Sesquipedalophobia

We’ve been settling in here nicely in Seattle. I have gotten into my new work routine, we are visiting new neighborhoods throughout the city with an eye on home ownership, and sampling new bars and restaurants a couple of times a week. So why in the hell did I find myself at a Jillian’s sports bar on a Monday evening? The Seattle Spelling Bee, my friends.

The second Monday of every month, the Seattle Spelling Bee is held and anyone of drinking age is invited. Diana and I took a 15 minute walk to the bar and scoped out the set-up a few minutes early. There were already a few potential spellers scattered throughout the bar, they were easily identified, as they just had that “look” of competitive nerds. One guy even went all out with a white short-sleeved shirt, a black necktie, a set of red suspenders and a pocket protector.

For a $5 entry fee you were allotted your score sheet with spaces for 40 words, a piece of scratch paper, a ticket to a drawing and a #2 pencil. The score sheet was for the first stage of the competition, which entailed forty words being announced by the host. The object was to write down the correct spelling for as many of the forty words as you could, with the top 12 spellers advancing to the more familiar stand-up-at-the-mic-and-spell portion of events.

Our new friend Rachel showed up just a couple of words into the written round and the host was nice enough to halt the proceedings and get her caught up with the first few words. After twenty words were announced, everyone traded pages and graded the other players. I was feeling pretty good after the first half as I had correctly spelled eleven of the twenty given words. However, the second round did me in, with only seven correct words in the second set. Including misses on “mayonnaise” and, remarkably enough, “um” (I over-thought that one a touch). This allowed Diana to beat me by one point in the written portion, which irked me just a touch.

There were some seriously hard words in the written round; I would say I knew the meaning of about 25% of them. Anything that sounded familiar seemed like a relief, until it turned out the word was “indubitably” or “zinnia”.

Not only did Diana beat me in the written portion, but it turned out hers was the cut-off score for the top twelve oral section. I stewed and wished I could be playing air hockey. Diana ended up doing fantastic in the championship rounds, ending up in fourth place out of the top twelve spellers. However, this did not quite put her in the running for prizes, which were essentially bar tabs.

So, if you ever want to see a bunch of grown-ups acting just as weird and twitchy as the twelve-year olds that will be in the Scripps next month, come visit and make sure your stay is on the second Monday of the month. Even if we bomb out again, we can always just say screw it and go play pop-a-shot.

I Can’t Believe I’m Dumber Than Eli Manning

So, after a long, long hiatus I’m back. I hope to be active once again; we’ll see how it goes.

Most of you may know this, but for those that are reading and do not, Diana and I have moved to Seattle, WA as of April 1, 2010. We live in a neighborhood called West Lake Union. It is right in the middle of the city, and we can see the Cascade Mountains in the background and seaplanes taking off and landing numerous times a day in the foreground. Diana had an opportunity to keep her job working from home, so we decided to put down roots further north on the west coast in the hopes of eventually becoming homeowners again.

In order to become homeowners, however, I need to get gainfully employed. Yesterday I had a request to come in for a face-to-face meeting with a seafood company that I think may be a great fit on both sides. We’ll see how that goes, but that’s not what I wanted to write about in this space. This could have been one of my favorite job interviews ever, mostly because when I got to the meeting, the first thing the HR person did was sit me down in a conference room and inform me I’m taking the Wonderlic test, much to my surprise; and delight.

I immediately smile and get really excited. For those of you who don’t know, the Wonderlic Personnel Test is a twelve-minute, fifty-question test used to assess the aptitude of prospective employees for learning and problem-solving in a wide range of occupations. It has become best known for its use in the NFL pre-draft assessments of prospective football players, and some of these famous players test scores have been leaked in the past. I was cruising right along, but that 12 minutes moved along fast. When I had downtime between interview sessions, I started mentally kicking myself as I was still working on questions that I hadn’t finished and figured out the answer. Oh well.

When the HR rep came back she said I did really well on the test. I’d figured I’d do ok, but I think she was a little taken aback when I asked what I had received, I think most people don’t ask that. I didn’t care, however, as I wanted to compare myself to the players in the league, so the first thing I did when I got back from the interview was look up other NFL player test scores (it is an interesting aside to note that I, with my nice test score, took the wrong bus home from the interview and ended up 4 miles away from home and had to double back, so maybe the test IS flawed). I will put myself in the appropriate ranking below.

6 – Vince Young (allegedly retook the test and got a 15)
10 – Jeff George
12 – Percy Harvin
14 – Donovan McNabb, David Garrard
15 – Steve McNair
16 – Dan Marino
22 – Brett Favre
28 – Drew Brees
30 – John Elway
33 – Tom Brady, Steve Young
36 – Hell Yeah, You Know It!
37 – Drew Bledsoe
39 – Eli Manning
48 – Ryan Fitzpatrick (who allegedly finished in 9 minutes), Kevin Curtis, Benjamin Watson
50 – Pat McInally (Only known NFL player to get perfect score, was a punter for the Bengals from ‘76-‘85)

Damn you Eli Manning, damn you.