Trivia, week 4

Frustration!   That's what I have.  And my team does too.  So close to winning!

Last Monday (the 24th) I again when to trivia night at The Landing Bar.  Al and Rod were not there so that hurt our team of: Darrel, Mona, Marvin and I.  Matt wasn't playing on Mark's team either and that hurt them badly.

My team did well but not quite there.  In game one we were well off the leading position as the two man team got 18 of 20 correct and we only got 13 correct.  In game two we were one point from "winning'.   Again the two person team got 18 correct, but as they won game one they couldn't win the prize of free drinks in game two.  My team had 14 correct but the winning team had 15 correct.

No trivia contest at the Landing Bar January 31 as it is Ladies Night with male strippers dancers.  Marvin admitted that last year when Ladies Night canceled trivia night he forgot and showed up to find a bar full of women.  Didn't take him long to realize what he had forgot!

Since it has not snowed the past week people got to clearing the snow off their sidewalks.  Therefore I didn't have to walk on the streets.  However Darrel and Mona drove by as I was walking and offered me a ride to the bar.


Wednesday night I went to the Rivera Bar for the Tavern trivia contest.  Darrel, Marvin and I were again the SOL team.  Rod, Ed, Mark and Randy were again the FunkyMonks team.  There were four additional teams there.

We again got the bonus question correct:

From 1956 to 1964, this forerunner of "reality television", with host Jack Bailey, offered to make woman a "what for the day"?

We knew it was "Queen".   In fact, Marvin's mother was on the show when she was in Minneapolis/St. Paul one time.  Darrel, being the youngin' of the group didn't know the answer off the top of his head.

Our team started off with a bang.  While the first round was a difficult round we reasoned out the multiple choice answers and ended with eight of ten correct.  We would have had nine correct but Darrel wrote down the wrong letter for the choice to the question: What Persian ruler was the son of Darius?   I - having watched the movie 300 - knew the answer was Xerxes.  Which was answer A.  Unfortunately Darrel misread how Marvin had written down the question answers and thought Xerxes was B.

Ok.  No matter.  We were in the lead with 110 points.


In round 2 we got seven answers correct.  We were now in a first place tie with the Rivitts team.

Then came round three.  Oy, yoi, yoi!   We really needed my girlfriend Tammy.  The question was:

Match ten months to ten different birthstones.

Darrel and I each knew our birthstones.  Marvin did not.  We had eight left to guess and we had no clue.  We randomly guessed thinking we'd get a few more answers right by chance.  We got all the rest wrong.   Tammy would have know most if not all of the answers.  She has a ring with the three birthstones of her daughters.  Later I quizzed Tammy.  I only had to name the months and she knew all the answers.  She didn't even need to know what birthstones were listed as the choices to choose from.

Augh! 

At the end of round three we were now in third place and tied with another team.  The first place team has 240 points and we only had 180 points.

Round four we felt good but only got seven of the ten correct.  What we got wrong:

• We guessed Cheyenne, Wyoming as the Rodeo Capital of the World.  Apparent it is Cody.    
• True or false?  An episode of Seinfeld had Kramer and Newman playing a game of Monopoly on a subway when a Ukrainian passenger knocked their board over.   The answer is false.  The game was Risk.  Darrel has seen the TV show episode and immediately remembered it.  However I believe he focused on the subway, who was playing and the Ukrainian.  He overlooked that the game was Risk not Monopoly.  That's the danger we all have fallen into when realizing we know the answer to the question.
• And Darrel and Marvin couldn't quite remember what STP stood for.  We guessed Superior Treated Petroleum.  The correct answer was: Scientifically Treated Petroleum
  

We were now in forth place.  Several teams had used their "double down" option and that moved them up.  At the end of round four the leading team was 360 points, then next was 300 points, then 260 and us at 250 points.   The top two teams had used their double down option.

