It took us about four hours to drive here. It was so hot the air conditioning in the car never really quite kicked in. We listened to CD’s of Prairie Home Companion joke shows and talked about random things – most of them having nothing whatsoever to do with work.

El Capitan really is an amazingly huge cliff. We determined that the sheer lack of toilet facilities would be enough to prevent most of us from ever attempting to climb (no really, think about it. Nowhere to camp; you just hook your sleeping bag on and hang all night, and so when you have to go, well…). Half Dome is probably more impressive if I could see it from the dome side and not the half side.

There are a handful of scrappy grey and white squirrels who keep darting across the patio of my hotel room. They’re joined by a cluster of some kind of jays, with little scruffy tufts on their heads. I think it’s the squirrels I hear barking, but the little notebook of Useful Information in my room says that the mice around here can be pretty loud as well. I think I’d better take my allergy medication just in case, considering my sensitivity to rodents, and the fact that my eyes have been itching and sore since we entered the valley (it’s probably not just the mice, is my guess).

I stepped onto the patio of my room here and took this shot. I’ve never been to Yosemite before and I’m not really going to have much time to see the park during the time I”m here, since most of the time I’ll be inside, in meetings.

But still. Somehow it’s hard to say business travel sucks, and mean it, when it includes things like this.

Today I woke up stiff and tired, and my legs ache from all the squatting and lifting and lugging that we did yesterday. I know it was only one ton of rocks – and I can say ‘only’ because building the wall took a few tons of rocks and all that dirt to fill that darn flowerbed weighed even more than the stones for the wall so ‘just’ one ton really wasn’t too bad in comparison. But it didn’t matter to my legs, which have spent the day in a permanent state of ouch, causing me to hobble up and down stairs and hills like an old lady, and making sitting and standing comical events in the meantime.

It made it a little interesting for our afternoon’s festivities, which included a trip to the State Fair. It opened on Friday and we both decided it would be fun to go, and with both of us going out of town this week and everything else kicking in over the next few weeks, we figured this weekend was our best chance, regardless of how sore we might be.

So we went to the fair. We walked around all the county exhibits and tried to track down all the ones for counties we visited during our few months with Benthic Creatures. We tracked down the exhibit for our own county and found out later it had actually won an award for its sheer spiffiness. We wandered around the art exhibits and decided that the life-sized bull made entirely of butter knives (with a few metal pie plates thrown in here and there) was quite possibly the coolest art thing of all this year.

Then we meandered down the midway, where we searched but did not find any sort of haunted house ride (alas). We got free samples of some kind of new frappuchino, and also veggie burgers, and then said to heck with healthy eating and split a funnel cake (because Richard, the poor deprived soul, had never had a funnel cake before).

Fortified with our monthly allotment of fried bread products, we next set off (with a slight detour through the fountain to take advantage of the spray) for the vendors’ exhibits, where we took shameless advantage of the booth selling industrial strength foot and back massaging equipment that looked suspiciously like portable sanders covered in fabric, and we had fun checking out all the latest in Things No Home Should Be Without. Fortunately, we decided that our home could somehow survive without all of those things anyway and headed next for the sideshow.

The sideshow was mainly things like exhibits of the World’s Largest Cow, and also the world’s largest snake – a 400-pound python that looked as if it would have been perfectly capable of swallowing a few small people, if it could be bothered to wake up. For the petting zoo enthusiasts there were scorpions to play with (live, no less), snakes (of the smaller and less likely to ingest people variety), and various other critters. Richard took the opportunity to pet a giant millipede. I declined because, well, euww.

And what sideshow would be complete without a guy dressed all in black eating fire, or a guy who not only swallowed up to three swords at once, but also put live tarantulas in his mouth (yes the thought still makes me squirm even after I saw it done). And if that weren’t enough there were also the Chinese acrobats, which include the guy who balanced on a stack of six or seven chairs standing on four wine bottles on a rickety little table, or the woman who folded herself into positions no normal person should ever be able to attain.

