Meanderings: January 22, 2000

Saturday,
January 22, 2000

Yeah, yeah, I know. "Melanie, why are you wittering on about snow, and your flu, and inconsequential crapola like that? Don't you do anything interesting? Haven't you written anything? How's the book coming along?"

Let me take those in order. 1) Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I just participated in the semifinals of the Stockholm Trivia Quiz on Sverige Radio's P6 Stockholm International, the city's multicultural radio station. The quiz was open to non-Swedish anglophone teams, and Scott Brown (the brave man who accompanied me to my slippery test) had organized an TBS team of me, Neil Piper and himself back in November. We showed up at Radiohuset, met the hosts and other participants, promptly lost in the first round (we were facing the Stockholm Players team, a trio of Brits who had over 40 years of experience in the city between them, so we didn't feel all that bad about losing), received our consolation prizes, and wandered off into the ! sunset, having completed our duties to P6 and the Stockholm Trivia Quiz.

Or so we thought. . .

Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago, when Scott came to my office. It seemed that one of the semi-finalists had to withdraw for various reasons, and the quiz organizers wanted to fill the slot with the highest-scoring losing team from the first round.

Which was, curiously enough, us. So today we trooped back down to Radiohuset, the wild cards of the Trivia Quiz. The other three semifinalist teams were the Stockholm Players, American Citizens Abroad (who had beaten the British Embassy during the first round), and a team from a local pub. Much to my dismay, we were teamed up with the American Citizens Abroad, who were good. I mean, damned good. We were neck and neck up through to the second round, when they started grabbing questions and just running with them. We beat them on the anagram section (where you get a Stockholm placename and have to make as many English words out of it as possible), but they opened a can of whupass on us during the final speed round. Total score: TBS 100, ACA 140. Ouch.

The Stockholm Players then went on to beat the pub team, and it was down to a Transatlantic battle, the result of which. . .I'm not going to describe, because all of this was taped for broadcast in February. Suffice it to say that the final round was extremely cool, and I'm glad I stuck around to watch it. Afterwards, I staggered out into the cold, cold snow, made it home after two wrong stops on the bus, and promptly cooked up a carbohydrate feast of pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, hashed browns and toast.

2) Yes, I have written something. "Dress Rehearsal" is almost finished, and I've done an outline for "A Robot in Your Future!" I seem to be getting better at writing short stories.

3) The book is coming along fine, thank you. I haven't done that much on it this month due to this damned flu, but I hope to have everything finished, edited and ready to submit by the end of February. So it goes.

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