Bad news.  Mark from the Funkymonks team mentioned he was going to get Matt.  Matt plays on their team except during the winter as he has bowling on Wednesday night.  Tonight his team bowling ended early and he was available.   We asked Mark to take his time in getting Matt.  Matt is very good at trivia.  Darrel even texted Mark when was getting Matt that Darrel wanted Mark to get him a hamburger from the A&W restaurant south of town.  Marvin wanted a snickers bar.  I decided I wanted a Papa Murphy's pizza and by the way, can you cook it before you bring it back?

Mark texted back to Darrel:    Dear Darrel,   FU!   Love, Mark.

An example how our teamed worked well together was on this question:

What famous economist was famous for the theories of the Invisible Hand and also Supply and Demand?

I knew the answer but could not remember the man's name.  My weakness: remembering names.  After describing all what I knew about the man, when and where he lived, Marvin after a few minutes asked if he also wrote "The Wealth of Nations".  Yes!  But who?  We waited and I thought and thought and all of a sudden his name popped into my head: Adam Smith.

Round five was good for us.  We got eight questions correct and also double downed this round.  This left us in second place with 410 points.  The leading team had 430 points and our Funkymonk competition was behind us at 400 points.  They also got eight correct even with Matt now on their team and they also had double downed.

The contest would depend on the last round.  The question:   Name the actor who played the title character in each of the ten movies listed.

We felt good.   We knew the answers to eight of the movies.  I could picture the actor to the other two movies but could not remember their names.  Darrel could picture the actor to one of those two movies but could not name him either.  It was so frustrating!!   I even knew that the one actor had three names and the other actor had an older more famous brother.  In the end we got eight correct and Funkymonks got all correct as Matt knew the answers to several movies that no one else on their team knew.

In the end the Funkymonks team won with a score of 500 to our 490.  If we had written down the correct answer letter to Xerxes we would have tied for first place.

Augh!!!  

For the 'which actors played the title role' question:

1. Little Nicky
2. Saving Private Ryan
3. The Talented Mr Ripley
4. The Island of Dr Moreau
5. The Truman Show
6. Ali
7. Shakespeare in Love
8. Napoleon Dynamite
9. Capote
10. Shindler's List

The answers:

1. Adam Shandler
2. Matt Damon
3. Matt Damon
4. Marlon Brando
5. Jim Carrey
6. Will Smith
7. Joseph Fiennes
8. Jon Heder
9. Phillip Seymour Hoffman
10. Liam Neeson

Neither Darrel nor I couldn't remember Phillip Seymour Hoffman's name.  And I couldn't remember Joseph Fiennes name.  His older brother is Ralph Fiennes.   Darrel had never seen the Shakespeare in Love movie was he doesn't watch chick flicks.    We also didn't fall in the trap of naming Tom Hanks for the Saving Private Ryan movie.  I wanted to go with Hanks as he was the biggest star in the movie but Darrel heard the question as: who played the titled character in each movie?  That would be Matt Damon.   That is also why Gwyenth Paltrow was not the correct answer for Shakespeare in Love.

Roof raking

With the recent warm weather (33 degrees above zero!) my brother raked snow off parts of the house and garage roofs over the weekend.  On Sunday I helped him rake more snow off the garage roof and part of the higher house roof.  We also raked snow off part of the widow's house roof across the street.

Here is a short video.

Tavern trivia, week 3

Wednesday night was another trivia night.  I again played on Darrel and Marvin's team (SOL) to even things out for team members.  Rod, Al, Mark and Randy made up the Funkymonks team.

This week our team got the bonus question correct so we did not start 20 points behind.

We started off strong in the first round with nine out ten answers correct and we were tied for first place.  For the question as to which of four animals had the best sense of smell I knew that bears had the best smell, even over dogs.

The second round was not so good as we only got five answers correct.  We were no longer tied in first place.

