Step 1: Unwrap the muffin.

Most muffins come in paper and it is never the tastiest part, so we remove it. If you’re lacking in plates/napkins, the wrapper may help contain things during the eating process.

Step 2: Turn muffin upside-down.

Yes, this is what you do. Do it confidently. If some cretin laughs at you for having an upside-down muffin, laugh back at them, because they definitely have some inferior taste lingering in their mouth, since they clearly don’t know how to consume muffins properly.

Step 3: Bite and/or Pull apart.

Things get a little strange, here, depending on where you got your muffin, how big it is, and how crumbly it is. If your muffin is small enough and will hold together, go ahead and start taking bites, from the bottom (which is now on top). If you prefer to tear off a chunk of the muffin, that’s fine. If you’re muffin is particularly crumbly, for example, a corn muffin, or a Coffee Cake muffin from Dunkin’ Donuts, you may want to leave the upside down muffin in the bag it came in, and tear off chunks.

Step 4: Top Consumption.

When all you have left is the best part, you may choose to switch to biting, if you’ve been tearing off chunks to get through the bottom. I leave the muffin upside-down, even if I start biting, because, once I commit to something, I’m in 100%. Depending on the muffin, the middle may even be better than the edges, so plan your bites/chunks accordingly.

I realize that some establishments sell muffin tops. While I do see the point, and might even feel some validation that, since muffin tops exist, I’m not the only person who feels this way about muffins, I think it’s the lazy way out and I will only buy such a muffin top if the discount in price correlates to the amount of muffin deducted. And, since I am now accustomed to the tops of my muffins as pure tops, with no bottom crust, I would have to eat it the same way as I would a normal muffin, first removing the bottom crust.

Warning: Cupcakes are an entirely different animal… as most of them are frosted and must be treated in much the same way as cake. This process is complicated and involves small samples of the frosting, the cake, and the combination, to determine if one is a better candidate for final bite status. If the cake is good, but the combination is clearly better, you can approach it like a muffin. Check for frosting stickiness, though, to avoid a mess, when turning it completely upside-down.  Oftentimes, a cake is best when you have a little bit of frosting with each bite (In a traditional cake shape, any edge or corner slice which has frosting on more than one side necessitates careful pre-planning of each of your bites to achieve this. It can become a complex three-dimensional geometry puzzle). If the cupcake falls into this category, it may be possible to just bite through it, keeping it upright, however, cupcakes are notorious for being over-frosted, so you mustn’t be afraid to remove some frosting.

The first problem with my Doritos Locos Taco experience was the drive-thru cashier. He gave me a moist towelette. It seems like a nice gesture, sure, but he handed it to me before he even gave my card back, and said, “You’re gonna need this, for yo’ fingers, trust me.”  This shouldn’t have come as a surprise, I suppose, Doritos leave stuff all over your fingers, so why shouldn’t a Dorito-taco-thing? Unfortunately, this immediately put me on the defensive, because when a normal person needs a moist towelette, I might need several. Then there was the wrapping. It had a paper wrapper, like any other taco from Taco Bell, but then, there was a paper sleeve. Was it just there for Doritos branding? Maybe, but then why was one end closed and the other open? Was I supposed to gradually push the taco out the open end of the sleeve and take bites of the exposed end? Perhaps… and that’s what I tried to do, which resulted in a disastrous mess wherein all of the vegetables exploded out of the taco and all over me. Looking back, I’d say the sleeve might be some strange, and not well thought out, finger protection device… as if Doritos dust was toxic or embarrassing or something. The moist towelette could’ve taken care of some Doritos flavored fingers, but not the cheese, lettuce, tomato and drips of meat-goo that actually ended up on me.

Lesson learned. Accept the moist towelette, toss the paper sleeve, get Dorito-ey fingers, eat taco without explosions.

Oh, and it didn’t taste bad… it was kind of exactly the combination of Doritos and Taco Bell that I expected. No surprises.

We started our trip with a drive through Indiana, the long way, until we reached the river that separates Kentucky and Indiana. There was nothing around except a cute little town every few miles… and this big-ass casino that we had booked a night at, in the hopes of a classy room and a little fun wasting some money playing slots. The slots were, indeed, fun, and we all managed to blow a few dollars and stay entertained for a couple of hours. I thought about trying my hand at roulette again, but the stakes were too high for me… $5 minimum… a far cry from the $1 (CAD) minimum in Montreal, where I did so well, all those years ago. We had a decent dinner at a cafe where fish swam behind our heads, but awoke to find the room even more dirty and stained than we originally observed… we put up a little fuss, in the morning, and they comped the room. They also promised us a letter worth a free weekend and $100 hotel credit… which turned out to be a letter worth one free night and $50. We’ll probably use it someday. The breakfast buffet was great… we understood how the crazy old casino addicts could play all day and then gorge themselves on the buffet food and make it worth the price.

