The days since Thursday

So I didn't go into work, for starters. We left for the campsite at around...2, after a few false starts and a long break at Subway.

Driving up there it was 107. Which was just plain depressing. Once we turned up the mountain, though, the temperature just started to drop. Evan was fast asleep, so Liz and I talked about extreme trucking. I kid you not. Apparently there's a TV show. The horror story from that one was the guy who had to truck over ice on the last trip of the season with a load that was liquid, which meant it moved around a lot, at 10 mph. Freaky. It gave me nightmares.

The camp site was already there for us, secluded, though we drove by a TON of motor homes and such. I mean, this place was worse than the small city up at Lake Hemet!

We made a trip down to the general store, played a ton of uno (I won twice, luckily, then on the ultra round Jad completely trounced us) and found a crap load of beads at the campsite. I mean, a CRAP LOAD. Like a craft fair had an battle to the death or something. It was intense. And they were fun to shoot from Evan's semi-professional sling shot. Especially at squirrels. Remember the fact that we were pissing off the squirrells.

Come nightfall, we had to light the propane lantern. It FWOMPED. And burned the hair off of knuckles. And Bree and Liz obsessively hunted down bugs. You learn a lot about the bugs around you when you camp with entemologists.

Friday:
Evan woke up with a swollen toe, there was a fire about 10 miles away, and the air was super smoky. As in I'm having troubles breathing type of smoky. The people at the general store assured me that the fire would be coming nowhere near where we were, but that the smoke would be bad. And I only had my contacts. It made most of Friday a day where it hurt to blink and it hurt to breath. Lovely. That kinda limited our activities for most of the day.

However, Friday was not all bad. Catan was played, then the best surprise of all: Allen was able to come! In a convoluted series of events, Evan had to run down home to help his mom with something, so Craig took him down, and since Allen had then finished his final, he was able to hitch a ride up. And he brought his football, and Evan grabbed his rubber knives and his sword with the back holster. Remember the fact that we had the sword.

We had to wait until nightfall to do any cooking, for the campsite was full of bees and yellow jackets during the day. So we had to hold the same propane lantern up, and someone had to stand guard with the bug zapper. The bug zapper that basically barbequed any bugs that flew into it...including spiders. That was empowering.

So we played more uno and watched more stars and heard some more stuff move about the campsite.

Saturday:
Saturday was pancake day. Which meant we actually had to cook while the sun was out. Bad, bad luck. Yellow Jackets. Especially the fact that the stove wasn't working correctly and we only had small pans. So it took a full two hours to cook the pancakes, with alternating shifts of Evan and Jad cooking. We also made WAY TOO MANY pancakes in way too big of a bowl. So we put the batter bowl on a faraway table, full of water, with the spatula in it, the lid on top to keep out the yellow jackets. Remember this.

Allen and Evan were up the earliest, shooting squirrels with beads and stuff. Pissing them off. Remember this.

The guys decided to knife fight, which was epic and, in my opinion, good for the guys. It's always good for guys to be guys, and it seems that they had a blast. And by them having a blast, they talked about it for the rest of the day.

I also discovered the sports setting for my camera, which means I got some epic shots. SO EPIC.

Then we went swimming. We basically commandeered the deep side of the pool from all the old people with their noodles and swimming aids, and did a short diving competition. which rocked. And then they did synchronized diving, which means I got some AMAZING shots. Especially with this sports setting.

The old people at this place were mean! The people in front of me in line to get a snack were all pissy that there wasn't any ice cream, and they completely ratted out the poor old lady who was working the snack shack. I mean, please. It wasn't her fault.

And then my shoe exploded. On the way from the pool to our campsite. So I had to ride on Evan's shoulders and piggy-backed from Allen the entire half mile walk back. Over rough terrain. Take a -2 for speed and being encumbered.

We came back, and the lid was off of the batter bowl, and the spatula was gone. Like, gone gone. We couldn't find it at all. We chalked it up to stupid kids or ambitious squirrells. We had been pissing off the squirrels.

That night, after the nastiest mac and cheese and the most depressing game of Catan at the far table, we came back and our cloth cooler was knocked over. Oh well, someone must've bumped it. So to bed we go.

At one AM, I hear from one of the three tents: "It's trying to get inside of my tent!" in a high, panicked voice. Then a "what the hell!!" and "where is it, where is it??"

So I'm wide awake.

Then "oh my gosh, it's on the table! What the hell is that? It's huge!"

I spring up, look outside the window, and there is a gigantic raccoon. And by gigantic I mean about three times as big and as fat as the fattest cat you've ever seen.

Pretty much everyone clatters out of the tents. Except Evan. Allen is wide awake and totally pumped up on adrenaline, and Craig has the intense flashlight up. We advance on it, I get literally five feet away...

...and watch it just unzip our cloth cooler, take out some graham crackers, and lumber away. It had no fear of us wanting to scare it away. I was standing three to five feet away, taking pictures, and it just chomped down on our graham crackers.

"Where's the sword?" Allen said, turning towards Evan's tent. But no, he was fast asleep. As in dead asleep. We had been yelling and laughing and waving our hands, and he was asleep.

Craig suggested we get the sling shot. But no, that was in Evan's tent as well.

After about an hour of us following it out and waving our hands to scare it away, it finally lumbered off past the ravine. And leaving all the guys totally pumping with adrenaline. Allen totally got into the protective guy mode, not even wanting to let me out of his sight. I asked him if he was gonna have nightmares from it, from the idea of something trying to get into the tents to get me, and he pretty much said yeah.

When heading back to the tents, we found the slingshot just on one of the chairs. Just chilling there. Out the entire time. Of course.

It took a while before people got to sleep again.

Sunday:
The guys were up and at it much earlier than the rest again, of course. And Allen had a nightmare about me getting kidnapped, of course.

Sunday was mostly full of trying to get the other tents up so we could pack up the stuff and head home, for Allen and Evan were a bit tired of the camping trip, plus Allen had something to do. We left at about 11:45, had a quick stop at a drive through starbucks, and was home.

On Sunday night I went to go see Twelfth Night at the park. It was...okay. Most of the people were obviously acting. Malvolio and Tobias were obviously in the characters, and they made the show. And yes, S. was there. Oh well. She glared at me from back stage a bit. It obviously disturbed me a ton.

I talked to Robin Russin, he greeted me by asking if I was a theater major yet. I talked with Paul, he asked me to audition for the next play. The auditions are Wednesday. Not sure if I'm gonna go.