Adventures in Jeopardy (Part 1)

The Jeopardy Online Test starts TONIGHT! So I thought I'd blog about my Jeopardy experience...

You can’t win if you don’t try

I am a huge “Jeopardy!” game show fan. I’ve been watching for years and just love the whole concept of the show.  I am what my friends call “The Queen of Useless Knowledge” and I am really, REALLY good at trivia. My family stopped playing “Trivial Pursuit” with me a long time ago, and I used to have the best trivia team EVER for Tuesday night Trivia at Nanny’s, until the guys all moved away… *sob* A bunch of us also used to meet up at a bar in Cleveland Park (Aroma, RIP) and watch Jeopardy every evening and I was always one of the first to answer.

I always thought it would be so cool to be on the show and win a million bucks. I could be the female Ken Jennings! YEAH! Of course, you can’t win if you don’t try… right?

So, a few years ago, I decided to do the online test.  The first time I did the test, it threw me for a loop! You had 15 seconds to respond to each of 50 questions, and then it was GONE! You didn’t have to respond in the form of a question (like you do on Jeopardy!), and they took partial answers, but, man… that was hard! I got stuck on a question about who won an Oscar for about 10 minutes work (Judi Dench), and then completely missed the next three questions! *doh*

But, as they say, practice makes perfect, so I kept doing it every year. It was a lot of fun and I realized that I was getting better at it.

In January, 2012, I signed up for the Jeopardy! Online test for the fourth time, and I felt that I did really well. I knew there was one question that I had NO CLUE about, and there were maybe two others that I wasn’t 100% on, but otherwise… not so bad! So, I was feeling pretty good. My friend (and top 5 bartender), Rich, kept asking me “Has Alex called yet?” and we’d laugh a lot…

But then about a week or so later, I got an email asking to confirm which location I had requested for the live audition. I thought I had asked for DC, but apparently, it showed NYC instead. So, I responded that I had meant to select DC.   But, that got me a little excited! Why would they ask if they weren’t going to ask me to come audition?

And I was right!  In February, I went down to Charlotte, NC to “help my parents move” – I got there after the move, but was able to spot Karen & Carlton for a bit so they could rest – and I got the email inviting me to go to the DC auditions in April!

I got back to DC and went back to Atomic where Rich worked and leaned into the bar and said… “Rich, guess what? Alex called!” He looked at me blankly for a sec, and then it kicked in and we all got excited.