Can Hulk smash now?

This was not a good week.
I’d planned for the disruptions I anticipated: Monday returning from South Carolina, and my future mother in law visiting Wednesday evening (I’m pretty sure “Hello future MOL! Good to see you, now I’m going to go work for three hours!” is not the way to go). But then other unrelated disruptions popped up, some of them fairly stressful. So I lost time, then I lost more time, then I lost time from stress … good thing I have TYG to snuggle, which makes everything more bearable than I when I was on my own.
So while I made my eHow quota (well, less one), I’m now five hours behind on fiction instead of one. I should be able to make that up next week without trouble (I know, I know, you can almost hear ominous musical chords in the background), but still, it’s frustrating. Not only was the week chaotic, it left me feeling disordered, and that’s never good.
•I reviewed Where Is The Life That Late I Led—it looks good, but it’s such an odd structure I think I’m going to submit to my writing group for review.
•Brain From Outer Space went pretty well. I’m actually ahead of where I wanted to be at this point. Makes a pleasant change.
•Swords of Al-Andalus (working title) got another draft. Improved, but needs work. I may try the same trick I used on No Good Deed Goes Unpunished (I’ll try to remember to detail the trick next week).
And that’s pretty much it. I’m probably going to skip a writer’s get-together tonight for the local magazine Bullspec, even though I was looking forward to going. I’m just wiped and still stressed.
So in lieu of more writing to talk about, I’ll discuss last weekend.
My four days away was a trip to visit friends of mine in Greenville, SC. They’re fellow Mensans and they invited me to join their CultureQuest team. CultureQuest is a monstrously challenging knowledge quiz Mensans compete in every year—no rewards, just bragging rights, though I don’t usually earn many of those.
Some sample questions from this year:
•What is the subject of Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s most famous work?
•Derived from the name of the ballpoint pen’s inventor, this British English word is often used as a generic term for a ballpoint pen.
•What sport gave rise to the term ‘hat trick?’
•The moons of Uranus are named for characters in the works of what two authors?
•What was the subject of Project Blue Book?
•How many zeroes in a milliard?
•What is a holographic will?
•Who is the comic-book villain Doomsday famous for killing?
Plus math questions, art images and a map of Russia (can you name all the former Republics and locate them on the map?).
Having gone over some of my answers, I’m sure I didn’t cover myself with glory. However, I had a fun weekend catching up with friends, went to the Greenville Zoo and the glorious downtown Falls Park and thoroughly enjoyed myself, so I can live with the dismal dregs of defeat.
As for the answers:
•Dogs playing poker.
•Biro.
•Cricket.
•Shakespeare and Alexander Pope (kudos to my teammate Robert who pegged Pope—I was convinced he was wrong).
•UFO sightings.
•Nine.
•A will written in the testator’s handwriting.
•Superman.