Day: March 27, 2010

The 2010 Chili Champ!

To my great surprise and pleasure, I wound up winning tonight’s Chili Cookoff. (See photo of trophy below.) There were 5 chilis in the running. They were all tasty (as usual – we haven’t had a lousy one yet in the years I’ve been coming). But in the end, mine got the most votes! Go me! I think Gary was a little miffed that I beat him. (It’s one thing, he said, to be beaten by someone his own age, but to be beaten by a younger person…) It helps that Moe didn’t have her 6-time winning recipe there. (Apparently she agreed not to enter the contest if Gary did a long-term sub for her husband earlier this year. Heh.)

Still, to put me and Moe in our places, we played 2 games of pool against Gary and Garry and lost both of them. Then Michael and Moe tried against the two Gar(r)y’s and lost as well.

We all had a lovely time at Gary & Marcia’s and I am stuffed to the gills with not only excellent chili, but also fabulous desserts. Mmmmmm!

Winter Lashes Out

Had I known mom had to work yesterday, I wouldn’t have been as surprised when we got the call that school was closed. Just about every time she worked in February, we wound up having bad weather & closed school. I really need to talk with her about what “retired” means. 🙂

So we’ve already filled up all of our days before May 7, which is our last day or bust. I’m guessing we’ll be going in on a Saturday in a couple of weeks. But that’s not an official word from the superintendent, just me speculating.

It was an interesting morning, weather-wise. It had rained all afternoon and evening on Thursday, then the temperature dropped into the upper 20s F. And then the rain turned to snow. There was a substantial layer of ice all over the roads and sidewalks with a light dusting on snow when I got up. We were called around 5:30am that we had a 2-hour delay, so I got up an hour later than normal. But then while I was finishing breakfast, we got a second call. And I’m glad we did – those roads looked nasty. (Mom says the drive into work was not pleasant.)

I enjoyed my day yesterday and spent a good deal of it being geeky and fixing up my album art in my MP3 collection. I also added a large number of CDs to the collection – my early Bernice Summerfield stories (seasons 1-4), the Excelis quadrilogy (I had forgotten about that!), and the Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III audios as read by David Tennant. (Bought the CDs a couple of weeks ago, but hadn’t ripped ’em yet.)

So now I’ve got nearly 60GB of MP3s in my collection. And that’s still not all of the CDs that I own. But many of my Big Fish CDs won’t be ripped. All of McCoy are, of course. Docs 5&6 have a few. The only Doc8 audios I have as MP3 are Zagreus and the first ep of Company of Friends (which I bought on its own for 99cents cuz it’s the only ep with Bernice in it.) I love that Big Fish now offer the Doctor Who audios as MP3s for about half the cost of CDs. Wish they’d do the same with the Benny audios!

In just a few minutes I’ll be heading off to a Chili Cookoff party. I’ve got a pot of chili cooking right now. The Chili Cookoff is always a hoot. The parental units will be picking me up (and presumably dropping me off after the party) soon. So I guess I’d best put on my best party t-shirt!