Then we headed down to Nashville. I think that, even though I had prepared the google maps of our trip, it hadn’t really dawned on me that we were driving through Kentucky, until we started this leg of the trip. I remembered trying to figure out how close we were going to be to where EJ lived, when we chose the Smokies as our overall destination, but somehow, the fact that we were driving across the state had gone totally unnoticed. We stopped in one, clear tourist-trap-of-a-town and almost went on a tour through a cave, but decided that the time commitment involved wasn’t worth it. Then we stopped at a giant “rock & gift shop” that reminded me of that scene in Zombieland where they bust up a cheesy gift shop. We also took some pictures of the entranceway to Dinosaur World, but decided not to waste $13 per person to go inside. We made it to Nashville before dark and hooked up with our friend Jesse for dinner. He took us to a couple of cool places: a really nice cafe, that seemed off the beaten path a bit, and a bar on Broadway, where you’re supposed to go when you visit Nashville, I guess. We heard the “Honky Tonk-Heroes” play and I got my dose of country music.

Then we headed across Tennessee to our cabin in Pigeon Forge. Google took us on a long stretch of NOT-interstate which resulted in one police officer pulling us over and “cutting us a break” by writing us a ticket that had the words “*Pre-Trial” written on it…  and assuring us that we would pay less than the actual fine, though that amount isn’t actually written on there anywhere, so we’ll see what happens when I call to take care of it. We were a little stressed about our cabin rental office being closed by the time we got there… but the directions to our cabin were in a coded lock-box outside the office… the unpaved and extremely steep road up to the cabin probably would’ve been described better by a person than that sheet of paper could’ve ever done. It took us a couple tries to get up the last stretch of road. We ventured back down to stock the cabin with some food from Food City and picked up a movie at a Blockbuster Express kiosk.

The next day, we cruised around Gatlinburg, skipped right through the cheesy touristy section, and toured around the crafters’ section of town. There was one scary shop full of wood-carved stuff (including belts!), and the walls were covered with signed portraits of every past republican president and letters thanking them for their contributions… There was a slightly friendlier pedestrian mall full of shops at a cute little covered bridge; We had some good ice cream there. On our way out of town we stopped at Hillbilly Golf, which was a mini-golf course installed on the side of a hill where we took a chairlift up to the top and played our way down. We actually went to dinner  at a BBQ place, based on the Hillbilly attendant’s recommendation, and then came back to golf.

Our friend in Nashville recommended that we go to Ruby Falls. He talked about it like it was in the same town as our cabin, but it was really 2+ hours away. We were up for a little road trip, though, so we decided to trust his advice. The cave was pretty awesome and the history or the cave and the original cave beneath it was pretty cool. The falls themselves were impressive, but the “7 minutes” that you get there is not sufficient for a photographer. The castle that they built out of the rock they pulled out while digging the shaft for the elevator provides a nice view of Chattanooga and the winding river. We decided we were hungry, so I busted out the Yelp app on my phone and started reading off the nearby restaurants. “Pizza sounds good.” was the decision, so I found the closest pizza place with the most ratings and it happened to be the best freakin’ pizza that any of us have ever had, I think.

We tried to save the Smokies for the day that had the best weather predicted, so that our pictures would be pretty and any small hikes would be bearable. We drove into the national park and started up the mountains… we pulled off anytime we saw something picturesque and wandered a bit, took lots of pictures. We went all the way up to the North Carolina line and saw where the appalachian trail meets the scenic road we were on… then we headed up to Clingman’s Dome, which included a half-mile walk up a fairly steep grade. We were all pretty exhausted, but we made it and the views were awesome. We decided that we deserved a good meal, so we headed to this Apple-themed place… it had a long wait, but a good reputation. Unfortunately, our waitress left and handed our table off to someone who was far too busy and sort of left us with no food for a half an hour… again, we put up a bit of a fuss and they gave us lots of free stuff. On our way back to the cabin, we experienced the world’s largest As Seen On TV store… it was entertaining, and maybe a little sad, but definitely an experience.

