Well, Ray was hoping to accomplish a few things on his week off, and today he did at least one of them!  Today he finished Final Fantasy X on the PS2.  The system and game were part of his Christmas gift, but he was initially reluctant to pull them out and play with them.  I have spent much of my recent "down time" (you know, now that I don't have homework) sitting on the sofa next to Ray and reading while he plays.  I have gleened enough of the storyline by proximity, that I was actually rather excited to get to see the end.  And Ray sat through ALL of the credits!  There were a lot.... enough to take a picture!  And, of course, there was a "secret" scene at the end, which left the player feeling a little bit more uplifted than he might have otherwise.

As our ASM has been forced to have back surgery, I am back on wardrobe duties.  After the show tonight Jen gave me a ride home and this is the situation that I found:

And while Sam's strange the-flash-makes-me-look-like-I-have-laser-beams-for eyes look is unusual, neither that, nor Ray's super enthusiastic express are why I took the photo.  Ray has found just about the perfect way to play Call of Duty on the PS3.  He sits on the left-hand side of the couch (don't ask me why), pulls out the ottoman, graps the TV remote, the stereo remote, the PlayStation controller and his bluetooth and gets himself snuggled under the blanket.  The PlayStation remote is wireless, so he can hide his hands under the blanket while he plays, so they don't get cold.

That is EXACTLY where Sam decided he wanted to sit.  On Ray's hands, so he can't play. 

Danielle has always said that she and I should go on some sort of pop culture game show and win a million dollars.  While Danielle could certainly uphold her end of the bargain, I've always felt that my random collection of knowledge tends to be slightly less useful, or at least less likely to end up as a pop culture trivia question.  But tonight we did the next best thing: Tuesday Trivia Night at RiRa's.

Apparently Danielle got the taste for Trivia Night in the bars of Charlottesville, VA while in grad school.  Upon her return to Vermont, she promptly set out to discover which of the Burlington bars would allow her to continue her weekly tradition.  Apparently RiRa's won out over Hooters (not that I am complaining).    Danielle convinced me that, even though I had never been to a Trivia Night before, this was certainly one of the "Things Corinn Wishes She Was Doing Instead of Her Homework", so we each contacted some friends and met at RiRa's for a bite of dinner and some Trivia.

Danielle convinced Travis to join us after his Business Statistics class, and I was able to persuade Sarah, Jay and Tonya for a night out.  The seven of us joined up to form team "Nearly Proficient".  Turns out we were pretty good! 

There were nine or ten rounds consisting of mostly 10 trivia questions a round.  The first round we were given a card with some strange aluminum foil creatures on it which we had to identify (we got 7 of 10) and round eight was ten songs from the 50's for which we were meant to identify artist and title (we got 8 of the 10 songs and no artists).

Here is a small smattering of questions that I can remember:

• What is the name of Captain Hook's ship?
• What international organization is based in Brussels (that is not the EU)?
• Who was known as "Sweetness"?
• What country uses the internet code ".am"?
• What comedian made the "Hippy-Dippy Weatherman" famous?

(Post your answers in the comment section and I'll tell you if you were correct - these were all questions we DID get the answers to!)

We won three rounds - two on a tie-breaker that Danielle won for us!  While we didn't win it all (I think we came in second or third), we did receive some mad prizes for our winning rounds.

We took a pilsner glass for our first two round wins and the D picked out this Magic Hat hoodie for our final round win (the round in which we had all 10 questions correct)!  The hooide is completely black, but has these glow-in-the-dark spots all over it.  When I took the picture with the flash it seems to have "activated" the glow-in-the-dark and makes it look funny in the photo.

About halfway through the evening Kris made her way downtown and joined us!  Kris works for Population Media Center, and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.  She was our PMC contact there when we visited in August.  She was back in the states for a week to run some workshops and information sessions with the students working on the UN project at the EMC.  But it can't be all work and no play, so we were very pleased that she came down to join us!

So today was full of fun surprises!  Around 4:45 this afternoon, I was doing my homework, and I heard a knock on the door.  Low and behold, it was my parents!  They had come up for a surprise visit for my birthday!  Turns out my husband had been up to a wee bit of planning: a family dinner was planned a Junior's Italian Restaurant with my folks, Vanessa, Nate and Jina and then at 10:00 we were meeting friends for a bit of bowling!  Big smiles all around!

Dinner was great; it was wonderful getting to visit with everyone and the food was yummy!  Ray came a wee bit late, as he was finishing the final touches on my birthday cake.  This is an annual tradition: every year Ray makes me a delectable confection for my birthday.  This year did not disappoint, it was both yummy and beautiful!

After dinner we had a bit of time to spare, so we headed back to the house with Nate, Jina and my parents.  We chatted until it was time to go and then headed over to Spare Tim (formerly Yankee Lanes) for some bowling action!  Ironically, my parents had been playing Wii bowling this afternoon while I was finishing my homework.  Due to the late hour, they opted to stay at home for the real deal.  As we very quickly discovered, Wii bowling skills do not translate to real bowling skills.

