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.

This morning I got up at the usual time, and headed off to meet my mom at Curves – except that somehow she had gotten it into her head that we were flying out yesterday evening, so had made other plans. I suppose, since I was sitting in the parking lot right in front of Curves, I could have gone in and worked out anyway, but the will power just wasn’t strong enough. So instead I swung by a coffee shop and picked up coffee and pastries for breakfast, and returned home to share them with Richard before he left for work.

After this past week’s hectic schedule it was almost sheer relief to have nothing more pressing to do than putter aimlessly around the house. I sorted and put away a few stacks of miscellaneous mail that had been piling on the kitchen counters over the past few days. I emptied and reloaded the dishwasher. I did a few loads of laundry, and tidied the breakfast nook table, and packed my little weekend bag. I even went outside and picked all the peaches that were ripe and had yet to be attacked by the birds. I had to leave two on the tree that hadn’t yet reached prime ripeness, but did manage to rescue four peaches from the birds. They’ve torn more than that to bits, however, and I am telling myself that in a few years we will be glad of a little help from the birds to take care of the sheer volume of fruit this tree is so desperate to produce. But still, it’s a little disappointing, since for a brief moment there I thought we might possibly get enough peaches off our tree to make a pie. How fun it would have been to have been able to serve a white peach pie on July 4th when all our family is here. Ah well.

Because we’ve been working at the church every night this week I haven’t gotten in much, if any knitting time at all since Sunday, and so one of the things I was very much looking forward to doing today was getting some knitting done. I am bringing the lace shawl with me on the plane, since it’s on bamboo needles, and the yarn is so light and thin that it easily rolls into a tiny little bag and fits into my purse. So instead of focusing on the shawl, I decided to focus all my extra time on the afghan I’m making for Richard – thicker yarn means faster knitting, which was just what I needed this morning.

My older sister has called to say she is on her way now, which means it’s time to take care of all the last minute details, like zipping off to the bank to get some cash for the trip, dropping off some library books, and giving all the cats one final scritch or pet before I leave them behind for two whole days. I’d pondered going in to work for half the day today and having my sister pick me up at the office, but after this past week, I’m glad I decided to take the day off instead. Just a little peaceful, quiet downtime to prepare myself for what promises to be a very busy, very fun weekend.

The last four days have been more than a little exhausting. Our church is a little old one from the 1800’s, without a lot of money, so when there’s maintenance work to be done, the members gather together to do it themselves. There’s the benefit of getting to learn new skills (for example, when they were building the new front steps and porch, a lot of us got to learn how to lay bricks), but it does mean the occasional block of time dedicated to hard work. This past week was a blitz week, in that we have had projects going on every night from 5-9pm. If I wasn’t the chair of the Board of Trustees I might have found all manner of excuses to not go every single night, but unfortunately, with position comes responsibility, and all that. So my days this week have been spent getting up, going to work, coming home just long enough to change into grubby clothes, and head over to the church to do things like paint and repair and clean and so forth.

We did a little bit of preview work Sunday afternoon, lugging all the heavy furniture and chairs off the chancel (in preparation for painting) and somehow managing to drag the (extremely heavy and awkward) organ away from the wall far enough so we could get scaffolding behind it. There was also the fun drama of trying to pick a paint color – for months now, several women in the church have been pondering whether to go with something a little different, but when it finally came time to make a decision, after all that dithering somehow we ended up choosing the same color it’s always been. The one modification is that this time the paint will *not* be flat finish, which means when the walls get their inevitable scuffs and marks, this time around we might actually be able to clean them off without having to paint the whole darn thing to cover them over.

Monday and Tuesday night several of us spent working on painting the chancel (and I successfully avoiding having to climb up on the extremely tall and wobbly scaffolding to do it). Wednesday night we removed all the plastic sheeting and tape and somehow did it without removing any of the new paint (a feat which I have never managed to accomplish when painting at home, of course). And tonight a group of us headed upstairs with buckets and sponges and cleaning supplies and scrubbed down the walls and baseboards and doors of the entire upstairs. While we were painting and scrubbing, other people were busily cleaning downstairs rooms, inventorying the kitchen, replacing burnt-out fluorescent bulbs all over the church, washing every single toy from all the Sunday School rooms (and there are a *lot* of toys), and one entire group focused, all week, solely on removing the old water damaged sink and cabinetry in the tiny little parsonage next door and putting in brand new flooring, cabinets, counters, and sink.

