We have unfortunately missed several weeks now of writing on the blog. Being displaced mid-month from one's apartment tends to prevent blog writing. We are going to start off with a partial post from a few weeks ago that we never got around to publishing.
Unlike when we last wrote, the past several weeks have actually had exciting elements to them. A few weeks ago, we spoke about our participating (somewhat unsuccessfully) in a scavenger hunt competition of sorts. But, this past week, we got another shot at winning. In the previous go-round of this scavenger hunt, the first person to find the prize was declared the winner. However, this more recent installment of the game provided an added twist: After finding the prize, the first five (or sometimes 10) contestants there had to engage in a head to head competition to be declared the grand winner. The runner up competitors were given a shirt, but they were not given any further prizes.
Because of our proximate location to several competition sites, we had multiple opportunities to be one of the first five contestants to arrive at the prize. We spent most of the morning, and even some of the afternoon waiting for the announcement that our location was "live" and ready for contestants. Our first attempt failed, as we were about the 100th person to arrive at the prize. This was good enough for us to be included in the picture of all the possible contestants to show, but was insufficient to be included in any head to head competition (an egg hunt at this specific site) for the grand prize.
However, this failure still turned out to be a minor success in that we were able to identify the car the "prize givers" drove, which contained other grand prizes yet to be delivered. Engineer R identified the prize van by discreetly looking inside the vehicle while no one was watching. After waiting in the bushes (not to be confused with the bushes of love) for about 15 minutes, we followed our new victims like cat and mouse. Sadly, our cat and mouse chase a was more like a Tom and Jerry scenario in that Jerry (the car) got away. In the future we may try tailing the prize van more closely.
Our next move consisted of driving around town waiting for the next competition site to be announced. After about an hour of driving, the next site was announced: a fast food joint, and we were only four minutes away! After a frantic drive to the restaurant, Engineer J was able to elbow out several people for the fifth and final slot. The judges allowed Engineer R to step in as a replacement, since the competition turned out to be an eating contest.
We will not bore you with all of the inane details of the eating contest, but suffice it to say we got second place. This won us a pair of T-shirts. The grand prize went to a huskier fellow than Engineer R. He was born to eat large burgers with mayonnaise and pickles. We attempted to enter several more contests later that evening, but to no avail.
Since the excitement of this eating contest, nothing else superbly exciting has happened. At the end of the week we will be moving back to the land of milk and honey. This is to be taken in more of a literal sense, not the usual figurative sense. We will provide a post next week with the details of our move.
