Last night, we went and did trivia again, only this time it was just me and my sister against 12 or 13 other teams that all had at least four people.

So, imagine our surprise when we came out first after the first three rounds, and then again after the second three rounds!

Haha....not really surprised. They had a music round with double points and we wrecked that.

Anyway, after the last two rounds, we were sitting at our table and waiting for the point tally at the end (we knew we blew it, because there was a whole category about robots in movies, TV and video game....like we have time to watch crap about robots, except, of course, the movie about Johnny 5, but that wasn't even in there so we got no points at all that round). This guy comes up to our table, in massive nerd freak-out mode (I know, buddy...I've been there) and starts asking if we really were ahead after the first three rounds AND the second three rounds.

Yes, yes we were.

I don't know why he was so upset. It's free trivia and the only thing you can really win is a gift certificate to the bar where it's at. And his table totally ended up winning, anyway, because that round with no points killed us (7th place, which is still pretty good, considering the no-points round and the fact that we were by far the smallest team). I kind of wanted to go harass his table after they announced the winners, but I didn't think he would find it funny.

Plus, I'm a little scared by anyone with that amount of knowledge about robots.

I finally got a new phone yesterday. It's about time, too, because mine was fixing to die on me. It actually did die for a while, but then after I activated the new one, I got it turned on so I could at least get all my phone numbers out of it.

It was a long process. Anyhoo, the only really sad thing about losing that phone is that is has a picture of my grandpa on it, that has been transferred from phone to phone, and which is now gone. Argh.

Yep. Lost all my pictures. The ones of my dog, who is not with us anymore, too. That kind of stinks, but if I think about it realistically, none of those pictures were very good anyway. I can also probably take it in to the phone place and see if they can help me get them off my old phone.

Anyhoo....I digress. I bought the highest-rated free phone they had, and it ended up still costing me $30 because, get this, they charge an "upgrade fee" for a power cord and instruction manual.

Seriously.

That is the lamest thing I've heard. Plus, I already had a power cord for this kind of phone jack, so I didn't even end up needing it.

Oh, well. I do like my new phone. It's kind of slidey, which is fun, and it has a full keyboard, which I'll have to get used to for texting, but at least I won't have to manually input long words that aren't in my phone's texting dictionary. You know, words like "sphincter" and "flatulence" and "onomatopoeia."

(Yes, I use words like that in my texts...I also don't use any abbreviations or bad grammar...my texts are a wee bit lengthy, at times.)

I'm still mad about the upgrade fee, though. Maybe I should charge them a fee for the convenience of me paying my bill every month. I'll deduct it from my phone bill and call it a convenience charge, and then when they call me to ask about it, I'll charge them by the minute for how long our conversation takes. I'd bet they'd take care of business a lot faster and not put me on hold for a month if they had to pay for my time.

Ha ha ha. I wouldn't actually do that, but it sounds fun. Ah, well. Happy Wednesday!

Some people should just get a little self-awareness. Maybe there should be a store for that, perhaps within a mall or something, so they wouldn't have to feel self-conscious about going there.

Walk along, buy a bra, get an Orange Julius, go the self-awareness store...you know, no biggie.

When you're learning how to teach people something or manage them at something, books and teachers always say that you should generalize and tell the group, "We all need to (blah, blah, blah)."

Except that really doesn't work if the person you're aiming it at doesn't think he or she's the problem.

Sigh.

Oh, well.

Maybe I just need to pull out my Anne Robinson figurine. The one that says, "You are the weakest link. Goodbye." Maybe it's time to bring that phrase back. I don't know.

We'll see. I probably won't because then that would mean someone else could do that to me, and I don't think I'm a fan of that. I want to keep my self-awareness at a blissful minimum, thanks.

Vajamas. Okay, so I guess I'm not the only one who's getting a lot of ads for these pants on my Facebook page. Because I think I've pretty much had the ad for Vajamas on the right side of my page constantly for the last few weeks. My curiosity finally got the better of me this morning and I googled the name to see if they really were a real thing.

Apparently, there's a market for pants that are softer than the fields of heaven. They are also, according to the site where they may be purchased, softer than the anus of a silkworm or a freshly laundered bunny.

I wanted to buy a pair, just because that site is hilarious. Then I noticed the $85 price tag.

