I take a small departure from the purely yogic world to talk about something that came up for me at my son's 6th birthday party yesterday. Instead of a traditional candy filled pinata, we filled one with 720 ping pong balls, and told the kids that when the goodies fell out of the pinata, they were to collect whatever they wanted, and then put them in any of six boxes around the party site - 2 each for charities that Eli picked out. Ever ball was worth five cents toward that chartiy. Children were welcome to take some home as well. Though Eli thought the kids would be upset there was no candy, then scramble to shove ping pong balls into pockets and shirts and hands and pants seemed to entertain them well enough, as well as playing "basketball" tossing the balls into the boxes. I was pleased with my cool new idea, saving quite a bit of money by not buying candy, and sparing parents and kids the sugar hang-over as well as reducing the "gimme more candy" scramble th...