The Internet is Shit

Karen Traviss posted a link to this website with an interesting view on the internet:

http://www.internetisshit.org/print.html

It's very true to life - something that I've heard a number of librarians say over and over - don't depend on the internet. Unfortunently, in this day and age, too many people depend completely. For communications, for news, and even for their weather, instead of looking out the window.

Take a read through this - it's interesting. There is some language in there though, if you haven't figured that out through the title.

Status Update

So, life's been going on decently. Apartment, check. Various problems with apartment fixed, check. Internet, check. Cable TV and TV, check. All the basic necessities of a college student fullfilled. I even caught the first episode of Prison Break Season 2.
My grandfather died on Tuesday, which was not unexpected. He's been in very tough shape for the past two or so years, due to various medical problems. I feel a bit of relief and sadness- relief that he's no longer in pain, and sad, well, for reasons I'm sure that everyone can guess. At least I got to see him and say goodbye before he went.
It's my sister's birthday yesterday. Our family went out to a nice place in Stowe. Stowe, for those of you who don't know of it, is one of the nicer places of Vermont, one that seems to have retained a nice false charm and Vermontness for all of the wealthy patrons. It's a resort town, and there's a lot of commercial property there, very expensive stuff. There's the ski area there, as well as several resorts, etc. Food was very good. I felt really out of place there. Rich resorts are not really a place that I'd like to be around. They feel very fake to me. Fits with the rest of the town...

Home

I'm at home now. My new home- Northfield. My roommate, Kyle, moved in the day before I got back, and the place is still a mess while we put our things away. It's weird adjusting to a completely new routine - right now, it's getting everything sorted away, getting bills sorted, food, various things for the apartment, etc. We've spent a lot of time catching up on our summers.
School's next week. A lot of people are heading home, so I haven't gotten a chance to see anyone yet. Most of my friends are coming in this weekend, can't wait to see them. A couple other friends are going out to the same program that I was in for London, kudos to them.
And, I have Prison Break on DVD. Great show.

I miss camp.

EDIT: NOOOO! The SciFi Channel just announced that they're not renewing SG-1 for an 11th season. Curses.

Departures

It's the last week of camp this week. It's been scary at how fast things are moving, and it's saddening when people will be parting ways. There's some people that I'll never see again in my life, and people whom I won't remember in a couple years, which scares me as well. When I was at Carbon Leaf, I ran into a guy who'd been at camp three or four years ago, and I couldn't for the life of me remember him at all. Oh well.

We had to let another staff member go a couple days ago, after a couple of things that happened. Can't and won't talk about it, but it wasn't a terrible surprise when it did happen. Probably booting a camper or two as well in the next week. We've got our second group here, Operation Purple Camp (More on that in a minute) and we've got some new staff to give us a hand. Chuck, a member of the Vermont National Guard, is in my village. Really cool guy, works well with the kids and really knows what he's doing, as well as gave me some help with a class.

Operation Purple Camp is a specialty camp, along with Champ Camp, and are the only groups in which we have girls on camp. This one's for children who's parents have been deployed in the current war on terror. Regardless of political ideology, the needs for kids who have parents in the military are great and it's a real challenge for them at times, with someone away from home for huge periods of time when they really need a parent. The camp's got some goals to teach kids how to cope and deal with the stress. Hopefully it'll work.

Carbon Leaf - Live at Battery Park

Great concert - I really had a good time watching these guys for the third time in Burlington. Great set list, great weather for it, and all around fun. I met up with Jakob, a counselor who left a couple weeks early to get ready for school, and Laura, another friend of mine, who's also a big fan of the band.
They played a good mix of things - a bunch of new songs from Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat : Learn to Fly, Love Loss Hope Repeat, Native America, Under the Wire, Texas Stars, Comfort, a lot of songs from Indian Summer, Paloma, Life Less Ordinary, Changeless, One Pairie Outpost, What About Everything and even a couple songs from Echo Echo: Desperation Song and The Boxer. All really good renditions, and the band has been sounding really good altogether. I really like the sound and feel of the new songs. It's gonna be a great album.
It was also fun to be there with people. The last time I went, I didn't have anyone that I was with. It was great to get a couple of drinks with some friends and to just relax.

And now, I'm going to bed...

Carbon Leaf!

Concert's today, in about four hours. Can't wait to get up and out there. I'm just waiting for lunch here at camp, then I'm out of here to watch. Full report when I get back.

And, apparently, the Dave Matthew's Band is going to be releasing a greatest hits album. The problem is, they can't figure out which ones to do, so they're asking fans in a survey: http://web.davematthewsband.com/songsurvey/SongSurvey.asp

w00t.

Engagement

Not I, but my best friend Eric, whom I know from High School, just got engaged. Congrats!

