52 New Things -- Week 14 -- Wisconsin Trivia Championship

Nerd alert!

It all started out so innocently.  We met this other young, childless couple -- the ones who introduced me to Settlers of Catan -- and they invited us to play trivia sometime. Scott is the host/announcer, so Amanda was often left to sit alone listening to him read off the questions. We said we'd stop by sometime to play . . .

 . . . and we won a gift card -- they give $30 bar credit to the first place winners, $20 to the second place winners, and $10 to the third place winners . . .

. . . so then we had to go back another night to spend our winnings . . .

. . . and when Scott started hosting at a different bar, we invited a whole bunch of people so he'd have a big crowd on his first night there . . .

. . . and Amanda, Kevin, and I sat next to and started playing with A.J. and Nick . . .

. . . and then we won, so we had to come back and play again the next week and spend our winnings . . .

. . . and lo and behold if we didn't win again the next time . . .

. . . and pretty soon we were winning pretty much every week and everyone else in the bar was hating on the Roaring Cheetahs. Geesh. We can't help it that we're awesome.

So anyway, long story short, these trivia scores got added up every week and the top fifteen teams in La Crosse got invited to play in the state championship game. Madison and Milwaukee each got thirty teams. La Crosse and Eau Claire's top fifteen teams got to play. There are some other cities who had teams, too, but because I'm not from around here, I can't name them. (Obviously Wisconsin geography questions don't come up much or we'd be out of luck.)

All in all, 120 were playing at the bar on Saturday. Scott had told us in advance that the questions were really hard and someone from Madison or Milwaukee always won. In other words, come on out, have some fun, but don't have too high of expectations.

I should mention that Amanda had to bow out at this point. First place wins $2000, so people take it seriously. Scott was afraid if by some wild chance we did win, people might not find it fair that his wife was on the team. He said we should recruit a couple more players since every team can have six players, so we invited Jon and Christina, another couple that plays most Monday nights, to join us.

So there we were, sitting in our booth, expecting awful, unanswerable questions, when the first question was asked. It was something along the lines of, "On Seinfeld, what Latvian word is used to describe Kramer's "lure of the animal," meaning women can't stay away from him?"

A.J., Jon, Christina, Kevin, and I stared blankly at each other. Nick grabbed the answer pad and wrote down "kavorka." I have no idea how on earth he knew that, but whatever. We were off.

(Nick turned out to be the master of strange knowledge. He also came through in the clutch with "Trixie" when asked the name of Speed Racer's girlfriend. Who knows this stuff?)

The Roaring Cheetahs doing our super-intimidating roar!!

So yeah, we rocked. It was shocking, really. At halftime when Scott read the scores, we were SECOND IN THE ENTIRE STATE OF WISCONSIN. We couldn't believe it.

Unfortunately it was all downhill from there. We stunk it up, answering question after question with wrong answers. Presidents, dogs, clothing, religions, geography . . . we were equal opportunity stinker-uppers. Our score in the second half was less than half our score in the first half. It was sad.

But here's the thing: everyone else in the state seemed to stink it up in the second round, too! We still had a shot at this! You could risk 0 to 20 points on the final question, and if we went up 20 while the top team went down 20, we could still win. We bet it all on the final question, eying the $2000, $500, and $100 prizes for first, second, and third.

We lost. Dang that Carly Rae Jepson and Call Me, Maybe. We thought for sure she had to be one of the top five downloaded ringtones in 2012, but she wasn't. Sigh.

So anyway, we ended up twenty-something-eth in the state of Wisconsin. Scott said if we would have bet 0, we would have been fifth in the whole state. Alas. We wanted the money, baby.

We still got a $50 gift card for getting third place in all of La Crosse, so that was nice. Also, we declared ourselves the third smartest people in all of La Crosse, Wisconsin, which is pretty much awesome and may or may not be true.

And then we resumed our regular Monday night game at our regular bar two days later . . .

. . . and won . . .

. . . so guess where we'll be, spending our winnings, this Monday?

