minor accomplishments, major grievances

I sort of left everyone hangin' on the whole Jeopardy! thing, huh? Well, I guess I haven't spoken a follow-up because they left me hanging. I did it. I answered all 50 questions, but they didn't give me (or anybody else) a score. Apparently they'll contact me at an undisclosed future date if I made the grade and the random selection process. So even if I aced every single question (which I know I didn't) I'm still dependent on a certain amount of chance (the probability of which scares me to think about).

I totally should have videoed myself taking that dumb test. You would have gotten a tremendous laugh. Five minutes before it started I went into major "Jon Fidget Mode" as I just sat there watching the countdown screen let me know when the test would start. I try really hard to be cool and laid back all the time, but a select few have seen me in my natural, anxious state. It's ugly (and funny). I really started getting nervous 30 seconds before the test began and it started playing the show's theme music.

It would have been easy to video too. I could have set up a Camtwist setting that would show my face as well as the question being asked (they actually ask questions instead of answers so that we wouldn't have to type "what is" every time).

The first 25 questions or so were easy, at least for me. I don't want to say that in a braggy way, but more in a "they asked questions from 80s movies and Greek mythology sorts of questions" type of way. I know I missed a couple of middle questions. I think nine of the last ten gave me problems. None of the questions were multiple choice. It was all "know-it-or-not" fill-in-the-blank.

A couple of my other friends from around the country tried out too. Edvalson said he didn't think he did too well and Ammon confided in me that he missed at least one -- one that I'm pretty sure I got. That's pretty cool because I always get a huge Jeopardy! surge of confidence when I can get a question that other contestants on the show don't get.

I guess we're allowed to take the test every year. Now it looks like I'll be taking it every year until I'm smart and lucky enough. Next year I'm gonna get video of the ordeal. Totally.

... So my car hit 200,000 miles last week. Much rejoicing. Here's the video of it. Joe was in the car with me. If you want to see the point of the whole thing, just skip to 1:54.



Last week I also discovered that life is simply unfair in so many ways. How fair is it that it's a hundred times easier to ruin somebody's day than it is to make the day slightly better?


I'm still sorry Alex. We'll be getting way awesomer eatingware.

My neck hurts. On the right side. It's buggin' me.

I hate the Fort Union area. It's like the forbidden zone of Salt Lake Valley. I'm so proud of SLV for being awesome enough to maintain a grid system where everything is easy to find. Not so in Fort Union. It's so diagonally that I make every attempt not to go there. Plus its main hub is the intersection of two streets -- Fort Union and Union Park. That's confusion waiting to happen, right?

One time Stephanie and Mark and I were hungry so we went to the Chili's downtown. When they said it was a 20 minute wait, Mark was like, "No way. We're not waiting that long. Let's try Five Guys." So we got in Mark's car and he drove as if he were driving Miss Daisy all the way to the Fort Union area. It took 30 minutes to get there. We couldn't find Five Guys at first, but found it after another five minutes of searching in the forbidden zone (right next to another Chili's). The burgers were okay. Sound gross now.

Anyway, the point is, there's only one Five Guys around and it's at Fort Union. A more likely story is that I'll want to go to the Belgian Waffle House. I went there a few weeks ago late at night, had some laughs and most importantly stuffed myself silly. They served me this stuff called garbage hash. It's a combination of hash browns, bacon, cheese and peppers -- and they gave me a couple of pounds of it. It very well could have just been the sweepings from the kitchen, but it was breakfast-awesome. An even more likely occurance for the Fort Union trip is World Market where I pick up my Tim Tams. Tim Tams are these Australian chocolate cookies you can suck hot chocolate through and then slide down your throat. The practice is called Tim Tam slamming. This Friday is a big Tim Tam slam contest so I had to pick some up (you're going, right?).

THE POINT IS if I ever crave the burgers, the garbage hash or the chocolatey gooey goodness I'll have to descend into what I call "The Salt Lake Axis of Evil." Observe:


I've discovered that I don't just get lost in Fort Union because it's diagonally. Notice that the union of Union Park and Fort Union combine to form an evil swastika. Surely this isn't a coincidence.

If you need to hit this evil part of town, though -- take this map with you.