Last night was a City Council meeting, which normally we would have ignored. But they were going to be discussing the impending racetrack project (since having a new Walmart in town is not enough white trash for us, someone thought it would be just ducky if they built a huge horse racing track right off the freeway) the group that is opposing it wanted to gather a large crowd, and since Richard and I are, like any sane, rational person who would like to keep their town from sliding even further into the hell of dead-end, low-paying jobs, traffic, and pollution (because the 1200 horses they want to house there will produce one heck of a lot of poop), against the racetrack as well, we decided we ought to take a more active part. So we showed up, dutifully wearing yellow shirts (the only yellow shirts either of us owned, actually) since that’s the color of the protest group, and sat through an extremely long meeting, until they finally got to the part we actually cared about.

Small town politics are an interesting thing to watch. There is the vice mayor, who seemed to take things seriously, but also felt the need to make every comment a stump speech. There is the council member who was apparently voted for looks or something because he didn’t seem to have the remotest clue what the rest of the group was talking about most of the time, nor did he seem to have even a vague clue of how politics and running a city actually works. There is the guy who shows up to every single council meeting with a chip on his shoulder because he has been unable to get himself elected for any office (and I think by now he has run for every single possible office available), so takes it out on the council by issuing long lists of angry questions at the meetings, acting as if he is an expert in everything he rants abuot, and by writing angry diatribes in an extremely biased, right-wing newspaper that is delivered to everyone in town whether we want it or not (Richard likes it only because we don’t subscribe to a regular newspaper, so this provides fuel for his chimney starter for the barbecue grill). There are the slick lawyers presenting their cases to the city council, using big flowery words and smoothing over any rough edges in their arguments. There are the impassioned speeches by other city members who really ought to have at least made some effort to do some semblance of research before standing up and making it clear they really didn’t have a clue. And then there is the rest of us, the audience, sinking lower and lower into our chairs as the night progressed, wishing that they would just vote on the damn provision about whether you can keep a horse in your backyard in a rural area already and move on.

Due to timing we didn’t eat dinner before the meeting, and neither of us had had any idea it was going to run on so long. So once the race track issue had finally been discussed (and it’s not a done deal by a long shot – they’ve still to finalize the environmental impact report, and the number of people opposing it is growing daily, much to the racing corporation’s dismay) we staggered out to our car and headed for Denny’s because it was either that or IHOP as the only things open that late. They brought us our food and we ate it blearily, interrupted only by another pair of people who stopped by our table, having left the meeting a little bit after us, sporting their yellow t-shirts too.

It’s funny, this being an adult thing. You don’t think about it when you are young – all the responsibility. It’s not just that you have to have a job and own a house and mow the lawn and repair the leaking faucets and pay the bills. You also have to pay attention to the world around you, and as much as you might despise the dimwitted morons who are elected to the highest offices in the country, what happens in your own town is sometimes far more important, because that will have a far greater impact on your daily life than (nearly) anything the aforementioned dimwitted morons could ever do.

Yesterday was our fourth anniversary. It seems a little odd, when I think about it, that we�ve been married for four years, because for some reason it does not feel as if it has been that long. I can mark the date in April when we moved into this house and say �yes, we�ve been here four years�, and that feels right, but when it comes to other dates that indicate the passage of time, nope, it doesn�t work. It�s like my oldest nephew�s birthday, which was this past weekend. He turned seven. Seven! He�s starting second grade this fall. How can he possibly that old? Worse yet, the two little tow-headed twin boys who served as ring bearers at his mom and dad�s wedding (who were, now that I think about it, younger than him) graduated from high school in June and this fall are going off to college. How did this happen? I think sometimes time moves faster in pockets of space, and slower in others, and somehow we move through them without ever knowing it, until suddenly poof, toddlers are going to college and babies are going to second grade and newlyweds are having their fourth anniversary and so on. I feel old.

It was a nice anniversary, though. We went out to a fondue place and had cheese fondue with pesto, and chocolate fondue with caramel and pecans, and a whole lot of other food in between. And because we are both nerds and we love our gadgets, we decided that our joint anniversary present to each other would be a Roomba. So we put in our order and soon, oh yes, very soon, our very own little robotic vacuum cleaner will arrive. Maybe this isn�t everyone�s version of romance, but it works for us.

