I’ve finished reading Ken Jennings’ book, and it was, as Sir Monkeypants says, “Both gripping and boring as poo.” We both liked the parts where Ken described his own personal experiences on Jeopardy, as well as time he spent at other trivia events. The chapters on the history of trivia, though, are a wee bit dry.

Anyway, one throwaway line in one of the chapters happens to mention that the biggest single-day trivia event in North America is World Trivia Night…which takes place in none other than Ottawa, Canada!

A few years back a friend of mine mentioned the trivia contest and tried to get a team together, but no one from our little circle except me responded to his email. But this year, I am determined to pull it together. We need a team of 10 people of varying specialities, ages, and backgrounds. How hard can it be to find ten people actually interested in a night of trivia? With food? And possibly funny hats? And the glory of attending an event that is on the radar of Ken Jennings? It practically sells itself.

World Trivia Night is held every year in November — ooh, it’ll be like a little birthday party for myself. So I have about 10 months to find a team…and more importantly, to train.

KenJen describes in his book how he studied up on certain common Jeopardy categories before going in, and it paid off. I might get around to such focused work, but before that, I feel like I just need to limber up my brain a little bit. The lack of sleep and lack of adult conversation lately has left me in a truly addled state, and sometimes I can’t even remember the name of that actress who played Daphne on Frasier. You know, red hair, English accent? It’s killing me!

So in these early days of training, I’m focusing on watching as many trivia-based game shows as I can. Weakest Link and Jeopardy are the best, because the fast pace of these shows means lots of trivia crammed into a short period of time. In fact, I think I should start taping Jeopardy every day — the writers’ strike means I have a lot of free TV hours on my hand to train, especially now that I’ve FINALLY caught up with all those back-episodes of Heroes that were kicking around on the PVR.

After my game show orgy, I hope my brain will be stirred enough to handle a few run-throughs of all the cards in the Trivial Pursuit box we have. Maybe I’ll head out for a few games of NTN at the East Side Mario’s.

And after that, I hear that the same people that run World Trivia Night run a weekly trivia event at the Barley Mow, which is nice and closeby. Once I get my crack team of trivia buffs (or just avid snackers, whatever) together, maybe we can do a few nights at the Mow to warm up. Go team go!

Then, it’s on to World Trivia Night! Last year, the top two teams tied with a perfect score — they answered all 110 questions correctly. I’ll be happy to get in the 70-80 range this year, mostly because I have no idea what to expect from the questions or if the Wee One will (SO HELP ME GOD) be sleeping through the night by then.

But just the thought of participating…it has me salivating. People I know…consider yourselves targets for recruitment! Let’s DO THIS THING!

Our New Year’s Day dinner for 20 was, I dare say, a smashing success. The adults had a good time socializing while all the kids played happily together. Everyone liked the food and I handed out several recipes for the dishes I had made. I ate many, many pieces of shortbread and three big pieces of Peppermint Bark and all was well with the world. The cleanup didn’t take long at all, and we had exactly the right amount of leftovers — not so much that food went to waste, but enough so that I didn’t have to cook at all the next day. Yays all around!

I’m looking forward to having it at the LuckySevens’ next year, though. I need at least a year to recover from all the schedule making.

I’m excited to be starting 2008 and I see nothing but fun times ahead with the kids and and my new labeller. Organization and day trips await!

I like to make only one resolution (at most) per year, so I can really focus on it, and I’ve already declared Improving My Grammar to be this year’s goal (off to a bad start, by the way, as I have already used the “I never” construct at least ten times since 2008 began). But I do have some other things I’d like to accomplish this year, so I thought I’d list them here. Then next year I can look back at the list and laugh and laugh and then make some more Peppermint Bark to ease the guilt.

Get Heart Healthy. Really this goal translates as, “Lose those extra 30 pounds of baby weight.” But around here we try hard not to focus on being skinny/losing weight. Instead, we try to set a good example for the kids by focusing on eating right and exercising, to keep our bodies happy and our hearts healthy. In 2007 I made great strides in improving our diets (thank you, crock pot!) but now it’s time to get back in shape. My biggest problem with this goal is that by the end of the day, I am completely and totally exhausted, mostly because I am not getting any sleep, like, ever. Which brings us to…

Get the Wee One to sleep through the night. I knew that when she slept through the night at 2 months old that it wasn’t going to last, but I didn’t think we’d get to the point where we are now, with her getting up three or four times a night like a newborn. We’ve let her cry it out a few times but every time we get her down to a more respectable one or two nighttime awakenings, she gets another FREAKIN’ cold, and I just can’t stand to let her cry when she’s coughing and stuffed up and a good suctioning combined with some nursing would really help her sleep so much better. I hope that once the winter season is over we will get a good long stretch of healthy baby time, and we can get her sleeping much, much better than she is now. I plan to wean her around the one year mark, so by then, she better figure out a way to comfort herself at night, because I’ll be out of tricks.

Get Gal Smiley to poop in the potty. The toilet training is going great, don’t get me wrong — she keeps her underwear dry all day and can even go use the bathroom all by herself if I am busy with the baby. But she still insists on putting on a pullup — by herself, if I refuse to do it for her — so she can poop. I’m really fed up with cleaning up those messes, let me tell you, so it’s a major goal of mine for the very near future to get her using the potty all the time, for all events.

Visit extended family. Now that we travel so infrequently, our visits to Southern Ontario are almost always exclusively to visit our parents. I have two first cousins and an uncle, in particular, whose houses I have never seen and who have new babies (the cousins) that I have never met. So this year, I have a major goal to make the time to visit them at their homes and take a thousand pictures of their adorable little ones.

Use a babysitter. We now have access to not one, but two babysitting opportunities right here on our very street. My friend Jen’s 12-year-old daughter, Miss Hilarious, already knows our kids and is totally, totally, fabulous with them (in fact, she is the real reason our New Year’s Day feast went so well — she single handedly took care of the other six kids while all the adults got the afternoon off). She’s finally old enough to babysit and her parents are just down the street and that’s all fabulous. When we can’t get Miss Hilarious, which will happen often because when we go out, we are often going out with her parents and she’s stuck at home caring for her own younger siblings, we could use the twin 12-year-old girls that live just down the street that are now hanging their shingle out as babysitters. There we get two for the price of one, and again, their parents are just down the street. I’m not talking about making this a regular thing, but once we get the Wee One sleeping a little better at night, I don’t see why we can’t pop out for a movie say, once every other month or so. If I can keep myself from having a panic attack at the thought. My babies!

Make more time for writing. This is kind of a pie-in-the-sky goal and we’ll see if it happens at all. At the very least I’m sure I’ll be blogging a lot, but I hope to write some more constructive things this year — finish up a few stories I’ve had kicking around for a while, maybe put together some newspaper or magazine articles to sell. Although this is definitely my long-term goal for building a career, we’ll see if I can make the time for this in 2008 — right now getting better sleep and focusing on my family are more important.

That’s all I can think of for now. Time to get cracking!