Then we drove home… as if we hadn’t spent enough time in a car, the family agreed to indulge my 50-minute detour to the nearest Tim Horton’s. A few of the roads were “closed” on our 50-minute detour, but we drove on them anyway. I must have missed Tim’s coffee a lot, because it tasted amazing. It was also a nice break in the drive… somewhere a little past the half-way point.

A little ways into our first day of driving, we started choosing the music we would play alphabetically, by band. You can see some of our soundtrack on my last.fm page. We were missing a few letters, went back to a couple, a bit out of order, and some of them came from Sarah’s iPod, but if you’re curious, I could try and figure out what all letters were. The iPods all got a little time on the stereo… we replaced my noisy, clicking tape adapter on the ride home. The Mazda got new struts (covered under that extended warranty we bought with the cars… phew) right before the trip, so the car performed great. My phone was a champ, it managed to get us internet access in the cabin, guided us by GPS, everywhere that we went, and let me check in on Yelp all over the place and finding us good places to eat. Yelp and a couple other travel/review sites definitely had better recommendations that the silly guestbook in our cabin – for example, when it comes to pancake houses in the area: Flapjacks, no; Log Cabin, yes. The cameras all performed admirably. A few pics from mine are up at Flickr. We brought a handful of film cameras and haven’t developed anything from them, yet.

I also took a trip down memory lane, earlier in the week, when an old ex-girlfriend apologized to me on facebook, in case she was ever heartless or selfish. She wasn’t and I told her so. It got me thinking about past relationships… there are a few people I should probably apologize to; I guess I have a few regrets, but I think I only really hold one grudge, maybe two. Facebook is certainly good for bringing up these random memories and feelings.

In other news, camp is almost over, though I got roped into an extra week. It’s going to be a low-enrollment/more chilled-out version of camp, but it’s still another week of getting up early and going to the city. My hope is that my seniority and 15+ years of camp experience will mean that I’m running the show as the fill-in director. My history in these matters is that I’m promised a director’s position and/or I fill in for one until a decision is made and then it isn’t given to me… no such promise was made this time, so maybe this will be the time it happens.

The commute to camp has been made much nicer, this summer, by the set of Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5vi that I picked up when they went on super-sale at Amazon. Unfortunately, the cord busted on the first set, so I had to get myself another set, but Logitech customer service got back to me about my complaint and replaced the first set for free… in the meantime, the cord started to separate, right at the jack, on the second set. I put some electrical tape on there to hold it together until the replacement set came. I’m hoping they replace them as well. The foam tips are the most comfortable, but it makes me sad that they fall apart after a week and half or so. I think my ear canals are too small or something because all of the various sized silicone tips irritate my ears a bit and seem to wiggle their way out. The cord is obviously cheap on this model, both have broken and it makes lots of contact-noise when I’m walking around, but if I ever upgrade to something better, I might look into those custom ear-molded ones.

I’m also still playing the music on my commutes from my iPod. I was hoping to be just be carrying the Droid. I am carrying an extra battery for the phone, so I don’t have that excuse anymore, and it’s not that it’s not capable, but the lack of gapless playback (for those few albums that really need it) or built-in volume normalization (for regular shuffle) or a shuffle-by-album option (for when I feel like reconnecting with my albums, which is most of the time) makes me continue to carry my iPod. There are alternative music apps that attempt to solve these issues (at least the gapless and shuffle by album), but none puts it all together. I’m sure that future versions of Android will get these features in, especially if the rumors are true and they start using android as an OS for a media-player type device. Will these features make it in before I upgrade to a new phone?

I’ve found the phone very difficult to use this summer. I’m not sure if it’s just too humid at my mostly-outside job, or if I sweat too much (likely) but the touchscreen gets all freaked out and thinks it’s being touched all over the place and renders the phone useless until I clean it off… and even then, I can only get good response from it for a few seconds until it starts freaking out again. If I go somewhere cool and dry (air conditioned) and give it some time to recover… and give myself some time to recover and not be so sweaty … it works just fine. This wasn’t an issue at all in the Winter and Spring; It will probably affect when I decide to upgrade to a new phone. I’ll be eligible for a bit of a discount in early July, and that humidity will just be starting to bother me again. So whatever awesome android phone is available on July 06, 2011, you can pretty much bet that I’ll be buying one. If it continues to happen on the next phone I own, I’ll have to seal my phone in a ziploc bag all summer, or something.