Even comedy has its limits.

I already have a pair of soft pants for lounging, anyway. My Mom gave them to me for Christmas and they have Sesame Street characters on them and she gave my Dad a matching pair so we could, theoretically, lounge together, in matching pants.

Did I mention they are like wearing pants made from a heating pad? Because whoa. Fleece pants are the ultimate in warmness. Or should I say over-warmness? 

They are soft, though.

Maybe I should institute "Wear Your PJ Pants to Work" day. Probably not, though. I don't want to contaminate my PJs.

Just in case you need a pair, here is the link: http://www.betabrand.com/blue-vajamas-pajamas-drawstring-pants.html

Enjoy the softness!

I really thought I had gotten through to people on this, but apparently, everyone's forgotten, so I have to use today's blog post to remind you all of something that is vitally important to the safety, health, and well-being of every person in the English-speaking world: APOSTROPHES DO NOT INDICATE A PLURAL.

Whew. I had to yell it. It's kind of an emergency.

I saw a sign on someone's house the other day that was this large wooden thingamajig that read, "The Smith's live here." Now, the only way that could possibly be grammatically correct would be if the store Smith's lived there, but then it would be, "The Smith's lives here." And it would have to be a much larger house, because I've been to Smith's, and there's no way that house could contain it.

Anyway, why would someone spend that much money on a sign that is grammatically incorrect? Why? I think this may be part of a larger conspiracy to drive me completely insane.

So, here we go again: If you are saying there is more than one of something, just use the "s." If you are saying something belongs to someone, or saying the word + "is," use "'s." If you are using the word "its," there is no apostrophe unless you are using the contraction for "it is," which is "it's." 

I'm not confident that I got all of those quotation marks right. It's 5:30 a.m., and my eyeballs are killing me. I had to do it, though. We've got to get the word out before my brain explodes.

Share it with your friends. Say no to improper apostrophe usage.

So, we're kind of the dorky family that loves to do trivia. We all have our areas of expertise: My Dad knows, well, everything, and my sister and I have different areas of pop culture covered, along with little weird specialty areas. For instance, if they ever have a question about Tolkien, I'm all over that, and my sister knows so much more about current TV stuff and music stuff than I ever will. My knowledge stops in the 80s.

Oh, and percentages. Thank you, Grandpa, for forcing me to learn how to do percentages in my head. It's actually quite useful.

Anyway, last night we all went and did trivia, and everyone had places where he or she threw in some help, and, although we were in first place at the beginning, we ended up fourth. You may think this was disappointing, but we're pretty sure the calculations were off, since her scoring didn't match up with ours. Also, we beat the table of scientists, so that's pretty cool.

And we had the best team name....just used Fred's Got Slacks and the table of drunken 21-year-old birthday revelers serenaded us with the song.

Felt pretty cool for a minute, then got the question about The Dark Claw right AND the question about the real name of Mount Doom right, and we knew that we really are the coolest family on the planet.

Really. We are. Ask anybody.

And 21-year-olds are annoying.

People who treat good-looking people better than other people are evil. Maybe the non-good-looking people deserve a little extra consideration for just having to live with their ginormous noses or big old ape arms or whatever.

Or maybe the non-good-looking people should just go on strike.

Or maybe I should just go eat my cake and shut up.

I think I'll do that. Happy Wednesday.

On Friday night, my husband and I went out to dinner, and it was very nice, except for one thing: We were just about the only people, at least in our section, that were talking to each other and not completely engaged in our smartphones. The glow from the light of the phones onto the people's faces would've been funny or maybe added ambiance if it hadn't been so sad.

I like my texting just as much as the next person, but really? You go our to dinner with friends to text other friends?

I'm not talking about an occasional checking of the phone, either. It was full-on absorption with no conversation or interaction. There was one particular table that had five people at it, and they were all glued to their machines. It was a little disheartening.

Of course, there was the "middle-aged date night" table that my husband completely missed out on, where the wife (who was about my mom's age, so, yeah, old enough to know better) had purchased breadstick-looking things and was sucking cheese sauce off of them while raising and lowering her eyebrows at her husband (boyfriend, date, whatever), who was fidgeting and looking slightly embarrassed. That table was not sad in the same way, but I was still trying to avoid looking at it, because the lady reminded me of my fourth grade social studies teacher, and the thought of her sucking condiments off of a pole of bread makes me want to vomit.

