My brief moment in the sun

 

Self-portrait in the beautiful Southern California sunshine

Last year in the spring, after I got vaccinated, before the Delta variant started spreading, I had a brief moment in the sun. I had the opportunity to go to California again to be a game show contestant for the third time. The experience was intense. As you probably know from many of my previous posts, I had spent the bulk of the previous year working from home in solitude. I had stopped getting my hair done because there was no point. I had stopped spending time with family and friends in person on a regular basis. I had stopped going into stores and other public places.  And then all of a sudden I needed to go to the salon, go to the airport, get on a plane, go to a TV studio, meet new people in person, and try my best to answer challenging trivia questions at a rapid-fire pace without the encouragement of a live studio audience. Tomorrow night you'll get a chance to be in the audience to see how I did. Check out my episode of The Chase at 10 p.m. Eastern/ 9 p.m. Central on ABC. If you're a cord-cutter, you can also see it the day after tomorrow on the show's website. In the meantime, take a look at these photos I took now that I can finally talk about why I took them.

Some of the trivia books I studied. (Thanks, Chicago Public Library!)

My luggage for the trip, a combination of old, new, and vintage

A view of the Grand Canyon from the plane

The view from my hotel window

Beautiful California flowers

UPDATE, 12/30/22:

Now that the show has aired, I can share this photo:

I almost won $100,000!