Camp Update

I haven't really had any time to update this lately, so here's what I've been up to. Camp's been going fairly well lately. Things are getting slightly stressed, but that's normal for the end of the year. We've got a bit of an odd group and session at the moment. Champ Camp, an asthma camp, is here, with 12 girls, and next week, we've got Purple Camp, which is a camp for children who's parents are serving overseas. It's running well at the moment. This means that we have a two one week sessions and a two week session running at the same time. Actually, it works out well because I can get the day off that I really want.
Which is 11 to 11 Sat to Sun, because Carbon Leaf's playing over at Battery Park in Burlington, along with a couple other bands. Can't wait to see them again, especially with their upcoming album. I've listened to a couple more songs on their website, and it's sounding fantastic.
Saw my sister last night at a camp dance with Hochelega, which was pretty funny. She attacked me with a hug, and I got my revenge later that night with a slow dance thing that we do here. Everything went over pretty well, which is a plus.
Rest of the week for me is paperwork. Final Reports are coming up, as are Staff Reviews and Staff Reflections. Hopefully I'll have time to do all this...

Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat

Amazon.com has posted up the cover for the next Carbon Leaf Album, LLHR, along with a track listing:

Track listing is as follows:

1. Learn to Fly
2. Love Loss Hope Repeat
3. Under the Wire
4. Royal One
5. Girl and Her Horse
6. Texas Stars
7. Block of Wood
8. Comfort
9. War Was in Color
10. Bright Lights
11. International Airport

I must say, I LOVE the cover, and I've heard a couple of the songs, Texas Stars and War Was In Colour. Can't wait to hear the rest of them though. Man, this album can't come soon enough.

Cabin Otshata, My Own Office and Homesick Campers

I have a cabin of my own now. For the first half of the year, I've been rooming with another member of staff, Adam, who's on the maintainence staff, because the other cabin usually used for the Tamakwa Village Director was taken. But now, with reduced camper numbers and my supervisor urging me to spend more time in my village (Tough because I was living outside of the village) so I took one of the empty cabins as my own.
It's nice, fairly large, and I've organized it to suit storage and things like that. The best part is a small room on the back, which used to be a bathroom, but is now essentially a closet. It's now my office, which is nice, because I can keep work things in there, like my computer, and it's private enough so that I won't be as distracted. Plus, it's nice to have a place of my own.
On top of that, I've got one extremely homesick camper, who's got his ups and downs, currently on an up period, which I hope will last the entire session. Homesickness is very hard to deal with, and it's always a problem in a cabin. I think I deal with it okay, hopefully this camper will pull out of it fine and enjoy himself.
On the plus side, I'm running a D20 Modern game that's off to a good start, and I'm running a session of Fantasy Gaming with a group of campers. Should be a lot of fun.

Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat

Is the title of Carbon Leaf's upcoming album, as they announced on their websites and in a recent news letter. Really excited for it - listening to all of their previous albums, they've been getting better and better. Judging from the title, this one's also going to be something that I'm really going to relate to. All of the songs on Indian Summer had something that I could empathize with, especially Life Less Ordinary, One Prarie Outpost and Changeless. I can't wait for the album cover and track list. Hopefully, that'll be coming soon.
In addition to their new album, they've announced that they're returning to Vermont! August 12th, with a free concert in Burlington. Absolutely cannot wait for that concert. I've missed two concerts (James Hunter and KT Tunstall) and I don't want to miss any more.

Went out with a cabin sailing today, out on the Lake. Lots of fun, we brought lunch and had a blast sailing around. Even the thunderstorms, which were forcasted for this afternoon, haven't come yet. We were hit by a hard and fast one this morning at around five, which cooled everything down nicely. If only it'd do that for the rest of the year.

Session IB

Check-In today went extremely smoothly, which surprised the hell out of me and the rest of the Village Directors. This morning was pure chaos as we made a ton of changes to our lists. I ended up moving a couple of campers between cabins, only to find that we had a conflict, then had a last minute addition, then more switches, arg, it was frustrating. At least the day went better. I've been taking a ton of pictures, although I just haven't had the time to upload them into facebook yet.
Blackwell's returned to camp, and I've finally started doing a bit of GMing for various people - something that I wanted to get around to doing four weeks ago. Blackwell's campaign has started off really well. Can't wait to see what happens next.

Lords of Abnaki

I'm exhausted.

I spent much of last week designing a weekend program based off of Dungeons and Dragons, as well as a bunch of other camp games. Lots of planning, writing, thinking and finally, implimenting on Saturday. The entire thing went on really well yesterday, and found things to fix, worked on tweaking it. Kids liked it, staff loved it, I think that we'll be doing it again. The Program Director, Brian, my boss, Jon and my Supervisor, Rhet, all thanked me for doing it and were happy that it went over well. As am I, but the entire thing left me really drained.

