Refryed Pink Gus. Here's a little history on our team name for this year's Lawrence Trivia Weekend contest.
In 1988 our team name was Gus the Autistic Wonder Dog. I wasn't part of planning our team in 1988, but we had a lawn ornament with pipe-cleaner horns, painted white, as our mascot. I was invited late to this weekend and thought I was "just dropping by" with Jeanette. We wanted to bring a snack so we stopped at a gas station and bought a 5lb. bag of popcorn. "Tube o'popcorn" it has lovingly come to be known as. This is the Trivia Weekend I have blogged about previously in my posts about falling in love with my first boyfriend, Chuck. This is where we met.
In 1989 our team was called Fryed Pink Clams. This is partially because our friend, with the last name of Frye, hosted the affair again in her basement (it's great having friends with verbs as last names.) The "pink clam" portion of the name came from the title of one of the porn movies some of the guys brought over. Apparently there is a porn flick with the title "The Pink Clam." Eww, but a great Trivia name. So we became the Fryed Pink Clams.
My friends from high school and I seem to be celebrating our 20th class reunion all year, because we made a hybrid of those two names for this year's team. Hence, you end up with Refryed Pink Gus: 20th Anniversary Edition.
Hays, Jeff, and I spent a good portion of last week trying out different technologies so we could be in touch with each other over time and distance during the contest. We tried Skype, Google Group Chat, and me beam. In the end the Google Group Chat worked the best because there wasn't a lot of lag between posts, however we couldn't see each other. Skype only lets you have video with one person at a time, and me beam had horrible echos and feedback. Although we did use me beam during "on campus questions only" just to check in with each other and verify the physical meltdown that I seemed to be going through: Friday night I didn't sleep. I finally fell asleep at 4am Saturday morning and I had to be ready for class at 9am. I was up at 8am, so I got 3 or 4 hours of sleep Friday night. Needless to say, there was no shower happening before class, so I threw on pajama pants and a long sleeved t-shirt. One of my friends drove up from Milwaukee to play at our house, and she was at my house by the time I got home from class. So there was no time to shower then. Two other girl friends showed up so there was a houseful of four women and Mark all clacking away at computers, looking for answers, calling in answers, chatting with friends in New York, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee via Group Chat. When we all checked in on me beam during the on campus only questions, I looked the worse for wear by far than anyone else.
I loved the video check ins. I got to see my two friends from high school who started dating junior year and have been together ever since. They married and now have two young sons. We got to see the boys too which was great because they look like hybrids of their parents; I mean, technically all kids are, but with these two, it's almost freaky. Especially since I've known the parents since almost the age their oldest son is now which is even freakier.
I didn't play much on Sunday as I was sort of "trivia-ed out." I have a lot of homework this week and I wanted to get started on it. This is graduate school after all, not high school.
Although for those 12 or so hours when I was on line answering questions and looking up answers, laughing with friends, eating junk-food and highly caffeinated beverages, I kind of felt like a kid again, which makes all the sacrifice worth it in the end.
Enjoy.
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