I’m pretty sure I have a legitimate use for the wireless tether feature of the Droid. We’ve booked ourselves a few days at a cabin in Gatlinburg, TN, in late September. The rental policy said something about having “local Knoxville area access numbers…” Dial-up? Awesome. I don’t think I know anyone in the area (unless EJ is still around there, somewhere), so this one is going to be pure vacation, for me, and no attempting to visit friends/family. That stuff will have to wait until sometime around the holidays. It’ll be one of the longer roadtrips we’ve done in the past couple years, and I’m excited about that.

bad news: A1C tests usually mean blood samples taken with a needle and a big bruising scar that lasts for days.
good news: today’s A1C came from the same finger prick they used to test my current blood sugar and was ready in 6 minutes.

bad news: I had to fast for this appontment today and hadn’t eaten since 8.30 last night.
good news: panera bread on the way to the red line (with free wifi)

bad news: I’m not done with the stats for work, yet
good news: I’m downtown for the study appointment, so I can swing by the office and get the stuff I’m missing, hopefully.

bad news: between major seasons, so not much work besides finishing the stats.
good news: picked up a few days at a couple other teams courses and met people and have heard from even more courses who want me to work for them.

bad news: it was raining this morning and I had at least one 10 minute walk on the schedule.
good news: the sun is out.

I’m genuinely worried about the two $100 gift cards that I put into my wallet this week. One is an American Express card that I only paid $50 for at their Daily Wish site, and the other is a rebate from Verizon. Regardless of my extensive and ridiculous wishlist, I like getting gift cards. They make things easy, theoretically, but I’m still bad at using them.

In other news, we got that tree up, and got lights and ornaments on it. Peanut helped untangle the lights.

And now I’m officially between seasons… doing a lot of sleeping in.

The outside screen on my phone broke during the last week of camp, so I really do need a new phone… do I wait for a good Android phone or give in to the immediate pressure and get an iPhone?

Also, early heads up: We will be heading back to the East coast sometime around Christmas and will be spending a little extra time so that I can catch up with all the people who’ve been missed the last couple times I was out there. So, let me know if you’ll be around, so we can work something out.

I’m getting into the swing of things, now, though. I’ve made some simple changes to my diet, so far… no more regular sodas, experimenting with alternative sweeteners, making breakfast and lunch a more balanced and much more regular occurrence. Been thinking about ways to try and stay active between seasons. It’s been going well, but I guess I’ll find out on Thursday, if I have to do any more. We bought a couple diabetic cookbooks and I rediscovered hummus. I’ll really, really miss my favorite sodas, but I’m sure I’ll find a new favorite drink, sooner or later.

Anyway. The rest of the weekend included a delicious anniversary dinner on Friday night and an even more delicious birthday brunch and a party at our friends’ new house with lots of presents and even more yummy food (it’s hard to be ‘good’ when so much good food is around).

AND … instead of our usual September journey back east, we’re going to try to do a longer visit in the November~December time frame. I dunno exactly when, but around one holiday or another and a long enough visit to try and see everyone who we’ve missed on previous visits. Consider yourselves warned… more details will come as we get closer.

I’m also back to trains and other public transportation for the summer and have been listening to a lot of music (and Half-Blood Prince, lately, in preparation for the movie). I like how the commute in the summertime gives me a chance to reconnect with my music collection. I’d still love to replace my phone (which still turns itself off quite a bit) and my iPod and the GPS with one device… but I don’t know if I should wait for the Garmin phones to come out or just cave in and get an iPhone. So I’m still nursing my phone along and carrying both.

The wedding and trip out to Maine  was fun. I haven’t really had a chance to go through those pictures and pick out the best ones yet, but again, I’ll post a link, when I do. I don’t think I have another day off until camp is over… though, I may take a Saturday, next week or the week after. I’m LOVING my Macbook pro. I haven’t completely set myself up on it and decided what programs I’m going to use for photo work and web work to replace my windows favorites (Paint Shop Pro and Homesite 5.5). It’s an awesome piece of hardware, and I’ve already used it to do some stats work for adventure ed. and it was almost a pleasant experience. I’ve definitely gotten used to the trackpad and the multi-touch-ness.

I’m also eating a little healthier. When I’m picking out meals, I constantly think of the Dead Milkmen song “nutrition,” which is fun to hum, but it’s kind of a silly song. I’ll get more into the reasons for this sudden health-consciousness when I’ve completely wrapped my head around it.

