not realize Mom and Dad N would be tagging along! It was such a great birthday surprise -- and Dad N is going to put a new roof on my house next summer. We talked about it yesterday. My ,other, Other Mother, Theresa, stopped by and she brought two new types of spaghetti sauce for me to try! (I am a sucker for fancy spaghetti sauces; my mom gifted me with five of them this year.) My mom came over and Alex greeted her with the loudest, "Nance!" imaginable! Their reunion was adorable! Annie and Brian showed up and we listened to Cabinet! (Phil and I are going to see Cabinet at XL Live on Friday and I believe Annie and Brian are going to join us. Brock might come too -- he's supposed to be checking his calendar.) Erin and Matt came and Erin brought me a funny concert-themed gift! Kathy brought her new puppy Piper, who is incredibly small and totally cute! She's silvery with black spots and she has that wonderful puppy-dog smell. We introduced her to Arlo and Augusta, who overwhelmed her a bit, but were about as good as they're capable of being. I mean, I don't call them "the terrible terriers" for nothin'. Jody finally showed up! She and Kathy helped me clean up by essentially eating all of the leftovers I would have had to put away. It was very helpful.

That was the day in a nutshell. Just by turning older, I secured quite a few plants and some other great things as well. See?

Trivia Recap: 4/6

The Players: Hannah (English teacher), Mary (English teacher), Darren (math professor), Brock (musical and artistic web design expert), Danielle (bartender), Ben (not a golf analyst), Alex (coffee-shop owner), Buddy (librarian and psychology teacher)

Hint of the Day: Taxi Cab

Opening Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Round One:

Leave it to me to somehow mess up the math on the very first question! This is why I teach English, folks. Since none of us are Deep Space Nine experts, I figured we were going with a one-point wager, but Ben came up with “The Changling” and it did seem like the only possible answer, so that’s what we went with and Darren changed our one-point wager to a three-point wager without me noticing. It worked out because we got it right. Other things we got right include Children’s Characters (Casper and Wendy), Let’s Build a “Fort” (we got Fort Knox and Fortnight, but not Fort Lauderdale, so that was a two-point bonus we missed out on), Common Chemicals (Caffeine), and Zodiac Grab Bag (Cancer and Scorpio). At the end of the first round, we had a score of thirty-two. Not too shabby.

Round Two:

As usual, we opted to make our bonus category the audio clue, but this week’s audio clue was hard! Thank goodness Buddy was there to substantiate Alex’s thought that the third song was Lil Wayne! None of us knew for sure that the first artist was Dolly Parton, but it sounded like Dolly Parton, so that’s what we put down and it was correct. And the second artist was KISS, even though we weren’t confident about that at all. Ben was the one who came up with KISS as a suggestion and he was right, though! MLB Players and Positions ended up being a great category for us! Sports… Who knew? But Ben and Darren and Brock all reasoned that “Designated Hitter” must be the answer. It was. Award-Show Hosts was fine (the answer was “Billy Crystal”) but we did not realize that Billy Crystal was in a musical and therefore could not come up with the name of said musical… so we missed that two-point bonus. We got Ancient History (Hannibal) and the US City Name Game. I wasn’t much help with that last category because it took me forever to understand the question! I’m going to try to word it correctly here, but it might be slightly incorrect: There are seven states whose largest cities start with the same consonant. What is that consonant? And for a two-point bonus, which of those seven cities has the smallest population? The letter is B and the largest city with the smallest population is Burlington, Vermont.

Halftime:

On the top, we had to identify the sport that the pictured athlete went with. I proved useful here because I recognized Missy Franklin. I once had to attend a horrible week-long Reading Apprenticeship Training and one of my instructors reminded me of a chicken. She moved around like a chicken, if that makes sense. She bobbed her head in a way similar to how chickens do. For this reason, I referred to her as Chicken Lady. I have no idea what her real name was, but Chicken Lady gave me a huge compliment that summer and that compliment was that I reminded her of Missy Franklin!

On the bottom of the halftime sheet, we had to come up with words that began with BAN and coincided with the given clue. I knew “Bangkok” and “Bankrupt.” We ended up getting 20/20 on that, which brought our score to EIGHT-SIX and put us in first place.

Round Three:

This round was pretty lame. Here’s why: Wrestlemania, Video Games, Female Music Groups, Cheesy Word Games, and US Presidents and Vice Presidents. We obviously missed the wrestling question because why on earth would we know that? Danielle knew the answer to one of the clues, but it wasn’t enough for us to earn our wager. We chose Cheesy Word Games as our bonus category, because who doesn’t love cheese? Unfortunately, the question was more obscure than we thought. We had to come up with an Italian cheese that when split into two words gave the name for Medusa and an author’s name. Luckily, we got the answer which was Gorgonzola. Mary correctly guessed that the answer to the video game question was Assasin’s Creed. The team knew that the musical group was Haim, but we missed the bonus about the name of the movie in which one of the group’s members had a role. And we missed the two-point bonus regarding Presidents, too. Other than that, we muddled through, but the clues weren’t exactly fun, if you know what I mean.

6-4-2:

We should have gotten this for six points because I knew the song… but Adam has a tendency to play music when one is trying to hum a song and so I couldn’t come up with the answer. We got “Charlie Brown” for four points thanks to Ben. Had Darren been there at this point (he had to pick up his son and give him a ride home), he likely would have come up with “Charlie Brown” for six points, but sometimes being a good parent is more important than trivia. We all understand that.

Round Four:

The hint of the day came into play with Game Shows, seeing as the answer was “Cash Cab.” Remember Ben Bailey, the host? We didn’t. Ben knew his name was Ben, and we could all picture him, but none of us remembered his last name. That didn’t matter because we still got the points. We also knew something about Malaysia, thus securing us seven points in World Geography, and since we’re all very fashionable, Fashion Icons proved a reasonable category as well. Movie News was fine (the answer was The Flash) and 3 Clues, 1 Name was also good (the answer was “Benjamin,” which made Ben happy).

Final:

We needed to come up with the company that blows things up the most, or spends the most money on explosions, or something like that… Brock and I were both on the right track with fireworks, but neither of us thought Disney used as many explosives as it does. I’ve never been to Disney and have no desire to go, but thinking about it now, I guess there are a lot of fireworks. Anyway… we got that wrong, which means that we ended up in second place. Not bad at all!

(Mary added the stuff in purple because I just really don't always feel like writing the trivia blog and I need some help/motivation sometimes...)