The third round was to match 10 drugs to their use.   I'm talking about prescription drugs now...  I knew a couple of drugs from caring for my mom and dad, and who doesn't know from the ads what Clariton and Levitra are for?  We got a respectable six answers correct.  And for the incorrect answer the uses were so similar no wonder we got then confused.  For example, one use was for "combats depression" (Elavil) and another use was "gives you a peaceful feeling" (Paxil).   We got these wrong as we had switched them.

Still six out of ten was not bad as the Funkymonks team has Randy on it and he works as an EMT.  They got eight out of ten correct.

At the end of round three we had 220 points, 40 points behind the leading team.

For round four we felt good about our answers and between Darrel and I, and Marvin flipping a coin, we decided to double down.  A mistake that cost us the game.  We only got six answers correct. In the late 1800s there were 10,000 pigs in New York City, not rats as we had thought.  If we had thought about it more we would have realized that 10,000 was too low of a number for rats.  Our doubling down had us now in first place, but not every team doubled down.

Round five was great for us as we got nine answers correct, the best showing of all teams.  All but one of the other teams had doubled down by now.  Even so we were just ten points behind the Funkymonks team who were now in the lead.  Man!  Round five was the round we should have doubled down!

Round five had lots of easy questions:

• Which drummer from the rock band Genesis became a successfully solo artist?
• Which non-flying bird lays the largest egg?
• Name the tire company who has a blimp?
• Who sang the James Bond song, "Live and Let Die"?
• What is the name of the sexual position where the man and woman face each other?   Boring! - which was shouted out - was not the correct answer.

Marvin knew six was the number of fouls before a player was ejected from an NBA game.

Finally the answer came to me for: name the book and movie series where the lead characters are: Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter?   The Chronicle of Narnia.

Darrel and I put together the answer to "What does the internet phrase ROTFLMBO mean?"  I knew the first part "Rolling On The Floor Laughing" and Darrel knew "My Butt Off".

The best I could do for "What Shakespearean comedy is about a case of mistaken identity?" was to guess "The Taming of the Shrew".  The correct answer was "Twelfth Night".

The last round was "Name 10 of the 17 movies Heath Ledger was in between 1997 and 2009".  Oh my.

Darrel and I came up with the two easy answers: The Dark Knight and Brokeback Mountain.  I came up with The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.  Then a struggle to name more movies.  I then came up with The Patriot.   I knew Heath had been in the movie Casanova but couldn't remember the movie title other than it was a person's name.  Neither Darrel or Marvin saw the movie so they had to guess who I was talking about when I described the historical person I was talking about.  After some head scratching and a few wrong guesses, they named Cassanova.  Bingo!  Darrel and I both had seen 10 Things I Hate About You and remembered the story, but we couldn't remember the correct title. She's All That was not correct.  I also knew the movie story where Ledger was fighting battles as a knight.  The best I could do was guess Dragonslayer.  Wrong.  The movie was A Knight's Tale.  Once the answers were revealed I kicked myself for forgetting about The Brothers Grimm.

So all we got right were five.  But Funkymonks only got four right so that meant we were tied for first place at 480 total points.  However the host went over all the rounds' scores again and found he had under-counted an earlier round by Funkymonks by ten points and therefore they won the game with 490 points.  *augh!!*    So close!

Btw... round five answers were: Phil Collins, Ostrich, Goodyear, Paul McCartney and Wings, and Missionary.

Revolutionary trivia

Monday was another night of trivia.  Again I walked/ran the three quarters of a mile to the Landing Bar.  It was harder to walk on the streets than the cleared sidewalks.  The snow that remained on the streets was packed to a hard icy sheen.  As this packed snow was not flat, it made for worse walking than on ice.  For the few times I had to use the street I had to wait in a driveway for a vehicle to pass by.

Mona and Rod both showed up this night and they were a great help to Darrel, Al and I.  In game number one we tied for first place with two other teams with 13 answers correct out of twenty.  We went through three tie breaker rounds before we lost.  The tie breaker question was:

What state had the most revolutionary battles?

