Played Trivia this weekend. Honestly though, after arriving so late on Friday and leaving before dinner on Sunday — not to mention getting enough sleep for once — I don't feel like it was just Trivia Weekend at all.

Scattered impressions:

The Lawrence division of the Nerds was prettymuch all about the on-campus "action questions," which is really the only way to play Trivia casually. Our Bold Hero, on the other hand, has always been about the rest of the questions. Huddling around the computers, knowing that every sleepless hour is a sacrifice duly noted in heaven... that's Trivia.

There was question re-use this year; I recognized one or two from Trivia 39.

There was a "design a new batman costume" question that also involved sneaking, which I missed. I would have loved the sneaking. But most of the action questions were disappointing.

The Connie-fication of Trivia continues unabated, in my mind if not necessarily elsewhere. I'm skeptical that anyone with the dedication and responsibility to become a talented musician could also be interesting, original, and geeky enough to make a good trivia master.

(Geekiness here is emphatically not synonymous with nerdiness. D.B. Weiss offered a good albeit broad definition of the phenomenon on page 183 of his heartbreakingly disappointing Lucky Wander Boy: "A geek loves something more than the fear and respect and desire of his fellow men and women.")

The worst action question: Our Bold Hero showed up at the concert hall right before a performance for a "read a poem about orphanhood" action question only to find that Trivia Master Adam hadn't gotten any clearance and didn't care. A visibly less-than-relaxed Prof. Metcalf was not pleased at the thought of us hijacking the hall and its audience right before the world premiere of La Serenissima, and there was a tense standoff, with Adam declaring simply that it was "our choice."

I didn't spend enough time playing this year to develop (inevitably) strong opinions about any of the current trivia masters, but the Überteam representative and I were somewhat appalled at this behavior. As alumni, we had no reason to care what Prof. Metcalf thought about us, but the incident cast Trivia in a bad light: my "hot dancer legs" incident pales in comparison.

But the weekend wasn't entirely about Trivia, it was also about Lawrentians.

I'm a bit annoyed that I didn't see enough of certain Lawrence acquaintances I like. Trivia Master Layout, Amelia II, Katy, Elizabeth K... I don't like that I have to choose between friendship and just letting good, interesting people drift away. Building every good acquaintance into a friend is often either undesirable or, due to the constraints of time and distance (both actual and social), logistically impossible.

And yet the acquaintance relationship is simple enough that it can come far closer to perfection than friendship, with its long history, various demands, and inevitable ups and downs.

As for the regulars: I wrote a quick post before I headed out, a bit too gooey and slightly false, so I cut out most of it. Nevertheless, though I'm not sure I would or could live with the guy again, I stand by my point about Jonas' very good taste: it's broader than mine, so he likes some stuff I hate, but the stuff I like is a subset of the stuff he likes. He had the Penny Arcade books, which blew my mind a little, but makes total sense.

Also strange to be worse at a first-person shooter — freaking Gears of War, which I just played — than Jonas. It was like when my little brother Matt came back from college and was suddenly better at Halo.

And of course, I saw the Politician for the first time in... a long time. I certainly would not have driven so far if he hadn't been there. However! The two topics I most enjoy discussing with him, politics and people we dislike, barely came up at all.

I even talked to third roommate Jubb; I enjoy those occasional drunk-dials, and now I have a decent story to tell:

I threw up for the first time in many years Saturday night, as it turns out not because of the Politician's goading. I'd drank less than my usual and far less than my limit, so I was baffled. Today at work I found out that others had a similar Saturday night, which is enough light for this mystery.

I left around four on Sunday, still feeling pretty ill, and I couldn't stay up for the Garrudas. An odd little weekend.

P.S. Oh, and will a Grandmaster ever summon enough courage to move the contest back(!) to Spring? Is there really no warmer weekend that would work?