Pick 'Em.

I was in Colorado over the weekend, visiting my family. For the most part, it was All Quiet on the Western Front.

But, Sunday was family dinner day. My parents host a family dinner every two weeks. Usually, it is my parents, brother and his partner, and cousin. Sometimes her boyfriend attends. But this Sunday, it was nine people: four couples (parents, brother and his partner, cousin and her boyfriend, and my faux brother -- my brother's best friend from high school who lived with us for a year or so -- and his wife) and me. Gotta love that. Nine people and four dogs (could have been six) and two cats. Delicious spaghetti and amazing cheesy bread, salad, wine, and cheesecake. Yum.

Coincidentally, Sunday was also the day that the Daytona 500 was supposed to run (delayed due to rain) and the Oscars aired. While none of us are NASCAR fans, some of us like the Oscars, or at least the red carpet. Because I like to add an element of fun to family events, e.g., holiday poppers at Christmas and making people wear the paper crown, I decided to print the Oscar ballot and come up with a fabulous prize for the person who guessed the most winners. I thought that it would make it more fun for everyone. It is kind of like bowl games or March Madness -- always more fun when you have a horse in the race, even if you care for totally artificial reasons. My friend, KWW, has taken the bowl game fun to a whole new level with his family: for the past ten years, he has run a bowl game picks contest with his family, with three different, engraved trophies in place: best year, best overall record, and, introduced this year, best of the decade. Compared to that, my fabulous prize is less impressive but who doesn't like candy and free movies?

Fabulous-ish?

I was pretty happy about the idea but by the time people arrived and the red carpet was on, it was clear that most people didn't care. My mom took over and forced people to play and wouldn't you know, people suddenly started to care when the awards began being announced. As it turned out, I easily won with 13 winners picked correctly but I decided to disqualify myself. After that, it was a three-way tie between my brother, my faux-brother's wife and my cousin's boyfriend. It had to go to a tie-break (who guessed the most of the big three awards) which ultimately meant that my brother won. I was happy about that since he was the person who was most excited about the contest, if only because he wanted the candy.