Useless Information

Because I have no other way of generating content: Trivia returns!

This may only be for a week: it happened that I was in town on a Thursday, I decided to go, and after two hours of recycled and otherwise easy questions, I'm in no particular mood to go back. The current writing crew is, apparently, completely out of ideas, as there were rounds (plural) of questions that I've heard before. In fact, I'm pretty sure they repeated the final question (ordering Kevin Costner movies). Yes, I've been doing this thing for two-plus years, and you're bound to hear the same question once in a while, but it isn't like it's impossible to come up with a good trivia question, or at least a new one. Anyway, here's my miss, and a couple others I made up.

1. In what country was roulette invented?

2. During the Olympic Parade of Nations, which country almost always enters the venue first? Also, what is the exception to this rule?

3. We all know Johnny Depp's first film was A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Kevin Bacon was in the original Friday the 13th. But name the mega-stars whose early work includes these 80's horror films:

a) Leprechaun

b) Cutting Class

c) Return to Horror High

4. Who was the last member of the Whig party to be elected President of the United States?

Happy Almost-new Year

Well, every year I get started on the posts later and later.

All in all, 2009 looks to be a banner year for the Preschool. I'm living in a new town (well, I'm sort of living in two towns right now), with a new person, and, with any luck, will soon have a new job. "Luck," of course, being the operative word. All this excitement is not without downsides, though. The new town meant giving up the old job. Chances are, the new job will be in yet another new town, which means the w might also get to experience the joy of a job search in what might be charitably termed a "tight" job market. And, most importantly, I'm rarely around for trivia night anymore, thus dealing a devastating blow to the major source of content around here. And, sadly, no replacement seems in the offing; the w did find an ad for trivia night at a local pub, but when we went there for a drink on Saturday, we found the place shuttered and "For Lease." Not a good sign.

There are content possibilities: No way am I detailing the academic job search, but I could always bring back the cooking segment. In the meantime, I'll fill space by looking at how I did on last year's resolutions.

1. Get the PhD. Well, oops. I'll have it in May, though, I swear.
2. Brown-bag it more. I was helped tremendously by the 12:20 class I taught in the fall, which kept me from even eating lunch most days.
3. Less red meat. Less butter. Less sugar. Definitely less red meat - it helps a lot that the w doesn't like it much - but I do like me some cookies.
4. Way less pizza. I was doing better on this the first half of the year. I can, however, count on one hand the times I hit Todaro's AYCE buffet.
5. Stop using sponges to clean the dishes, as they are, apparently, nothing more than slightly soapy bacteria farms. We do have scrub brushes in the kitchen now, and I try to use them for most things. Still, the sponge is terribly convenient for cleaning knives. I'm still working on this.
6. Reach 400 on the 1001 Movies You Must See list. I was well ahead of the pace through the summer, but then the getting-married and writing-the-dissertation bits got in the way, as did the seemingly interminable sequence of 1950s Japanese dramas in my Netflix queue. I ended the year having seen 104 movies on the list, giving me a total of 370. Of course, by now, the list has likely been updated, so who knows where I am.
7. Ride the bus more. I definitely pulled this one off, even if it occasionally involved driving halfway to campus, parking at the grocery store, and riding the bus from there. I usually went shopping on my way home.