We guessed: Virginia, then New York, then Pennsylvania. Our rational was to guess big states.  The correct answer was South Carolina.  What?!

In game number two we placed in the middle with 15 correct answers. Sometimes for our guesses the obvious logical answer was correct; other times it was not.  We seemed to go 50/50 on our guesses this night.

For the "quarters" bonus question Mona got one correct and got a small blanket for a prize.  She would have won another quarters question except at the time she didn't have any quarters to play.  I didn't have any quarters as in my rush to get to the contest on time I forgot to bring money or my wallet.

Roof snow

Last night and this morning it snowed.  It must have been around four inches give or take an inch.  With a temperature of 7 F and little to no wind the snow was light and fluffy.  Too bad I forgot my cross country ski shoes back in Montana.

I shoveled off my brother's driveway and sidewalks.  I also shoveled off the driveways of the two neighbor widows.  And as I was on a roll and enjoying the exercise, I shoveled off part of the street in front of my brother's house.  I may reap the 'benefits' of all this exercise later.

So my brother had no snow to clear when he got home from work.  To make up for it he decided to use his snow rake on some snow from one part of the house roof in order to prevent an ice dam from forming when it warms up later into a freeze/thaw cycle.  He then used his new snow-blower to remove the fallen snow.

Here are few photos of the snow he raked from the roof:

Tavern trivia, week 2

Wednesday night I went to the Riveria Lounge for another night of World Tavern trivia.  Ed, Randy, Mark and Rod were there for the Funkymonks team I played with last week.  Darrel and Marvin were also there, and this week I played on their team (team name: SOL) to even things out.

Things got off to a bad start for our team when Darrel hadn't gotten the answer completely correct to this week's bonus question.  All the other four teams had gotten the bonus answer correct so we started out 20 points behind them.

But that didn't matter as each round we gained on the other teams until the fourth round when we passed the other teams for the lead.  We also had chosen this round to be our "double down" round which was a good thing as this was our best round with eight answers correct of the rounds four through six when the double down option was valid.

We were still in the lead going into the sixth round.    Most of the teams had used their double down option by now so things were looking good for our team. Then it all fell apart.  The question this round was to name 10 of the 19 names of the kids in the reality TV show:  19 kids and counting.

Neither Darrel, Marvin or I had seen the show.  They left it to me to come up with 10 names. We guessed five boy names and five girl names not knowing how many kids there were of each sex.  Since there were so many kids in the family I figured they were religious and would name their children with religious names.  What I didn't know was that all but two of the kids names begin with J.   "Jinger" with a J?  Come on!

Meet the Arkansas family that has all of America talking: parents Michelle and Jim Bob.  Kids: Joshua, Jana, John-David, Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Joseph, Josiah, Joy-Anna, Jeremiah, Jedidiah, Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johannah, Jennifer, Jordyn-Grace, Josie, Anna and Mackynzie.

Therefore the only names our team got right were James and Joesph.

We later learned from the host that another team had watched the TV show and they got six names correct.  I think this team must have doubled down on this round as they won with 490 points to our 440 points.  Dang!  We were so close.

We also had done poorly in round 3 when we had to match the concerts with the years they were held. We did worse than we should have done. We only got four correct.  We knew the dates for the Monterey Pop Festival (1967), Concert for Bangladesh (1971), the Freddie Mercury Tribute benefit concert (1992) and the Tribute for Heroes (2001).  We got the other six wrong though I should have known when the No Nukes concert (1979, Live Aid concert (1985), and SARS Benefit concert (2003) [Has it been that long since the SARS outbreak?!] were held.  Others I vaguely heard of (Live 8 in 2005 and Live Earth in 2007) and one not at all: The Billion Hands Concert in 2008.  I guess as I have aged I get disconnected from the concert scene more and more.

Monday trivia

Monday night I attended another trivia contest.  This contest was at my old stomping grounds: The Landing Bar.

