I love a good challenge.

I wouldn’t say I am the competitive type, and I bow down gracefully when someone proves to be better than me at something (which happens a lot), but I just like the feeling of playing along. No matter how bad it can make me look, in the end.

My good (until now, we’ll see how this goes – she is rather competitive) friend Trina is slightly geographically impaired, and has started a series of posts to share her very personal way to see the world. She has already published Where in the world, which is about where she thought our Canadian provinces and territories were. Definately worth a click, if you ask me!

Yesterday night, during our Skypy Friday session, Trina shared that she was working on doing a second post about American states. One thing led to another, and she ended up breaking the challenge into two rounds; first, trying to name all fifty states by heart (which should be easy, since she first thought there actually were 52 states!), and then redoing the puzzle on a blank map.

I said I’d do the challenge with her, and we gave ourselves 12h (hey! Neither of us are American, give us a break!) and then post our lists to compare scores.

Before going to bed, I made a first list of the state names that came naturally to me. I had a good forty of them, and I must say that I was very impressed with myself.

I was supposed to publish my post around noon, but when I woke up this morning, the game had changed. My left eye was all swollen and red, and hurting like hell. Listing the ten extra states (or so) suddenly wasn’t on top of my priority list. Fortunately, having a boyfriend that has a couple of health issues, we have a very well garnished pharmacy. So after (hopefully) washing whatever was irritating my eye, and using drops, I went back to bed and took a nap.

Good news! When I got up again, the swelling was almost gone, and my eye was just a little soar.

So back to the list.

I kept looking for my last state names, and slowly but surely, I reached an honorable forty nine. And then it happened.

I turned into Ross Geller mode!

If you’ve been a fan of the tv show Friends, you probably know what I mean…. If you don’t let me refresh your memory:

I searched and searched, and tried to bribe Chéri into reading my list and helping me, with no success. The worst thing is that I am completely sure that the missing state will be an obvious one, when I realize what it is…

But here it is!

Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona

California, Colorado, Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Georgia

Hawai

Idaho, Illinois, Iowa

Kansas, Kentucky

Louisiana

Maine, Massachussets, Maryland, Michigan, Minessota, Mississipi, Missouri

Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New Orleans, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota

Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon

Pennsilvania

Rhode Island

Texas, Tenessee

South Carolina, South Dakota

Utah

Vermont, Virginia

Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Fourty nine… Now, what’s that dang state??