When we got home yesterday there was a pallet sitting on the driveway (Long-time readers should recognize this phenomenon by now). This time, however, unlike the last few times, it was only one pallet – and it contained a fairly small (by comparison) pile of rocks.

So when we got up this morning we went outside and dragged all the rocks to the backyard and laid them all out on the ground side by side to get a sense of sizes and shapes, and then we went off to Davis for the traditional Saturday breakfast of cornmeal waffles with pecan butter, followed by a quick trip to the farmer’s market to stock up on more fresh-picked corn, grapes, and a handful of white peaches. And after that we swung by the lawn and garden store to load Richard’s car down with about half a yard of potting soil (luckily it was in bags, as this would have been a tad messy in the back seat) and then finally returned home to start the rocky fun.

Naturally, since Murphy’s Law is always in effect, it was extremely hot today (high 90’s). But we were determined (or rather, I was determined – I think Richard would have been just as happy to leave the rocks right where we’d dumped them), so we dumped potting soil all over the path area around the raised flower bed we’d built earlier this summer, and then started laying rocks.

It isn’t an exact science, this sort of path building. You grab the largest stones first and sort of drop them in the dirt and then you get down on your knees and dig in the dirt until the rock settles enough that it doesn’t rock when you step on it, and then you get back up and go pick up another rock and you do it over and over and over and over until either all the rocks are laid, or the path is as full of rocks as it can be.

And then when all the rocks are nestled gently in the potting soil (which smells suspiciously like cow manure, by the way, and has an annoying tendency to filter inside the gardening gloves no matter what you might do to stop it), you spray down the whole path until the aforementioned potting soil becomes mud. This is to allow the (extremely heavy) rocks to settle enough so that they won’t have a tendency to wobble when people walk on them later.

For now, we’re just letting the rocks sit, in order for them to all settle as much as they’re going to. The next stage is to get a few flats of creepers and start filling in the open spaces and the next stage after that will be to call it a year and not do any more heavy lifting or deep knee bending or digging until next summer.

Just to keep things in perspective, that flower bed you see there is about 2 1/2 feet high, and it is 12 feet across.

Richard lost his Palm Pilot last week. The Palm Pilot that he just got a few months ago. The very expensive upgraded spiffy Palm m515.

Wince.

Sometime Monday evening of last week, he mentioned in a bit of a panic that he could not find it. He’d searched his car and his bag he totes everything around in. He’d looked through all of his drawers in the computer room, and under every piece of furniture in the house and no sign of it. He asked at work, checking his desk and all his coworkers, asking the cleaning crew, putting up a lost ad in the paper. No Palm Pilot.

I joined in the search as soon as I heard the news, and together we poked and peered and prodded. We tried to think of every possible scenario where it might have gone. And when we finally decided that it was probably a lost cause we went out and got a replacement (I got a new digital camera at the same time, so it was new toys all around.

Then Sunday night, as I was sitting in the guest/storage room typing in a list of all my Nancy Drew books for an inventory, I heard the unmistakable sound of a Palm Pilot alarm beeping. It sounded very quiet, and at first I thought it was his new one or mine. But after checking, neither of ours had had any reason to beep, and suddenly it occurred to both of us that maybe the missing Palm Pilot was still somewhere in the house after all.

I’ve so far been the only one to hear it go off. And each time we’ve scoured the guest room in hopes of finding it, since that seems the most likely place for it right now, without any luck.

So now we have resorted to camping out in the guest room for hours on end, waiting for it to beep again, so maybe we’ll have a better idea of where it might be. And it is driving us both nuts. I have heard it go off now three times but we cannot seem to locate it. We are beginning to think that it has somehow slipped into another dimension – a fact that, considering it lives in a house with seven dimension-slipping cats, doesn’t seem so far fetched as you might expect.

