And we’re off!  Gail won Monday’s game, but both George and Graham have a shot at a wild card berth.  That was a tough Final Jeopardy! question in the category A YEAR OF FIRSTS: Year in which the Dept. of Energy was created, the Indy 500 had its first female driver, and the first President was sworn in under a nickname.  I think my thought process would have been “Bill Clinton!–no, it has to be earlier than Bill Clinton–Jimmy Carter?  Then why do I know his full name, James Earl Carter?  Janet Guthrie. The energy crisis. Definitely seventies”–and that’s about when the time would have run out.

There’s not a lot to tell you about the run-up to the 2017 tournament, actually.  We all got formally booked in December, and February was Paperwork Month.  Sony sent us video cameras to tape ourselves explaining what we planned to do with our Thank America’s Teachers grants, so I also had to get my students and their parents to sign releases for their appearance on that video.  (Can’t wait to see what our clip looks like on TV!  One of my students, an aspiring filmmaker, served as director/camera operator.)  The hotel was the same, except that a life-size figure of Robert Pattinson had been installed opposite the check-in desk as an advertisement for Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum.  I ate dinner alone at the Universal Citywalk Pink’s (my first Pink’s experience, actually) the night before.  And didn’t have as much trouble falling asleep.

*1977.