So, maybe put your phones down at the table. Can you? You're paying good money to spend time at a restaurant (okay, maybe it wasn't anything fancy, but it wasn't Taco Bell, either) with these people. Maybe if you can't stand them enough to talk to them for an hour or so over a meal, you should look for other friends (I don't count the table with the four kids...the parents were smiling at each other as their kids played with the parents' cell phones...I thoroughly approve of that method in restaurants, as it leads to extended periods of silence and the children getting along, albeit temporarily).

And no overtly sexual flirting with your spouse in public, please. I feel like I saw something I'd normally have to go to a creepy theater downtown and pay a $9.99 admission fee to see (or however much they charge...as you may have guessed, I've never actually gone to one of those, as the cost in hand sanitizer alone before I could even sit down in one of those seats would be astronomical, not to mention having to burn my clothing afterwards and I wouldn't see anything because I'd just have to hide my head the whole time anyway from embarrassment). Ew. Just...no.

It's finally Friday. I'd like to say that I didn't die from the insanity this week, but I'd like to reserve that statement until 4 p.m. today. At that point, I will know whether I'm surviving the craaaaaaaazy or not.

I hope I do. I have a special alone day with my husband starting and I'd hate to miss out on that. 

Except the whole "not working on Saturday" thing is freaking me out a little. I mean, we'll be back late Saturday, but the odds are good that I won't get much work done at that point. I don't know what I'll do with myself.

Actually, I do...I'll work extra insanely on Sunday to make up for Saturday, so I'll be nice and tired for Monday.

Monday? Ick. I'd like to skip that day, please.

Get to work on that.

For now, I'll make it through today with visions of stuffed sopapillas in my head. That's going to happen, yo. Maybe even beer, too. Heck yes.

I did something today that makes me incredibly proud of myself. A certain person had left her Facebook account open and I logged out of it without reading her messages or typing an awesome status update. It was really difficult, but I did it.

I'm still curious, but at least I feel like I did what I hope someone would do for me, even if they weren't terribly fond of me and were super super super wanting to post something hilarious.

And I'm not mega fond of this person, and I wanted to real bad.

So, yes, I'm totally bragging.

Okay, Apple Jacks and Corn Pops are the best cereals ever. Why? Because they each have three grams of fiber per serving, plus they're both puffed up with air, so I feel like I'm having a huger serving than I really am.

Can we work on making a puffed-up-with-air cheeseburger? I'm not really a scientist, but I think that would sell, if someone truly had his or her mind set on it.

Come on. You know it would be awesome to have air-puffed versions of everything delicious. No more calories, but everything would just look ginormous. Maybe everyone would eat less.

Maybe I would eat less.

Maybe we need this for cookies, as well.

Okay, scientists. Get on it.

It's great when you have an entire conversation with a person in double-speak. You know, where everything in the whole talk is implied, so at the end, you're not really sure if where you think you are is actually the place in which you've ended up.

That was the last couple of days for me.

It's weird, because I think I was braver this week than I've ever been in my life, but I'm still too much of a weenie to do some other things that I think most people do on a normal basis and aren't scared of at all. I am an extreme non-confrontationalist. I prefer to handle things in a sneaky, under-the-table sort of way, and I realize that sometimes that can be manipulative, but I suck at the whole face-to-face confrontation thing.

Which is why, when I said what I've been needing to say to a certain person a couple of days ago, I almost crapped my pants. It was almost an out-of-body type experience, except I couldn't get out to float up at the ceiling and observe, and all I wanted to do was hide my head in my shirt and wait until the talking was over.

I hate talking. I think I may be a little bit differently abled.

Seriously, not for fun.

Anyhow, today, we may learn some new things. Hopefully, these things will be positive and not lead to me drinking too much wine and telling certain people more of my feelings, the ones that are best kept bottled in my brain.

Also, I am going to try to work up the courage to talk to someone else about a business thingy. Wish me luck. I've done a partial lame-o thingy on my own, but I would rather try with this person, except I'm just too embarrassed to ask.

That may take a few weeks.

Ugh.

Everything clear now? Yeah, that's what I thought. Happy Friday.