I'm a weather junkie

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I’ve been busy as hell. A well-meaning friend of mine pointed out that I might as well have fallen off the planet for all of the communicating I’ve been doing with the outside world. I assured her I was still on the planet, even though I live in a bubble.

No really, here at camp, we live in the bubble. That means we keep the outside world at bay for most of our staff and all of our campers. They’re here for barely 5 days, so they can survive a week without cell phones and I-pods. Me though, I step in and out of the bubble every day, because I live for the weather.

It’s my job to determine whether we’re on the regular schedule, a back up schedule, or the weather schedule. The weather schedule can be called because of thunder and lightning, but it can also be called because of a nasty heat index. And I must say, we’ve had some nasty indices, topping out in the 110’s, lately. As if that wasn’t enough to throw camp into a tizzy, we’ve had some thunderstorms come to visit lately.

And that’s when my cell phone and walkee-talkee blow up. I can’t communicate fast enough with the rest of camp to head off the phone calls and radio reports coming in at me. I usually burn through 2 radio batteries in the course of a day, and most of my cell phone. In a storm though, I can burn through all of that in under an hour, which leaves me a bit stunned. It’s a whole lot of program to rearrange, to keep 128 campers and at least that many staff safe and having fun.

The worst was last week. We had some outside guests coming into camp to do something special for the campers and a bad storm moved in during the afternoon. The entertainment counselor called me crying, because it was raining, and she needed it to stop. Yeah, I’ll get right on canceling that storm for you. I have the national weather service on speed dial, in my cell, which means I can check the weather, but I can’t cancel or change it, no matter how we’d all like to wish otherwise.

Anyway, after a couple hours of bad storms, and power outages, the weather cleared. We had dinner about 15 minutes late. And our special guests arrived.

Because the US Army’s Golden Knights came to play. They made a couple jumps into camp, thrilling the campers and staff alike. Sure, the humidity was at about 98%, and the temperature was around 112, but we spent the evening outside staring into the sky. The camp was miserable, because for the first thirty minutes of trying to breathe swamp water in place of air, no one knew what was happening, and then the first skydiver came down, flying the POW MIA flag under his canopy.

And then it was on.

The good news is that we’re in our 9^th week of camp. We only go to 10 sessions, which is at least 2 sessions too long, but we’re almost done. And when we’re done, after I take a week of vacation, I should get back to regular communication, I hope.

It's raining, it's pouring... okay it's not, but it might!

Mmm, that’s better. Things are down to a manageable level of chaos around here, and I think I’m doing pretty well. Not perfect, of course, because I am far from perfect, but I’m getting things done when I say I will. I’m not leaving anyone twisting in the wind, and I’m getting people trained to do what they need to do this summer.

Today was the perfect day to train them all on weather procedures. I’ve mentioned to them in the past that I’m the person who will make the weather call. But today we had a pretty good chance of some bad thunderstorms in the afternoon as a cold front blew in. So when we were all gathered in the theater this morning, I was center stage with the microphone, going over some weather procedures.

They’re pretty much common sense, but there’s nothing common about camp. I was telling them that if they hear thunder or spot lightning, that they should call it in to me immediately. At my extension. Which is forwarded to my cell phone. Which lead to the perfect opportunity for a trio of counselors to sing the song they’d made up about my phone number.

Keira’s desk phonnnnnnnnnne,

Keira’s desk phonnnnnnnnnne,

2-0-3-4, Keira’s desk phonnnnne.

Apparently you’re in, you know “innnn” when they make up a song about you. Granted it’s just my phone number, but still, I’ve been told that it means I’m not only liked, I’m well liked.

Which is a good thing because tonight when I had to go out in the rain to three different areas and send all the counselors up the hill, I was pretty stern. I wasn’t mean, I was just authoritative, so that they’d know to truck their butts up the hill immediately, since I didn’t want them off the hill to begin with, but I gave in when they started whining.

But yeah. A song. Heh. And the entire camp sang it, twice.