The cats, so far, are the only ones getting anything out of this great (and possibly futile) Palm Pilot hunt. Because the guest room gets incredibly stuffy with the doors closed, I have been resorting to leaving it open so I can still listen for random beeping while still being able to breathe. This means the cats have suddenly had access to the Great Forbidden Chamber, because back when we moved in we had some kind of grand scheme of having an actual guest room with (wait for it!) an actual guest *bed*, which would be kept cat (and thus the theory went, cat hair) free.

Well, flash forward a few months with the advent of the happy peeing-on-the-downstairs-futon cat party which resulted in us tossing the futon mattress downstairs and lugging the one from the guest room down to the one in the living room (after first encasing it in pee-repellent vinyl), and add in the fact that there really isn’t anywhere else in the house for random bookshelves, leftover computer monitors and other parts, and Richard’s weight bench to go, and the guest room morphed pretty quickly into the ‘place where random junk accumulates’ room. And yes for whatever bizarre amusement we still refer to it as our guest room because I think in both of our heads there is this silly dream that we might somehow be able to transform it within minutes to a cozy sleeping spot should the need ever arises.

But back to the subject. This evening I spent over an hour lurking in the guest room, sitting on the futon frame that is lacking a futon mattress (and may I point out that futon frames are not exactly comfy all by themselves), straining to hear any noise at all. All this accomplished was giving me an incredibly sore rear and a nagging voice in my head telling me I really ought to break down one of these days and attempt to get that room a teensy bit more organized. So far, however, the Palm Pilot remains stubbornly hidden. Plus, now that it has taunted me with the initial round of beeps, it refuses to offer any more audible clues as to its whereabouts. I have a sneaking suspicion that we will only find it once we move out of this house – an event which probably will not happen for a few decades if either of us has anything to say about it. And in the meantime I am starting to get a little tired of hanging out in the guest room waiting for it to beep.

I think that after last night, I should probably ban myself from going back to eBay for a rather long time. I have probably reserved far too much money in the last 24 hours, even though it’s my personal money and I’ve very carefully avoided touching the joint account out of which we have to do important things like pay mortgage and insurance and other bills. And what am I spending all this money on, you ask? Books. Or rather, more specifically, Nancy Drew books.

To be fair, there are a few devil duckies in the mix, since every once in a while I go poking around on eBay when I get really bored, and devil duckies are one of those things I look for. I found a hot pink one and a purple one and best of all, one done entirely in camouflage and how, I ask you, was I supposed to just walk away from any of those without bidding? It was probably for the best that the one book of sheet music I really wanted was up to about $50 and there is just no way I am willing to pay more than $20 for it because that’s about what I paid for all the others, and then for whatever reason I decided to see what was available for Nancy Drew books and oh my god there were pages and pages of them up for auction and it was really late at night and I was a little wired for some reason and unable to sleep so before I knew it I had suddenly acquired a rather impressive list of auctions in which I was actively bidding.

I know how cheesy these books are, and yet I still went on this bidding binge for more of them. There are always two completely separate mysteries that somehow end up linked together and interspersed amid the discussion of clues and shifty characters are the inevitable comments about the matronly housekeeper, and Nancy’s cousins, and of course the lengthy descriptions of the smart and oh-so-stylish outfits Nancy and her pals wore while fending off bad guys. I started getting them when I was a little girl and then once I was older I started actively looking for the ones I was missing, and actually managed to score some of the really old prints, back when they came with book jackets and Nancy had a 50’s hairstyle on the cover and still referred to Ned Nickerson as her “favorite date”, before they went and updated the pictures and the language to more ‘modern’ standards. And for whatever reason, I have always had this little secret desire to finish up the collection, as long as I could find the earlier versions.

I did drag the laptop into the guest room where all the kids’ and young adults’ books are stashed, and I did a really quick spreadsheet listing all the books I currently have plus their numbers and then I went poking around on Google until I found a site that lists all the old series and figured out the names of the ones I was missing and then hit eBay with a vengeance.

