I'm such an amateur

My friend Sherri occasionally checks in with You'll Eat It and Like It and was interested in hearing more details about our dead pool. You have to understand, I got the idea for doing a dead pool from Sherri herself: she and her family have been running one for years. They used to each throw in five bucks so that the annual winner walked away with twenty dollars, but now they just do it for fun.

Sherri's family is serious about their dead pool. I'm under the impression that they all do esoteric research to find the oldest, sickest, most accident-prone celebs to add to their lists; Sherri's dad, for instance, favors ancient western movie stars. Once they "submit" their lists no changes can be made. Sherri's mom has kept all of their old dead pools in a big notebook with some kind of skull on the cover. Sherri said she'd bring it in someday so I can look it over; maybe it will give me some ideas for how to proceed next year. I mentioned a couple of names that are on my list, and Sherri took notes in case they survive this year but might kick off in 2010 -- like I said, it's research.

Sherri's a bit miffed because she hasn't won the dead pool since 2003. Here's how seriously her family takes their dead pool: I was thrilled (well, maybe that's not the right word) because someone on my list died and I won our competition. Last year Sherri's brother Steve had three invalid names on his list (invalid because they'd already died), yet he still won their dead pool. That's hard core.