********

They send us our vacation balance at work once every three months and when I got mine recently I was a little bowled over by how much I�ve got saved up. We�re both trying to be a little miserly with the vacation hours in preparation for the trip to Ireland (and we are actually, finally going to go next year � we�ve both talked to our respective bosses so maybe this might actually happen), but still, I realized if I didn�t start using up some of those accumulated hours I was going to lose them. So I decided to take today off from work and my knitting mom and I drove down to Oakland for the TKGA convention. Or rather, we drove down there because they were having a convention, which meant they also were sponsoring a great big room filled with vendors selling yarn and needles and pretty, pretty things to make all us fiber addicts very happy.

I bought yarn, because one of my favorite vendors was there and I simply could not just walk by without purchasing something. And this time I even bought yarn with a pattern and a specific purpose! Of course then I succumbed to the lure of 50% off sale at another booth, and in a weak moment bought every skein available of a gorgeous cotton slub yarn in beautiful shades of copper and silver and brown, and I did this knowing full well that knitting with cotton makes my hands hurt, but sometimes you just have to ignore common sense and indulge.

This morning, now that Richard has finally plowed his way through all six books and I could safely snag the Half-Blood Prince back again (and also finally *talk* about it because no one else I know has finished it yet either, for crying out loud!), I sat down at breakfast and proceeded to read through the last four chapters in more depth. The first time I read it, by the time I reached that point I was reading and skimming so fast because I was sure that somehow, what happened hadn’t really actually happened; that it was all just a big elaborate ruse put together by Dumbledore and Snape and that eventually everything would right itself and would be well. But it doesn’t, of course, as any of us who have read the book have discovered, and I found myself tearing up a little as I reached the ending. Earlier this week, watching the trailer for the Goblet of Fire, I choked up as Dumbledore uttered his fateful words about how there would come a time when everyone had to choose between what is easy and what is right. And even though I knew that what he said was true and that what happened was meant to happen, it didn’t make it any easier to hear.

********

As I was settling on the couch this evening with the latest afghan-in-progress, a movement caught my attenton. Just at the edge of my line of vision I saw a tortoiseshell tail – the base where it hit the body a little ruffled and raggedy looking, and for the briefest moment I thought it was Rebecca. It wasn’t, of course, since she’s been buried in the flower bed for nearly a year, but sometimes it really hits me, how a creature so ornery and small can leave such a huge hole when she is gone.

I am not ashamed to admit that over the past week I have been counting down the days until the newest installment in the Harry Potter saga was released. We preordered our book back in November or December, pretty much the moment the release date was announced, and it made me positively giddy to receive the little announcement in my email earlier this week that the book was still on track to arrive at our house on Saturday, no later than 7pm. I will admit that I did begin to question our decision to preorder, since Saturday morning we went to CostCo to stock up on a few things, and greeting us at the door as we walked in were mammoth stacks of brand new Harry Potter books in their lovely green book jackets. But I told myself I would be strong, and once we returned from shopping, I spent the rest of the afternoon either downstairs, where I’d be sure to hear the doorbell, or at least the scuffling on the porch when the UPS delivery person dropped it off, or upstairs refreshing the UPS tracking site, muttering about how it didn’t show anything at all useful.

Because, it is important to point out here, they told me that they shipped it UPS. Which means that the package was supposed to show up on our *front porch*. So I was a little miffed when I went to check the regular mail at around 5-ish, and there it was, waiting for me, who knows how many precious reading hours wasted.

We’d planned a 20’s and 30’s group potluck dinner for Saturday night and couldn’t really skip it due to Harry Potter (although don’t think the thought didn’t cross my mind at least once or twice). And it was a fun evening – a small group, but animated. We ate cajun food – red beans and rice, crawfish pie, shrimp etouffee. I made apple cinnamon sweet potato muffins because I was feeling extremely unadventerous, and besides, I figured since the recipe came from the Louisiana Sweet Potato website, it at least qualified as being from the region. There was decadently delicious chocolate cake, and some kind of pie whose filling was made primarily of sugar and butter and wow, and we chatted and played Flux, which is a marvelous card based game I urge everyone to go out and buy right now, and we didn’t get done until after 9:30, which meant we didn’t get home until around 10, and if it wasn’t for the fact that the brand new book was waiting for me, I would have just gone straight to bed because I had to be up rather early the next morning, seeing as how I was the accompanist for the 8am service at church. But I’d started the book the second I got it out of the mailbox (I literally was tearing open the box as I walked hastily back to the house), and managed to get about a third of the way through during the slightly-less-than-one-hour between when I found it and when we had to leave. So when we got home I dumped everything rather unceremoniously on the counter and picked up the book and did not stop until slightly less than 2 hours later, when I was finally done. If you were keeping track, yes that means it took me just about 3 hours to read it (which is better than for the last book, but the last book was over 800 pages and this one was only 600 and something, so it makes sense).