So far I’ve won about twelve or so and I think I have another five or six pending (plus the devil duckies. One cannot ever forget the devil duckies. And actually, the word ‘won’ isn’t exactly the most appropriate, since if we go by the usual assumption that winning means getting something for free, technically I really didn’t win squat (except perhaps the chance to fork out some cash)). I also keep logging into eBay to check on the time remaining on all the rest, and the ping of arriving email sends me scrambing for the inbox to see if maybe another one finally closed and maybe I won. But the main point here is that I am well on my way to finishing off that collection. There are a still a few I haven’t been able to find, and it’s possible I may not be the top bidder on some of the still-pending auctions, but that’s okay for now. I think my eBay binge has been accomplished for this half of the year and perhaps it’s actually better to leave a few left to aspire to, months down the road when I finally release myself from eBay probation.

It felt so good to sleep in this morning. Or at least I assume it did. I didn’t get to sleep in much at all, since I was swarmed by cats. Amusingly it was much like bees, this swarm, due to the rather constant buzz of purring that accompanied them. They all wanted pets and ear scritches and attention and they wanted to sit on my pillow or my stomach or my head and I finally gave up because there was just no way I was ever going to be able to go back to sleep.

We started the day off with a trip in to Davis for what has rapidly become our favorite weekend breakfast – cornmeal waffles with pecan butter. Then we walked down to the Farmer’s Market, where we picked up all the ingredients for a delicious dinner: fresh corn on the cob, a pair of white nectarines, incredibly sweet and crisp, and an oddly shaped tomato in a delicate green hue that actually managed to slip by my variable dislike of tomatoes. We also picked up golden cherry tomatoes and a few bunches of grapes.

I keep forgetting that there is this Farmer’s Market so close to us, and every time we happen to be in downtown Davis on a Saturday morning it hits me that it is there. They always have such a lovely selection of produce and the prices are usually fairly reasonable and there is no reason why we don’t go more often except that we just forget. So perhaps for the rest of the summer maybe we we’ll be better at remembering.

My main (and frankly, my only) goal today was to go look at rocks for the path around the raised flowerbed we built earlier this summer. There’s a place down the freeway but it’s never been open when we drive by. So after a quick detour to drop off all the fresh fruit and veggies at the house, it was off to the rock yard, where we got to pet a rambunctious white puppy and talk back to a rather talkative parrot perched in a little tree, and browse through piles and piles of rocks of every shape and size.

They’ll be delivering a ton of rocks to our driveway this Friday, in preparation for some happy path-building fun next weekend. I suppose earlier this year I might have found this a phenomenally huge amount of rocks, but hey, after dealing with 3 or 4 tons of rocks for the wall and a few tons of dirt, what’s a measly one ton of rocks to put in a path?

Much like the wall, whose components could simply be stacked and required absolutely no mortar, these rocks will be laid the easy way. We’re going to cover the ground with a layer of newspaper (in what is probably a futile effort to curb those rather tenacious weeds), toss on a few inches of loose soil, and plop the rocks around in a circle until we like the way it’s laid out. Then we’ll add a flat or three of creepers in between all the rocks, give it all a good hosing down, and then cross our fingers and hope for the best.

After we’d ordered the rocks and were trying to figure out what we wanted to do next, I mentioned that billboard on the freeway for the new chocolate candies at Jelly Belly. This is offered as explanation for why we next drove to Fairfield for the sole purpose of going in to the Jelly Belly visitors’ center and heading straight for the tasting counter. We’ve already gone on the tour (and on weekends when the factory isn’t even running it somehow lacks a bit of excitement), so it was a pretty quick stop – just long enough to taste a few of the rather interesting combinations (chocolate grape, chocolate and buttered popcorn, chocolate and orange juice). Plus we threw in a few of the regular beans just for variety (the Caramel Apple flavor is actually pretty good. I passed on the Tabasco flavored one, however), and then we were done.

But hey, as long as we were in Fairfield, there is a mall, and behind the mall is a Trader Joe’s, and in that Trader Joe’s are boxes of the nearly fat free (1 point each!) cheese blintzes we have both adore. Plus, it’s the only place we can find vanilla mints.

