so yes, today was the last day of camp (!).

- my team came in first place in the camp olympics with a 4 point-lead over the second place team. go team 1!

- we had an excellent end-of-the-summer party full of pizza-eating and pop-drinking. how kids can eat so much and still run around afterwards, i have no idea.

- evaluations went fine. i got all 1s, so all is well.

- cleaning up didn’t take as long as usual (maybe because i keep the camp super-organized to begin with) and we all got the equipment packed up in our cars by 3:15pm.

- i hung around bri-rec for a bit with becky and kasey, and then gave becky her hug for the year and went home (where i consequently fell asleep for 5 hours — i blame it half on being exhausted from camp and half from being sick with whatever i have).

i don’t get to see any staff/kids for like four months now! *tear*

(1) tomorrow is the last day of camp! wow, i can’t believe the summer is over. oh, that means evaluations are tomorrow. i never mentioned what i got on my last one, mostly because i wasn’t happy with it, as it was the worst evaluation i’ve ever received (i got three 2s). last summer i got one 2 on my first eval and all 1s on my final eval. 2 is “meets camp standards,” 1 is “exceeds camp standards,” if you were wondering.

(2) this week is olympic week at work, and my team is totally in first place. my team has taken the gold every summer i’ve worked, mostly because i always end up with a stacked team somehow. not that i’m complaining ; )

(3) tomorrow is our end-of-the-summer party, which will of course be super fun. we earned enough money via a can and bottle drive to buy two pizzas and enough snacks and drinks to feed an army. or at least an army of small children.

(4) last night was the brighton rec. staff party, which was fairly uneventful as usual. i actually had to host it, as becky (the director) and kasey (the assistant director) both had obligations, and i am apparently third-in-command at brighton rec.

(5) i went to the midnight release of tropic thunder on tuesday, bringing my movie total for 2008 to 85!

(6) i go back to school in nine days. NINE DAYS. where the hell has the summer gone?

if you hadn’t already heard, i velcro’d my face to a pulp today.

here’s the scoop: every morning i come in early to set up and such. one of my tasks is to turn the gymnasium lights on. the thing is, the switches are on the wall opposite the door. so i blindly walk across to the other side in the pitch black every morning to turn them on. yesterday we had set up an obstacle course, and cleaned up everything but the gymnastic mats that we used, which were folded up in the middle of the gym. so, as you may have guessed, on my way across the usually-empty gymnasium, i fell over the mat. on the way down i hit my wrist on the floor (luckily my watch was unbroken) and you know that velcro that’s on the mats to attach them together? — my face literally was velcro’d by the scratchy part. i spent about five minutes laughing hysterically, in a pitch black empty gymnasium, before i realized i should probably get up before someone saw me.

i’m currently bandaged and feeling a bit better, although i do look a bit like nelly the rapper. oh well.

talent show:
yesterday was the talent show at work that the kids have been working on all week. basically, it was super cute. i emceed like last year, and it was a pretty good time. we made popcorn and lemonade and handed out most of the programs that i made the other day. the acts weren’t as terrible as i had imagined they might be (for the most part…) and most of the kids were adorable. great success!

renaissance festival:
today i went to the ren fest with liz, stevie, marta, tom, and cathy. i made the mistake of wearing a long sleeve shirt, but other that being really hot whilst not in the shade, it was pretty fun. we saw several comedy shows, ate several meats, and did several other ren fest types of things. it somehow got me really tired out because it’s only 9:30pm and i’m about to fall asleep here at my desk. good thing i have work at 8:00am tomorrow… not.

hello there! where have i been all week? let’s just say i’m a bit busier than usual, which means i also haven’t been sleeping much either so i feel like crap, but what’s new?

well, on tuesday i worked the concert series show, and it was def more fun than usual. but that was because it effing poured and thundered and lightninged, and the band still played. and everyone that was watching stayed. well, they moved under the concession stand pavilion, but they could still hear from there. melissa and i were completely soaked—so soaked i couldn’t wear my pink chucks to work on wednesday.

on wednesday i went to seabreeze with liz, my cousin steve, his friend trevor, my aunt marta, and my uncle tom. we went on all the cool rides (and some that were less than cool, like the new ride they put in this year—super lame). it was a pretty grand time, despite the fact that steve squished me on a ride (thanks, gravity!) and i got covered in powdered sugar thanks to trevor’s snack and steven’s idiocy. afterwards we ate at bill grays and got lost finding the interchange on the way home.