Normally I would have handed it to Richard and he would have read it immediately (or maybe, due to the late hour, he would have waited until the next day to read it), but on Saturday morning – yes the *day* it was released – he had the bright idea that he wanted to read through the first five books again, and so he is not going to be even touching this new one for several days. DAYS, people!

I am going nuts here. No one at work has read it because while I love my job and my coworkers are awesome and in every other way this is a great place to work, I am the only nerd there, I am also the only one who is interested in science fiction and fantasy and anything else like that. At The Company to Be Nicknamed Later, there was a little group of us who would all gather together the morning after a new episode of Star Trek: Enterprise (back when it first started and we didn’t realize how stupid it was going to become) and we would talk about what had happened. They were the sort of people I could have babbled excitedly to about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or the fact that I finally managed to do something really new and cool with SQL or VBA, and they would have *understood*. Here at this new job I get the distinct feeling that the rest of them sometimes look at me as if they want to pat me on the head and then give me a pepperoni pizza and a comic book and send me back to play with all the other little nerds (if there were any other nerds to play with. Sniffle). So there is no one I can talk to about the book, and about my speculations about how some people who appear evil really aren’t, and how I think the title of the book really had very little to do with the actual plot, and a million other things that I will not mention here for fear of spoiling it for the rest of you slackers who did not drop everything and read the whole book in one sitting (ha ha). Gah.

A while ago, when making plans for the next batch of gift knitting, Richard asked for an afghan. So I let him pick out the yarn he liked, and then I sat down and spent a few days hashing out a mix of likely candidates for patterns and designs. I cast on and ripped it out about five times before I finally got something I liked, and then spent about a month working on it (along with other knitting projects, of course, because one can never have only one thing on the needles).

I finally finished it this weekend, but didn’t get around to weaving in all the ends and tossing it into the washing machine to soften it up and let it ‘settle’ into its final size. The pictures are a little grainy, but you get the gist of it. I think I did a pretty good job – cables only look difficult, but they’re really just time consuming.

I suppose I shouldn’t make light of the amount of work that was involved in this. After all, this did entail me having to keep track of about six pages of typed notes and instructions and charts, including having to reverse the trees cable pattern so that it would be identical on both ends of the completed project. Considering that none of the cable motifs I chose had the same number of rows, this meant that I had to keep track of where I was in up to five different patterns at a time. All things considered, the fact that I only made one mistake in wrapping the cables (and it’s near the bottom so you can’t really tell anyway unless you know exactly what to look for) is pretty amazing.

Anyway, here are some pictures. Every single one of these cable patterns is available for free online somewhere (more info on yarn and where I got the designs available in my cross-post to Knit One, Purr Too, here).

The full length shot

Close-up of the center cable pattern, and the ‘filler’ section of tile stitch for the middle.

Close-up of the Twining Trees motif

Back when I was fostering, we used to give the kittens their vaccinations – a set of three shots that they received over the first 12 weeks of their life. Obviously, with the number of kittens we were handling, the pile of spent needles and syringes would grow rather quickly, and then whichever one of us who happened to be working in a lab or other office where there was a sharps container would bundle them all up, toss the batch into the car, and drive around with them for a few weeks before finally remembering to bring them in and properly dispose of them.

I’ve been taking Allegra several times in the past month for blood tests and check-ups. Two vet visits ago her blood tests showed some anemia, and the follow-up visit confirmed it. So now we have a new thing to give her – an injection of epigen, three times a week.

I took her in yesterday for the first injection, and also so they could give her a shot of iron and some B12 to help stimulate the marrow to make more red blood cells. Giving the epigen injections is easy – it’s an insulin needle which means the needle itself is so tiny that she acts as if she doesn’t even feel it. But the other two shots (thankfully one time only) obviously hurt, and she has spent the time since then letting me know in no uncertain terms that they just might have made her feel pretty icky.

I am reminded of how those vaccine needles piled up, now when I look into the guest bathroom upstairs – the same bathroom where we’ve put nails into the walls to hang the fluids so I can give them to Allegra without having to wrestle with cat, needle, *and* bag all at once. There’s a box there on the counter now, into which I am collecting spent needles – the tiny insulin ones from her epigen injections, and the larger separate needles that I attach to the end of the IV drip set when I give her her fluids. It’s funny, in a way. I guess somehow I thought that when I was done with fostering, I’d be done with all of this too. Funny how you never think about what happens when the kittens grow up and get old and sick and suddenly you are right back amid little piles of spent, bent needles, where you started again.

