Our friend Brandon was bachin’ it last week, so we invited him over on Monday. I made homemade pizza, which I had not done in a couple of months. It turned out quite well. Brandon is a Batman fan, so we watched a couple of episodes from the 90s Batman: The Animated Series cartoon, which was well received. Mer then made a dessert called “pudgy pies,” which are dessert sandwiches that are meant to be made with special campfire irons. We have a grilled sandwich maker, and so Mer used that and it worked well. The pudgy pies she made were cinnamon bread stuffed with marshmallows, graham cracker crumbs and Nutella spread; they tasted like s’mores and were very good. We then chatted with Brandon, mostly about theater, until about 9:00.

On Tuesday, Mer had organized an outing with students to go play laser-tag. Mer had won a coupon to Laser-Sport at the CVCA Auction a few months ago, and she liked the idea of getting together with students to play. We had about ten students show up. Laser-Sport has a smaller arena, so this number of people worked well. Laser-Sport also forces you to “power up” on a regular basis – you have twenty lives or eighty shots on your gun. When either of those expire, you have to go back to base and recharge.

I decided on a different strategy for this venue than my usual one of stealthy wandering. For both games we played, I stayed on the second level of my home base and sniped people. It was less exciting, but since there were snipers on the other team, I felt as if someone had to cover my team on the floor. So, that is what I did. It seemed to work – our team won both games, and I was the number-one player both rounds. It was a lot of fun, although I do prefer the version of the game where you have unlimited shots and a more maze-like arena.

After the games were over, some of the students invited us to Handel’s for ice cream, to which we happily agreed. Handel’s had slow service that night, but that was okay since we got a chance to catch up with some of our students. Mer and I got home around 10:00, just minutes before a major storm rolled though. We were happy to have missed being out in that storm, but we happier still to have been able to be sociable during the start of the week.