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We had a great time at Dain's trivia night tonight. And I'm not just saying that because we won!

Last time we teamed up with D. and S., but this time they called (and wrote) the questions so we were on our own answering them. During the challenge I thought it was really hard and we were going to do poorly. But we had a few lucky guesses, for instance Mr. Bill's dog (Spot) and the movie which featured the WOPR computer (War Games). Also a couple of the questions weren't as hard as I thought they were: for instance one of the questions was the full name of the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I thought that by "full name," they must have meant what words formed the acronym HAL. Because "HAL 9000" was clearly too easy. And I was crushed that, as many times as I've read 2001, I couldn't remember what "HAL" stands for. (it's Heuristic ALgorithmic computer, in case you're wondering.) But in fact, "HAL 9000" was the answer they were going for. I thought for sure we had missed that one, but I was wrong about being wrong. Georg tells me that it's a sign of what a geek I am, that I think "HAL 9000" is a gimme. Only about half the teams got it right, so he might have something there.

We had one goof where I whispered an answer to Georg, but he couldn't hear me over the ambient noise and didn't write it down, and then it turned out to be the right answer. (Question: what is the highest calorie food at Taco Bell. Answer: Taco salad. No, I have never eaten one. I'm pretty sure I have never in my life eaten at Taco Bell.) I have to admit, if we had lost by one point I would have been annoyed. But in the event it didn't matter.

It was interesting to talk to D. and S. about how they developed the questions. It seems like it would be really difficult, to come up with questions that are hard enough to present a real challenge, but not hard enough to discourage people. I think I'd be bad at writing questions because my knowledge of trivia is poor in some areas that would be commonplace to a normal person (for instance, sports or current music), and fairly thorough in some obscure areas. We were joking that "The Misunderstood Films of Alan Hale Sr." would be the perfect category for me. Actually D. and S.' last category, "Fictional Computers and Robots," was pretty much perfect for me and Georg. That was the category that asked about War Games and HAL 9000.

The prize was a $25 bar tab, which made our evening almost free. Plus, we hung out with D. and S. after the contest and got to try a new dessert they're working on: deep fried mini Milky Way bars. It was pretty much exactly what you would think. In other words, if you think that sounds disgusting, you wouldn't like it. And if (like me) you think it sounds great, you'd probably enjoy it as much as I did.