Trivia Nights and the Camping Trip That Wasn't

I've always been a bit of a sucker for trivia. I was one of those weird kids that watched Jeopardy every evening and did the Washington Post crossword puzzle with my dad. I still am one of those kids, if I'm honest.

On any given Thursday night during my college years, I could be found sharing a table with four friends (y'all know who you are), spouting random factoids in the hope of winning a gift card and a witty t-shirt.

Well, two Thursdays ago, I made my trivia comeback: Rachael, Taylor, Evan, and I went to Homeslyce, a Baltimore-based pizza chain, for their trivia night. It was my first night in Baltimore since my Europe trip, and it was well worth the wait. The pizza was good, the beer was better, and our fifth-from-the-bottom finish was something we were not at all ashamed of. I was especially proud of my performance in the '80s movies category. (Abe Froman, Sausage King of Chicago, anyone?)

The debut of The Rookies Rollin' Up
(great team name, we know)

Since the weather was freakishly un-February-like, Evan's and my plans for the following evening included a one-night camping trip. We loaded up Evan's new CR-V with camping supplies, and as we were about to walk out the door, Evan pulled out his phone to make a game-time decision as to where we were going to camp that night.

As it turned out, we weren't going to camp anywhere. Because even though the weather screamed May, the calendar steadfastly insisted that it was February, so the campgrounds at the local state parks weren't open yet.

So we unloaded the camping supplies and invited friends over to a bonfire in Evan's backyard instead. We couldn't let perfectly good s'mores makings go to waste, now could we?

After we'd stuffed our faces with marshmallow-y, chocolate-y, graham-cracker-y goodness, we moseyed on over to our friend Brad's house, a few backyards over, to make use of his hot tub. Because if you can't go camping, a hot tub is the next best thing.

The next morning--instead of the camp-stove-cooked pancakes that we'd originally planned as our Saturday-morning breakfast--we went to The Original Pancake House in Rockville. Evan had been telling me for months that I had to go there for breakfast, so we finally made it happen. I ordered strawberry pancakes, eggs, hashbrowns (duh), and coffee (double duh), before making my trademark mistake: forgetting to take a picture of my food before I scarfed it down.

I bought this card in Edinburgh because it basically summed up my travels.

So you'll just have to take my word for it: it was all pretty dang tasty.

Monday night found most of the usual suspects at Pub Dog, which we had recently discovered also has trivia night.

We tried our hand at shuffleboard in between rounds, and--despite a little bit of self-sabotage *coughcough* Outlander *coughcough*--we managed to place third, scoring a $10 Pub Dog gift card! I credit my parents with the victory. We had no clue what that Duran Duran song was, nor did we realize that Hagrid had been a Bond villain.

Yep, I'm the cool kid who brought her parents to trivia night.

Oh, and I bought a car!

#adulting

See? I can still do fun stuff without traveling the world.

But dang, do I miss those croissants.