Richard had a meeting on Monday, but came to join in the ‘fun’ for the rest of the week. He and another of the basses from the choir headed up to the roof with huge brushes and buckets of sealer and cleaned the flat part of the roof, then covered it with two coats of sealing paint (the reasons for this were made fairly obvious by the line of wastebaskets that had been set up underneath the leaks in the ceiling in some of the rooms below). They came down each night covered in splotches of white sealant, but there was a lot of laughing and joking and talk of pigeons with digestive problems, so I think somewhere in all the work they also managed to have a little bit of fun.

There’s more work still scheduled for tomorrow night, but I will not be involved (Gosh. Gee. Darn). I’ve assured everyone that I will be thinking about them all when I’m off to Las Vegas with my sisters (somehow none of them believed me, I think). I suppose I should feel a little guilty for skipping out on the last day, but I just cannot muster up even a smidge of regret. Four evenings of nothing but coming home to work, work, work, is more than enough for me.

When Richard’s laptop was stolen, and he got a brand new one to replace it (thanks to the wonderful thing that is insurance), we pondered swapping out my old one for something a wee bit shinier as well. But mine seemed like it was still holding up fairly well, and since I really have no need for anything more advance than what I had – a Sony Vaio we purchased about 3 years ago (back when we were both working for Benthic Creatures), it didn’t seem worth spending the money.

Then the warranty renewal came up for my laptop. and we discussed the fact that it is 3 years old and has had to be sent in for the same repair several times now – and Richard’s (prior to being stolen, that is) had to go in even more often for the same thing. After a period of time the cooling fan seems to break, and the laptop begins to shut down intermittently, and without any warning whatsoever. And naturally, once we made the decision to let the warranty expire instead of renewing it one more time, the fan in my laptop started acting up almost immediately. I’ve been trying to avoid problems by putting it into hibernate whenever possible, figuring I’d try to hold out maybe til the end of the year before thinking about finding a replacement. It’s not so crucial for Richard, since he’s got his desktop computer to use, but for me, my little laptop is the only computer I’ve got. So after it shut down on me in the middle of working on something far too many times to count this week, I finally gave up.

This afternoon we headed off to Fry’s, and bought me a pretty new laptop. It was actually a pretty painless procedure, and I think I found exactly what I was looking for. I don’t play graphic-intense games, I don’t really listen to much music or watch DVD’s on my laptop, and I have no need for massive amounts of storage. All I really wanted was a 17 inch screen, enough speed to make things run smoothly, and the ability to burn the occasional CD, without having to pay for any extra features I would never use. When we told the sales guy, he didn’t even blink an eye. He just led us to the end of the aisle, and pointed to the Fujitsu Lifebook. Heck, this thing will even read the memory stick from my Clie. Yay!

In Fry’s, when you go to pay for things, you have to snake your way through several aisles of shelves of impulse buys. It always amuses me to see what they’ve got for sale on these shelves, since interspersed between the assorted candies and snacks are usually a fairly large selection of personal hygiene products (just what everyone would go to a computer and electronic mega store to buy), and of course the few random toys and accessories to make any nerds think twice about passing by empty handed.

We’ve succumbed to the Fry’s impulse buy aisle twice now. The first time was a year or two ago when we could not pass up on teeny portable USB drives that had such a great rebate they only ended up $10 each. This time, Richard spied extra long outlet strips, and after a little bit of discussion, we were sold

See, one of the problems with our computer room is that when we were building the house, this was not actually supposed to *be* the office. The room that is now the library was originally supposed to be the office, so that room has tons of extra electrical outlets. The room that is now the office, however, was just going to be the guest bedroom, so it’s got only the normal number of outlets, all of them situated in the most inconvenient spots possible. When the contractors built in our main computer desk (which sits in the center of the room with file drawers on either side, so that each of us has a workstation in the center, as well as one directly behind each of us against the side walls, they left space to access the main electrical outlets, but getting to them requires crawling underneath the desks and going through interesting contortions to reach through a narrow opening between the desks to reach the outlet. The sheer volume of electronic gadgets we’ve had set up on the main desk has resulted over the years in a veritable web-like tangle of cords and surge protectors, all cleverly woven through ancient plastic milk crates to try to protect them from the prying teeth of a certain orange kitty cat. We’ve talked about having someone come in and rewire the room, or at least lay down a strip of outlets across the top of the desk. Turns out all we needed was a four-foot long strip with a dozen available outlets to make it all work out.

It took a bit of doing, including climbing around underneath the desks to untangle the mess. Turns out we had a small pile of adaptors and cords that were plugged into various surge protectors, but apparently nothing else – the consequence of four and a half years of gradual upgrades and equipment replacement.

