> > uni"i never get to go ANYwhere"peg

Welcome to my world. Sigh.

> It's "odyssey", after Odysseus, except in certain circumstances where it's "oddyssey", after Abe, possibly one of the greatest games of all time.

I knew I'd heard of it!

> Brunnen-"I got a brand new Playstation for $40 in a mall promotion, ha, ha, ha"G

Well, we've got some pretty cool competitions.
OK, brag time for Chris: There's this thing called battle of the Books. There are categories for Kindergarten, High School, and every two grades in between. They each get a list of 12-13 age-appropriate books. There are teams of up to three people that have read and reread and reread the list of books and they get asked questions starting with 'in which book.' They have to give the name of the authos and the title. It's eight points if they get both, 5 if they get the title but not the title, and none if they get it wrong. That's basically it-- schools choose up to two teams to go to district, and the district chooses one team to go to state.

My score:
3rd grade: first in district out of about 35 teams. Anchorage was *late* so we'd already missed state. Read one book seven times.
5th grade: Tied for fifth [sixth?] out of twelve teams in district. Dad never coached again.
7th grade: FIRST IN STATE! WHOOOO!!!! STILL HAVE THE T-SHIRT!! GO GIRDWOOD!!! YEAH!!!! Read all books once, half of them twice.
8th grade: SECOND IN STATE! GO US! YEAH! I'd read all twice and half thrice. That was my now-or-never year. I gave up everything when I went to High School. :( We actually lost by only two questions in the last round. That was tough.

BotB's only in Alaska, though.

Then there was the MS Readathon-- I think that had several states. I was second in state in... eep... sometime in Elementary... sixth grade? Anyhow, first prixe was two tickets anywhere in the continental US. Second was one of those talking robots that runs off a tape and is meant for second graders. Yay. Several thousand minutes of reading didn't seem like much of a reward then. Now I only wish I had the time... probably should get back to homework....