Your "Deck The Halls... oh, God DAMMIT!" Quizo Update

Quizo - and here I mean the actual physical sheets of paper which I carry around with me on Monday nights - is obviously generated on a computer. Now over the almost 2 years we've been doing this it's been generated on a number of different computers, but I have tried to be conscientious about keeping everything in one place in the end, between home PCs and work PCs and work laptops and the office in the DH and whatnot. That's one of those things that GMail is great at.

When I had to return my old work laptop this summer I made certain that I got all the files I'd created on it that were mine - stuff for the theatre, personal things, and Quizos - into a zipfile which I then sent myself. This was back in... what was it? July? July.

Flash forward, if you will, to last week, and me telling everyone that tonight would be the return of Special Holiday Quizo. Everyone seemed pleased to hear that. Believe me when I tell you that none of you were as pleased as I was, since doing Special Holiday Quizo meant I could simply re-use last year's well-received Holiday edition, and the thought of Monday when I don't have to race home at the speed of light and spend my precious few hours of free time banging out trivia questions makes me positively giddy.

(Note that last year's Holiday Edition was won by Delicious Bass, who are now in something of a rebuilding phase. One of their team members moved out of town almost immediately after seeing the last play I produced. For a little while I thought I had offended him so badly - what with the murder of the baby and all - that I'd driven him away. Turns out he just got a new job. But if he had actually been shocked at killing ONE baby imagine what he'd think of Medea, opening January 11 at Second Stage, 2030 Sansom, tickets $20.)

(I nominate that for Best-Yet-Most-Circuitous Medea reference ever. Can I cook or can't I?)

So anyway, this morning I wake up, and before I go to work I sit down to find the Christmas Quizo amongst my many files and see if I had to update any of the questions.

Hmm... it doesn't seem to be here. That's odd. Oh well - when I get to work I'll go through GMail and find the copy of it there.

At work - browsing GMail - not there.

I am starting to seriously worry that I may have to do actual work at some point today.

I start going through every place I have so much as shed a digital skin cell in the last year. Home computer - nothing. Remote storage sites - nothing. Old e-mails, several accounts worth - nothing.

I have Quizos for every week for the last year and a half EXCEPT the Christmas edition.

It's the only one I don't have a copy of any more.

The ONLY ONE.

The odds against this happening are so high as to be mathematically disharmonious. I check everywhere again in the desperate hope that I have made a mistake, which in and of itself is exceedingly unlikely.

It's not anywhere.

I have to make it all over again.

Merry fucking Christmas.

JLK