Macbooks down in price! Great timing! Cheap upgrade to Snow Leopard, too! Now, convince me not to switch to AT&T and get an iPhone … or convince me to switch, turn-by-turn GPS was one of the things holding me back from the iPhone and I guess that’s not an issue for much longer. I need a reliable phone ASAP. I’d love to wait for an Android phone on Verizon, but the chances that Verizon will cripple its coolness (app store and free access to all of googleness) is almost guaranteed… or convince me to wait and risk a few weeks of camp with a phone that turns itself off a few times a day. If I go all apple on hardware, will I be tempted by the apple counterparts to the Google stuff I use and love?

Looking forward to a trip out east next week… hope Sarah and I can shake our weird ailments before then.

So… I had a fun birthday. We hit Olive Garden on Thursday and had some friends over on Friday for dinner. I prepped my Puerco Pibil on Wednesday and Sarah and her mom cooked it all. I think everyone liked it. Sarah also made some awesome little banana cupcakes with yummy honey-cinnamon frosting. I also got a couple more Apple gift cards. I want to resist the urge to replace the Dell with a Macbook… at least until the end of June, when I’ll almost definitely be in tax-free New Hampshire. The Dell is still running, but it’s loud again, and blowing out the dust doesn’t seem to help… it also takes forever to boot, and weighs about ten pounds… which is too much to carry to work, four days a week.

I slept in, yesterday, for the first time in who-knows-how-long… and will get to sleep in again tomorrow. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have another day off until March 23rd… unless I request another weekend day off. I was going to do that when I was at work, today, but I forgot. Maybe I’ll call them tomorrow and put in the request.

Last call for hang-out requests while Sarah and I are at Mom’s house the weekend after Christmas!

I did a lot of wandering around in between my grandfather’s funeral and the day Sarah and her Mom arrived. I didn’t make a checklist this time, I sort of winged it. I missed Putnam and Providence and Western Mass, as well as Sara and Drew, but I’ll try and make it up to them over the holidays or something. The most impressive changes were in Woonsocket. I drove around most of town on one of my first free days, while doing some errands.

Improvements since I lived in Woonsocket:

Starbucks: closed
Tim Hortons: opened a second location, with a drive-thru
Main St: more than half of the storefronts were occupied and open

Also, the Game Stop had a Wii Fit in stock.

I caught up with some people and did a little sightseeing around Worcester & Millbury and Webster & Dudley. I ate at Jimmy’s pizza, played Werewolves of London on the jukebox. I did some shopping for New England treats at a Market Basket (where I found the Coffee Milk on the same shelf as all the other milks). I helped Mom start to remake her living room and move beds around.

The girls arrived on Saturday night, right in the middle of what was left of the storm Hanna. They survived their long drive, though, and I was very proud of them. Sarah’s posted a pretty good recap of the first couple days at her livejournal. We saw some family, toured through Plymouth, hit King Richard’s Faire and then went to NYC and played tourist some more; visited the Statue of Liberty and ground zero and a good deli.

Tuesday, we had a little more rain, so we kept it local and did some indoor-type activities. We started with breakfast at Carl’s Diner in Oxford. The serving size has not gone down. We sat at the counter, for the maximum effect. I don’t believe we ate another real meal for the whole day. We did hit Friendly’s for some ice cream, that evening. I believe that was also the day we took in some Candlepin bowling at Mohegan in Webster. It’s still kind of a dive, but its charm is intact.

Wednesday, we met Mom in Worcester, after dropping my car off at the Mazda dealership for an oil change (and to look into the weirdness it went through on the drive out there). We headed to Lexington to visit the historic Battle Green, visited the cemetery where my Dad and my Grandfather are and then met up with Mom’s friend Joyce at Bruegger’s Bagels for lunch. I hadn’t had a Herbie Turkey in a long time, and it was very tasty. Then we drove downtown and walked around Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall, had some cream puffs and then went to my cousin Mark’s place, in Braintree, for dinner. Mark made us pick records to play, and then made us play his XBox 360 and his Playstation 3. He cooked his awesome mac & cheese and some amazing burgers for us.