And since we were going to be rearranging and reorganizing the mess of electronic gadgets anyway, we swung by a hardware store on the way home and picked up a set of nesting wire mesh shelves. While most of the mess of cords had been living in milk crates underneath the desk, another tangled pile had its own stack of milk crates on top of the desk, housing all the little pieces of equipment that allow us to have our happy little wireless network in our house. These new shelves give each of the little routers and hubs lots more space, and hopefully a slightly more dust free environment to hang out. This can only be a good thing when it comes to electronics, I’m sure of it.

I’m slowly transferring everything over from the old laptop to the new one, and marveling at how crisp and clear everything is on this new machine. We’re not giving up on the old one completely, by the way – once I get everything I need off it, we’re going to give it a brain wipe, and then – since voiding the warranty is not so much a concern anymore, we’re going to try to crack it open and give it a good cleaning and see if that might fix the fan problem. If it works, Richard gets yet another Linux box (because in the world of open source geekery one can never have too many Linux boxes); if it doesn’t, well, I know where there’s a place where we can recycle our old electronics, and my old, dead laptop will just have to join the pile of obsolete equipment that’s been waiting in our garage for longer than I care to think about, for that some day in the distant future when we finally get around to getting rid of it.

The end of May marks the beginning of birthday season in Richard’s and my combined family. First up is Richard’s oldest sister, who is exactly five days older than me, and then comes my birthday. June is positively littered with birthdays and such – my dad, Richard’s dad, Father’s Day (for both of them), my oldest nephew, and Richard’s aunt. Close on the heels of June comes July, with birthdays for half a dozen more members of Richard’s family. So planning for birthday (or other) celebrations starts to get a little interesting, as we all try to figure out the best way to fit everything in.

Last weekend we did a combination celebration for my dad and my oldest nephew’s birthday (he turned 7! How did he get to be this old?), as well as Father’s Day. My older sister made a birthday cake for the two of them to share (my nephew got his own cake at his own party with several other little boys today). There were lots of presents to unwrap, what with all three reasons for presents. My mom made chicken parmesan and my dad uses any excuse to use their nifty bread machine. They’d found these marvelous air rocket toys earlier in the week – the rockets were squishy foam and you shot them into the air by pulling back the tube and forcing them off the launcher with a blast of air. We took those outside to the front lawn and the entire family had a wonderful time launching those goofy little rockets into the air. We quickly discovered that the youngest nephew was perfectly willing to dash off to collect the rockets, over and over, since, being much younger and closer to the ground, he didn’t mind bending over to pick them up.

The oldest nephew got roller blades for his birthday, and had to go try them out immediately. Watching him, with his helmet and his elbow and knee pads, had me remembering my sisters and I and our first roller skates, which were noisy metal contraptions you put on over your shoes, and then tightened with a metal key. The whole concept of helmets and padding never came up back then; we’d just strap on our skates and hit the sidewalk. I’m sure the neighbors got a little tired of the sound of those things scraping along the concrete, but that’s what all the kids had, so it was no big deal. Then came the boot skates (and amusingly I believe I still own a pair of boot skates – not only that, but I think it’s likely they actually might still fit). Roller blades really didn’t hit it big until we were in college. A friend and I rented some for the day and spent the afternoon careening around corners and grasping wildly for stop signs and telephone poles because we could never figure out how to make the darn things stop. Now I doubt any of my nephew’s classmates have ever even heard of roller skates – especially not clanky metal ones that had to be adjusted with a skate key. It makes me feel a little nostalgic. Okay, and also more than just a little old.

This weekend we headed down to Richard’s parents’ house for his dad’s birthday/Father’s Day thing. His dad is heavily into the Scottish guilds and is a member (and on the council or something) of one particular clan – even owns, and wears, kilts. So he was off at the Scottish Games in Campbell when we arrived, and we headed off to meet him there.

The Scottish Games in Campbell, much like the ones here in our home town, are a tad on the small side. Really, if you want to see a big one, you have to hit the ones in Pleasanton, where they end the day with hundreds upon hundreds of bagpipers all converging into one massive army making something vaguely like music heard through the buzzing of a million industrious bees. But still, it’s fun to wander around, see all the clan tables and tents, and ponder if there’s anything cool to buy. I’d dressed according to weather.com, which swore it was going to be cool, with chances of rain, so I was naturally dying of heat shortly after we got there. Luckily we found a table of suitable t-shirts, so I demonstrated skills learned during long ago coed bus trips for high school and junior high band competitions, and changed from sweatshirt to t-shirt right there in the middle of everything, all without flashing any hint of skin. Later we wandered into the indoor areas and listened to a little group consisting of hammer dulcimer, drum, various sizes of flutes, and a singer who was actually pretty good.

So now the latest installments of the summer birthday celebration are done and, with a few exceptions, we’ve got all the gifts for the July birthdays purchased, wrapped, and mailed or delivered early, just in case we can’t make it down at the appointed time. And we can breathe a little sigh of relief and forget all about birthdays, except for the random one here or there, until November, when the winter birthday season starts up and we get to do this all over again.