We were standing in the freezer aisle loading a basket with about 8 boxes of blintzes when we realized we were being watched. She asked, a bit tentatively about the blintzes, noting she’d been curious but hadn’t yet tried them. After we both waxed rhapsodic about how much we adore them, she picked up a box and eyed it consideringly. As we walked away in search of cappuccino wafers (also 1 point each!), I noted her adding a second box to her cart. Aha – another convert!

So now we are back home, where I made up for not being able to sleep in by taking a nap. Granted I was surrounded by cats this time too, but it being the middle of the afternoon, they were much sleepier and more inclined to just snuggle next to me and purr me quietly to sleep.

Another Friday Five, just for the heck of it.

1. What’s the last place you traveled to, outside your own home state/country?
The last place I traveled was to Reno, which barely counts as out of state, since it’s just over the border of California. Amusingly, as I was driving there on Friday I somehow never saw the sign that says ‘Welcome to Nevada’, and only figured out I was in a new state by the fact that the exit numbers started suddenly over again from one. I saw it on the way home only because I specifically looked for it.

2. What’s the most bizarre/unusual thing that’s ever happened to you while traveling?
I’m not entirely sure. Does the fact that I own a pocketknife that constantly defies airport security cameras count as unusual? Last time I flew (to Los Angeles and back – for work), they caught the other pocketknife, but not the ‘invisible’ one. Fear me. Or at least my pocketknife.

3. If you could take off to anywhere, money and time being no object, where would you go?
I think I would go to Europe first. I’d take perhaps six months, or even an entire year, and travel all over Europe, with absolutely no set schedule at all. We’d just wander around each country until we were ready to move on to the next place. We’d stay in little bed & breakfasts wherever we went and we’d avoid the typical tourist traps and I would make a concerted effort to learn something in each language, even if it was only “Excuse me, where it the bathroom,”, or perhaps “Pardon me, can I borrow your cat?”

If I have to narrow this down to just one country, it’s a little more difficult. But for now, I’ll just say Ireland, since I have not yet given up on our plan of going there for a month for our (extremely belated) honeymoon.

4. Do you prefer traveling by plane, train or car?
This depends entirely on where I am going. If I had all the time in the world I would take the train. You can get up and walk around, you can see the countryside as you ride by, and best of all, you don’t have to worry about finding somewhere to stop for gas or worry about how to read a map while you’re careening down the freeway or try to figure out directions when you hit a detour. Also on a train you never have to cram yourself into a bathroom the size of your average shoebox, or deal with sudden stomach-wrenching turbulence.

However, if the trip means we are going overseas, planes have it all over trains or cars. There’s that little matter of being able to go over the water, see.

5. What’s the next place on your list to visit?
In state, my next destination appears to be Yosemite, since it’s looking pretty likely that I’ll be attending a three-day meeting for work. I’m actually looking forward to this – and not because of the location (although that should be rather nice too), but because I think the meeting is going to be pretty interesting, plus I’ll get to write a big huge report!

Shut up! I lthink writing reports is fun!

Out of state – probably Seattle again, but not for work. Looks like we’ll be doing Christmas with the younger sister and her family this year, so my entire clan will be piling into planes and heading up north for a few days in December.

I was awakened Sunday morning by my little sister poking me excitedly because she’d gone off in search of coffee and ended up winning a sizeable pile of dollars in a slot machine. We decided this meant that she apparently had the gambling skill (since neither my older sister or I managed to win much more than a few dollars in quarters the entire trip) and were ready to hand over our loose change to see what she could win us. However she’d promised her husband she would return home, so she decided against staying in Reno to live a life of gambling and loose morals.