In honor of it being the Fourth of July, we decided to get some uniquely American food for lunch. So while I was cutting up peaches and apples and turning them into crumble pies, Richard went off to procure lunch, and we ate it in front of the television, while watching John Q. When we were growing up my family always watched The Great Race, and then 1776 on the Fourth, and while I adore 1776, for some reason we never think to rent a copy in time. So instead Richard and I watched something from our Netflix queue. And I think maybe 1776 might have been better because it is significantly more upbeat, on the other hand, what could be more American than a movie about the impossibility of the current health care system for the working class poor. As Richard pointed out, there were no bad guys in this movie � only a lot of people who had their hands tied by the beaurocratic mess created by the rising cost of health care and the inability of corporations and HMO�s to look at people as human beings and not as numbers and expenses to be cut and boxed and shoved aside.

I spent several hours today knitting (and did not once touch my Civilization game, either � go me!), but there was also much time spent in preparation for the big family gathering later on. We decided to do something fairly easy for dinner, so we had tri tip and chicken and lamb, all marinated in various sauces, and we put out huge bowls of cut red and yellow bell peppers, onions, and mushrooms and told everyone to build their own kabobs. I�d asked everyone to bring a side dish, so we had lots of berries with cream, and pans of cornbread, and an extremely festive jello mold of red, white and blue layers, shaped like the American flag. Along with the two pies, I�d also found a recipe for a cinnamon chocolate bread pudding in a recent issue of Cooking Light, and what better time to try out new desserts than when you have a large crowd of people who cannot escape, and who always have the option of just having known quantities like pie anyway.

I invited my knitting mom over as well, since both her daughters and all three of her grandchildren were off doing other things for the holiday, and while the rest of the family all sat downstairs and listened to Alice�s Restaurant, I took her upstairs and we both poked experimentally at my new knitting machine and managed to get it to do a few rows and we compared yarn stashes and where they are stored, and got all our knitting geekery out of the way without annoying anyone else. So that was good.

The neighbors behind us put in some rather fast growing trees, such that we had to choose our positions in the yard carefully in order to see the fireworks display through the openings. It was a little saddening to know that this may be the last time we can all just congregate in our backyard with our lawn chairs, but I cannot really ask my neighbors to hack down their trees just because one day out of the year I want to see fireworks. I suspect that next year we will all take our lawn chairs and make a very short trek to the bike path that runs directly behind their yard, where we will hopefully still be able to avoid the larger crowds at the park where the fireworks display is actually put on. It�s just that none of us likes dealing with crowds, and it�s been so nice to be able to just go right out the back door and look up into the sky and see all the lights and the colors and the sound.

For Christmas last year Richard gave me the latest version of the only computer game I have ever been addicted to � Sid Mier’s Civilization (the Complete version). I have put off installing it because I have had a lot of other things that needed to be done � birthday and holiday presents to knit, projects to do around the house, and so on � and I knew that once the game was active, I would be sunk.

So guess what I installed this week, after returning home from Las Vegas? And guess what I�ve been doing most nights since then? It�s got a newer format and there�ve been a lot of changes and additions to the game, but overall, it�s still the same old Civilization that I fell in love with back when I had to run it from a DOS prompt on my second hand PC that ran Windows 3.1 and was slower than dirt.

Somehow, however, I have managed to tear myself away from the game long enough to do useful things like laundry, and go to work, and even do significant quantities of knitting. But there have been more than a few late nights this week, camped in front of the computer, trying to take over the world.

One thing I did tear myself away from the game to do was to see the last play of the season from the DMTC � The King and I. One thing that continues to strike me about seeing all these plays is that I am always amazed by how dull they can be. This is no reflection on the ability of the actors or the cleverness of the direction, or the detail of the sets. I think it has more to do with the fact that for so many of these, I�ve either read the books on which they are based, or seen the movies made long after they were done as plays, and in each case, they tend to be much more interesting. There have been some notable exceptions. For example, the play version of A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To The Forum was worlds better than the rather insipid movie version. But then I remember the horrible things done to the story The Secret Garden when put into play form and it just makes me shudder to recall it.

This play had its moments � most of them occurring when the King was on stage. The actor was marvelous for the role, and the woman who played Anna also did a marvelous job. But the play itself tends to drag, and perhaps it is just my 20th century sensibilities finding annoyance with the way people reacted back then.