Years ago, Starbucks used to sell a cinnamon chip scone. It was one of my very favorite breakfast treats – to go to Starbucks in the morning on the way to work and purchase a double tall, nonfat, no-foam latte and a cinnamon chip scone.

But then, back in 2002, for some reason known only to whoever it was in charge of pastry ordering for the corporate offices, Starbucks stopped carrying my scone. Oh, they tried to replace it with an apple cinnamon concoction, memorable only because the apple pieces were rubbery and not at all pleasant to chew. Eventually that disappeared from the menu entirely, since apparently I was not the only one who didn’t see it as a decent replacement.

Starbucks in other areas of the country still carry cinnamon chip scones, but they are made by a different bakery, and they do not taste the same. I have looked in every bakery we have entered since then, but alas, nowhere have I ever found a suitable replacement. I even searched high and low for a recipe for the scones, but since the recipe surely had to involve cinnamon chips, and since cinnamon chips weren’t something I had ever seen before, I figured that was a lost cause.

Then, a few months ago, while searching for toffee chips in the baking aisle at the grocery store, I spied something new. Hershey now makes cinnamon chips! I snatched a bag, emailed my sister (the budding pastry chef) for some likely scone recipes, and then sat back and pondered all the possibilities.

Last week I finally made cinnamon chip scones. But they were a little disappointing. For one thing, Hershey’s cinnamon chips are not very cinnamony. And for another, for being little chips of disappointing flavor, they were unreasonably high in calories – Richard calculated out that there were 38 Points in the entire bag of chips, and the recipe called for the full bag. Ouch. The scones themselves were tasty, but they just weren’t worth all the caloric overload. And overall, the experiment was a bit of a disappointment. Richard brought the remainder of the scones to work (where one of his coworkers dubbed me the scone queen, or something like that), because they *were* good…but they just weren’t what I was hoping they would be.

I have been mulling over the issue for the past week or so, pondering ways in which I could try again, this time with something with a bit more cinnamony kick (and a lot less guilt), and then I remembered the cinnamon ornaments I had made, years and years ago. It was all due to an article I found in some random magazine that listed a bunch of lovely holiday crafts one could do with children. As I recall, this same article also had a recipe for peppermint ribbon candy that it claimed was so easy even kids could do it. We will not discuss the disaster that ensued when college-aged women attempted to make ribbon candy.

The cinnamon ornaments, however, were a different story. You mixed up huge quantities of cinnamon with a little applesauce, then rolled it out and cut it into shapes. Let them dry, drill holes in one end, and poof, you had lovely holiday-shaped ornaments that exuded a pleasant cinnamon scent. Or rather, you *would* have had lovely holiday shaped ornaments if they were made by someone who was a wee bit more artistic; my stars turned out a little lumpy and misshapen. But they did smell nice, and I strung them on some red ribbon and they were hung near the door for a few years. Eventually they disappeared, however, and I’m not sure what happened to them. But remembering those ornaments, it occurred to me that the dough could surely be made a bit thinner, and then one could take a large mallet or hammer to them once dried, and smash them into teeny nearly calorie-free bits, which could then be used as, perhaps, a suitable substitute for Hershey’s disappointing barely cinnamon flavored things.

A quick internet search revealed that the cinnamon ornament has been listed in far too many children’s craft sites to count, but basically, the general recipe is that you mix one part powdered cinnamon with one part unsweetened applesauce, stir it into a dough, and have happy shaping fun. So yesterday, since I had the time, I decided to give my theory a shot. I mixed cinnamon and applesauce together (it’s a messy endeavor because cinnamon, in large quantities, tends to poof over the sides of the bowl no matter how carefully you try to stir), then spread it out as thin as I could onto some parchment paper on a big baking sheet. I preheat the oven to a low temperature, popped the pan in, and then turned the oven off, since all I wanted to do was dry them quickly. That was yesterday evening.

This morning I removed the (mostly) dry cinnamon stuff from the oven, and broke it into little chunks. Then I dragged out the recipe and did a few more substitutions, like swapping half the white flour for whole wheat flour (because we are all about the fiber, yes we are).

The good news is that with my homemade cinnamon applesauce ‘chips’ and the whole wheat flour, I literally cut the total number of Points in the recipe by half. The bad news is that the scones still need work. And I’m not so sure that my rather primitive cinnamon chip recipe is necessarily the best. But at least these taste pretty good with a little apple butter, and the whole experience has been kind of fun. And the house still smells rather strongly of cinnamon, but in a nice, comforting sort of way.