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.

Camp is good

It’s been a very busy month. We’re starting our fourth session tomorrow, and things are going pretty well. I can’t say they’re going great, because there are always downs, but there are several ups, to balance it all out.

I mean sure, we had a lousy week at boating, with one kid clocking himself in the head with his own canoe paddle, and then another kid falling in the lake while trying to climb into a boat, and then the next day a counselor tipping a canoe over and clocking another camper in the head. That wasn’t a fun place to be, for me or my staff.

Over in Adventure, at the 55 foot tall Alpine tower, we found ourselves short staffed, so I ended up helping out all morning on Monday. No big deal as my schedule can handle it, but sadly, my sunblock could not, so I nursed a super secret sunburn for three days, which I called “dry skin.” Sunburn around here is a cardinal sin, so the few people who knew had to keep it quiet from the medical team. And then little bottles of sunblock with an SPF of about a million started randomly appearing on my golf cart and in my backpack. That was some entertainment.

Arts and crafts had a great week, though, because I got approval to buy a ton of blank leather bracelets, for our oldest campers to make. They hate arts & crafts, as a rule, but they liked doing the leather tooling, so I kept pleading for it. And the big boss came through, which should make for some fun times over there. We also got a new donation of about a million markers, which I’ll be regifting to another camp, because we just can’t use them before they dry up.

Things are rocking and rolling in sports and rec, now that we turfed the third counselor out to be a cabin counselor. She had a whole lot of drama which made session 1 and 2 a bunch of misery for her coworkers, and not much fun for me, either. By comparison, things were smooth sailing this week. And the kids had fun. Plus I got an email request asking what supplies we need donated for the Superdome, so I spent today coming up with a list that will cost several thousand dollars, but really give us some great gear.

On the downside, since I supervise the most counselors as the program director, I’ve been asked more than once to play the heavy with some of the cabin counselors, too, when their unit leaders can’t get the right behavior change. I hate those types of meetings. It gave me a bunch of anxiety.

Which led me to another type of anxiety I experienced for the first time this week. See, at the closing campfire each session, a professional company comes in and launches fireworks for the campers to enjoy. The normal pyrotechnician, or whatever they’re called, wasn’t here this week, and his back up guy was in place. The back up guy didn’t have quite the right timing, so the fireworks to me looked like a whole bunch of incoming fire and outgoing C-RAM rounds. And that’s when the shakes began. Stupid Iraq still bugs me almost a year later.

But camp is good. Yeah. Good.

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.

And they let her be a lifeguard?

So I’m back in Houston this week to teach a water safety instructor class. I have to teach that course every 2 years, minimum, in order to stay certified as an instructor trainer. Since getting that IT rating was such a pain in the butt that I make certain I teach, and having spent a year and a half in Iraq, it’s time right now, this instant, to teach.

I packed up my office and brought a ton of work with me, because the start of camp is next Saturday. Well, staff training starts next Saturday, but still, I have to have everything ironed out and on the schedule by then, even though the first campers won’t arrive until the 1^st of June. Anyway, I caught a plane back to Houston, my dad picked me up at the airport, and then we met my mom a couple blocks away, where I all but threw him out of the car and headed across town to teach less than an hour later. Awesome parents, to say the least.

Friday night’s course went well and my friend Tweetie Bird came to teach with me. The WSI course is pretty involved and has a ton of lecture to do, so we like tag teaming it, for our own sake. It’s also great to see her again, since she’s here and I’m there, most of the time.

Saturday morning we’re back at the pool and had just put our class in the water for the first time. It’s an indoor pool and they were jumping up and down complaining the water was cold while I pretty much gave them a chance to settle down. We started swimming a few practice lengths of strokes they needed help on, and while I was down toward the deep end on deck, mind you, I noticed the lifeguard instructor who was teaching another class out of the corner of my eye.

Becky was giving the pool the hairy eyeball, which meant something was up with her student who was in the water. Then, about a half second later, I’m giving Becky the hairy eyeball as she enters the water. I make the split second decision to head over to her, stripping off the jacket I was wearing and entering the pool, too, as the back up lifeguard. It seems that she had a little lost Dory in her class, who managed to surface under the bulkhead, swim through the tiniest of crevices, and become caught inside. She could breath, don’t fret, but she wasn’t getting out of there on her own.

Long story short is that it took three lifeguards, a whole lot of steady, smooth talking to calm Dory down, and about ten minutes to get her out of the bulkhead and then out of the pool. Little lost Dory didn’t have a scratch on her, but she was quite hysterical for a bit, which I can relate to. I left it to Becky to calm her down, and I swam back to my class once the chaos was over.

Did I mention I was in cargo shorts, with big pockets, a t-shirt and my tennis shoes? That sucked big time, but otherwise everything went well. And heck, in today’s session, I stayed dry all day.

Oh, and Dory told me, “I almost died again this morning! I was coming off the freeway and I knew the light would be green so I didn’t stop… And it was red!”

Ugh.

Rubbing Buddha for good luck? Really?!

Greaaaaaaaaaaaaat. It’s now been reported that masturbation can help prevent prostate cancer. Like guys needed an excuse to do that more often.

And no, sex doesn’t have the same effect.

Stupid Australian researchers…

They just made it more difficult for any woman who’s still single and interested in men, of course, to convince a man to settle down. What is the allure of sex when the guy can spank the monkey in the name of cancer prevention?

Also, does that mean they’ll spend a little less time working out at the gym, reducing the effects too many steroids and supplements have on their bodies, in order to have enough, uhm, we’ll call it “energy” to do their prevention, uhm, we’ll call that a “workout” too?

It’s going to be tough to tell what this latest study means for the world, but those crazy Aussies have guaranteed that guys between the ages of 20 and 50 years old, which is the prime dating range for everyone with more brain cells than hormones, will be busy committing assault with a friendly weapon….

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…