Don't Quotidian me on that. But go ahead and Quiz me.

For days, they were whining about an OMGSnowpocalypse! coming into town today and burying us in Le Feete of messy precip.  That's now been scaled back to OMehGod estimates of a couple of inches- but it gave me one more thing to stress about the night before a trial.

I only do a handful of these a year now. They're all-or-nothing propositions, waste inordinate amounts of time on protocol, and my general aversion to anxiety makes the night before one a sure bet for insomnia, and the inevitable weeks (if not months) of waiting for a decision from a judge or arbitrator a pins-and-needles form of torture. 

Note that "juries" are not in that list of fact-finders; yes, they're quick, but so is cyanide.  I've done exactly one-half of such a case in 30-plus years and got my clients' head handed to me. (Half, how? Because it was an odd hybrid form called a "summary jury trial" which was a Thing mostly in the southern sectors of Western New York. For years, there was an official state court brochure promoting the program online, which listed the types of cases "successfully" disposed of by the expedited process; one of which, though described generically, could only have been The Case of The Color Coded Timber With Ray's Head Hanging From It.)

So I write this just before an early turn-in and, just as likely, an early wakeup and stayup.

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Most of what I've social-mediaized the past few days has been the usual Dumb Stuff. A hockey fight breaking out at a football game; Melania's Handmaid-Tale-inspired Christmas trees; and getting this stupidly meta message after Windows crapped out in the process of reporting a crapout:



One thing that went unposted, here or anywhere, over the weekend was the progress made round the house, mainly by Eleanor on painting our ceilings for the first time in forever.  (I wasn't totally slouchy, spending a few hours outside working on transporting our backyard leaves to the curb, but it was a fraction of the effort she put in.)  Late Sunday night, Eleanor called me out on that- wondering why I was not acknowledging in any public form how hard she'd worked at this process.  It was too late to get into thinking, much less arguing about it, but by the following day, the answer came to me from a place likely unknown to anyone but me or her:




She's been quite the fan of this book since it not long after it first came out 20 years ago. I've been aware of it, but don't have the same burn into the brain of its meaning. It speaks of finding joy and spirituality in "the ordinary" of daily repeated tasks- laundry in the title, but perhaps the painting of a ceiling would be a better example right about now.

I don't relate to it in the same way. Maybe some of that is how much is ingrained in me to find the opposite of joy in that kind of task- raised as I was to learn that anything I did (other than read, write and do rithmetic) was not good enough, or wasn't as easy for me as they thought it should be. It's taken 30 years with a blessed and beloved to overcome a lot of that- but, as one of the reviews of this book puts it, "It might also be a good read for a spouse who has trouble understanding exactly what their partner does day in and day out."

Most of what I post here, and on the blog, is of momentary inspirations- a thing, a person, an event, a thing that happened to a person at an event. Quotidian things don't capture the imagination (at least not mine) in the same way- but that doesn't make them any less important or worth writing about.

The more I thought about it after sharing these thoughts with Eleanor, the more I realized- I was doubly damaged by this upbringing. For not only did I learn not to expect patience learning things I'm not good at, I learned not to give patience in teaching or explaining the things I can do well. It's why I've never done well with assistants at work, or showing someone how to do something; I give up trying to show, and take over trying to do.  It's quicker, but see above about that.

So since that discussion, there's not been much if any further painting, and definitely no more raking (hopefully not running the risk of major forest fires around here:P).  But I'm glad for the insight into the thinking and feeling behind it- and we have a fresh copy of that book Amazonning its way here along with a fresh load of compression socks. Yes, for both of us.  Get off my lawn; I'm not done raking it.

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Here's another silly thing I've mentioned a few times online but will now explain in some detail.

I go way back with trivia games- from call-ins to radio shows in the 70s and 80s, to joining and eventually hosting online games for AOL in the 90s, to the occasional night out with friends these days at a Geeks Who Drink event- I have pretty good brain chemistry for remembering a lifetime full of useless information.  This time round, my new trivia outlet is entirely online and I'm alone when actually competing.  I'd read something about it a while back- probably this Times piece- but was never interested enough to look into it until I became one of the chosen nerds to receive a referral from wayback LJ bud audacian and an invitation from "the league’s trivia-obsessed founder, Shayne Bushfield, who in his capacity as 'commissioner' uses the moniker 'Thorsten A. Integrity.'”

The article lays out the generalities- six questions per play day (generally non-holiday weekdays) for 25 total contests, questions which, in Jeopardy! clue fashion often hint at their own answers or possibly at wrong ones, and the daily matchups where you're rotated in your "rundle" against 20-ish other triviots known only by first initial, last name and a few other mostly ungooglable identifying traits. 

Here's where it gets interesting, though: you mostly score points for getting questions right, but the points are awarded based on how your opponent for each day thinks you will do.  Figuring these out is as tricky as getting the answers right. You assign weights of 1 point to two of the questions, 2 points for two more, and throw in one zero (for the one you think your opponent is most likely to get) and one three (for the one you think they're least likely to).  These are the components of your daily score.  You get limited historical information about how your opponent has done in the past- here's mine's for today through the first six rounds:



The days' difficulties vary. Monday's were a tire fire of trivia hell: I only got one of the six right, while my opponent got one more right but scored twice as many points because I guessed wrong about which would be hardest for them.  Tonight, on the other hand, I nailed five of the six, but have no idea how I or my opponent did until we see how we bet points against each other.  (Answers are revealed immediately, but the scores show up in the wee smalls, which is fine, because, trust me, I'll be up then:P)

There are no prizes other than bragging rights- and after your initial free invite you pay for the privilege, between $30 and 100 a year. And in theory, there's absolutely nothing stopping me from passing the answers to any friend I know who's in it, or looking shit up on the Interwebs.  One theory I have about how they discourage the latter: these people are smart, duh. There's nothing stopping them from making up questions, or more likely answers to questions about extremely obscure facts, crowdsourcing those fake answers out into cyberspace to trap the disreputable, and then banhammering any player who "correctly" answers the fake answer.  (The copyright equivalents of that come from the world of cartography, where mapmakers would invent "trap streets" and "paper towns" to find infringers on their designs. This actually became the basis for the film Paper Towns, leading to the eponymous nonexistent burg of Agloe, New York, a trout's throw from the World Famous Roscoe Diner but absolutely not the real diner where they filmed a scene in the film.)

That, of course, is the only thing stopping me from doing it- well, other than that little guy on my shoulder going



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Not getting enough sleep would also be wrong, so, adieu.