We had a great group!  I think we talked (and ate) more than we bowled, but we certainly did have fun!

Tonya and Jami came, and brought excellent ice cream to compliment the chocolate and raspberry cake Ray had made.  They also brought Sesame Street plates, which appropriately reflected my new age (well, maybe my mental age).  Sarah and Jay came, and as expected, Jay had the best score on our game.  He couldn't just let the Birthday Girl win?!

Jen (VSC's Stage Manager) and Evan (her boyfriend) came out as well.  Today was the first day of tech, and Jen had JUST gotten out of work around 10:00 and had easily put in a 12+ hour day.  For all you theatre folk out there, you know how incredible it was that she made the trip!  While Jen and Evan didn't bowl, they did eat cake (which was practically required) and were excellent company.  Evan was a bit camera shy, but Jen was a good sport.

Nate and Jina even stayed out waaaay past their bed times to hang with us.  I think Nate came for the cheese and gravy fries....

Since the bowling alley has recently changed hands (or at least changed names) ALL of the shoes were new!  I was struck by the color-spectacular that Ray's shoes and the floor made!

On Lane 34 we had a game of Corinn, Danielle, Ray, Sarah and Jay (and a little bit of Ken helping everyone out).  Remember what I said about Jay before?  Here he is in action!

One pin left!

In Lane 35 we had Nate, Jina, Tony and Jami.  While Jami is flaunting her mad bowling skills, ultimately it was Tonya who took the night.  No one in my game broke 100 (but to be honest, I think we were distracted by the cake).  EVERYONE in the other game broke 100, with Tonya having the high score of the night!  Look, she's so proud!

An excellent time was had by all!  Unfortunately, Galatic Bowling started at 11:30, and we were not allowed to stay (for reasons that are as of yet still unclear).  Fortunately, there was a small arcade in the bowling alley, and I have friends who know how to play video games!

Danielle took me on in air hockey (twice) and whooped my butt (twice)!  Again, no love for the Birthday Girl?  Actually, I'm terrible at air hockey, and have a somewhat reasonable/somewhat silly fear that I'm going to hurt myself (because I did once).  It might add a tiny bit of "timid" into my game.  The first game was a shut out, but in the second game I held my own (you know, I scored almost half what D did).

Jami and Tonya also took on the air hockey table.  I can't remeber who won their game, but this is Tonya's fiercest competitor face!

Beside air hockey, popular games were shooting games, driving games and skeet-ball (I totally beat Ray!).  Sarah took on the Big Africa Safari Hunt game, that girl knows how to hold a rifle! I wonder if the game was more meaningful since she'd actually eaten some of the animals she was shooting....

I don't quite think Ray understands how this game works.... but Ken sure does!  That must be some serious kick-back if he needs both arms to shoot!

Danielle took the first stab at the driving game, which she claimed is her favorite.  Isn't this the look she always has when she's driving?

As Sarah is so kindly demonstrating, some of the games spit out tickets.  The group was super sweet and pooled their tickets and gave them all to me!

There were a bevy of prizes to select from, and I had 81 tickets to burn, so I selected carefully.  I was able to get three prizes:

my completely adorable be-beanied mini-rubber ducky, an adorable frog finger puppet, which I gave to Tonya to add to her collection,

and a dark green rubber snapper, which I gave to Ray, and he played with for about 15 minutes and then promptly lost.  Probably for the better, as he was describing several ways to torture the cat with it. 

It was about 1:00 am when we finally headed out in the sub-zero night to let our cars warm up and head to our beds.  It was an AWESOME evening, and I had so much fun!  It was so sweet of Ray to plan all of this, and so cool that people came out in the freezing weather to hang out, eat cake and bowl a little bit.

A big shout-out to Danielle and Tonya and Jami, who all took photos at the par-tay and were kind enough to let me post them here.  Some of these were taken by these fine ladies, so thanks!

The EMC Grand Opening yesterdy went extremely well!  There were tons of people in attendance for the open house and Governor's Press Conference.  The focus was on the students, as it should be, and what an awesome opportunity the EMC creates in the Champlain community.  Even though I barely saw Ray all evening, he was working hard, talking to folks about the student projects and helping to make sure that everything went smoothly. 

One of the best moments was when the ceremonial ribbon was cut - but being a tech center, they decided to cut wire instead!  About 10 people, including Ray, his boss, the Governor, two students, and some representatives from game companies who were in attendance all used specially provided wire cutters for the job!

As we didn't take any pictures, here is a link to the professional photos taken by Champlain College's photographer.   Also, WCAX, one of our local news stations did a bit of a news story about Champlain's move into the Mill and the EMC.