At the trivia contest last Wednesday I learned that the people on my old team no longer regularly came to The Landing for trivia.  But since I was in town Darrel, Marvin and Rod said they would come on Monday.  Darrel came but Marvin and Rod never showed up.  Rod's job is delivering out of town packages, and with the snow that day, he must have had to work late.

Ed is still the host of the contest and he brought Al with him.  So my old SOL team was Darrel, Al, and I.  Mona was going back to work on nights and was sleeping in to prepare. Jeff and Donna haven't been coming to trivia for some time now.

Even though I had seen a TV advertisement the day before for the Landing Bar and their schedule (including trivia night), a number of other trivia regulars weren't there and the crowd was less than I am used to.  We only had four teams competing.   Several old teams had merged.  Only the judge was here from the lawyer team and he sat with the team of women and their team name was "Something" women and the judge.  I forget what  the "something" was.

Mark, the biker dude from my Wednesday trivia team, was here and he was on the "Minds over Minot" team.  I learned that the other guy originally from Hawaii who had been on that team moved to Bismarck.  He was very good at trivia.  His absence didn't matter as the "Minds over Minot" team scored highest in both contests.

My team didn't do well.  In the first contest we got 12 right out of 20 questions for last place.  In the second contest we got 13 right and again were in last place by one.  We gave it a good try but were very rusty.  We couldn't even figure out the answer to the question, "What food processing company is named after the first three letters of each of two adjoining states?"   The answer is at the bottom.

I hung around and chatted with the other contestants after the contest was over.  Karaoke started at 9 pm and more people came into the bar for karaoke and the participants seemed to be decent singers.

In the cold night air I had walked to the bar and found with all the snow here that a number of homeowners hadn't cleared their sidewalks of snow.  I had to cross the street a few times to find clear sidewalks.  A few times I walked on the street itself.  Darrel dropped me off on his way home so that solved the problem of walking home.  I could have used the walk and fresh air in order to get some of the cigarette smoke off my clothes.  I swept the freshly fallen snow of the driveway but that wasn't enough to air out my coat.

The answer is: Oreida for Oregon and Idaho.

Snow pile

Plenty of snow here in North Dakota.  Each day brings a little more.  This morning I shoveled off the inch or so that fell overnight.  It is getting harder to find a place to toss the snow.

Tavern trivia

Wednesday night Rod called and invited me to join him, Ed and a couple other people for a night of trivia at a different bar (the Riviera Lounge) than I usually go to in Minot.  This trivia contest is part of a nationwide trivia contest run under http://www.worldtaverntrivia.com/

Each contest is a series of six parts of ten questions each for a total of 60 questions. Each question is worth ten points. For rounds four, five or six you can "double down" meaning if you feel good about your answers you can have the points earned in that round doubled. It can be a bit of strategy as to when to "double down" as you don't know what the questions will be in the next round and how well you could do.  The game starts with a 20 point bonus question so the total possible for the night was 720 points.  Our final score was 650 points and we won first place by 90 points.  Our prize for the night were two $20 drink certificates for future use at the bar.

Each person on our team (Funky Monks) is good at trivia and we have differing areas of expertize. Ed knows music, Randy is an EMT and knows medical stuff, Rod is good with music, literature and stuff one learned in school, and I know useless things, such as "Pennyworth" is Batman's butler's last name.  The other guy - whose name I already forgot - looked like he could be a member of the Hell's Angels and he knew that blood was thicker than water... in fact, he also knew it is six times thicker.  And we could play off one another as I remembered the author of the novel "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" also wrote "The Great Gatsby".  But I forgot the author's name (you know me and remembering names).  Rod knew the author's name is F. Scott Fitzgerald and we were the only team to get that answer correct.  We all were bad with 1980s TV trivia.  Who knew that Tom Hanks guest starred on "Family Ties" as an alcoholic uncle?  See the video here.