Sunday morning we decided to head over to Circus Circus because we were getting tired of the smoke and the slot machines and had a need to try to win poorly made stuffed animals just for the fun of it. Little sis continued her winning streak by promptly flinging a stuffed chicken into a pot to win a little stuffed tiger, and then we threw bean bags at beach balls hovering on columns of air for green and blue and purple splotched teddy bears, and then we rummaged in our wallets and scrounged up enough quarters to win enough tickets to score a rubber duck and a Matchbox car each. The Matchbox car was only so we could claim (truthfully. Sort of) that we had each won cars while in Reno.

The only thing left was to find a roulette wheel and then a blackjack table for little sister to play both games (since she was curious), and then we’d just about had it with the gambling. So going on the poorly remembered comments of the manicurist the day before, we all piled into the car and set off in several different directions to eventually find a mall (after getting an unexpected tour of Reno on the way). There was just enough time to wander around one store and get ice cream cones at a little sweet shop next door (thus ending the weekend on a high note) before my sisters needed to get to the airport.

I dropped them off and then headed home, with only a few detours along the way for gas and lunch. It was a bit of a trip down memory lane as I drove – passing the town where lived a guy I once had a crush on, the town where I went to high school, the town where I spent over a year working on a project for the Big Fish. I finally made it home, three hours later, somehow without falling asleep at the wheel, and promptly waved sleepily at Richard, pet a few cats, and then crawled upstairs to climb into bed and try to recover.

This weekend with my sisters was incredible fun. We talked and we laughed and we got a chance to catch up on everything we needed to know. We’re already starting a list of ideas for where to go next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. This weekend reminded me of how very much I miss spending time with my sisters. But at least I know that once a year from now on we’ll have a few days that are ours and ours alone.

My younger sister and I suffer from difficulty sleeping in strange places, so by the time we got out of bed on Saturday we really hadn’t slept much at all the night before. But hey, no big deal! We were in Reno! There was coffee to be found. Also donuts!

She and I went in search of the aforementioned coffee and donuts, while older sis took a shower. We ate our donuts and managed to get powdered sugar all over the floor of our room (the sign of a truly great donut, after all), and then we called our parents to tell them all about our (rather pitiful) gambling exploits so far, as well as our introduction into the world of nightclub entertainment (aka the karaoke). And then the three of us went in search of a salon for pedicures. Interestingly enough, as we were standing there, setting up appointments for later in the afternoon, who should walk in but Joannie Rogers, the female comic from the previous night. I’ll get back to that later, however, since we were off to explore other places beside our smoky and mirrored hotel.

We meandered down the street and ended up at the El Dorado and the Silver Legacy. It didn’t take much wandering inside to convince us that next time we go to Reno (if we ever go back to Reno, that is), we should pay the extra money to stay at someplace nicer. There was a larger variety of things to see and do, including a marvelous brunch buffet, where my little sister managed to spill her coffee all over both her and my older sister, and where we broke with the unhealthy eating to suck down as many pieces of melon as we could.

Next it was pedicure time. When we returned to the salon, the female comic was still there, getting her hair cut and styled, so we ended up chatting and joking with her for an hour or two while the manicurist lined us up and made our feet pretty, assembly line style.

Our toes are now painted in dark cranberry. And I point to the earlier mention of lack of sleep as the reason for why we were somehow talked into getting nail art as well. I have little gold-lined hearts on my big toes, people. I do not do nail art. I barely do nail polish as it is, but little shiny things on my toes make me do double takes every time I see my bare feet. I am making myself leave them alone in the hopes that they will eventually chip away, but I have a feeling that sooner rather than later I will get annoyed enough with them to drag out the nail polish remover.

But I digress. After the pedicures came more girly action, in the form of a happy hair dying party (for my little sister), followed by a few rousing games of cards and random laughing until it was time for dinner. We decided to abandon the healthy eating trend begun by those earlier melon slices and started dinner off with cheese fries and milkshakes. We also continued down the slippery path to sin and degradation by playing a few rounds of Keno (if only to figure out just what the heck it was).

