I Lost on Jeopardy, Part IV

B"H

(Two paragraphs from the last entry:)

Sometime in March, I think, I got a call from Robert from Jeopardy. He asked me if I wanted to be on Jeopardy and I said, emphatically, "Yes!" But, the date that he asked me if I could be there was in the middle of Passover. The first two and last two days of Passover are holiday days and we are not permitted to drive, use electricity, or use just about any modern electrical (or telephone, cell phone, or the like) or technological product. Now that I have gone to California, I realize that I was right to tell him I couldn’t do it – I wouldn’t have had the time to squeeze this in between the holiday days. Since this was the last taping for the year, Robert told me that they’d keep me in mind for the new season.

I was concerned that, especially with the awful set-up of the Jewish holidays this year (Rosh Hashana was Monday night to Wednesday night, as were Sukkot and Shmini Atzeret / Simhat Tora, and Yom Kippur was on a Thursday) that I would be called sometime during the Jewish holiday season (which pretty much lasts for 4 weeks). But thankfully, that didn’t happen.

On Erev (the day before) Yom Kippur I got a call from Robert. He asked me if I could make it on November 11. I checked the calendar, found out it was a couple of weeks after the Jewish holidays (and a few weeks before my nephew’s Bar Mitzva – I later found out that it was a few days after my cousin’s Bar Mitzva, but that was in town, so I was able to go to the Bar Mitzva and do Jeopardy).

Now came the stressing – not over being on Jeopardy, but the stressing over the plane tickets, the hotel room (they don’t pay for you and you’re only guaranteed $1000, so if you’re heading to Los Angeles from the Northeast, you need to keep costs down), food, etc. The actual Jeopardy experience didn’t stress me out at all. I’d been looking forward to this since I was a little girl. My Mom and great-aunt had been on Jeopardy in earlier years. I’d been practicing in various ways since I was in my teens (from writing down what I got right as a teen, to counting amounts on my fingers, to counting right answers on my fingers, to counting the right answers while using a click pen as a substitute buzzer). So even though, in order to actually do this I had to schlep from coast to coast and sleep in a hotel (I’m not a hotel person), I was as ready as I’d ever be for the actual Jeopardy experience. I knew that a lot had to do with what categories came up (my Mom told me about her experience – I missed the actual show she was on – that she was ahead after the Jeopardy round but when she saw the Double Jeopardy categories she knew she was toast), who else I was competing against and how fast I was on the buzzer.

I managed to get reasonably decently priced plane tickets (my Mom came with me – I’d never been to California before and didn’t like the idea of going someplace I’d never been before all by myself) and the hotel rate, I was told by my cousin who lives just outside LA, was very good. Then came the food…………

The week before we left, I did some research on vegan restaurants in the area. I found one that was perfect for me – since, besides being a vegan, I can’t eat grains or sugars or soy it was hard even with vegan restaurants – it was a raw food restaurant, called "Leaf Cuisine", that had a number of soy free dishes. I called them and found out that I could get food delivered from them if I contacted a food delivery place they deal with. I ordered a lasagna type dish called "rawsagna", a kale salad, a wrap type sandwich (make with greens on the outside instead of bread) and carrot juice (the carrot juice was a mistake – it got all over the bag, but it was delicious). There were some more arrangements I had to make (since I wanted the food to be there when I got there) but this all worked out rather well and the food was delicious. But my Mom didn’t want anything from a place that said it was raw food (turned out she liked the food too, but neither of us knew what would happen). So the Sunday before we were leaving (we left Monday afternoon), I spent about 8 or so hours on the phone trying to find an appropriate kosher restaurant (that also had food I could eat). I found one called "La Gondola" on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills and I ordered some stuff for my Mom for Monday night (when we got there). The food was there when we got to the hotel.