Darrel and Marvin from my SOL team of Monday nights were also there as another team and they were our main competition.  We were one question ahead of them until the fifth round when we got nine answers correct and we had selected this as our double point round.  We felt good about our answers and didn't want to risk doubling on the sixth round.  That was a good decision as the SOL team also doubled on the fifth round and they had got three questions wrong.

The sixth round was to name the top ten cities in the world based on population in 2006.  We only got 4 cities right and the top team that round only got six cities right.  The SOL team also only got four cities correct.  Cities we were sure were in the top ten, such as Tokyo and Mexico City, were not.  Our correct guesses were Shanghai, Beijing, Moscow and Sao Paulo, Brazil.    I would link to the list of the top ten but it seems to vary based on years and criteria (city itself or the metro area).  It seems as if the trivia question called for the city itself as this list comes closest to the top ten we were told: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762524.html   A city metro list can be found at http://www.worldatlas.com/citypops.htm  so you can see how we thought Tokyo and Mexico City should be on the list.   On our team I argued for Shanghai, Beijing and Moscow as the other team members were not for them.  I was surprised to learn that Seoul, South Korea are on the lists.

North Dakota still allows smoking in bars, and while the bar was nowhere near full, my clothes reeked of smoke by night's end.  Yuck.

MN to ND

Monday night I caught the train from Minnesota to North Dakota.  The estimated arrival time into Red Wing was on time at 8:52 pm.  Tammy said it took 45 minutes to drive there and we left at 8:01 pm.  No sense getting there before we had to.

Well... it may take 45 minutes in good weather but it was snowing lightly and the road was slippery in spots even though the Minnesota highway department trucks were out in force salting the roads.

Tammy said it takes 20 minutes to reach Zumbrota where her friend lives.  This night it took us 27 minutes.  Not good.  We had 23 miles left and 24 minutes, a 55 mph speed limit in the country and less in the half of Red Wing we had to cross to reach the train station.

The stress level began to rise, especially when we came up upon vehicles taking it slow in this weather.  Even with her vehicle's high beams we saw more black (night) and white (snow) that we wanted to and not enough of the road ahead of us.

In the dark I fiddled with Tammy's cell phone and eventually was able to call Amtrak and "Julie" and found the train was estimated to be late 10 minutes.  *whew!*   We can make it!  Still we didn't let up.   Behind another slow car I called "Julie" again and found the train gained time and was now only 6 minute late.  *augh!*

It took forever to drive through Red Wing and we arrived at the train station at 8:55 pm.  No train was at the station.  Had it come and gone, or not yet arrived?  At Red Wing the train only stops long enough to load people on board.  There is no train station personnel and no baggage service so this is a quick stop as not too many people use this station.

Inside I found a half dozen people waiting for the train.  *whew*  We made it.

A few minutes after I got my bags from Tammy's car and placed in front of the station the train arrived.  I never have been so glad the train was late.

It was a whirlwind to get on the train, and once everyone was on board, the train left and I never got to give Tammy a proper goodbye.

The train ride was better than I expected as I expected the train to be full. It wasn't.  However the other people who boarded the train got upstairs to the seats just before I did and got the last pair of open seats. It seemed as if my only choice was to sit by other people who were sprawled across pairs of seats and sleeping or pretending to sleep.  I found that the reserved seats for couples were mostly empty and I took a pair of those seats.  When the train attendant came I explained I was in those seats only to Minneapolis and that I would move back to the correct seats when the Minneapolis people got off the train.  And that is what I did as three pairs of seats opened up at Minneapolis.

While waiting for Minneapolis I struck up a conversation with a woman across the aisle.  She and a few friends and family were on their way home to Winnipeg, Canada after spending the holidays in New York City.  This NYC visit was something on her bucket list.  She had a great time and talked about New Years Eve near Times Square: how she and the others got separated and reunited, how the large crowds were managed by the police, and how friendly people were.  She also talked about the snowstorm and standing outside the Today show studio when they were broadcasting one day.

