Subject number 1: Poetry.

The deadline to have work published in our school literaty magazine The Metaphor is fast approaching, and seeing as how my best poems have been submitted and published in past years and that I'm running out of "good" works, I decided to use the best lines from poems I had and combine them into one. You'd be surprised at how well that can work sometimes.

Thus, my "Mosaic in 22 Lines." Why 22? Because there were 22 lines on my piece of paper. I only tweaked a few words, so for the most part the poem is word for word taken from other poems. I also made the rule that I would only take one line from a poem even if it spilled over onto the next line. So for example if I sampled my poem, "Saturday Mornings," I'd find myself taking "cologne and in the cold which burned our noses when we worked on the car in wire-" but not the accompanying line.

Since we can submit up to three poems, I'm submitting that, and two revised copies of poems that I wrote years ago. I'm just glad for the extended deadluine giving us until Tuesday. I would have been in trouble had they stuck with Friday the 24th. They extend the deadline every year though, so it's nothing new.

Subject number 2: Partying.

Even though parties at Britt's house are more on the get together side than they are on the party side, people still find a way to arrive late. She told me to be there at 10, and we watched That 70's Show and something on The Food Network until Jamie arrived.

Jamie. I hadn't talked to her in well over a year when we went on a camping expedition. Looking back at that entry, we were supposed to leave at 10 on that day too, but I was the only one who arrived on time.

So Jamie arrives at 11 because she had to work until ten, and Britt, her dad and her sister Destiny struggle to explain the rules of Cranium to David and I who have never played the game.

We decided to play a boys vs. girls game, since we were already situated that way on the couches. Still unaware of how to play, I decided to follow everyone's lead.

The game was fun. We came back from about 15 spaces down only to lose on the last turn. Who would have thought that Jamie knew how to spell 'campaign' backwards?

For those of you who don't know about this game, I'll give you the very basics. During the game, you draw cards. A star performer card will lead to a person humming a song or acting like a person, a data head card usually gives a word and four possible definitions, another card requires you to draw the item indicated on the card (usually with your eyes closed) or to sculpt the item depicted out of clay, and the "hard" category is one in which you have to spell a word backward or forward or that you have to unscramble or fill in the blanks.

I'm sure I just made no sense, but whatever.

I was designated our team's speller. Beginning with 'ibuprofen', I succesfully spelled, 'larynx' backward, and something else. Things got a bit interesting when I was asked to spell a word that Britt couldn't pronounce.

So she handed it to Miles. He couldn't pronounce it. So he hands it to Jamie. She couldn't either. David looks at it and agrees that he isn't going to read me the word either.

As soon as Britt's dad leaves to ask his wife and Destiny if they can pronounce the word, I'm getting worried. How am I going to spell a word that seven people can't pronounce?'

Finally, after nobody can pronounce it, David gives it a shot.

The word: pseudonym.

Even with David pronouncing it, "suede-o-nym," I succesfully spelled it faster than any other word I had spelled that night.

I was panicked over 'pseudonym'? After spelling it, they asked me what it means. That surprised me. None of them knew how to say it or its definition.

I've always been quite the speller. In fact, I can remember joining the spelling bee in eighth grade while we were on our way to the thing. Seriously. We were walking to the auditorium to watch it, they asked me to join and I did. I hadn't even glanced at the list of words and still placed fourth or fifth out of about 30 students.

It was fun to catch up with Britt and Destiny, who were the two main people I talked to. I heard about how Destiny is notorious for killing her fish, how she's going to be going to my school for a dental assistant class in a matter of months, and how for some reason, Ogden provides them with better shopping than Salt Lake.

We didn't leave until just after one. High Fidelity was getting a bit boring (probably because we had missed a key point of the movie) and the Vh-1 special on the derrier entitled, "Booty Call" was a bit too much for us all.

I never grew up playing board games like most of my friends did, but Cranium is a definite winner in my book, if for no other reason than Britt's team couldn't guess Jamie's quite accurate humming of The Pink Panther Theme. It probably didn't help that she was only able to remember the first seven or seconds of the song.

I'm sure I'll mention more of what went on later. It was a lot to be packed into three hours, for sure. But of course today is Super Bowl Sunday, and in a matter of hours, I'll be watching the game, like it or not. I'll personally be shooting for a new record number of chicken pieces. I'll let you know if I eclipse my old record of four or five.

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