Thursday, we took in Purgatory Chasm. We walked down the chasm and back up on the East side of it. It was very nice, good weather for it. We also went up to Dresser Hill and got some food and shakes. I don’t think the Dairy stuff is as good as it once was, but it’s still the only place I eat fried clams. That night, we went to the outskirts of Worcester and saw Mark’s group, The Accident that Led Me to the World, play in a barn attached to a huge farmhouse that about 20 people lived in. They call it a Collective (read: commune) and the show was a potluck. Lots of friendly modern hippie-types, nice big wood-burning stove in the kitchen, bunch of pretty good music. It was something I’d never expect from Worcester.

Friday, we decided to hit the Big E on opening day, as a stopping point on our way back home. It was fun to go down the avenue of states and expose Patti to all the local culture and flavors. We wandered through some of the vendors and a good chunk of the crafting section. We ate a little and walked a lot. Looking back, it wasn’t a good choice for a stop on the morning of a big drive. We were still pretty exhausted for the first few hours of the trip home, and we ran into torrential downpours and Tornado warnings, but we survived. I think I slept through most of Saturday.

that’s “colossal” coffee milk. right next to the 2% and the “ultimate” chocolate

The plan is to drive out there on Tuesday the 2nd and stay until Monday the 8th (or maybe Tuesday the 9th, if we need an extra day). We’ve penciled in a King Richard’s Faire outing with my sister and her kids for Sunday, and we want to see some Boston and NYC, but otherwise, plans are fairly open. I think we should do a little candlepin bowling, eat breakfast at the counter at Carl’s Diner, if it’s still open and see any of y’all who live out there and miss me. Put in your requests for activities/hang-out time now.

Saturday, we spent the whole day in Mt Horeb, starting with breakfast at a great little place called Schubert’s. Then we took in the activities and sights of National Mustard Day. We didn’t actually participate in the activities or eat any mustard or mustard-themed food (Culver’s Mustard Custard?). But we did wander and take pictures and shop all the cute stores, including the gift-shop half of the Mustard Museum. Then we popped back into Schubert’s for milkshakes and rosettes. We also did some quick visits to the gift-shops of Little Norway and Cave of the Mounds. We bought some geodes. I’m not sure if we cracked them open yet. Then, after a little chillin’ at the motel, we got some yummy dinner at a place with a HUGE menu.

Sunday, we used the third part of our tickets to the House on the Rock tour. We did the other two parts last year. This was definitely the darkest part of the tour, but it was very cool… it started at the huge carousel and included the doll carousels, lots and lots of dollhouses and the amazing organ room. On the way home, we picked up some cheese and meat and ate at a Panera Bread rip-off called Atlanta Bread.

Pictures Here

It was nice to do a little road trip. I’ve been doing public transportation to work most of the summer and I’ve missed driving. I had kind of forgotten about the phenomenon that, back in high school, in the music groups that went on many trips, we called “bus head.” The theory was that sometime after two hours being enclosed in the same vehicle, something in your brain shut off. We found that it didn’t matter if it was a school bus or a nice comfy chartered bus or a van or even a car. Once you hit that point, you had “bus head.” We discussed it with our band director; It takes a long time to recover from “bus head.” We didn’t want to plan any trips with long rides and immediate performing, even if it meant leaving in the early morning. We needed at least two hours. We could unload equipment during those two hours, but we definitely couldn’t do any rehearsing or make any decisions or be expected to engage in any activities that involved a lot of thought.

Luckily, my drive to work usually stays just short of “bus head” inducing length, and the public transportation route involves changing from train to bus or “El” about halfway through. I actually drove a couple times this week. Wednesday, I got together with a couple guys, after camp, and played some music. I think it went pretty well, if it turns into something I will definitely let you all know. Thursday, we had our family night (that 60 inch TV was what my camp photos slideshow was being displayed on) and then some of the staff went to Whirlyball. I had no idea what Whirlyball was until I saw it. It’s kind of like like Jai Alai or Lacrosse, in bumper cars. It was fun.

One more week of camp left. This week includes a sleepover, possibly another trip to Eli’s cheesecake world, a visit to Independence grove and another cookout… so lots of excitement.

Today, we took a drive up to Wisconsin. We stopped at the Jelly Belly factory on the way and picked up some candy. Our main draw up there was a couple breweries that make good root beers around Milwaukee. We managed to visit both of them and bought four cases of soda between them. We also ate at a great German place that had a very tasty Sauerbraten. We walked across the street and picked up a bunch of sausage and cheese.

And now, I’m feeling a little bit more tired than I think I should, given that it’s only 9.30… so it’s definitely not just camp that’s got me so exhausted.