Random Ramblings, Reasonably Recent

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Mom always tells me I don't take enough pictures of friends. Well, I didn't take any of these, but at least it proves I have pictures of friends.

Once a month the Kiwis host trivia night. Pete creates the quiz and emcees the event. Pete is my Kiwi counterpart; he takes care of their Arrival Heights building, as well as other scientific equipment at Scott Base:

The trivia rules are simple: "My answer is always the right answer, however, I will accept disputes as long as they are written on a 20 dollar note." Humorous answers are encouraged, so if you don't know the answer, you can still get points for wit. You have to think like a Kiwi, though, because their humor can be a little different.

This was our trivia team for the last two months:

From the left: Brody, Brian, me, Emily, Ellie, Jackie, Jill. Excepting Emily, the girls are British scientists who are studying microorganisms in several lakes in the Dry Valleys, an area on the main continent directly across McMurdo Sound.

Ellie once settled a disagreement between Pete and me concerning our English by stating simply, "I think you both talk funny."

We tend to do a lot of laughing and make a lot of noise during trivia. Normally, the Americans would be the loud ones, but in this case, Jackie is definitely the catalyst. She has a bad habit of saying the answer loudly enough for other teams to hear, so we have to shush her every time her face lights up. This is usually followed by uncontrollable laughter. By the end of the night, other teams were saying "shhhhh" with us.

We placed third last month and second this month. The fact that Pete catered several questions to the Brits and always asks Pink Floyd questions for me had nothing to do with it, I'm sure. Actually, he stumps me half the time. It's too bad the whole team is gone now (except Brody) because we had a good shot at first next time, which would win us each a highly coveted quart of real ice cream.

At some point in the evening, Gifford, Emily and I busted out the Tiger Strike:

Through extended season we played volleyball every Monday night in the big gym. We would play anything from two-on-two to six-on-six, depending on how many folks showed. Skill levels varied dramatically, which made for a lot of silly mistakes that led to laughter and quickly snowballed into general goofiness. It was always a blast.

My serves, when they make it over the net, are pretty difficult to return, I'm told. They're terribly inconsistent though. Gifford and Emily were my teammates for the last game of extended season. Gifford proclaimed that our strategy would be the "B Nelson Tiger Strike." When I served one completely under the net, Emily yelled, "Less kitten, more tiger!" which had me rolling on the ground laughing. Generally the opposing team is gracious enough to let the laughter stop before serving, but I think they got impatient, because they scored three or four points before we finally settled down.

We had a wine tasting in the library last weekend. Since the coffee shop is closed for the winter, the library provided a great place to hang out with a similar laid-back feel. I was asked to play for the event. It was great fun and I managed to play for three hours without exhausting my repertoire. Brody was the official photographer and grabbed this one:

He also took this picture of Casey and Jude:

I wasn't there for it, but I find it amusing. The down side to playing the gig was that I didn't really get to socialize much. We're going to try to start having acoustic nights in the library, which will be a lot of fun, and I won't have to play the whole time.

This collage of friends is incomplete, of course, but I feel that I can't conclude it without at least including Katie and RaJa:

I really like this photo, so I've blatantly stolen it from Brody's blog. He claims there that I was the photographer anyway, so if I keep my mouth shut no one will be the wiser.

More random rambling to come...