Trivia and Smoke

The annual Trivia Marathon was held yesterday. We competed against something like 25 teams and finished a heart breaking second, just one point out of first. We gave it our best. There was some concern when we found out that there were new people running the show. The local attorney/humorist who had been the emcee was otherwise occupied and the owner of a cement company was taking his place. This fellow also picked the questions. The cement guy did a fine job, except that he never asked how many steps there were from ground level to the top of the Empire State Building (102nd floor). I waited twenty rounds for that question and never had the opportunity to shine with my answer : 1860 steps. Maybe next year.

The top finishers were all teams that we have played against for many years so there is always a lot of ribbing going on. One team changed its name this year to the Four Horsemen and wore the appropriate name tags: Death, War, Famine and Pestilence. Do you think they were trying to scare us? Another team brought over-the-top snacks. They drank sparkling cider out of champagne glasses with cocktail shrimp draped over the rims. Others wore team tee shirts. It didn't help.

It's still definitely winter here despite the groundhog predictions. The pond has 6 inches of ice on it. Hubster, son and his galfriend have been skating several times. Hubster has also been keeping the wood stove burning day and night. Late yesterday evening after I stepped outside for a few minutes, I came back in to find the house filled with smoke. I say something brilliant like "Why is it so smokey?" at which point the smoke detectors go off. Hubster had forgotten to open the damper before opening the doors of the wood stove. He mumbles that at least we know the smoke detectors work. I step outside again keeping the door open to bring in fresh air and leaving him to risk hearing and lung damage to reset all the detectors. The smoke smell lingered an amazingly long time. I tried to pretend I was camping so the smell had a more pleasant connotation.

Son and I watched a bit of the Grammy's last night. Some of the acts made Prince's Superbowl halftime show seem positively sedate. I turned it off after watching poor old Smokey Robinson's very embarrassing performance. The sweetness of his voice is still evident, but his pitch was painfully off. I also wonder if these veteran performers ever get tired of endlessly singing the same songs that they made famous forty or more years ago. I guess it depends on how much they need the applause and how much their identity is wrapped up in their past hits. And their fans may not allow them to change either. However they become a caricature of their own past selves, an icon of their own making. I found the whole business rather sad so instead I read some more of Pauline Chen's very interesting book about physicians and mortality, Final Exam.