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
Christmas and the Jewish Single
Math Hints 1 -- Adding Fractions
Presidents1: George Washington
Passover: Holiday of Freedom
Ruth and Naomi
John and John Quincy Adams
Television Trivia Quiz
Tamar -- Mother of Kings
Jewish Perspective of G-d
Yocheved -- Mother of Moshe (Moses)
Purim, Esther et al
Being an internet small business owner
Why I'm a Red Sox fan
Pythagorean Theorem
My Blogs
Top 10 Presidents
Bottom 10 Presidents
How Can We Appeal to G-d for Forgiveness?
Math Tips 2
Searching for a Fashion Partner
Math Hints 3
One Actor, Two Shows (TV Quiz)
Presidential Tidbits
Why Should anyone hire Me?
Eat a Healthy Breakfast
My experience on Jeopardy
Project:Runway and how it got me excited about designing again
Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb?
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