90 Miles an Hour

Holy Batman, have I been running at 90 miles an hour. I got back from Texas on the same day that a group of camp counselors arrived here, and it’s been nonstop ever since. It was pretty nonstop before I left, actually, too, but this is verging on ridiculous.

I can’t remember when exactly it happened, but I’d say around the third day of camp, one of the staff got sick. Hell, it was my roommate who got sick, and the camp nurse called me while I was up in Greensboro at Wal-Mart to ask me to be a good roommate and bring her some ginger ale. Seems the roommate was throwing up big time.

Seems the roommate was also patient X. And while she probably wasn’t the one who actually contaminated everyone, in the end over 25 people got sick over the next three days. We had a serious case of the Norovirus in camp, and it had everyone blowing chunks, tossing their cookies and spewing violently for hours on end.

I had the good fortune to avoid the illness, but I was one of 5 healthy people who kept the camp running throughout it all. It’s a fact that I did 3 people’s jobs, including my own, and kept us on track. It seems like it was a month ago now, though, because when we finally got everyone healthy, it was time for my 30 program counselors to arrive, and I had to immediately see to their training.

Two days after that, the rest of the counselors arrived, and it was time to start their training. And now I’m rapidly rewriting the activity schedule to try and satisfy the departments who need a specific schedule, while keeping the rest of the camp on track. That’s 19 program areas for each kid to visit throughout 3 days, and that ain’t easy.

Since it’s not challenging enough, I’ve got a cranky lifeguard who is way too big for her britches trying to railroad me into making the schedule changes on her agenda. So I had to derail her little train a bit and take away the boating counselors, because I think running the pool will be more than enough for her this summer. Actually, right now I’m not even sure she’s competent to do that, but a trial by fire will answer that soon enough.

Once camp gets started in June, things should normalize a bit. When they do, I’ll try to write more because it is a really spectacular place. There’s just no time at all, as I’m pulling 17 hour days regularly. But I live in hope that it will settle down soon.

Fish hooks galore!

It was a good week this week. No one else quit, we didn’t have 4 outside groups visiting camp in 3 hours, and no one pulled the fire alarm. I’m not sure I ever mentioned that, but a few weeks back, a young camper wondered what the fire alarm handle was all about. Then there was a lost camper drill at 2 am the same weekend, which turned into 4 teenagers sneaking around, so yeah, this week was easy by comparison.

I’m pushing hard to get ahead on the things to do before summer camp starts. Every day though, summer camp comes one day closer, and every day, a dozen new little details land on my desk that need attention right now. A friend of mine reminded me the other day though, that I’m good at organizing chaos, so I’m really not sweating it.

Texas is calling my name, too. I’ll be home to teach for a week at the beginning of May. Trying to shoehorn that in was a little stressful, but it all came together yesterday and it won’t cost me all of my vacation time, either. That’s a huge relief because the boyfriend will be home in November, and I’d like to get to spend more than a day with him. And now, it’ll work.

Life is good. Even though my hand is sore from squeezing pliers on the all the fish hooks I smooshed, and I have mud all over my shoes from helping at the barn during the thunderstorms today, life is good. But I won’t say no if anyone wants me to mail them about 10,000 fish hooks to debarb before summer…

Somebody order a pizza

Earlier this week a co-worker of mine quit. She was a really tough person to work with and had pretty much caused most of my misery since I arrived here, so I wasn’t sad to see her go. I was, however, frustrated with all the tasks she had left undone. It’s inevitable when people quit though, that the work they claim to have been doing is actually not being done.

So anyway, her departure, plus several staff vacations, left our program team really short for the family weekend we just had. And now I’m up in the office using the real internet for a few minutes, while wearing my boyfriend’s sweatshirt and his way too big fuzzy Crocs. I’m going to get the files I need, post this story, and then head out to find some place with a drive through, because no way in heck am I cooking dinner tonight. Cooking dinner would involve grocery shopping, you see, and that’s not going to happen.

It’s not that I have anything against groceries, or cooking, but it was a whopper of a weekend. We had 32 amazing families in camp for the physical disabilities weekend. Aside from some wheelchairs and walkers, though, the smiles are all the same. It was pirate weekend, too, so Friday night saw all of us dressed up. I was sporting a lovely hot pink pirate beard, too, which our videographer got on camera. And then the video editors made sure to put it into the weekend DVD everyone left with. I think I’ll be Pirate Pink Beard forevermore at this point. Heheh.

