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):
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Strong Biblical Women 2
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Vegetarianism: Getting Started 1
Vegetarianism: Getting Started 2
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Quick Vegan Cooking
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Strong Biblical Women Part 3
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Israel and it's Place in the World
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