Well, Evil Petting Zoo finished in the money again in the P&H Trivia Tuesday contest, barely grabbing 3rd place with a score of 49. This makes the 4th week in a row we’ve finished in the money, though Kath and I weren’t able to make the first 2 contests. Last week’s 2nd place finish felt good, because it marked the debut of the tiki statue we brought back from New Zealand, which is designed to scare the other teams with its spooky reflective eyes. So far, the reviews are mixed, but he is hanging in there.
The best questions from last week:
1) What year did the Miss America contest begin? [1921]
2) Who was the last ruler in the line of Ptolemy in Egypt? [Cleopatra]
3) What is Paul McCartney’s first name? [James]
4) Other than New Year’s Day, what is the only other U.S. federal holiday that can fall on the 1st of the month? [Labor Day]
5) What does the D. H. in D. H. Lawrence stand for? [David Herbert]
6) Which famous explorer fought in both sides of the U.S. Civil War? [Henry Morton Stanley]
7) Which native Tennessean held all state and federal offices available during his lifetime? [Andrew Johnson]
The questions tonight were just about as good. Some of the best ones include:
1) What is the first name of Anne Frank’s father? [Otto]
2) Which country hosted the 1994 World Cup? [USA]
3) Who was the first natively-born Israeli Prime Minister? [Rabin]
4) Who was the first U.S. President to appear on a coin? [Lincoln]
5) Which U.S. President was the only one elected to two non-consecutive terms? [Grover Cleveland]
6) McDonald’s hamburgers in New Delhi are made which what kind of meat? [Lamb]
Evil Petting Zoo will be asking the questions on April 14th. It remains to see how many folks will show up on Valentine’s Day to provide trivia answers in order to chase a few bucks.
Kath and I are back in the US now, in Las Vegas, preparing for our flight back to Little Rock tomorrow, where we will pick up our dogs and head back to Memphis for work on Thursday. The last few weeks have been a blur, and I’m thankful that I grabbed a few snapshots along the way to help make the whole experience much more real in hindsight.
We flew out of Christchurch without any problems, landing in Sydney without a rental car reserved (we waited too long to book a cheap one, as Christmas to New Year’s is the most busy car rental time in Australia). We cabbed over to La Perouse, glad to be back among our friends there. Karen Linnell put us up the whole time we were in Sydney, and we enjoyed spending time with her and her 4-month old son, Justin. Karen’s wonderful generosity and hospitality will not be forgotten…
While we were in Australia, we drove up to Hawk’s Nest (about 3 hours north of Sydney) to spend several days with Gillian and Hal Cowlishaw. Gillian was one of Katherine’s academic advisors on her PhD dissertation and is the author of the authoritative 
New Year’s in Sydney was a lot of fun. We rang in the new year at the Yarra Bay Sailing Club, our old haunt when we lived in Sydney during 2001-2002. After that, we headed down to Auntie Marge’s for a feed and few more Victoria Bitters with the gang.
We are enjoying Vegas but are experiencing a bit of culture shock after diving into what I would call “Americana on Speed.” The internet connection at the MGM Grand (where we are staying) is not proving to be very reliable, so I will just post a few photos and look forward to seeing all of our Memphis pals in a few days.