Last weekend was the St. Louis All Star Quiz. Our district (Chicago Central) sent 10 kids to compete against several other districts. Several people who read my blog were there. Thus my not writing about it could have been quite distressing to them. If I don’t write about it, did it really happen? :)
Anyways, the trip was pretty cool. We left Thursday night, drove to Springfield and stopped at Steak and Shake for dinner. At Steak and Shake we met up with a bunch of the other quizzers and some other adult chaperones. After Steak and Shake we drove the rest of the way to St. Louis. For the most part the trip was uneventful, however we did start calling my car the “rave car” because of the music I listen to and the streaking cell phones Paul and Joe were waving everywhere. This was done in opposition to Sara’s “party van” which joe and paul did not get to ride in. We split up the boys and girls, because well….they’re boys and girls.
After getting to the hotel, we played a little Mafia and hit the sack. I never sleep well in hotels. I think it’s because it’s not my own bed, and the fact that I’m sleeping in the same bed with someone, so maybe I feel constrained. Either way I didn’t sleep very well and the morning came earlier than I wanted it to. Scott and I, along with several other volunteers spent the better part of Friday setting up for the quiz. We had seventeen rooms to setup, including chairs, tables, and quiz equipment. Sara, Erika, and the rest of the kids headed to the Science Museum where they did some stuff. I’d fill you in more, but I haven’t seen the pictures yet. I hear they’re coming soon.
The quiz started Friday night. I started out as a content judge in one room, but after 5 rounds I got pulled to help with stats since I’m computer savvy. I did a lot of running around for the entire quiz, mostly because we didn’t have a working wireless network, so to get the stats from each computer we had to plug a usb key in and manually download the stats. 17 rooms is a lot of rooms, especially when you have to grab stats from each of them every 3 rounds or so. Barry and Bill would have gone nuts if I hadn’t been recruited I think. It was also cool to hang out with Barry (since he wrote QuizMachine - the program we use to quiz) and talk shop with him. Somehow I let it slip that I love COBOL. Turns out he’s a big fan too. :)
So anyways, we had 10 rounds on Friday night and and probably close to 12 rounds on Saturday. It was a long quiz. Originally we were supposed to head back on Saturday, but the weather was pretty horrible between St. Louis and Chicago (lots of freezing rain, ice, and snow) so we opted to stay another night. We got back to the hotel, played some Egyptian Rat Screw, Mafia, and 4 on a couch (though we made up the couch since we didn’t have one. After that the kids played some “bang ahh ahh” game (yes that’s really what it’s called) where you shoot someone in the circle (by saying bang) and they have to say ahh, followed by the two people next to them saying ahh. Then the original person who said ahh gets to shoot someone. I guess the point is to try and get everyone out by making them make mistakes. I didn’t bother trying to play.
Sunday morning we got up, had some breakfast and it the road. We stopped a couple of times, including Subway for lunch (more on that later). We got back to Kankakee around 4 and I was home by 5. I ended up taking a 2 hour nap because I was so tired. You’d be amazed how much driving makes you tired. So that was my trip. I’m home safe (and I’m still safe 4 days later..imagine that!). When Marilyn puts up the pictures I’ll drop a link in the comments so you can check them out.
Recent Comments