ROAR!!

52 New Things -- Week 13 -- Running

Before you ask, no, I do not have a head injury. I'm sure you're going to wonder that when you find out that I, the woman who has always said, "Only run if you're being chased!" ran today. Nope.

I blame Colorado. It was just so gosh darn beautiful last week with the blue skies and the sunshine that I couldn't help but dream of being active outside. Plus I did a fair amount of huffing and puffing every time I walked up a slight incline. I blamed the high altitude, but let's be honest: it's been a long Minnesota winter. Being a fair-weather walker, I spent many, many more nights on the couch than getting exercise of any form. A couple of weeks ago, while I was getting undressed, Kevin looked at me and said, "We need to start working out again." I threw my pants at him and stomped out of the room.

"I said 'we,'" he called after me.

(The next day, when I'd calmed down, we had a long talk about our needs . . . like his need for me to communicate instead of stomp away, and my need for him to not imply that I'm fat if he ever wants to have sex with me ever again.)

So yeah, getting in shape wouldn't kill me . . . or would it? I hate running. Too much jiggling. Too many cramps. But I read a magazine article about Jamie Lee Curtis doing a 5K after downloading this C25K app, so I thought, heck, if a 54-year-old woman can do this, I can, too, right?

Free download = no risk. If it stunk, I'd be out nothing. The premise? By starting out slowly, alternating walking and running, you'll build up your stamina and be running a 5K at the end of eight weeks. Color me skeptical.

Today was day one. Here's how it went down:

3:45 Get home from school. Promptly sit on couch. Fiddle with iPhone to figure out how to make a playlist. Wonder why only twenty songs show up on my phone when I've got a bazillion on iTunes. Realize what a waste it is for someone like me to have a smartphone.

3:50 Playlist done on phone, try to figure out what one wears to run. Completely unaware. Put on two sports bras in an effort to reduce jiggling. Wear two layers of everything else since running sounded a lot better in sunny Colorado than 35-degree Minnesota.

3:55 Search three junk drawers for the ear buds that came with the iPhone. After finally finding them, spend several seconds flipping the iPhone around before figuring out where to insert the jack.

4:00 Leave apartment. Go right back in to get hat and gloves.

4:01 Begin five-minute "brisk warm-up." Heavy D and the Boys begin singing "Now That We Found Love" in the background. Try to remember what it was that Heavy D died from and figure probably a heart attack. Walk faster in an effort to not die the same way or garner a similar nickname.

4:06 A Tinkerbell-ish ding sounds and a soothing voice says to begin running. Take a deep breath and take off . . . at a sloth-like pace. Wonder why I didn't drive out to a deserted country road so that no one would see me. Also, wonder how one is supposed to run -- on the balls of your feet? Rolling from heel to ball? Flat-footed landings? No idea what proper form is, other than staying upright, which is taking a great amount of concentration.

4:07 Tinkerbell-ish ding and instruction to "begin walking." Not bad. Not good, but I made it a whole minute. Yay me!

4:09 Tinkerbell ding lady says to start running again. So soon??

4:09:30 Leg cramp . . . run through the pain.

4:10 Ding and walk. Thank God. I thought I might puke up those Special K bars I ate at school. Someone brought those yummy treats into the teachers' lounge today and I ate not one, not two -- I'll skip right over three and tell you -- I ate FOUR of those darn things over the course of the afternoon. They are now churning in there.

4:12 Ding and run. Seriously? Already? You're killing me, ding lady. I listen to Metro Station sing "Shake It" and remember happy times with youth group kids. Yay for ribbon dancing. Disassociation or something, right? Isn't that what hostages do? Go to a happy place when being tortured?

4:13 Ding and walk. Try to do some mental math, which is never easy for an English major. A twenty minute program, and with five minutes of warm up, that's only fifteen minutes . . . plus maybe a five minute cool-down at the end, so that's only ten, and over half of it is walking, so I won't be running all that much . . . I mean, I'm probably almost done already, right?

