"The play, the whole play, and nothing but the play!" is a good synopsis of my life this week. Apparently though my nose and throat did not take the oath, so the sinuses are generating muck and the throat has the vocal passages down to one lane for construction reasons (or at least, that's what the little voices say.) Folks, there are no seconds, and only one performance. If any of the major characters (including your's truly) can't YELL Friday night the entire cast of 42 people will lament in sackcloth and ashes, and that will be the Rogers County CHEF drama presentation. Somehow I don't think it have the same amount of entertainment (sp?) as the Western.

BonnieJean, thanks for the long 'letter'!!! I haven't been online since Teenpact until today, and it was such a pleasant surprise! The old folks letter sounds hilarious! Hope your cold is feeling better! You have my empathy and sympathies.

TeenPact was awesome! I was on the Judicial committee, and didn't win a single election. I stayed with the W. who are an on-the-go family. Tuesday and Wednesday we were gone 12-13 hours out of the day. Emoly (pronounced Emily) W. is 17, and last year was her first at Teenpact. She is a-gorgous, and highly intelligent. She was my committe chairwoman, and was a representitive candidate. I got to have some interesting debates with her, Mrs. West, and Michelle Mc., and that was a blast! Also staying at the W. were Kara S. from Broken Bow, and Shannon M. from Tulsa. These girls (Emoly, Shannon, and Kara) made the week for me! We stayed up late every night discussing our speakers, bills, spiritual warfare, exteneded family, politics, reading Hound of the Baskervilles, and doing eachothers' hair. Then Emoly would pop us all out of bed at 6:30-7), and mayhem would ensue, but everybody was so considerate and ready to serve the other person.

The staffer assigned to our committee was Joseph M. from TEXAS!!!! He wrote a bill annexing OK to Texas. It failed, but Samuel, Emoly, and I soundly supported him! There were several bills passed that annexed TX to OK, and made TX pay for _______. I guess I shouldn't surprised considering it's the OK Teenpact.

Samuel secretly wrote a bill banning purple in the State of OK. One of the moms found out about it, and handed out strips of purple cloth to over half of the students. So, the clerk reads the bill, and the author of the bill gets to come up and speak on it. He got up there, turned around, and sees a sea of waving purple in front of him. :) He then proceeded to cover a fictional Congressional study on purple. And then, he yielded the well to me! I started dragging up all the dirt a little sister possesses, but then was told that was against the rules. Just then, I noticed James M. raising his hand. James was on my committee, is really intelligent, but very shy. The first day he wore a purple suit, Tuesday he wore a royal blue suit, and Wednesday he wore another purple suit. I yielded the well, and when the crowd saw him stand up all in purple we all went crazy hooting and clapping! He had written up a little speech and had researched all these things about purple, and one of the staffers read it. James got a standing ovation. Afterwards he showed Samuel and I different examples of purple he had. Purple deoderant, toothbrush, watch, and he said he has a purple clock at home. I got a picture of him holding all of it.

Oh, and if the entire state went by Teenpact legislature Big Bird would be the state bird, Snuffelufigous would be the State Bear, and C is for Cookie the state song. I proposed the state song amendment, and got to perform it for everybody. The bill passed!

Some good serious bills were several dealing with marriage, gambling, taxes, state funding of higher education, banning Disney (I'm so upset that passed!), and the Patriot Act.

A highlight of the week was having two speakers on the recent gaming bill-one from each camp. The guy supporting the bill was really on the defensive and somewhat condescending. His arguments were "It's for the children. I will not make a moral judgement on the lottery. I wouldn't personally be involved in the lottery, but polls show that my consticuents want the lottery, and I'm here to represent them." Well, if polls showed that your consticuents supported killing you would you say "I won't make a moral judgement on my execution. I'm here to represent my consticuents, and if they want to kill me that's how I'll vote." The other guy was Forrest Claunch. He went through and just destroyed the other sides arguments. He cited polls that contradicted eachother (so you can't make decisions on those), the effect of lottery on business and families (it makes everything go down the drain), gambling addictions, and how previous gaming bills have not returned as much money as they say and have not gone to education.

Another highlight was Charlie Meadows, our guest director Tuesday and Thursday. He is extremely intellectual and had great talks. He took a special interest in me, and lent me a book callled The Persecutor by Sergei Kourdakov, and gave me a book called America's March Toward Communism (I think that's the title.)

Wow, I think that covers last week fairly well. And now I'm off to beddy-bye!