We played games, danced, bowled, fished, rode horses, made pirate loot bags, snot, slime, and painted wooden letters that spelled out our names. We painted the miniature ponies fun colors and took the llamas for walks. We went after a hole in one on the putt putt course as fast as we could and got lost in the maze after we climbed the tree house. We climbed in and out of race cars, practiced our pit stop tire changes and raced on the video simulators. We painted our hair funny colors, did our nails and our make up too. We ate cotton candy, ice cream and popcorn. We built model rockets and launched them later that afternoon. We looked at amazing Model A cars that came to visit. We watched a Mad Scientist make a gummy bear burst into flames. We watched the fabulous Hot Dog Daddy O’s put on a rocking good show, and then we put on our own rocking good show, too.

Weekends are busy around here. But they are awesome. And even though there were only 3 of us on staff handling things, with all the amazing volunteers we had here, we never missed a step. I’m excited because summer will be more of this amazing pace. There will be more staff to help, certainly, but then again there will be more work to do. I know, though, that it’s going to be awesome. I’m sure I’ll get overly tired, overwhelmed, excited, happy, sad, frustrated, thrilled and a thousand things in between. I’ll also get bitten by bugs because that’s mandatory at camp. It’s going to be a fun ride from here on out.

I’ll try to get a picture off the video, so you can see the pink beard, but no promises on when that will happen. Meanwhile, just think of it as reaaaaaaaallly bright.

Camp camp camp

There have been a lot of small changes going on this week at work, and now I’m pretty much heading toward “overwhelmed.” I’m not overwhelmed yet, but I can see the potential to head there rapidly. So instead of doing the stack of work I brought home this weekend, I made some down time for me.

Sure I still had some telephone interviews to do, because they’re unavoidable right now. And I had to go to 2 fabric stores on Saturday morning to find material to make costumes out of for summer. But other than that, I ignored the pressing need to rewrite the woodshop tool use policy, as well as to do a calendaring of all the hundreds of tasks which need done between now and the beginning of May.

Today is Monday though, and while the program team is technically “off” I’m going to try and sketch out everything so I can get with our volunteer recruiter and see when it might be good to schedule some hands in to help. The arts and crafts building needs a serious bit of love from some women’s group full of organizational ability. The theater needs a new set designed, by some people who are good at that sort of thing. The costume closes also need a serious overhaul, because a lot of the things in there are tattered and torn. The gym equipment needs sorted and the Fab shop needs a complete overhaul.

I know it can all be done. I know it WILL all be done. But right now, staring at the wrong end of the list, it’s a bit daunting. Because I also have two weekends at home in Texas to teach, a family weekend here at camp, and several staff training days to fit in this month. And the interviews. Always the interviews.

Each person we interview gets a phone call to set up a telephone interview. Then we read the application and autobiographical essay, which takes about twenty minutes. Then we call them for the interview, which takes about an hour and fifteen minutes. Then the answers from that interview are reviewed, which takes another half hour or so, and a second interview is scheduled. That one only takes an hour, and then those answers are reviewed. If the candidate is up to scratch, then a third interview, which is about ten to fifteen minutes long, is scheduled and an offer is extended. Hiring someone around here is exhausting. But it is how we get the best staff possible for camp.

So a lot to do today. And my first interview of the day is now, so I’d better get to dialing…

Mmm mmm good

I hit the wall last week. I’d had enough of barely-out-of-the-teens girl power struggles, missing Texas and being bored. When my boss failed to show up for a meeting we’d scheduled, when he finally ambled around and asked how I was, after talking to the aforementioned almost-teens, I was not in a good mood.

We walked down to a private conference room and I dropped a whole lot of stress on him, along with a few tears, because getting here to camp hasn’t been an easy road. It wasn’t all drama and bad stuff, but it was the first chance I’d had since arriving to open up about the behind the scenes issues, which definitely needed aired. He was unaware of several of them, and we both felt much relieved about my own awareness, as well as my plan of attack.

