TO CALIFORNIA

The trip to California was uneventful (except for the delay of our departure because "the plane cannot get any power" - not real comforting for a fearful flier like me). We arrived at the Radisson late on Sunday night, and awoke early on Monday - it didn't feel real early as our bodies were still on Eastern Time - to go to Disneyland. We had a great time. Even I had a great time, especially watching my daughter have fun, although everything reminded me of what I didn't know. For example, one of the Disneyland marching bands was playing "76 Trombones" which I knew was from The Music Man but it took me 15 minutes to pull the composer - Meredith Wilson - out of my brain. Thank goodness that form of insanity was temporary and would end the next day.

After Disney, we met some friends for dinner. A family from our church decided to use my appearance on Jeopardy! as an excuse for a trip to California. It was very cool having more familiar faces that were going to be in the studio audience.

That night, I didn't sleep a whole lot. I kept telling myself what I told everyone - getting on the show was the goal. Winning would be nice, but just the opportunity to play the game was enough.

That was all true, but . . . I sure didn't want to make a fool of myself. I certainly didn't want to finish in the negative and miss out on playing Final Jeopardy and the hang-out time with Alex Trebek after the game. That would be embarrassing.

And what if I gave a wrong response to a clue about the Bible?

No, there wasn't much sleep that night at the Culver City Radisson.

But again, I'm focusing too much on the negative stress. There was as much - if not more - just plain excitement that when I got up the next day it would be the day I was going to be on Jeopardy!

But I couldn't remember who the Prime Minister of Canada was. It was important information - after all, Alex Trebek is from Canada. About 2am I got up and googled the answer - Stephen Harper.

Now I was ready.

To the next installment - AT THE STUDIO