Well, it has been quite a while since I posted anything.  Life got really exciting and hectic at the end of the summer.  The end of camp is always a bigger deal than you ever remember it to be, and this summer was no exception.  I had more things on my plate in the last week of camp than I anticipated, and I still have some unfinished ones that I really need to get around to, especially now that my hard drives are back in town.

Getting home from camp, I had the worst travel day that I have ever had.  It started with bad omens in that we missed being able to go to the post office to mail home one last box of stuff.  Why the post office closes early on Saturdays, who knows.  However, from there, things only went downhill.  On the drive down to the airport I managed to get in a car accident that basically totaled my parent’s truck.  Thankfully everyone was OK, but it was not a good situation (not that any car accident is).  It all started because i had to slam on the brakes as there was another accident that had occurred, and everyone was stopping.  It is probably good that I hit the car in front of me as opposed to going around it as the embankment was very steep and the probability of rolling the truck would have been high.

So, I call my parents, who rush down to pick us up and get us to the airport.  Amazingly, we get there with a little time to spare, which is a good thing.  Why?  Well, when going through security, I got stopped because something showed up when they put my carry-on through the X-ray.  Turns out that I had one of Ruth’s bags in my carry-on and it had her pocket knife in it.  Needless to say, the knife got tossed.

After getting on the first plane, things seemed to smooth out, and for the first time that I had done any major travel with Ruth, it was good.  On our connecting flight from MDW to SLC we managed to snag our own row, with no third person, so we were very happy.  However, upon our arrival back in SLC, there had to be one more thing that would go wrong.  One of our bags decided to take an extended trip around the country, so it didn’t make it to SLC that night.  In fact, when I walked into the baggage office and showed them the claim ticket, they already knew about it.  The good news is that they knew where the bag was and they managed to get it to us the next day.  For that we got a $50 travel voucher which is pretty nice.

That weekend did get better though because we had tickets to see The Lion King on Sunday night.  The Lion King is quite possibly one of my most favorite musicals ever.  The music is great, the costumes and head-pieces are spectacular, and it is just a fun show to see.  If you have never seen it, you should.  I had been lucky enough to have seen it on Broadway back when it was new, and I had always wanted to see it again and see how they would get it on tour.  Well, even slightly scaled back to fit in trucks and in smaller theatres, it was a great show.  I still have the music stuck in my head.

Come Monday it was back to work.  Possibly the first thing that my boss said after “hello” was something to the effect of: “Can you push your schedule up a week and hang the show early so we can fly our scenery?”  What was my response?  Well, in traditional me style I just said: “Of course.”  So now I had to round up a crew and get to work to be able to start a week earlier than I had planned.  That is life at the theatre, always unexpected.

So, things are finally starting to settle down and get back to a normal rhythm.  I have plans to go camping on Labor Day Weekend, and then I am helping to lead services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and then we are doing the show.  I have to figure out my ski-pass situation and all the mundane things that come with being back in the swing of things.  Now that things are normalizing, life is pretty good.

The other thing that happened that is a major time suck is Words With Friends.  It is a iapp for iphone, ipod touch, etc. that is kinda like scrabble, and I love scrabble.  So I am totally hooked.  If you play or want to play, you can get if for free, and then look me up: Icewolf08!

On a side note, I did drop the ball on organizing Bloggerstock for August due to all that stuff I just mentioned.  So, we have pushed the August topic to September for anyone who is interested.  You can get the full scoop at the Bloggerstock Site.

Time really just seems to fly and stand still all at the same time.  We say it all the time at camp (and I probably say it here a bunch as well): “The days are really long, but the weeks go by fast!”  Days like today (though most days at camp) just seem to go on and on and on.  I suppose the fact that this morning started at least an hour earlier than normal was probably a contributing factor.  I had to get up early to go down to the river and meet the riding staff and a bunch of kids to go swimming on horseback.  They do this a few times every summer, and this week we are doing it twice.  This morning started pretty grey, but it wasn’t bad, and it cleared pretty nicely.

It is hard to believe that we are halfway through the summer already.  We have been at camp for twenty-some-odd days and there are only twenty-some-odd days left of camp.  Next weekend is Parent’s Weekend.  That is always the most exciting weekend of the summer (I say that in quite a facetious tone).  Some of us look forward to the prospect of getting gifts from parents as tipping is not allowed.  Some think that it is a great time to network with parents many of these parents are pretty prominent people.

No matter how you spin it though, Parent’s weekend is the biggest show that camp puts on.  We start buttering up the kids a week in advance.  This past Sunday it all started with a breakfast of waffles and ice cream.  Oh, we also finally got a protein at breakfast that wasn’t eggs this week as well.  I don’t know if it really works, maybe on some kids, but most I think are smarter than that.  It is just interesting that we allow Parent’s Weekend to be as disruptive to the program as it is.  We can’t really, in one week, make the summer any better than it is.  I think we are pretty much in the groove.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a good summer.  It seems like the kids are having a good time.  The staff is having a better time than they should (or something like that).  The oldest boys seem to be having a ball most nights, running around pulling pranks.  I hope they come up with some creative stuff.  They have managed to not be destructive which is good.  That is what camp is about, so I hope that they continue to find creative things to do.  I have some ideas that would take a little bit of work, but would be amusing.  Gotta keep things exciting.

This is the point in the summer though where everything speeds up.  It is like being in a car with no brakes and a stuck accelerator going downhill.  We will be at the end and it will seem like we just started and yet it will seem like we have been here forever.  It is like living in a timewarp, the best one there is.