And I saw Pirates of the Caribbean : Dead Man's Chest. Really fun movie, almost as good as the first.

And, Carbon Leaf's new album is out September 12th. Yay!

Indy Day

Hope that everyone had a good 4th of July. Camp traditionally marches in the 4th of July parade in South Hero, and we did again this year. The two British guys working for us were a little worried coming into the day, but we had some fun the night before, raising the British Union flag over the camp for the morning. It got some funny reactions that morning. Our camp director, who's Australian, told us to keep it up. Another counselor was really mad. I think that it served a good purpose though, representing what the 4th really means. Americans are terrible at history, so a reminder's always good.

The parade was hot, and we had to park several miles away (counselors with no kids) and walk to the parade route. Afterwards, we went to Hochelaga, the girls camp, where we usually do some events with them, before weather got bad and we returned home. I then went on day off, where I was able to sleep in this morning.

Got most of LOST season 2 on my computer, and have been catching up. Great show. Can't wait to finish it up.

New Session

First - Happy Birthday to Dad, who's Birthday was yesterday. Not sure when I'll be home to say that in person.

New session arrived yesterday. This coming session is a two week one, instead of a one week, and as a result, we get to do a lot more with the campers, weekend programs, more evening programs and more interactions with other camps. Plus, we get a lot more returning campers, so I've been seeing a lot of kids who've been around in my village or cabins before. Makes me feel old when a camper who was first in my cabin said that he's been here for four years.

Should be an interesting session - kids seem really excited to be here.

End of Session

The 1st session is now over - Went by quickly, and I think that we did a good job. Unfortunently, it's only going to get harder, and we just lost another staff member, who had to leave early. Hopefully, we'll get that sorted out...

Now, for day off.

Superman and Headaches

I drove out to see Superman Returns last night on my night off - Fantastic movie, really well done and a great comic book movie. The opening credits were fantastic - lots of space and planet shots with the main theme, and while watching it, I realized exactly what people were thinking back in 1977 when Star Wars was released for the first time: Wow. Absolutely fantastic. It wasn't a great movie by any means, but it was extremely well done and very fun to watch, so it's coming highly recommended from me. Bryan Singer did a wonderful job with this one, and I think that he's even refined his style a bit, which is good to see. I hadn't seen anything else from Superman, none of the other movies, so I felt like I was missing something at times, but that just means that I'll be going out to find Superman 1 and 2 (I've been told to avoid the 3rd and 4th ones.)
I was waiting to see Hugh Laurie make a cameo towards the end, which would have been hilarious (Singer is the producer and a director for the show House, MD.) Kevin Spacy was great as Lex Luthor, Brandon Roth was really good as Superman/Clark Kent, etc. The film looked good. It drags a little at some points, and seems to be a little too long, but it's definently fun to watch.

It's been paticularly stressful today. I got out of bed slightly late, because my cabin's power died again sometime last night, and when I did get out to flagpole, I found from the director and assistant director that one of my counselors was to be fired today. So I'm down a counselor. Not really torn up over it though, for other reasons.

However, I finally got my medical papers in, my credit card payment and rent, and finally fixed my boots in time for Risk tonight. Yay. Now, to get going on some more paperwork and other random camp things.

Spiderman 3 Teaser

The teaser for Spiderman 3, the last of the trilogy. I just took a quick peak on YouTube, (because this computer doesn't have an updated Quicktime - the trailer's on www.apple.com/trailers).

I have two words:

Holy frack. Black Spiderman / Venom, facing off with Spiderman, Sand Man and ohmygod this movie is going to completely rock. 2007 Can't come fast enough.

And, Superman Returns is out today. Can't wait to see that. Hopefully, I can find tickets.

Rainy Day People

It was nice and sunny on Sunday during checkin. What happened? It rained most of the day yesterday and much of the day today, although we've had some nice breaks within the hour. The kids this session are awesome - we've got a great group of campers and staff this session, and it's starting to really kick in.

This session really feels different than other sessions that we've had in the past - this entire year, really. I feel more on top of things and in general, more comfortable with my job. Hopefully I'll be able to really keep on top of things better and better. And, hopefully we'll get a good break in the weather so that we can all dry out. My shoes are soaked.

And Superman Returns comes out tomorrow. w00t!

Moment of Truth

Campers arrive today in camp. My village is getting 24 new kids, with four cabins and eight counselors. Most of my counselors are new, and two of them have arrived within the past day. Now's the time that we'll be seeing whether our new training program worked or not. In any case, it's the first week of camp, and everyone is excited that it's finally begun.

It's also my birthday. Seven years ago today was my first day on camp as a CIT. It feels really good to be here.