Because really, it’s got to be very stressful to have the person you hired to take over the camp program this summer be all, “why am I here if I’m just going to sit around doing nothing while people play childish games with me whether I want to participate or not?!”

When he came down off the ceiling the real discussion between us rolled on, and it was good. Very good.

And then when I was doing some grocery shopping up in Greensboro at the Super Wal-Mart, I came across Blue Bell ice cream. Blue Bell people, the best ice cream in the country. No really, it’s printed right on the ice cream cartons. Fresh churned out of tiny little Brenham, Texas, and delivered fairly close to my door here in North Cackalackee.

Yeah, I can stay here now. It was looking dodgy for a few minutes though, but thankfully that passed.

Family Weekends

Amazing things happen at camp when there are campers here. There aren’t always campers here though, and that’s when this job becomes full of politics and strife and leaves me wishing I was anywhere but here. I know that I’m just going through those feelings because I’ve had such huge changes in the past six months of my life, but it has left me more than a little frustrated.

As I was saying though, when the campers are here, this place is amazing. Family weekends are what we are running this time of year. They start on a Friday evening and go through Sunday just before lunch. And we cram a bazillion activities into them, trying to appeal to all the different desires of each family.

Around 2 pm on Friday, the volunteers, or vollies, as we call them, arrive at camp. They come from all over the state, and others fly in from all over the country. We have regular vollies here who do our airport runs and pick up the other vollies and then camper families later in the day because if you want to come to camp, and you meet the requirements, we’ll help you get here.

So the vollies arrive and then it’s time for their orientation and training. The program team, of which I am a part, does all this stuff. We take them through the medical needs, with the help of our Body Shop (that’d be the medical clinic) staff, as well as all the traditional stuff. Then we split out into specific job functions and show them what they’ll be doing in their area. I do arts & crafts, the woodshop, the maze and mini golf. Others are learning about procedures in the Fuel Stop, where we eat, or what to do at the Horse Power Garage (the barns), Fishing, Archery and of course, being a Crew Chief. Program Chiefs run the programs. The Crew Chiefs run the families.

Back into the theater everyone goes and we review the stuff the Vollies learned in their few hours, learn some dances that we do after breakfast and dinner in the fuel stop, and then head up to cabin row to meet the families. Sometimes we do a parade, waving streamers and pompoms and cheering as all the cars arrive. Other times, when the weather is nasty or 25 families are waiting eagerly in the parking lot, we meet the families at their cabins.

Vollies and families meet up, get settled in and head down to the Fuel Stop, and the weekend begins. After the dinner dance party, led by the program team, which is a huge stretch for me, we meet everyone in the theater. And there, the program team puts on a show that involves singing, dancing, acting silly or serious and whatever else we decide it needs. All the while our professional videography crews are shooting footage. Bright lights and a camera in my face are a bit hard to ignore, but the laughs and smiles in the audience make it all worthwhile.

Saturday starts bright and early with Pole Position before breakfast. The activities vary, but always include the Fab Shop. It’s our resident beauty salon, where we can turn your hair any color and make it stick up in all sorts of fun shapes. You can put on all sorts of glamorous make up, paint your nails, and get all dolled up. You can make your parents and Crew Chiefs look silly as can be. It’s just plain fun. And the boys spend more time there than the girls.

Breakfast and another dance party get the rest of the camp moving. Then it’s off to the races, so to speak. All the program areas are open, including fishing, crafts, horseback riding, sports and games, and whatever else we can think of. There are 4 different activity times throughout the day, called Turns. Turn 1 and 2 are before lunch and 3 and 4 are after lunch and Recharge Time. Recharge time is a really important thing because even a day at camp leaves you wiped out.

Dinner involves another dance party and then everyone is off to the Pit Stop for dessert. Dessert is hosted by a bunch of volunteers and includes a soft serve frozen yogurt, cotton candy and popcorn. There’s also one last chance to visit the Fab Shop before it’s time for Stage Night. Stage Night is an all camp talent show, where people do whatever they can think of or want to on the stage. It’s some pretty amazing stuff, to be sure.

