Today I got up to 55 countries in the how many countries can you name in five minutes game. Shamefully, that's my personal best. Part of my problem is spelling--I can never remember how to spell Luxembourg. Or Belarus, which looks easy but I persist in believing it's spelled Belarusse. Even if I remembered Kyrgyzstan, I wouldn't be able to spell it.

And I forget weird things. I don't know why I can remember Qatar but not Chile. Nigeria is easy, but Ethiopia always escapes me. I usually waste several valuable seconds trying to spell Czechoslovakia, instead of remembering that it's called the Czech Republic nowadays. Morocco I can get, but Liechtenstein lives in my memory only as, "the country with the castle." The odds of me remembering Djibouti are pretty slim, but I should be able to get Cuba.

Too many dinky countries, that's the problem. And they change their names. Like in recent news coverage. For a week, all you read about was coverage of the Myanmar flood. Suddenly, yesterday, all the news outlets were talking about Burma. What was that all about? (By the way, did you read that "officials" in the country are being accused of selling, not giving away, the relief supplies they seized?) (Maybe because they are in denial about the scope of the tragedy in their own country?)

Even Haiti. I watch for news about Haiti. I talk about Haiti. Why can I never remember Haiti when I'm playing this game?

I've thought of cheating, of course. Printing out the list of the top 150 or so countries that I should be able to remember and studying, but I can't bring myself to do it.

It's wrong to cheat.

Except, now that I've typed that, I wonder if I shouldn't focus on the "studying" part of the concept?

How many times have you played the states game? You know the one--the one where you have to write down the names of all 50 states. It's surprisingly difficult to do. It's embarrassing, in fact. Why does my brain not retain Mississippi? Why does Indiana hold no place in my heart? Why is Kentucky so often forgotten?

Embarrassing.

As you can probably tell by today's entry, my resolution to Blog Interesting didn't last long. Never does, does it?

For the past couple of weeks, I've been watching and being utterly enthralled by Masterpiece Theater's latest offering, Cranford. I turned it on for Judi Dench, of course, but I've been so glad I did!

I've never sampled any of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels. I wonder if I should--or if I should be warned off by the idea that three of her works were merged to produce this one marvelous production?