We are the champions!

I made the photographers take pics of us like this

For the second straight year, I participated in the Alaska Literacy Program's Biz Bee. The Biz Bee is a charity event where businesses around Alaska get together and compete in a spelling bee to decide who is, once and for all, the greatest spelling company in Alaska (or at least until the next year). After last year's disappointing finish of 7th (or 8th, but my memory fades), we were particularly excited about taking another run at the crown, with that excitement further increased by new (and dedicated!) teammate Sara joining fellow returning member Sharee and I.

The bee started off after an extremely lengthy introduction by the Queen Bee (as she described herself), and it started off with a shocker - the second team to go missed their word, and it was giraffe! Sitting up on my high horse directly behind them, I scoffed and laughed at the puny mortals and their inferior spelling (that may be a lie, it was a little old man and I felt bad). Progressively, more and more teams went out but our crack team of spellers kept going. We even worked out a strategy where if we knew a word and we knew a team was going to pass it, we would feign dejection and look away. Inevitably, the teams would give us the word and I would respond with a thumbs up to moderator, effectively saying "hell YES lady, we got this." The predictable nature of human kind worked out for us quite nicely indeed.

Of course, given that it is a spelling bee and filled with lots of waiting, I had to find things to do to entertain myself (besides drinking Crown and diet cokes, which was quite entertaining in itself). This led to me coming up with a new way to clap for the people who would get a word correct every single time they got one right. You would think it would be hard, but it ended up being pretty damn easy as I started using props, snaps, and various other things to make my applause lengthier and more bizarre. This is of course a special version of my low level OCD that comes up when I get really competitive.

Back to the actual competition. A few bizarre things happened during the spelling bee: somehow the words that came up for us kept being my words, and given that I had studied a lot I developed the reputation as some sort of incredible speller (murmurs of "he must know every word!" and "he's freakish" were surrounding us at all times) and we became the team that everyone was rooting for. The latter became especially obvious after every team had been demolished by a freight train powered by difficult words. While we were in a heads up matchup versus Anchorage Fracture and Orthopedic Clinic and were pulling absurdly difficult words, they were getting lay ups like "obnoxious" or "tenacious." Clamors of favortism rippled through the teams, as the announcer basically announced she was trying to make us lose.

But those with lion hearts and ice water in their veins never give up, and our team didn't. As we managed to pull off the successful combination of "dedicatee" and the other team unsuccessfully spelling their word, the championship fell to me. 31 rounds in (longest Biz Bee ever, literally), it came to me to finish it and the word almost made me fall over. Something that sounded like "coo-chee-free-toe" came to me, and my demeanor went from gleeful to aghast in a heartbeat. Let's break it down from here on out:

I lean in and say: Okay, c-u-c-c-i-f-r-i-t-o...like the food, but with the double c?
Sharee: You think it's the double c? I don't know...where is it from?
Me to the moderator: Language of origin?!
Moderator: Spanish.
Me (internalized): JACKPOT!
Sharee (with the Chilean roots): Okay, try this - c-u-c-h-i-f-r-i-t-o.
Me: Cuchifrito...c-u-c-h-i-f-r-i-t-o...cuchifrito.
Carol Comeau, announcer: That is correct!

The audience goes crazy! Sharee, Sara and I start hugging like crazy. Sharee and I run down the top aisle high fiving everyone and we celebrate like the most ridiculous people ever.

Of course, given that we were adults participating in a spelling bee on a Friday night, we may just have been. Who cares though - viva la cuchifrito!!!

Biz Bee: The Sequel

Myself nailing a word

I pride myself on my ability to spell. It's kind of uncanny how good I am at spelling, and you could argue that perhaps my mutant power is the ability to spell anything correctly. Quite the gift. Of course, I used those powers for good last year in a charity event in which I represented my company in a spelling bee against other Alaskan businesses, titled "the Biz Bee." We came in 8th last year, so I can only assume someone had a power dampener there, negating my powers (I still spelled all of my words correctly).

Power dampener or not, it was so much fun last year that I'm back for round 2, with my faithful compadre Sharee joining my side once again, along with new teammate Sara. I'm really looking forward to completely dominating Alaskan businesses, as this year we won't let silly words like commisar (err...commissar) bring us down. You're ours Biz Bee!

The Weekend Edition

This weekend was another one that was fun and fundamental, meaning that it was again full of all kinds of good natured fun and lots of reading. Of course, I really had to stay with my standard persona of all or nothing, and this weekend, from a partying and bizarre times standpoint at least, was definitely on the nothing side. But man, it was freaking awesome. What went down?