Sunday has an optional worship service in the morning in place of Pole Position, and then breakfast. After that there is some sort of free choice or all camp activity. It’s never the same thing twice, because we might have a visiting entertainer like a magician or a band to come and play. And then there is a quick bout of t-shirt decorating, before we have an all camp game of kick ball in the brand new Superdome building. The Superdome is so new it doesn’t even have it’s sign yet, and hasn’t been dedicated but we play in it anyway.

Finally, it’s one last trip to the theater, where we do a camp closing and the camp director shows the DVD that the awesome video crew made over the weekend. Then everyone heads home with lunches to munch in the car, and promises to come back this summer. It’s one heck of a weekend, to say the least!

Camp

I've been busy getting settled in here, and things are getting better ever day. I'm over the hump of being new and have tons of work to do. But I finally had time to get some pictures here of the camp for you all to see.

Fried brain, fried brain, cheese and baloney....

I’ve been busy getting settled in here at camp which has left me worn out through and through. It’s not a bad thing to be so overstimulated all you can do at the end of a day is sit on a couch and stare at the TV. Or a wall. Or the inside of your eyelids. Right?

Anyway, being new here involved fighting with a satellite company. It’s easy as pie to buy the service. It’s difficult as hell, however to get the service installed. I shoulda just paid to fly my brother over from Texas with his stash of dish installing tools and had him do it. It would have been kinder on my nerves to do that than to wait out the stupid, stupid, stupid computer glitches they had over at the satellite company. “Lost my install info my a**,” is all I can say.

And then there was the vaccination history. As in, “can you get us your childhood vaccination records?” The answer to that is no. And that shot record in my passport just isn’t quite thorough enough to work here. The great staff down at the Body Shop, which is our medical center here at camp, did say that I’m definitely better vaccinated than 98% of the staff, but I still had to get a few extra sticks. There was the flu shot, and the TB test, of course. Then I had to get a new tetanus shot, just in case. And I also had to get a titer to see if I’m immune to measles, mumps and rubella. I am.

Good news is that I also have grown an inch since I was last measured. I showed up at 5’10” in my socks, which I’m not quite sure I believe, but I’ll take it. It’s not like I was at that crucial stage though, where an inch of height meant I couldn’t ride all the rides at the amusement park. Still, an extra inch – nice.

There was also the snow. I’m standing outside with some of the other staff during a family weekend a couple weeks ago, and my boss assures me, “It’s never this cold here! Ever!” That white stuff on the ground and my constantly runny nose are begging to differ on that one. But I’ve finally gotten what I think are all the right clothes for the weather here, and now I’m no longer burning up or freezing cold at any given time. And yes, I know all about layers, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy wearing them. The snow was pretty cool though, since it only lasted a couple days.

Camp is pretty cool. I know I keep promising pictures but it just hasn’t been something I’ve had time for. I have a hideous internet connection at home, and I don’t have time at the office. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find 10 different ways to feed peanut butter to my staff this summer, as we are a peanut free camp…

Yeeeeeeehawwwwwwww

It’s been a busy week here at camp, and I like it!

We had a family weekend last weekend, which meant I was off from Sunday afternoon through Tuesday morning, in order to get my time off. That was a little odd, but it was cool. I went grocery shopping and cleaned the place on Monday, then chilled out with NCIS season 1 on DVD. Before I knew it, I was back at work on Tuesday.

Every day here is different than the day before. Iraq was a little like that, but we had a fairly repetitive schedule over there. It wasn’t bad at all, but still, every Monday was poker, Tuesday was 8 ball and stuff like that. Here, we might be sitting in the office on a rainy, snowy, sleety day like today. But tomorrow we’ll come in to the office an hour late, since we’ve got families coming into camp, and we’ll actually start in the theater to do some skit rehearsal.

I know routine will settle in a bit during summer camp, but when you factor in over 120 campers, plus all the counselors and volunteers to match up, even if you’re running the same schedule week after week, it’s going to be different every time. In that case, routine is the thing that gives you a fighting chance.