But that was the end of the season, and we had the required post-play pie, and then we came back home so I could play Civilization yet again, and really, I need to put the CD back in its box and ask Richard to please hide it somewhere where I cannot find it because I sense that there will be much time wasted over the summer on this game.

Saturday night we had two shows scheduled. The first was the Folies Bergere at the Tropicana, which we decided was mostly a big waste of time and money, with the notable exception of a little interlude in the middle put on by this self-deprecating man who did amazing feats with juggling balls, and who had the ability to reduce the entire audience to tears from laughter. And after the Folies were over we wandered around aimlessly for a little bit, and then headed back to the Excalibur, to stand in a line of extremely rowdy women so we could go see the Thunder from Down Under. This was in a room where the acoustics were almost painfully loud, and we were in the back of the room, and by the end, with the constant exposure to smoke throughout the day, plus the noise and the smoke from the stage, I had a splitting sinus headache. But still, this was definitely worth the money, because, well, wow. And if some of us maybe got to pet one of the performers at some point during the show, well, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and that is all we need to say about that.

I knew I wasn’t going to get much sleep over the weekend, but still, that didn’t stop me from tossing and turning and even doing a little swearing all night Friday night, before finally giving up. I’d brought along my lace shawl I’m knitting, because I figured I’d have lots of time to work on it in the wee hours of the morning, and I wasn’t wrong. I think I finally gave up on Saturday morning at about 4-ish, and dragged a chair into the bathroom so the light wouldn’t bother my sisters, since knitting in the dark isn’t something I’ve mastered. And Sunday morning I gave up and dragged some extra blankets into the bathroom and I was so exhausted I managed, somehow to fall asleep on the floor. I think eventually we are going to have to figure out some sort of solution to the no-sleep issue for our trips, because the older we get, the less able we are to shake it off. But this year, ah well.

Saturday and Sunday we spent, mostly, walking. Saturday we wandered between all the casinos that were fairly close to the Excalibur � the Luxor, Mandalay Bay, the MGM Grande, and New York, New York. The Luxor is the one shaped like a giant pyramid, and we all decided that having a room on the top floor would not be very desirable in that one � it felt more and more claustrophobic the higher you got in that hotel. Mandalay Bay is big and fancy, but it amused us that of all the casinos, this was the only one where we couldn’t find a quarter slot machine anywhere. I guess if you’re going to gamble in Mandalay Bay, you are supposed to be rich enough to be using dollars.

We saw the lions on exhibit at the MGM (and a pair of lion cubs wrestling, all wide-mouthed and wide-eyed) with each other. We wandered the M&M store down the street, just to see what the big deal was � four floors of paraphernalia decorated with M&M characters, and an entire wall of every color of M&M they have ever made. I paid an exorbitant sum for a pound of dark chocolate peanut M&M’s (which are absolutely divine and which I can find absolutely nowhere around home), and we watched a goofy 3-D movie all about how the red M&M had lost his M.

On Sunday we drove down the strip did a lot more wandering. We saw the gardens and the arboretum and the amazing musical fountains at the Bellagio, and came rather swiftly to the conclusion that the Bellagio � a hotel where all the restaurants seemed to sport signs saying that gentlemen had to be in coats and ties and where all the shops were the sort where one might pay an entire car payment for one pair of snooty shoes � was lovely, but absolutely out of our price range.

We wandered around the Mirage and saw the dolphins and the white lions and the white tigers, and a few other cats lolling around in the shade and being very lazy, which is typical behavior for any cat, no matter how large and striped they might be.

We got airbrush tattoos for the sole purpose of taking a picture of all of us with our new body art and sending it to my mom without telling her they were temporary, just to shock her. We allowed ourselves to be talked into getting pictures taken where they cropped our heads off and put them on top of three showgirl bodies, and I have decided that this was a far easier way to lose weight and get in shape (at least for a picture) than silly exercising and diets. We went back to the midway and won more stuffed dragons (because they really were pretty cute), and ate at Coldstone Creamery for lunch.

We did so much walking over the weekend � from casino to casino, and all around inside them. By Sunday afternoon we were all pretty much dead � too much walking, and not much sleep � and the constant noise of people and slot machines, plus the constant and pervasive cigarette smoke, was really starting to get to all three of us. So we ended up going to the airport early. Three hours early, to be exact. We�d hoped maybe there�d be earlier flights to take, but none were to be had, so instead we found a quiet spot near the gate, and collapsed right there on the floor. My sisters read books and I worked on the lace shawl, and between the three of us we managed to finish off a majority of the junk food we still had (although I did tuck the remainder of the dark chocolate peanut M&M�s in my little sister�s bag when she wasn�t looking).