And then we all piled into my car and drove down miles of twisty mountain roads (remember how much I don’t love twisty mountain roads?) to Incline Village on Lake Tahoe to see an outdoor performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream. We sat in chairs perched up the side of a huge hill of sand and the stage was perfectly framed by the mountains and the trees and the water. The play was accompanied by the night music of the lake – the water and the birds – and was extremely well done.

When we started planning to do a sister-only weekend, we all assumed we would all three be flying to wherever our destination might be. But when we finally settled on Reno, and I did an impromptu Mapquest query for driving directions it turned out it would take me a lot less time to just drive up there than it would for me to go to the airport, sit and wait for the plane, fly on the plane, etc. And besides this way we would have a car. So Friday afternoon, while my sisters were dealing with what was apparently the turbulence from hell on their respective flights, I was driving around the twisty mountain roads through the mountains toward Reno, reminding myself just why it is that I don’t like driving twisty mountain roads. And I especially don’t like twisty mountain roads when they are doing construction on them and have those barriers up that leave one no room at all to maneuver in one’s lane, especially when one is going around a corner next to a rather large and wobbly semi.

But somehow we all made it to Reno in one piece. I actually arrived first and checked into the hotel. The first thing that hit me was the stench of cigarette smoke (because really, what is one vice (gambling) without the others (drinking and smoking)). The second thing that hit me was the sheer cheesiness of the hotel – and the room. I think it was designed and decorated in the 70’s. There was much use of purple and neon red and velvet curtains.

Then it was off to the airport to pick up my sisters. We returned to the hotel, they dumped their stuff, we went back downstairs, and promptly ate éclairs for an afternoon snack to get the weekend off on the right (high caloric) foot. We sat around and talked and laughed and took silly pictures of our feet. We admired the wallpaper. And then we decided that since we were in Reno, we might as well feed a few bucks to the slot machines. This is when we discovered that:

1. We have absolutely no idea what the logic is behind all those slots with three rows and cute music.
2. If you win something on the aforementioned slots you get a little slip of paper with the amount on it to cash in later.
3. We are so clearly non-gamblers that this excited us so much that once I got mine (for a whopping 45 cents!), the other two immediately had to find a machine to give *them* little slips of paper listing out some ridiculously low amount of change. And then we all scurried back to the room to take pictures of us with the aforementioned credit chits, while laughing hysterically.

My older sister saw a sign in the airport indicating that the Chippendale men were at Harrah’s, and we figured that was an entirely appropriate activity for three women on their own for the weekend. But the show didn’t even start until 11:30 and unfortunately we are apparently too much of old married ladies to stay up that late. We didn’t think the guys would appreciate it if we ended up snoring as they went undulating past in their teeny tiny g-string undies. So instead we got tickets for a comedy show in the hotel.

There were signs all over the place indicating that Friday was Karaoke night in the bar, and I suppose it’s safe now to admit that I have always had this secret desire to do karaoke at least once in my life. There we all were in a town where no one knows us and would ever see us again and we had just enough time before the comedy show started so…we got up in front of everyone with microphones and did an awesome rendition of “The Shoop Shoop Song”, basked in the rousing applause for all of about ten seconds, and then beat a hasty retreat far, far away from anyone who might have actually *seen* us. It was actually so much fun that I think we should make it a tradition for our annual sisters-only weekends in the future, but I think my sisters may take a wee bit more convincing for that to come about.

The comedy show was a blast. There were two main comics and the club owner who started it off (and for some reason decided that since we were sitting right next to the stage we were fair game for light-hearted heckling), and there was a guy who could juggle better than anyone I’ve ever seen, and even though the main act wasn’t as funny as the woman who opened the show for him, we still were laughing pretty much the whole way through.

By the time the show was over it was so late and we were all so tired but my younger sister really wanted to get room service, so we ordered up huge ice cream sundaes and ate them in bed (or rather, we all ate about half and then couldn’t handle anymore). We called our respective husbands and told them all about our day (Me to Richard: “We did karaoke!” Richard to me: “Oh my.”) and then finally curled up under the psychedelic bedspreads and tried to ignore the train passing outside so we could get some sleep.