Anyway, it’s cool. I’ve had lots of you asking how you can help with the camp. Also had lots of you ask questions about programming, as in do you really run camp during the non-summer months?

Yes, we run stuff all year. It’s a bit different during the off season as it’s family based activity. But it’s 9 or so weekends each during the fall and spring. And we always need volunteers. Especially guys. We get 4 female volunteers for every 1 male volunteer. During the family weekends that’s never a problem as a family can have any gender volunteer. During the summer though… big problem. So guys, if you’ve got a week of vacation you can spare, or a company who will give you some time off to do good things, and are 19 and older, send in your volunteer application today!

As far as costumes and clothing, great response there, too. You guys are amazing! I won’t tell you what to send, but instead to be mindful that we are a latex-free camp, so any sort of masks and such are going right back out the camp gates. We just can’t take the risk with our camper’s health that way. And also remember that the cheap Halloween costumes are just that – cheap. They get one wearing and then wind up being torn, tattered and ripped, so they wind up in the trash fairly quickly. Not a problem though, if it’s a cool costume.

My aunt and I were talking and she said a co-worker of hers has clothes from his parents, which means they’re coming out of the Way Back Machine. Vintage clothes, like funky bell bottoms and crazy vests are awesome. Just whatever you think a kid, or counselor, would like dressing up in is what we’re looking for.

So yeah, that’s it for now. It’s time for me to go to bed because tomorrow is Friday and that means another family weekend is coming in. Lots of fun to be had all around as we get “Back in the Saddle Again.”

They pay me to work here?

So I’ve been at camp for three days now. It doesn’t seem like it, but then again it does. We’ve had a lot of open discussions, here on the program team, and learned a lot about everything. It’s really been great, and time has just flown by, which is tremendous.

There is so much going on here, that is so much bigger than I am. The camp services seriously and terminally ill children, providing a normal summer camp experience for them. We also provide a weekend camping experience for these same categories of kids, and their families, during the non-summer season. So, we do week-long program during the summer, and weekend programming the rest of the year. It’s not an every weekend thing, but it is steady and regular, which is cool.

Right now, being new, I’m learning it all. This weekend there is a family weekend and we’ve got 16 family groups coming to play. I don’t know what it’s all about, but I’ll catch it on the fly. Meanwhile, today we did a tour group of junior high kids, and I went along for the trip, learning a bit along the way. We’ve got amazing facilities, though, and I’m constantly in awe that they think I’m good enough to work here.

No really, I’m not modest. I know I’m talented and have some stuff to add to the program, but the idea that they are going to let me run it just baffles me. I’m in awe of this place. I know you will be too, when you finally get to see pictures of it. I’m working on those pictures, too, but first we had fog, then rain, then other business to take care of, but I’m carting around the camera now, so it’ll happen soon.

A blue phone? Seriously?!

It was a rigorous first day on the job. I did some paperwork, got a name badge with my picture on it, cleaned out some supply closets and some offices, logged on to the camp email system and took my golf cart operator’s test. I am fully qualified to drive an EZ Go golf cart now, and I don’t even have to wear a Kevlar helmet this time around. Nice!

Today was the most relaxed, easy first day I’ve ever had. I loved it. The attitudes of everyone I work with were cheerful and friendly, in a completely sincere fashion. You can always tell when people are way over the top with their “friendly” to the point that it grates on your back teeth but that didn’t happen here. And everyone stressed that we work as much as we play, and made certain we took a few breaks throughout the day to fit in some fun stuff, so it wasn’t full of drudgery.

At one point fairly early on, I was handed my Nextel phone. It’s a freaking NASCAR edition, too, with Rusty Wallace’s #2 on it. I’m going to see a ton of racing stuff come through, I bet. It’s cool, but eventually it will get old, I’m sure. For now though, it’s fun to get all the little hot wheels cars, sunglasses and other gimmes that they keep tossing my way. I plan to gather them up, put them in a box, and eventually mail them off to parts of Iraq, just because I can.

