Elementary, My Dear Watson...

IBM's Eero Saarinen designed Watson Research Center

I had a truly lovely outing today in Yorktown Heights, NY. It's a beautiful part of New York and a pretty drive...plus it's in Don and Betty Draper's Ossining neighborhood, so it's all good, right? (I'd have stopped in if it had been cocktail time...)

I literally and legally cannot tell you anything about what I did today other than that I was playing Jeopardy! sparring matches against IBM's Watson project. I had SO much fun and really enjoyed the other contestants, and folks from IBM--they couldn't have been nicer or made us feel more welcome.

One of the nicest surprises, though, was the building itself. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not always too thrilled with modern architecture, but Eero Saarinen has grown on me in the past few years. The fluidity of line and Saarinen's ability to place the building perfectly within it's surroundings is nothing short of genius. Set amidst the rolling hills that surround Yorktown, the building is crescent shaped and has walls of windows that look out over the campus. I can only imagine what it looks like during in autumn, with the leaves at their peak or in the winter during a snow storm. Even today, snowless and dreary as it was for most of the day, the view from the hallway was stunning. I could've sat and read or written all day looking out those windows. Equestrian that I am, it did also occur to me, of course, that it would be an absolutely brilliant place for a good hack!

And what's most wonderful about this structure are the native materials that were used in construction. It's filled with local stone--inside and out--and it couldn't look more like it belongs among the hills and dales of Yorktown. Inside some of the walls use the same local stone and there are the most beautiful, highly polished stone floors that look like an inky river flowing throughout the floors. (They'd make an amazing kitchen floor!) One of the engineers was saying that employees over the years have actually tried rock-climbing on the wall faces--who could blame them?

At any rate, a good time was had by all and if you're at all curious about the Watson project or the Saarinen building here are a couple of useful links for you to explore:

IBM's Watson project

Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY.

I Lost On Jeopardy!...No, Seriously, I Did

One of the obvious drawbacks to my freelance existence is that I don't always check the calendar to see what the date is. This can create myriad issues--from allowing deadlines to creep dangerously close, all the way to letting anniversaries and special days pass by unnoticed.

And when I looked at my BlackBerry and noticed that today was the 19th of January I realized that it has been about a year since my taped episode of Jeopardy! was on television. I was home in Minnesota when it aired so I was able to watch with my parents which was exciting. The entire odyssey had started on a whim with an online test I took the day after I was laid off--literally. From there I went to a casting session in Boston in May and then Jeopardy! called in October of 2008 and invited me to LA for a taping in November of 2008. And by the way, there's no preparing you for how you'll look on television, or how annoying your little nervous habits can be--putting your hair behind your ear or pushing up your glasses--over the course of 22 or 23 stressful minutes. VERY stressful minutes.

Everyone at home who yells out answers to Jeopardy! questions from their davenports knows that some days the category gods are with you and other days they are just plain cruel. In the days leading up to my flying to LA to tape the show I was practicing, as they suggest you do, with a clicky ball-point pen and answering questions along with the TV show. (Yeah, that's how I roll...MANY nights spent in front of the TV watching Jeopardy!, religious devotion to the NYT and WSJ crosswords, and friends emailing pop-quizzes.) More often than not there were categories I liked and felt confident about--and that should have been the first clue, the first little pebble from the universe that things might not go my way. (Come on, I'm Catholic, Scandinavian, German and Irish, what in that mix prepares you to think positively?!) In the theatre a rotten dress-rehearsal means a good opening night...and in Jeopardy! (in my experience, at any rate) good practice sessions did not mean a good show performance.

During those "practice games" at home, though, there was SO much possibility. Maybe I'd become a long running Jeopardy! champion a la Ken Jennings (okay, that was NEVER a serious possibility, but it was a fun fantasy to entertain) or I'd win enough money to buy part of a racehorse or the world's largest collection of Hermes scarves, custom riding boots, and Barbour jackets. Maybe I'd win enough to buy an old ChrisCraft or Garwood run-a-bout (think the Thayer IV boat in On Golden Pond.) And if I had won oodles and scads of money, I'd have started my own publishing company--one comprised of all the great and talented friends who had been laid off with me--and we'd bring together our favorite authors to have fun and do great work. All fun and frivolous things to contemplate, all still fantastically possible.

I think it was that pie-in-the-sky level of possibility, the realization of what today was, that got me thinking. How easy it was to see possibility then and how much harder it is today--with the incredible devastation of Haiti and the disappointing election in Massachusetts, possibilities are more difficult to focus on.

And that's the trick, I suppose. To find a way to see beyond the fog of disappointment and sadness to the myriad options, choices, and opportunities waiting off in the distance. I know all the possibilities are still there, even if I can't reach out and touch them at the moment, or even see them through the muddiness of my brain today. The extravagant monetary windfall surely didn't materialize, but the possibilities of those dreams--both silly and serious--live on as things to strive for, opportunities to continue to work for, Quixotic quests worth embarking upon.

Oh...so how DID my Jeopardy! day go? Well, not as well as I'd have liked--it was the first time the returning champion was too sick to return for the next game so I went on in her stead. It was all a bit frazzled and last minute, but it was great fun. The categories were not really up my alley and I never did really get the hang of the buzzer. I did, however, correctly answer a Daily Double and I did very well in the Potent Potables category (no shock there) and in a word category and I answered Final Jeopardy correctly. And happily, the young man who did win my game went on to win several more games, deservedly so.