Okay, sorry gang. I was so caught up in my newfound celebrity lifestyle that I totally forgot to update you on the results of the last Mystery Photo Quiz. Not like it even matters, though, since you guys pretty much got all the answers in the first 10 minutes. [Enter Jenny carrying bowl of sour grapes]
Here are some things I’ve learned through this experience:
1. You are all really, really clever.
2. Just because something looks cool doesn’t mean it’s hard to figure out.
3. I need to stop taking pictures of things that are within arm’s reach of my keyboard.
4. You can all be on my team when we play Cranium.
As promised, I want to recognize a few individuals for their unique contributions to this contest. But I don’t want the rest of you to get mad at these people just because they currently hold a special place in my heart. I’m very fickle, so next week we’ll probably get into a fight over something I thought they said, but didn’t really say, and then you’ll be my favorites.
Award for OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN THE USE OF ALL CAPS!
Dave from Blogography. He later confessed that he was imagining himself as a contestant on Family Feud. Good answer! Good answer!
Award for Most Confusing Answer
Shari from Eclectic for “Kitty Curry Comb.” What the-?
Award for Good Citizenship
Jessica from Daughter of Opinion and Asia from Deconstructionist for not peeking.
Award for Being the Only Person to Get #7 Correct, Thereby Spoiling My Pleasure of Having at Least One That Stumped Everyone
Rarity from A Rare View
The awards could go on all night, but then I’d have to cue the band, cut all the acceptance speeches short, and generally piss everyone off. So I’ll leave it at that. Thanks so much for playing, everyone! Oh, and the answers?
They’re here:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine

Filed under: Photo Quiz on September 22nd, 2005 | 6 Comments »

More games already? Well, I’ve got to admit – I had so much fun reading all the creative answers to last week’s Photo Quiz that I wanted to do another one. And I’m including more photos this time because I don’t want you to get bored while I’m gone. Didn’t I mention? I have to fly to L.A. for a three-hour meeting next week. It’s almost like I’m James Bond, I live such a glamorous lifestyle. Anyone know a good place in L.A. to rent a speedboat with flamethrowers on the side?
I’m heading out Sunday night and flying back Monday afternoon, which gives me a very limited amount of time in which to encounter my requisite number of mildly insane travelers. I just really, really hope that it’s nothing like my last trip to D.C.
If it’s not too frustrating, I think I won’t post the answers to these until I get back on Tuesday. Is that annoying? Nah… you’ll have them all figured out by noon today anyway. Special recognition will go to the most outrageous, yet still plausible, wrong answer.
See y’all on Tuesday!
One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Filed under: Photo Quiz on September 15th, 2005 | 11 Comments »

I stared at my calendar this morning in utter disbelief. We can’t possibly be heading into the second week of September already, can we? My four-day weekend is now but a distant, blurry memory. And with four days off, one would think one could come up with a clever and/or insightful essay to post. Something that would lighten the burden of returning to work after the unofficial end of summer.
But unfortunately, the trauma of spending what seemed like all day Sunday in IKEA with Dee-Dee proved too much for me. Although we both had maps and tape measures, we would desperately lose each other at least once every seven minutes.
“Dee-Dee! Dee-Dee! I’m in the container section! Are you by frames?”
“Jenny? Jen, where are you? Come toward my voice!”
By the time I could geo-locate her voice, she had already moved on to the floor lamp section. There’s nothing worse than looking for a skinny, blonde-haired, blue eyed person in IKEA. Talk about your needle in a Scandinavian haystack.
And on a side note, a friend of mine just got her wallet stolen, and within hours her bank called her to question some erratic behavior on her credit card. They thought it was odd that she spent $300 at the Nike Outlet and $50 at Bath & Body Works in the Loop. So why, I ask you, doesn’t my credit card company ever call me just to double check that it was actually me who spent $300 at IKEA, and $80 at Old Navy, and $50 at Borders in Schaumburg all in a two hour timeframe? It would appear that my spending habits outwit all fraud-detecting software. I am untouchable!
Anyway, as I looked at my calendar and realized it was time to post something new, I recalled a conversation I had last week with Natasha, after I mentioned that I finally learned how to post photos on my site. I told her that since I really don’t know what I’m doing with this camera yet, and still haven’t figured out at least half of the icons on the menu bar (like that one that kind of looks like a hermit crab – I mean, what the hell does that function do?), I wasn’t sure what types of photos to post.
“Why don’t you make a game out of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if your camera’s so tough to figure out, why don’t you just post stuff and let everyone guess what it’s supposed to be?”
“Wait – you mean, I should make everyone else do all the work and compensate for my inexperience?”
“Exactly.”
“I like it. I like it a lot.”
Once again, Natasha comes through in a pinch. So I thought I’d kick off the unofficial end of summer with a Game! Game! Game! No, there are no prizes, other than my undying admiration.
So the rules are really simple: just try to guess what the photo is. That’s it. I’ll post the answers tomorrow morning. And really, I don’t want to give too much away, but considering the state of my social calendar, if you guess “Jenny’s cat,” you’ll be correct about 90% of the time.
Here’s an example of how it will work – try to guess what this picture is:

And pretend it’s the next day now, because I’ll post the answer here.
See! I told you to guess “Jenny’s cat!”
Okay, now for the real thing. Guess away – oh, and in the event of a tie, the tie-breaker will be whichever commenter’s name comes first in the alphabet. So you may all want to change your name to Aaron, just in case.
Photo 1:

Photo 2:

Photo 3:

Filed under: Photo Quiz on September 6th, 2005 | 13 Comments »