For my 401(k), I'm thinking "Wheel"

An Ed. note before we proceed: Damn you, readers. No, seriously. My intention was to transition to this cheerier, unencumbered sort of blog, Uberzwerg. And, going by my stat meters, y'all simply aren't having any of it. I mean, I know my track record with starting, and then abandoning, new blogs isn't encouraging. And I know that the 'Zwerg hasn't...er...found its voice...yet. And that, frankly, it's ugly (still tweaking that, honest). But you know what? It plays nicely with photo uploads. And when (if?) I finally make it to Germany, that's going to be important, and it really (probably) will become my primary blog, maybe. But. In the meantime, against my better judgment, I'm going to try double-posting some content to both blogs. That doesn't mean there won't still be some stuff that only makes it on here, and some (photos!) that only makes it on there, just so you know. /End rant.

Ok. For this story, you need to know that K enjoys watching Jeopardy. (I know, I know: exclamation point. I labored over the grammatical vs. pragmatic implications...shorthanding it: not gonna happen here.) Me, I can sort of take it or leave it, but, sure: if it's on, I'll play along. But I'm just as likely to wander upstairs for a snack. Every once in a while, apparently, Jeopardy holds on-line pre-auditions, which I only know about because K was terribly excited about it and signed up for it and I stood over his shoulder and contributed the occasional assist from the general territory of the green Trivial Pursuit wedges, which is my absolute dominion in this coupledom. The next night, reviewing the website for information on when results were going to come out -- only a random subset of those who successfully pass the test are chosen for the next stage -- K noted that the test was being offered again that night and asked if I wanted to take it, too.

Sure...what the hey, right? We signed up about two minutes before the cutoff, and I took it and forgot about it.

This was...what, a couple of months ago?...so I was pretty startled, to say the least, when I got an email from the Jeopardy folks yesterday informing me that my in-person audition date would be May 22nd.

K got no such email. From the standpoint of our finances as a pair, this is not good news. I do ok on answers overall, but my knowledge base in several key Jeopardy areas (presidents, U.S. history, post-1990 music) is seriously impoverished. And I wasn't aware, until this afternoon, that there even was such a thing as a "wagering strategy," to say nothing of the number of sites devoted to arguing over it. Plus, when I'm stressed or under pressure, my autonomic nervous system pretty reliably pulls back blood from my fingers, toes, and the part of my brain that deals with numbers.

From the standpoint of my general social anxiety, this is truly terrible news. I mean, I've done TV before, and I'm not even that bad at it, apart from the phenotypic factors outside of my control. I usually get through it by pretending to be someone else. However, I've never had to do that while seriously drawing upon my own brainpower (I'm usually channeling the talking points of someone else, too), and I don't know whether it's possible. Plus, for the Jeopardy answers I get wrong, I tend to get them catastrophically wrong. Which makes me fret that they'll pass me in the audition for the entertainment value alone.

However. Since I'm up for promotion this year, and my chances of that happening just went from slim to none, this little lark has now become my best shot at keeping up with my property taxes, which Congress neglected to freeze. Sad, what?