Geography Sporcle

I know this makes me super nerdy, but I LOVE www.sporcle.com ...particularly the geography section. I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, but have always been not-so-great with geography. Recently I decided to teach myself all the countries in each continent via sporcle.

The first one I did was South America. It certainly wasn't hard since there's only 12 countries and I already knew like 11 before I started.

Then I did North America (including Central America and the Caribbean). That ended up including 23 countries...all of which I had at least heard of besides St. Kitts & Nevis.

Next I moved on to Asia. I'm not sure why I decided to do Asia before Europe, because I definitely knew more of Europe before going into this. With its 48 countries, I expected Asia to be pretty difficult. Surprisingly, it wasn't. The hardest part of it was learning to spell everything.

Following Asia, I did Europe. Western Europe was easy but there was quite a bit of Eastern Europe that I had to work on. My most commonly missed out of the 47 countries were the Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, and San Marino...and I had to learn how to spell Bosnia & Herzegovina.

Oceana was next. Right off the bat I knew Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Micronesia. The Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, Tonga, and Somoa were easy but it took a little while for me to learn Nauru, Palau, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.

My newest Challenge is Africa. This is definitely going to be the hardest by far. There are 53 to learn and right now...I know like 17. Looks like I've got my work cut out for me!

Yes, I am a huge nerd.

I'm nerdier than you

http://www.sporcle.com/games/presidents.php

I can get all 44 in exactly one minute. Yes, these are the things I do for fun.

It's official...

After finishing my Masters program in mid-March, I finally got my diploma in the mail yesterday. I guess these things take four months...

Anyway, it's official now. Woo-hoo!

Master Asher Throws a Party

About a month ago, I finished up my Masters program at Webster. I was wanting to have some type of get-together to celebrate being done. So one of my friends from class, Valerie, offered to let us have a party at her house. She has a nice big house, so I was happy to accept the invitation.

Earlier this week I was talking to James...trying to figure out what food to make and when I'd have time to cook everything. I was kind of stressed about it, because this week at work was very busy and hectic. I was hoping I could take Friday afternoon off, come home early, and get everything together. But then I ended up having an IEP meeting that I couldn't miss. So that was out of the question. My husband, being the wonderful guy he is, offered to take off work and spend the day in the kitchen. I told him it wasn't necessary but he did it anyway. And wow....just wow.

I had made a list of different hors d'oeuvres and appetizer foods that I thought sounded good and told him he could choose a few things from the list. Well he decided to make EVERYTHING on the list...and more. And everything he made was from scratch. He made turkey meatballs with a homemade sauce, stuffed mushrooms (I helped stuff), caprese-stuffed tomatoes, tortilla roll-ups (I rolled and cut them), deviled eggs (aside from boiling the eggs, I actually made these), guacamole, spinach artichoke dip, and pudding-filled sponge cake with fresh berries. On my way home from work, I picked up a meat and cheese tray...just in case we didn't have enough food. Totally not necessary. We had a ton of food, but surprisingly, a large amount of it got eaten.

My friend Valerie also provided a chocolate fountain with strawberries, marshmallows, and pretzels, which was fun. And my friend Melissa brought a "Congratulations Becky!" cake and champagne...super sweet.

We bought a pony keg of Bud Light and a couple boxes of wine (classy, I know) to drink. We have quite a bit of both those left, but K-State plays today so I don't think we'll have a problem getting rid of it.

It ended up being a really fun night. Around 20 people showed up, which I thought was a good turn out. Nothing like a night of good food, good drinks, and good friends!