Blackberry lavender for Ben, cherry cordial for me.

I was tempted to post about my rehearsal today, but my sister beat me to it!  So I'm going to let her tell the story.  Read her post here about our solution to bad weather.  I spent about an hour putting together 2 versions of the dance section, with 5 additional videos breaking down parts in more detail.  It sure beats the 7 or 8 hours I would have spent getting up there, teaching, and driving home.  Amanda showed me the last run through they did and I'm so impressed!  I'm so tickled seeing 30 kids following my image on a screen :-D  It was funny seeing them all drop their right arm at the end pose, something I did casually as the music faded out, it was not meant to be a dance step.

PS, I think this is the one they were watching in her clip.  I'm too embarrassed to post them all ;-)

Canceling church because of weather is the closest a nurse can come to having a snow day.  (I texted my mom that our church was canceled and she asked if it was for the weather or the superbowl.  What??  Uh, I don't think that has ever happened, Mom.)  (I'm going to assume she was joking.)

  It's been snowing since yesterday afternoon - thick, wet snow with a layer of ice underneath everything. 

We're spending the morning doing very little.  Laundry, TV, playing.  We also send each other goofy things we find on the internet.  Like this and this and this.  I've discovered that Ben did not know who Anderson Cooper is, did not know about the Remix the Clips game on Jimmy Fallon, and has never seen rice krispies treats made with fruit pebbles.  It's amazing how we can spend so much time together and still live in different spheres.


Last night we ordered Dominos pizza and watched OSS 117 on Netflix watch it now.  Dinner and movie without leaving the comfort of home!  Ok, I lied.  We only watched 57 minutes of OSS 117 because it was 10:30 at that point and apparently we are old people who can't stay up very late anymore.  We'll finish it later.  So far it's pretty funny.  Like a French version of Hot Shots.

We're trying to reach our friends to find out if the superbowl party this evening has been canceled too.  What am I going to do with 32 deviled eggs if it is?

We spent some Christmas money on new blinds for the living room.  Aren't they lovely!?  They are faux wood blinds from Bali via Lowes.  They were having a sale, with free upgrades on the valence and cloth tape.  Score!  The biggest treat was paying for installation.  I felt the tug of penny pinching, that little voice in my head saying "you can do this!  Why pay someone else to do something you can install yourself?"  Well, little voice, BOO YA! Installed in 15 minutes while I was away at work this morning.  No need to fiddle with tools and balance precariously on couches while marking a level with pencil, or worry about entertaining the baby and keeping the dog at bay.  Let professional dude do what he does.  Merry Christmas, indeed!

He taught himself to clap yesterday. It's pretty darn cute.

Taught himself to clap from Rachel Mason on Vimeo.

I'm sick again.  AGAIN!  That's three colds in as many months.  Jack started a runny nose a couple days before me.  What is it with kids and germs?  Before Jack came along I went 12-18 months between colds. 

I felt crappy and feverish this morning and called in sick at 4:55.  By 10 I felt a bit better and was very glad I took the day to rest.  With a high of -6 degrees, I couldn't have picked a better day to stay home.  I spent a lot of time on the couch building a mountain of soggy tissues, watching Ben and Jack make each other giggle.  Perfect entertainment.

Last night I played pub trivia in the largest pub trivia contest in the USA.  Roughly 150 teams (900 people) gathered at the Fillmore for an extra special night of Geeks Who Drink trivia.

It was kind of disappointing.  The entertainment was pretty bad and the night went on long, despite shortened times to answer each round.  It was hard.  The categories weren't very fun, like they usually are at our local game.  It didn't feel especially geeky.  Bummer.

But overall it was a fun night!  We placed 27th overall.  27!!!  I'm proud of us.  We wanted to make top 50.

It was like a normal trivia night.  8 rounds with 8 questions each.  Second round is music, fifth is visual, seventh is audio (video in this case, since they had screens).  Second and Eighth rounds are work double points.  You have a joker you can use one time on any round to double your score.  You write your answers on the score sheets provided and turn them in for tallying.  No cell phone use allowed during game play.

Differences from a local game: tons of people, reserved table with our team name and score sheet pre-printed.  No repeats of questions.  The question was printed on the screen as well as read aloud (wish they could do this locally). Two minute timer after each round to complete your answers.  This drastically cut down the amount of discussion and thought we could put into our answers.  You have much more time locally.  No internet bonus question or free drink speed-answer questions.  The drinks were hella expensive and no pub food to order. The chairs less comfortable than at the Bulldog (impossible but true!).    Super tight security with proctors watching for cell phone users. 
Huh, I sound pretty crabby about it, don't I?  It really was fun and kind of a crazy thing to do with your weekend. I'm waiting for them to post the final scores and total list on their blog.  Here's a summary of the categories and how we did.

1) Cold Facts on Colfax (A random knowledge round using keywords "cold" or "fact" or "Colfax" in either the question or the answer.
Score = 5/8

2) Music Round. Identify the song and artist or album (as specified) played by the live mariachi band.
Score = 13/14 (They tossed out one song, or else we would have had 13/16).
We should have jokered this round but we didn't know we did so well because a few were wild guesses.

3) True/False about True or False (each statement had "true" or "false" in it, was the statement T/F?)
Score = 3/8

4) Pop, Culture (basically a random knowledge round using those keywords)
Score = 3/8

5) Visual Round "No, Ship!"  Name the boat pictured.
Score = 6/8

6) Dowdy with a Chance of Meatballs (Feminism and meatball subjects, but hardly.  More like random knowledge.  Hated this round)
Score = 2/8

7) Identify the movie clips played.
Score = 6/8

8) Random Knowledge
Score = 8/16 (jokered for total of 16 points)