Hot Ripon, Baked Goods, and a Cemetery Deer

Since my prowess in the kitchen is often nonexistant, I thought I'd post a picture of the cinnamon rolls I made (from scratch!) just to prove it. You can see that my mathematical-spatial abilities have not improved though. I was supposed to cut the "cinnamon roll log" into 12 pieces...I started from the middle, which was obviously the wrong thing to do. I figured out later I should have started by cutting it into 3 pieces. So, yeah, I ended up with a few different sized rolls, but overall they were a success.

After the cinnamon rolls, but before Ripon, I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium with Nellie and her girls. With all the excitement at the aquarium, I didn't take any pictures. I can tell you that one of her girls was so excited about a seal that she threw up, and I almost dropped the other one into the penguin tank. Kidding. Kind of.

Anyway, we were driving around while one of the girls was sleeping, and we happened upon a cemetery full of deer. So, of course we stopped. Just to prove it, here's a deer.
Yesterday I spent the afternoon and evening in Ripon with Nellie and her family. The drive out there is the most open space I've seen in a long time in California. I know, I shouldn't take pictures while I drive, but I get bored. I actually saw this stretch of freeway twice because of a navigational error.What you can't see in the picture is that it was ridiculously hot. The high in Ripon yesterday was a cozy 104. Thankfully the A/C worked all the way out there. While driving I was haunted by a story from one of the other teachers at my school--she and her husband were driving on a hot day like this when they came upon a sheet accident. A whole truckload of sheep had overturned on the freeway, and many had been hit by cars. It turned into a 3-4 hour long ordeal, at the beginning of which they'd started to mock the people who didn't have A/C. At just the moment they began cackling, their A/C gave out.

Thankfully there were no sheep accidents. Ripon was interesting. There were a lot of things that were very similar to N'West Iowa, but some key differences, mainly diversity and big cities nearby. Some things were the same though--Nellie's parents cooked an outstanding Sunday night dinner, complete with mashed potatoes, corn, meat and applesauce. We also discussed the food pile-up (some for, some against) and the jello and pretzel combo (split again). I also got a tour of their almond farm, complete with processing plant. It's an amazing structure, really.

Perhaps the best part of the visit was that at nightchurch we sang my least favorite hymn. The organist ended the song (all 4 verses) with a finale when he crescendoed into a key change on verse 4. Will this song ever die?