Here I am, home again. :-) I was ridiculously giddy last night upon arriving in KC; I don't think I've been that hyper in years!!! I got stuck in Chicago with a delayed flight for awhile, but it was okay. I looked at the newspaper stand and saw a front page article about the Cubs and the "Sox", and after a moment realized that it was referring to the White Sox not the Red Sox. That's when the grin started - hurrah no longer in New Enland wheee!!!!!!!!! Unfortunately the down side of leaving New England is that Sam Adams is no longer available in such a great variety . . . but I had a Bud Light tonight like a good Missouri girl. Anheiser Bush being based in St. Louis and all. :-) Seriously, Bud dominates the beer scene around here.

Tonight I hosted a BBQ for my highschool crowd, since this was supposed to be our 5 year class reunion. The official reunion got canceled anyway, but that we had more fun tonight than we probably would have at the country club anyway.

It's nice, actually . . . my summer BBQ has become not quite a tradition but definitely a sort of established thing. I've done it 4 out of the past 5 summers. The first one was a big going away party for all of us right before freshmen year of college. I think last summer was the only summer I didn't do it, because most of us got together at Kara's wedding anyway. But this time around literally *everyone* came. I think the whole doing it in place of the 5 year reunion was part of the great attendance.

The male female ratio has balanced out quite nicely in the years since highschool. David and Josh used to be badly outnumbered but now that so many of my friends are married we had a great balance. It was nice too how much better people mixed . . . it didn't seem like anyone was left out in the cold too much except Dave's wife who sort of resisted attempts to engage in conversation by most people. We played washers, a new game for me, which is basically a portable version of horshoes. Some of the gals exchanged wedding stories. We played "the name game on crack" as Leo jokingly dubbed it - we had three frisbees and one football flying around all at the same time.

And of course we shot off some fireworks, although the fare was tamer than usual because my usual supplier has dropped off the face of the planet!! Actually it shouldn't be *too* hard to track him down, I just haven't had the time to do it yet. I'm a little surprised; Bruce knew I was coming into town and always makes it a point to claim a few prime slices of my time when I'm here. ;-) But the fireworks were fun anyway; instead of sitting back and enjoying the show Bruce usually puts on for my parties, almost everyone got involved in lighting the fireworks, which made up for the lack of spectacular bursts. We had a lot of bottle rockets and roman candles to set off. I held the roman candles in my hand for the first time while they went off; in fact at one point we had a line of five of us holding them while the balls shot out. We did have a few bigger flower bursts (artillary shells), but no fountains!! I'll have to get a couple for the fourth; the fountains are the most beautiful home-based fireworks I think.