And then it was time to go. I put my very last dollar in a slot machine as my older sister and I headed for our gate (alas, it was a lost cause), and we boarded a plane that, while just as crowded as the one we flew in on, was mercifully free of obnoxious men in red shirts. We landed at Sacramento and as I walked off the plane I took a deep breath and there wasn�t even a hint of cigarette smoke anywhere to be found, and that, more than anything else, made me glad to be finally home.

My older sister picked me up, and after a quick stop to pick up something for lunch, we were off to the airport. I figure we started the weekend off to a good foot by finding something to be impressed with in the airport bathroom. My sister had never seen motion-activated paper towel dispensers before, and I’d never seen motion activated soap dispensers. At the rate they’re going, the next time I hit the bathroom in the airport I will not be surprised at all to have the garbage can wheel itself over to me at the wave of a hand so I don’t have to put out any more effort than necessary.

The flight was full, but when I did the online check-in for us Friday morning I managed to get us both aisle seats, so at least we weren’t crammed against a window, or in between two strangers. We were, however, unfortunate enough to be seated in front of a trio of men who were likely our age, if not slightly younger, but who shared the combined maturity of your average 13 year old (although that might be an insult to 13-year-olds everywhere, come to think of it). They were all rather crude and coarse, and every conversation was liberally sprinkled with ‘f-ing this’ and ‘f-ing that. But one of them, whom we dubbed Red Shirt (because that’s what he was wearing), felt the need to have this sort of conversation with his buddies at the top of his lungs. The entire front half of the plane was subjected to a lengthy discussion on whether or not there was the lovely conversation about why his taller friend might not fit into the airline bathroom (but he could pee on the floor because that’s what carpet cleaner is for!), and then the whole discussion – all at shouting volume – as to whether one of his seat companions had ‘banged’ a ‘chick’ in all the rooms of some large house. By the time the plane had landed there were a lot of people muttering comments under our breath about him.

But luckily we left Red Shirt behind at the airport, meeting my little sister (who�d flown in from Seattle) as soon as we landed, and headed off to get our rental car. The strip is visible (or at least the backside is) as soon as you drive away from the car rental parking lots, and we goggled appropriately at the sheer excess of the casinos the instant we turned onto the strip. New York, New York stands out as the most impressive, just from the size.

Our hotel � the Excalibur � was easy to spot although we had to circle once to figure out parking. But once inside we checked in, got our tickets for the night’s dinner, dumped our bags in our room, and headed back downstairs to wander.

None of us are big gamblers, so we pretty much bypassed the slot machines and game tables for most of the weekend, and what gambling we did do was relegated to the occasional nickel or quarter slot here and there. However, we noticed that there was a midway with games, so we decided to go see if we could win some toys for my sisters� kids. I spotted the goofy stuffed dragons the second we entered the midway and so we all took turns trying to smack stuffed witches into cauldrons. Turns out my older sister had the best knack for that particular game, so eventually we just paid for her turns and let her win the dragons. She also had the knack for the bowling game, where we scored a stuffed pink and glittery unicorn for my niece. Luckily my little sister and I were finally able to return the favor in a third game, and won little stuffed giraffes and zebras for her boys.

One of the reasons we decided to stay at the Excalibur was that they had a jousting tournament dinner theater, and we got tickets for that for the first night we were there. The reviews online for the tournament had been mixed, but luckily we didn�t pay attention to the naysayers, because it turned out to be a lot of fun. We were randomly assigned to sections, and it turns out we ended up in the Dragon section (which made me happy because I like dragons). This, however, meant that we were actually cheering for the bad guy, although I think that turned out to be more fun than just cheering for one of the other, regular jousters, because *our* knight did cool things with fire and came with his own stage fog and special effects.

The food wasn�t bad, but then one doesn�t go to this sort of thing for the food. The entertainment was colorful and flashy and well done, and for three women on their own for a weekend, the inclusion of several men in leather pants and not much else (I�m not entirely sure why they were there, but we didn�t really care) was certainly an added bonus. We cheered for our knight until we were hoarse, even though we knew that, at least in stage productions, bad guys will always lose. By the end of the evening we were simultaneously exhausted and wired from all the activity, and it was the perfect beginning to our weekend.