Theoretically we were going to try to do one more thing before I left at 11. I kind of knew that was a long shot (none of us really feel like doing anything before 9 a.m. and at the very least food had to be had before anyone went anywhere), but did get myself out of bed and packed and whatnot by 9....and then found out that the grandkids were calling via Skype with their new puppy, so I went back to doing a writing project and monkeying with the computer instead for the next hour.

We did have some brief interesting conversation about what I was reading, though. I am reading, among other things, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s “All Wound Up,” which at one point rants about how she hates Mother’s Day because it’s a day designated to prove your love to your mother and how that doesn’t work out. I was all “UH-HUH TO THIS” since I feel on Mother’s Day that I have to make up for all the love Mom never got for most of her life. And how I used to get that kind of butthurt about Valentine’s Day until I accepted that I was never going to have that Hallmark holiday provided to me by a dude anyway so I might as well do other things. I wish my mom would be “cool” about it (yeah, like New Guy and his wife), but ...nope.

As for the rest of the book, it talks a lot about having the fidgets and wanting to knit when you are bored or forced to wait or forced to sit still, which I totally adored/agreed with and am writing a long-ass rant about for my yarn mailing list.

In other news, after I got home I went to the infamous Pub Quiz. Pub quizzes are a big thing here, but I usually don’t do that due to (a) being busy doing other stuff and (b) you need to have a team for that. However, since my Monday knitting group location is closed for the holiday, some of us went over there to do the pub quiz and knit/crochet while drinking.

This was the famous “Dr. Andy” quiz, of “Mom’s boyfriend’s son’s buddy” fame. I have been told by Mom that the aforementioned Mom’s boyfriend’s son is Dr. Andy’s assistant in these nights, but I can’t say I saw him there, so who knows.

I was best on the pop culture stuff, getting things like “What is the third word in two hit songs, one by Maroon 5 and one by Ed Sheeran?” (Shape of You/Girls Like You), who sings “Thank u, next” (I want to say “who misses that question, that song is everywhere,” but I was the only one in this pack who knew it!), that Mel Blanc was the man with a thousand voices and that Neil Gaiman wrote The Graveyard Book. So go me there. Our group (though not me, for sure) was the only one to figure out that the anagram for “linen sombrero” was former SF mayor Elmer Robinson, who nobody other than Dr. Andy has heard of, but he did hint that the guy’s name was very old fashioned. So we won that. We also had one scientist in the group, so she got “alkaloid.” Some things we were just guessing it but got, like the ages of Benedict Cumberbach/Chadwick Boseman (42) and that Kenya was the third richest African country--though yes, someone did put Wakanda. We all got mixed up on alphabetizing all of the European countries.

I also got a few that ah...I was overruled on and would have gotten right. The answer being “sansara” for a Sanskrit word (Alison was confident that wasn’t it and apologized to me afterwards when it was) and that George Washington is the second highest ranked president (Joyce argued that FDR did deal with the Great Depression and WWII at once, which is hard to argue...but that said, I was right). I also probably should have fought harder to put down that Levi Strauss was from Germany instead of Austria (“Strauss is Austrian,” “All right, I guess”).

Otherwise, this is all very tricksy. Out of 30 questions, the lowers scores were 11, we got 19 (coulda been 21) and the winners got...21, though I think we would have blown the “how much does the bridge weigh?” tiebreaker question had we got that far. Ah well!

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