4:15 Ding and run. That seriously cannot have been the whole rest period.

4:16 Ding and walk. Oh, Special K Bars with your chewy, gooey goodness and your delicious chocolate frosting . . . please stay down. Almost done.

4:16:30 Think I'm having a heart attack but then realize the pain is on the wrong side of my chest. And it's more external than internal. Make mental note to wear three sports bras tomorrow.

4:18 Ding and run. The ding is followed by a chipper announcement that I am halfway there! Halfway? I think hateful thoughts toward the disembodied voice as I realize the twenty minutes do not include the warm up or cool down.

4:19 Ding and walk. Oh. Oh. I'm dying. I'm pretty sure.

4:21 Ding and run. I plod along with the grace of a wounded gazelle, wondering how many people are looking out their windows and judging me.

4:22 Ding and walk. Thank you, Jesus.

4:24 Ding and run. Wish someone had taught me how to run at some point in my life since it obviously does not come naturally. Think back to high school P.E. and the curriculum that could easily have been called "Ten Variations on Dodge Ball." Awesome at the time, but not so useful lifeskill-wise . . .

4:25 Ding and walk. Notice that my walk has gotten considerably slower since I started.

4:27 Ding and run. Decide I am probably doing irreparable damage to my spine and stuff. Wonder why no one has invented a workout called "Gentle Stretches on a Queen-Sized Bed." I could jump on that train whole-heartedly.

4:28 Ding and walk. One minute to go, the trainer lady says. Hallellujah. I was about to start repeating what I'd heard in church on Friday re: forsaking, but I didn't want to get all melodramatic up in here.

4:29. Ding and instruction to "begin cool down." Oh honey, I started that a minute ago without you telling me to.

4:31 Arrive back at apartment and do some stretches on the front step. High school girls track team runs by . . . effortlessly. Sigh.

4:34 Ding and a message that my cool down walk is now over. Lady, I am already on my couch. You don't have to tell me to stop.

So yeah . . . I mean, I didn't die, so I've got that going for me, but I have to tell you that I am definitely not looking forward to repeating this tomorrow. Now excuse me while I go ice my hip . . .

52 New Things -- Week 12 -- Spring Break!!

Sometimes I look at college kids and think, Did I have an insanely different college experience or what? I mean, call me dull, but the thought of a Spring Break trip that I pay thousands of dollars for but don't remember a thing about? Not appealing.

(Oh, and while watching something on Hulu the other night, we saw the same trailer for a new Spring Break-themed movie about ten times, during which a bunch of former Disney girls are obviously desperately trying to break out of their Disney mold. Yikes.)

But last week I went on my first ever Spring Break trip! Whoo-hoooooo!

(Don't get too concerned. There was very little alcohol involved and absolutely no bikinis.)

Also, it's been about fifteen years since I even had the opportunity to go on a spring break trip, being out of the education world for a long time, so it's not like this is earth shattering, but . . .

Whoo-hoooooo!!! Spring Break trip!

We had the best week! Sunshine, skiing for a day (well, part of a day . . . our legs gave out fairly early . . . ), getting to know some of Kevin's family members, and not having to work = AWESOME!!! (Grown up Spring Break must seem totally lame to college kids, huh?) We ate more than I thought our stomachs could hold, but we did some hiking so that totally offsets the gluttony, right?

Best of all, though, was that I got to see LOTS of my old friends, and Kevin endured being introduced to almost everyone for the first time. I think he was exhausted by the end of three days of constantly being "on," but he was a trooper and knew it was important for me.

I left feeling very loved . . . and very thankful. Those ten years in Colorado played a huge part in making me who I am today. If I could have one superpower, it would be teleportation so I could just blink my eyes and be anywhere I wanted to be, with anyone I wanted to see.

Miss you, friends! Thanks for the best Spring Break trip EVER! (And just because this is the only one I've ever taken, don't feel slighted. I'm sure it's waaaay better than anything those college kids did this year . . . )