trivia report

I'm still getting used to blogspot, it's weird here. I'm used to reading other people's blogs that look like this, and suddenly mine does too? I feel like I am the new exchange student who's just arrived at the host family's house and have been shown my room and told to make myself at home and I have this rising excitement and fear. I get this feeling all the time. Which is odd because it feels like a real memory and yet I was never a foreign exchange student!

Well, last night was the monthly trivia night at Buttermilk bar. To celebrate the first anniversary, the entry fee was $30 per team but those who placed 1st 2nd and 3rd all got some money, and they gave pitchers of beer to 5 teams who scored well on the bonus round, and gift certificates at a record store to 3(?) individuals who were drawn in a raffle, and goodie bags to 3 more people. Or did 3rd place just get bronze medals? I saw two Neuticles wearing medals as I was leaving. I am fuzzy on all these details. My team was called "New Lease" in celebration of one of our number moving back to NYC and signing a lease yesterday. The team of my affiliates was called "Meat Endures," a homophone of "Meet Indoors," which seemed amusing at the time. Maybe we should give more thought to the team names before we are actually standing there having to sign ourselves up. I envy the Neuticles who always have the same name and the same people. We had 8 people and had to draw ones and twos from out of a hat, and then decide the team names and then which team got which name while meanwhile the games were beginning. It was great luck that we had 8 people show up, since there is the 4-person team limit in place. The bonus round was a doozy, it was 20 questions long. And all of them were questions that had been in the quiz during the past year. Nearly all of them were things we had gotten wrong and hoped we'd never have to think about again, like "How many miles long is Long Island?" (110) and "How many medals did the US get in the 2004 Olympics?" (103). Those at least were multiple choice. Oh it was maddening. However since we had so loyally shown up all year, New Lease, Meat Endures, and the Neuticles all got enough correct answers to win beer. As for the main body of questions, they were tough but fair. Ooh except one about the time difference between New York and Moscow, which didn't specify if we were in daylight savings time or not. Doesn't that count? We didn't quibble though, since we didn't really know the answer even though our guess was off by only an hour. But maybe we should have, since New Lease was one point away from tying for 3rd with 3 other teams. I guess that made us 6th place. Meat Endures was two points behind that. For some reason there were only 25 questions instead of the usual 50, so it was over early enough for us to actually stay and drink the beer prizes and enjoy ourselves. It even started on time! I was impressed. However for some reason I ended staying out later than I ever have. Oh well.