Check out my squidoo lenses (articles):

Strong Biblical Women
Strong Biblical Women 2
Why Be Vegetarian
Vegetarianism: Getting Started 1
Vegetarianism: Getting Started 2
Rosh Hashana
Quick Vegan Cooking
Creating new recipes from old
Strong Biblical Women Part 3
Hanuka
About the Jewish Calendar
Witches and Morality
Presidential Trivia Quiz
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Math Hints 1 -- Adding Fractions
Presidents1: George Washington
Passover: Holiday of Freedom
Ruth and Naomi
John and John Quincy Adams
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Purim, Esther et al
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My Blogs
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Math Hints 3
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My experience on Jeopardy
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My Vocational Experiences
Why I'm a Red Sox Fan

Check out my other blogs:

Israel and it's Place in the World
Jewish Singles
Strong Jewish Women
Everything Goes

I Lost on Jeopardy Part III

B"H

(One paragraph from the last entry:)

I hadn’t heard from Jeopardy by the time the next on-line test came along (well, the next one we were told that we could take). So, since we were told that Jeopardy loves people who keep trying (there was one person there that was on his fourth or fifth time there), I decided to take the test again. There was only one problem, though. I was scheduled to be in Israel for my niece’s wedding when the test was being given. So, while the test is given at 8 pm Eastern Standard Time, it’s 3 am in Israel.

Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem. At 3 am, everyone is asleep in my sister’s house, nobody would be competing with me for the computer nor would anyone be around to distract me. But, because so many people came in for my niece’s wedding (and my sister-in-law’s wedding two days later), my sister didn’t have enough room in the house to put everyone up, so I was sleeping at a friend’s down the block (where I didn’t have the availability of the internet). But two very interesting things happened.

The day before “test day”, the lights and electricity went out at the house staying at. I walked down to my sister’s house and woke her up and she said I should bring the stuff I needed down the block and sleep on her couch (which was fine with me). She helped me set up the couch and I slept there that night.

The next night, we went to get some take-out (and pick up my brother’s daughter since my brother and sister-in-law were on vacation for their anniversary and the two teens were by themselves, so we invited them for dinner that night – my nephew would come straight to the house from school) at the same mall my sister brought her kids to the eye doctor and it started to pour. The rain was coming down so heavily that we got totally soaked just running to the car. I have to give my sister credit for driving home in that weather. I had never seen such a rainstorm in Israel before and I don’t recall ever seeing a storm where it poured so much for so long.

It was pouring so hard that my sister told my brother’s children that they should stay over (there was no one to go home to anyway and with this horrible weather, no one knew if the electricity wouldn’t go out). It was so bad that my sister said she wasn’t even going to drive me down the block (I certainly couldn’t walk in that weather – I got soaked just running to the car to get my pjs from the night before). So, thanks to the “blackout” the night before, the couch was already set up for me.

I went to sleep about 1 am and woke up again about 2 am, leaving me plenty of time to sign on and get ready for the Jeopardy test. I did get on in time, and I took the test (though I’m not at all sure how I did – I couldn’t even think of George Eliot’s name until the time had almost run out and I was trying so hard to get it in time that I spelled it “Elite”, so I doubt, even with their very liberal spelling rules, that I got it right).

Sometime in March, I think, I got a call from Robert from Jeopardy. He asked me if I wanted to be on Jeopardy and I said, emphatically, “Yes!” But, the date that he asked me if I could be there was in the middle of Passover. The first two and last two days of Passover are holiday days and we are not permitted to drive, use electricity, or use just about any modern electrical (or telephone, cell phone, or the like) or technological product. Now that I have gone to California, I realize that I was right to tell him I couldn’t do it – I wouldn’t have had the time to squeeze this in between the holiday days. Since this was the last taping for the year, Robert told me that they’d keep me in mind for the new season.

I was concerned that, especially with the awful set-up of the Jewish holidays this year (Rosh Hashana was Monday night to Wednesday night, as were Sukkot and Shmini Atzeret / Simhat Tora, and Yom Kippur was on a Thursday) that I would be called sometime during the Jewish holiday season (which pretty much lasts for 4 weeks). But thankfully, that didn’t happen.

Stay tuned for the next installment.....

Check out my squidoo lenses (articles):
Strong Biblical Women
Strong Biblical Women 2
Why Be Vegetarian
Vegetarianism: Getting Started 1
Vegetarianism: Getting Started 2
Rosh Hashana
Quick Vegan Cooking
Creating new recipes from old
Strong Biblical Women Part 3
Hanuka About the Jewish Calendar
Witches and Morality
Christmas and the Jewish Single
Math Hints 1 -- Adding Fractions
Presidents1: George Washington

Check out my other blogs:

Israel and it's Place in the World
Jewish Singles
Strong Jewish Women