Big Fish, Little Ponds

In the early 80s I was an intern for Procter & Gamble one summer. While here, I heard about a juggling contest being held at the Union Terminal building. I had only been juggling a couple years then, but I thought I'd go and maybe learn something from the other jugglers. The building was a mess back then -- not the beautiful art deco building it is today. The organizers divided the jugglers into groups by decade. I ended up winning first prize in my age group. That sounds pretty good until you know there were only three people competing in that group.

In the late 80s I was in graduate school, on a pretty tight budget, always looking for something free to help out. At that time, the intramural athletics folks must have had a pretty good budget because they ran competitions and gave nice prizes for the top three places in many, many sports. After talking about it one day, we decided to look at the previous year's results to see which sports had the lowest participation. If we could find something that was do-able, we might be able to pull off a win. It didn't take long to stumble on co-ed horseshoes as our sport. I partnered with a gal in our research group, got registered, and practiced once before the competition. Another pair from our department registered too. When the big day came, there were only three teams registered and the one team we didn't know never showed up. We played one match against our friends and won. I think we each received a nice gift certificate at a local restaurant.

Fast forward to a couple months ago when the Cincinnati Fine Arts Fund started their fund drive. Many employers, including mine, help with the drive and ask employees to contribute. This year, to create some buzz, there was a photo contest associated with the fund drive. I thought it would be fun to participate and maybe win something. See this post about our arts adventure.

There was a pitiful amount of participation in the photo contest. At my site that probably has a couple thousand people, there were only two of us that submitted photos. There were more folks participating that worked downtown. The contest ended several weeks ago and I hadn't heard a peep. Today I found out I won a $50 prize and a limited edition print. I'm not sure for which photo or category, but Dianne and I think it is the one below of the lobby at the Contemporary Arts Center. However, because it was more challenging technically to balance the light in the photo at the upper right, I'm kinda hoping it was that one. We'll see in a few days when they post the winners. Nevertheless, score another victory for at least participating.