Trivia Master

I am quite the trivial fellow, apparently.

Sometime in November, a friend of mine called me up to ask if I would form a team to compete in the local orchestra's fundraising trivia contest, which was held on Thursday evening. And like an idiot, I said, "Sure!"

Actually, it was fun.

My duties as Team Captain were not all that extensive:

• I had to find seven other people to join me on the team, which went quite well (though one person had to drop out at the last minute, forcing me to find a substitute, which took, well, not much effort at all really). It ended up as the Campus Team, representing the university where Kim and I teach. If you want trivia head straight for academia, I always say - we live for this stuff.
• I had to front the application fee (it's a fundraiser, after all). On the one hand, this required me to budget the fee into our monthly expenses, but on the other hand it meant that when everyone did pay me back, it was like found money. Which I promptly blew on groceries. I am such a wastrel.
• I had to get the paperwork in on time. Actually I failed at this one, but as noted it is a fundraiser and the orchestra was not about to turn anyone down who was going to give them money. They were very nice about it when I called.
• And I had to go up front to collect the trophy when we won. Because you know we won.

Actually, the only charge that the campus dean laid on us was to beat the team from Local Tech, and if possible from Nearby Private College. And we did. NPC came in second - they closed the gap in the last two rounds, but we had built enough of a lead in the first three that we were safe. Local Tech placed fifth, behind the Daily Blab and another team from a bank or somewhere. No, we didn't do too bad, not by half.

We. Kicked. Butt.

We are the greatest of the least, the undisputed masters of that which is probably not worth mastering, and it feels pretty good I have to say. We ended up with all sorts of goodies, including some surprisingly nice individual trophies to go with the behemoth that I'm holding in that photo. That trophy is every bit as heavy as it looks, by the way.

Most importantly, though, we had a good time. The orchestra got a fair amount of money. And we beat NPU and Local Tech. It was a good night.