• GCI vs. the Biz Bee
• Being asked to be interviewed in a piece about cougars (not even joking)
• Catching City of Ember (not bad overall, but definitely didn't follow the book and had some ridiculously hokey CGI and an incessant need to speed through details, or ignore them entirely)
• Organizing my comic collection with my sister and mom
• Dinner with parents, sister, and two nieces
• Getting wiped out at scrabble
• Coffee discussions with dad and sister
• Finishing Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein
• Seeing the Rays make the World Series

It was definitely heavy on getting things done, but doing those things were a lot of fun. The highlight for the weekend?

"What in gods name did we get ourselves in to?"

Somehow I coerced my sister and mom into helping me organize my comic collection. Note to all: I'm a comic freak. There are probably comic stores out there that have less than me. Negotiating all of these comics to fit into the boxes I had, splitting up the series and then organizing them numerically, and managing to do that in one day was a Herculean effort (Greek god or comic character, you decide) by all of us, and it was strangely therapeutic and incredibly fun in the midst of the torturous aspect.

Nearly done, about to die

By torturous, I of course am referring to the fact that I woke up this morning actually feeling sore from the experience. Sore. From moving comic book from box to box. Good lord. I am the world's biggest pansy.

Of course, most of the heavy lifting was done by my mom and sister, as I spent most of the time clarifying and finding old gems in my collection for me to read later (Examples of statements from me: "No, that is not a comic version of a soap opera." "The Initiative is not a comic. Avengers: The Initiative is, the other is just a branding Marvel used because of the after effects of Civil War. Why are you looking at me like that?" "It's okay that I read Spider Man Loves Mary Jane, I swear."). Thanks so much for the help, and I'm sure the both of you can hardly wait for next year when we do it again. Hopefully that won't have to happen, as theoretically I should be able to just organize as I go and not have to worry about any more all day affairs.

Oh who am I kidding. Of course I won't do that and we'll just have to do it again. But man, they sure look nice now! One unnecessary side effect is I believe my family thinks I'm either crazy or horribly addicted (little of both more than likely) but that's okay. They seem understanding of it at least. Everyone has their little thing. Mine just happens to be a 15 book a week comic diet.

Well done Commissar, well done

Team GCI - myself, Sharee and David

Friday night was the event of events, the Biz Bee. As I mentioned in a previous post, the Biz Bee is a spelling bee for Alaskan businesses and my coworker Sharee recruited myself and my boss David for the event, as well as secured our donation to the Alaskan Literacy Program that allowed us to participate. With a highly competitive field featuring our most hated rival (ACS) and twelve other companies, I felt like our chances for victory were very high. At the very least, I thought it would be a great time.

Correctly spelling poltergeist in round 4

Sadly though, only the latter was true, as we lost in the fifth round on the word "commissar." Both David and I insisted to Sharee (our speaker at the time) that it was "commisar." Of course, now seeing it in print I think "wow, what a freaking idiot I am." We were devestated, especially after listening to word after word that we knew, including many crowd pleasers in difficulty as "witloof" (pronounced wit-lohf), "zeitgeber" (pronounce tsahyt-gey-ber) and others came up in later rounds.

The worst part of the deal is that they forced us to stay the whole time, and the event as a whole lasted twenty three rounds, a seemingly interminable amount of time that sucked my will to live out of my body. Also terrible? ACS being in contention, making it all the way into the final two until BP mercifully took them out to take the victory. Thank god for that, as we would have never heard the end of it the following week at work.

Sharee and I in the midst of the Biz Bee

It definitely was a blast though, as Sharee, David and I made ridiculous joke after ridiculous joke, had some tasty free food for dinner, got to see some old Boscos buddies, and had a great time afterwards hanging out with David, Moe, and Sharee at McGinley's and then Sub Zero. As we drove back from Sub Zero, bumping T.I. and discussing how it sounds like he is talking about Joe Biden in the song while dancing, I couldn't get past it.

Commissar.

Dammit.

I guess at least we weren't the first team out, and at the very least, there is always next year.

GCI vs. the Biz Bee

Champion!

I'm going to be in the Spelling Bee!

Not the children's version of course (those kids would absolutely dominate me) but the Alaska Businesses Spelling Bee, also known as the Biz Bee. It's Friday, October 17th at 6 PM and my team and I are going to absolutely rock the house. It's my good friend and coworker Sharee and my boss David and we are going to pity some fools.

Of course I do have to give up a Friday night to partake in the aforementioned pitying, but so be it! If it takes a weekend night to vanquish our foes at ACS and other local businesses, then that's what I have to do.

Also, if for some reason watching myself and two teammates stand tall amongst Alaskan businesses (in spelling), we have a table for ten that is open for our guests. I totally understand if you don't want to. I'd probably prefer otherwise, because frankly I'm going to be sweating it up there. I get real nervous in public.