Usually, Red Hot Mama is a blog about the Cincinnati Reds, but sometimes, especially when the team is boring or when I've got a lot going on, it's about me. I think it's good, really. It gives us a chance to know each other better, allows me to vent, and gives my poor husband a break from listening to me talk.

And, since the Reds are right boring right now, having lost their last two late-night, irrelevant games and taking tonight off, I'll use my space tonight to take you through my weekend. Don't worry: it shouldn't be at the top of the page long, theoretically. After all, today is supposed to be podcast day, but that can't be assumed. It's almost 10 already and, as the title foreshadows, the CTS is currently in the basement, playing with his Wii.

Friday was the Crack Technical Staff's birthday. Right after work, I got a call from my brother who had seen a Wii in stock at Wal-Mart while he was shopping for Jon. I asked him to pick it up for us, knowing full well that there wouldn't be time to play it for days.

That evening, we took off for practice with the Special Olympics volleyball team for which we volunteer and had a good time screwing around for an hour. We played four practice games with the other Delaware County team, and won three of them. Wally--who's MO is to serve the ball about three feet in front of him and immediately start telling everyone around him that it was a good try--had found his stroke and was getting 75% of his serves over the net. It was a good start to the night.

At 7:30 we headed for my brother's house to change clothes and give gifts before continuing on to go-karting. Jon was the lucky recipient of an additional Wii-mote, a copy of Pokemon Pearl for the Gameboy DS, and a handle of Knob Creek. I think most people would agree that it was a good haul.

Go-karting was fun, as was the hearty meal of Arby's food, and we finally rolled home around 11p.m. We were planning a camping trip the next day and had to pack, so we were finally in bed around 1a.m.

Eight o'clock Saturday morning, we were back up and at'em to take off for Turkey Run State Park. Once there, we pitched our rather mildewy tent among the walnut trees around our campsite. The walnuts are ripe, so they were falling from the trees, which made sleeping in our tent somewhat like sleeping on golf balls. Plus, one fell on the car and dented it.

We decided to take the kid for a canoe trip. Alas, we had packed nearly in our sleep, plus we're apparently stupid, because we were all wearing tennis shoes for this activity and only I had an additional pair of shoes back at the campsite. So I got to be the one to push off the canoe, plus get out and pull it through some shallow spots in the river. Good, soggy fun!

After another couple hours on the trails, running into a woman who came on to Jon when they were in high school, and a few frustrating attempts to get a good fire going, we were toasting marshmallows and watching the bachelorette party.

That's right, there was a bachelorette party going on across the street from us. You could tell by the giggly woman and the three-foot tall phallus-shaped ring toss game they had set up next to the road. Despite the loud drinking games they were playing, it seemed like a lame party, as you might expect of such an event occurring in a state park, and they were quiet by the time quiet hours started at 11p.m.

In less time than it took for the Hawaiian islands to form, the night of sleeping on golf balls had passed. After enjoying our miniature boxes of Kellogg's brand cereals, we threw our nasty tent away and began the journey home. Jon was to have a birthday lunch at his mom's that afternoon.

The birthday lunch was lovely, and Jon got more sedate gifts from his family than he had from mine: two music stands and a couple cards. Plus enough leftovers to fill our entire fridge. Not that we could put them in the fridge right away, because we were scheduled to be at the circus for the show beginning at 5p.m.!

The circus! Woo-hoo! It's elephants! It's acrobats! It's mediocre! At 7, we hauled our tired butts back to the parking garage to go home, only to find that someone had broken into our car and tried to steal it.

Awesome.

Apparently their efforts were thwarted by something, though, because the car was not stolen, nor was anything in it. My purse remained on the back seat; Jon's DS remained in the center console; the leftovers remained in the trunk. Just the empty envelope that had contained the circus tickets was gone, and the driver's side window was smashed in. The cover they'd taken off under the steering column wasn't even permanently damaged.

So, a lesson for the wise out there: don't leave your empty envelopes sitting on the driver's seat of your car when it's parked in a parking garage. Apparently criminals can't resist an empty envelope.

We couldn't drive the glass-filled car, and no one was around to pick us up, so Jon rode back with the tow-truck driver to our house to get the other car and come back for me and our son. We waited at the Hard Rock Cafe. I explained the situation to the waitress, lest she give me dirty looks for having my 6-year old out at 10p.m. on a school night.

Finally, we were home, exhausted but not too much worse for the wear. Jon couldn't stand to leave the glass unvacuumed, but I was ready to pass out and headed for bed, another day gone without a post to Red Hot Mama.

But not tonight. I've been writing about myself for like an hour now, even though there's a perfectly good Wii downstairs I could be pretending to bowl with. Speaking of, I'd better go rouse the CTS from his Nintendo revelry if there's going to be any hope of putting together a podcast.

Not that there's much to talk about right now; the team's pretty boring.