Anyway, it was a great day. We even went down toward Ashboro and had lunch at Chili’s. Tomorrow we’re going to discuss all sorts of last summer, and see what trouble we can identify and head off for this year. Gonna be good. Yeah. Good.

the dishes?!

Some guys used to live in this house and it shows. Even though the maintenance staff repainted and did a bunch of repairs, and the ultimate roommate ran a vacuum and spruced the place up, you can still tell guys lived here. For instance yesterday, when I opened the dresser drawers in my room, I found about two dozen old, worn, mismatched, clean (I hope) guys socks sitting there. Girls wouldn’t leave stuff like that lying around. Even if we didn’t want it, we’d still throw it out rather than leaving it behind.

There were odds and ends in the bathroom, too, and throughout the rest of the place. The biggest kicker though, is that there is a stack of side dish or dessert sized paper plates about eight inches high in one of the cabinets. And that’s it. There are no other dishes, bowls or whatnot in the place. I’ll rectify that tomorrow. What a pity I hadn’t noticed it before I went to Greensboro yesterday and gave Target way too much of my money. I could have given them a few extra bucks for a festively colored set of heavy plastic dishes that would last for a while.

At least this way, I can consult the Ultimate Roommate and see what color she thinks we should get. She’ll probably go with yellows and oranges, which are on my less favorite end of the color spectrum, given what I’ve seen of her taste so far, but that’s cool. It’s just a bunch of semi-disposable dishes, after all. Because once the season gets going, all I’ll do here in the house is take a shower and fall asleep. The camp kitchens over at the Fuel Stop will be doing all the cooking during the busy times.

But really, the plates? I know there were plates in here six weeks ago because I saw them. Ditto on the sharp knives. So the guys who lived here would take dishes but leave behind the tired socks. I suppose that makes sense, in some sort of whacked out male way.

From Texas to Disney to Camp

Eight days ago I woke up in Texas and hopped in the jeep with a ton of stuff. Stuff I thought I’d need along the way or at the end of my journey. Today, I reached the end, here in North Carolina, at the camp. I fell straight asleep last night, with only my pillows and teddy bear around me, leaving the rest to be unpacked today.

You’d be amazed how much a jeep wrangler actually holds, when it has to. I’ve dragged everything out, and it’s sitting on the bedroom floor of my room here in my cottage I share with one other person nestled snug inside the village that is at the tail end of camp. That was a seriously long sentence, but it’s where I am. Most resident camps have one or two permanent houses, with the “permanent” part being dodgy. This one has a full village, sturdy and new, clean and well made, ready to house year-round and visiting staff whenever they are needed. They are bright, cheerful and cozy, not to mention well equipped.

And they have a view of the camp, overlooking the horsepower garage and drifting down into main camp, a short walk away. There are even golf carts parked outside, to help the staff move through camp when they are carrying things, but I’ll try to walk more than I drive, because the place isn’t that huge.

Anyway, I came in last night, verging on midnight, and I wasn’t certain how well marked it would be. And the answer is that it is highly visible, through tasteful lighting that glows in the trees. Even in the dark you can’t miss the water tower painted like a hot air balloon with the camp logo on it. The second driveway is just as easy to find, which is marvelous. Getting settled in here over the weekend will be nice and easy and give me a chance to find my footing. Spending a week at Walt Disney World had me all revved up, and now I get a calm time to switch gears.

Disney was great, of course. I had rented a huge house over six months ago, when I was still in Iraq, so we’d have plenty of space to share with and avoid each other when we weren’t at the parks. We all haven’t been in one place in years and years. My big brother moved to Pennsylvania, and when he and his family came down to Texas to visit, I was in Iraq, so it was a nice time to enjoy each other. The parks were crowded as heck, though, but that’s to be expected since everyone and their brother were on vacation from school. It was still lots of fun and we all just waited our turns in line.

I’ll get pictures of camp and pictures from Disney up soon. I am in the middle of the woods though, and bandwidth is difficult at best. I’m now using a wireless network card through my cell phone company to try and connect, but I might have to put an amplifier on it to get a better signal. We’ll figure it all out though, as the time comes. Meanwhile, I’m off to unpack…