Luzon, Great Britain, Honshu, (Blank)

The other night I was getting ready for bed, turning out lights and checking doors and windows and that kind of thing, and I happened to glance across the street. One of our neighbors has a large TV, and they'd paused it in their dark living room with their curtains open, with the result that this face was looming in the darkness. I thought it made a pretty cool, if mysterious, picture. Anybody recognize the show? I don't.

Today I actually have something to blog about because I participated in a social event last night. I know! Rare enough these days! Who has the energy after a long day at work? And honestly, I wasn't all that excited about it, but a co-worker asked me to come and in retrospect I'm glad I did.

It was our school's annual quiz night, sponsored by the parents for themselves, faculty and staff. (No kids -- wine was on the tables!) Our team of eight did pretty well, mainly because one of our group was a complete quiz dominatrix, and we came in third out of eleven teams. Our main rival team came in second, and a team of alumni came in first, which made us all feel pretty good!

Here are some of the sample questions:

1. Which Egyptian city is the name of a Greek god spelled backwards?
2. Which ocean is at the eastern end of the Panama Canal?
3. Complete this series: Luzon, Great Britain, Honshu, ______.

The first one's not hard, but I'm including it here because it was my one distinct victory of the entire evening: Suez. I got other answers too, but usually concurrent with other team members.

The second one seems easy, but it's a trick question. The Panama Canal crosses the isthmus of Panama at a downward angle, and the easternmost terminus is actually in the Pacific. If you look at it on a map, you'll see what I mean. I suppose the giveaway here is the word "ocean," because the other end of the canal is in the Caribbean Sea, not the Atlantic. We actually left this one blank because it was in a round where we got docked for wrong answers and we weren't sure.

The third one was a complete mystery, because we weren't sure what we were measuring. Was it the size of the islands, the locations, some characteristic or what? We put Madagascar, thinking we might be going up in geographic size -- and that's roughly correct but there would be others in the series in between, so that's not the answer they were looking for. Turns out the islands are listed in order of increasing population, with the fourth and most populous one being Java.

So, anyway, that was a lot of fun. I walked home late and got in about 11 p.m. and immediately solved a household mystery.

Dave and I have occasionally noticed silvery slug tracks in the living room. They've been on the carpet, on the floor and even on the sofa. I have scoured the room trying to find that slug or snail, without success, but last night when I came in and turned on the light -- BAM! There it was, on the floor, caught in the act! I scooped it up and threw it out the back door. I'm impressed it's been able to survive in our dry house, but I suppose it stayed on (or under) the plants. Now it's back where it belongs, and probably relieved, if slugs are capable of feeling relief.