While there were lots of people at the Minneapolis station waiting to board the train I never got anyone sitting by me.  At the later stops I was curled up asleep or pretending to sleep and no one sat by me.  By the time I woke up the next morning the train had only a little over an hour left to Minot, and, while full, was uncrowded.  Many people had gotten off at Grand Forks, ND earlier that morning: mainly what looked to be university students returning to school.

So, surprisingly I had two seats to myself the whole journey.

I chose the seats just in front of the stairwell area.  No seats were across from me but I was still ahead of the stairwell area and none of the stairwell lights shone on me.  And everyone around me was quiet and no one snored.  At one time I heard a baby cry in the back part of the train and was glad I didn't choose one of the seats near there.

I believe the train was an hour late into Minot at around 9:30 am (I had accidentally packed my watch away and didn't know the exact time).  The neighbor was there to get me as my brother had to work.  She had been there since 8:45 am as Amtrak said that was when the train would arrive when she initially called.  I forgot to tell her to call again closer to the arrival time as Amtrak is overly optimistic they will make up time when they are behind schedule.

As usual plenty of people were getting off or on the train at Minot.  Some people has been away for a while as their cars were snowed under in the Amtrak parking lot. I saw a few people around their cars shoveling the snow away.

A day delay

I was supposed to be in North Dakota right now but Amtrak canceled train service over the weekend between Minneapolis and Montana due to the blizzard that hit eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota over the New Years weekend.  So I am delayed one day in traveling.  The train is running today so I'll be in ND tomorrow.  I got the last seat on tonight's train so it will be a very crowded train.

Sunday Tammy and I hung frames around some of the wall art on her walls.  Here is what it looks like.

We also temporarily fixed her fence.  The strong winds this weekend blew it over.  Bungee cords are a good thing.

Here is another Homade Gourmet supper Tammy made for us last night. Lemon Garlic Chicken.

IKEA

Tuesday Tammy and I drove to Minneapolis near the Mall of America where the IKEA store is located.  I never had been in an IKEA store.  It is huge.  The store has everything you would need for your house or apartment, from appliances to towels to utensils.  Everything but food, though one could buy some Scandinavian crackers, cookies, jams, and meatballs.

The store had a marked path on each floor directing people on where to go.  Naturally I wasn't paying attention when we first got there and we ended going against the flow for a while.

What I found confusing was the Scandinavian words on all the display signs.  I kept thinking that was the name of the item, rather than the Scandinavian word for the English word.

Here is a neat wall hanging that I liked.  These wall hangings are a material that is closer to canvas than a solid board.  Another item to build after you get it home, though it would be easy to carry it home.

New Year

Happy New Year!  I hope you had a nice time last night.

Last night Tammy and I went out with her friend Becky, and Becky's boyfriend, to the Jenpachi Japanese style steakhouse.  The afternoon had light freezing rain so the roads and sidewalks were slick.  I had to hold Tammy's hand so she didn't slip on the ice and fall when walking in and out of the restaurant.

The restaurant cooks your meal in front of you and nine other people.  The cooking is part of a show as the cook juggles his cooking utensils before beginning (with a lot of clanking and noise), starts the cooking with a large flash fire, tosses a small pieces of food in the air to some of the customers to catch with their mouth (I caught my piece of food), and juggles the rice bowls before giving them to the customers.

Maybe because it was New Years Eve but our cook let some people drink some of his Sake.  You had to open your mouth and he held the bottle above your mouth and poured it in.  Yum!   Tammy and the others got drinks, some of which were in porcelain pandas and Buddhas which one got to keep. 

Tammy has been to this restaurant a number of times and our cook recognized her.  My New Years Eve meal was a shrimp, steak and chicken combo and it was very good.

Below is a link to a video showing the cooking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-swXkYd7Vc

Rice bowl juggling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esu1amCBz0k&feature=related