and today i think i spent more time doing work things off the clock than i did on it. i got up at 6:00am to get things ready for our art project today, i stayed late to fold up tables and move heavy things to prep for our talent show tomorrow, i edited the programs to the show, i ran off 100 double-sided copies of the programs at the office, i hung out in becky’s office for a good hour, and i spent way too long folding the programs as i watched episodes of scrubs on my computer.

so this week i got about a hundred dollars taken out of my paycheck for taxes. WTF? i’ve never had that much taken out before. Y-T-D i’ve paid about three hundred dollars in taxes on my brighton rec paychecks. will i get any of that back when i file my taxes?

ETA:
i took a look at my old pay stubs to see if i could see what changed.

TAXES AND DEDUCTIONS (01/18/08)
SO SEC TAX 14.68
MEDICARE TAX 3.43

TAXES AND DEDUCTIONS (07/18/08)
SO SEC TAX 32.02
MEDICARE TAX 7.49
FED INC TAX 47.46
PRI-STATE TAX 9.92

so i’ve been the acting director at camp for the past two days, and i have to say that it’s going swell. although one of my staff was suspended for the today (not my fault!), due to complaints filed by campers, parents, and other staff. he just needs to learn that you can’t say certain things around children, or coworkers. making people uncomfortable is a habit of his, and i guess he’s having a tough time breaking it. oh well. actually, camp was pretty calm today. maybe there’s a connection there? haha.

anyways, i think i’ve totally got this director stuff covered. i opened camp last week too, and i definitely think i have the hang of it. my super organization skills are definitely a plus. i plan out the day the night before and write list after list of various things i need to remember (subjects for our morning meeting with the campers, things to bring, difficulties the staff need to work on, potential future projects, et cetera). tomorrow is our early planning meeting, which i’m excited to run. hahaha i’m so lame.

“i chose pink paper because it’s your favorite color.”
by mason, age 7

“excuse me ma’am, i made this for you.”
by yusuf, age 9, autistic

superhero week is going awesome! we’ve made logos, masks, utility belts, and tie-dye shirts so far. tomorrow is our costume day. i’m captain pink, aka i already have a costume.

but tomorrow is also evaluation day, which i am like insanely nervous about. since i’m the assistant director now, i’ve been helping my director with the staff evaluations, but he does mine on his own. no one has gotten a perfect or near-perfect eval yet, which is why i’m worried. last year i got all 1s except one 2. you see, they aren’t allowed to give perfect evaluations for the first eval, only the second eval at the end of the summer, to indicate “improvement.” so they gave me a 2 in some stupid category, told me that it wasn’t exactly true, and i was happy with that. but i think the director this year is too concerned with showing improvement, so he’s giving out a lot more 2s and 3s than i would have expected. i know this is a stupid thing to get worked up over, but it’s my first year as assistant director — i don’t want to find out that i’m not doing a good job.

oh, and i’m beginning to think i have actually developed an obsessive compulsive disorder.
- i go into work an hour early to sweep and tidy up, even though i don’t get paid for it.
- every time i pass something that’s crooked or disorganized, i stop to fix it. this includes piles of paper on the sign-in table at work, things that have been hung on walls, the game table/staff table/other tables and such at work, and et cetera.
- i noticed when i play battleship that i make subconsciously guesses in a symmetrical pattern, and i sometimes don’t put white pegs in when it upsets this symmetry and instead commit the miss to memory.
- i clean my room every day, multiple times a day. well, not really clean, since it’s not dirty, but i tidy.

basically, i’m slowly going insane.

so we plan the next week’s activities at camp on wednesdays, mkay? we came up with a really awesome week theme — superheroes! we were really excited about it, we even gave each individual day a theme (para ejemplo, monday is batman day). coming up with games wasn’t too hard, as long as we were sure to incorporate the superhero’s strengths/flaws/villains/etc. we’re usually pretty good at this. today we played adventure ball, because it’s adventure week. note that adventure ball is just dodgeball with an awesome name.

but we ran into trubs when it came to thinking up crafts. superhero crafts? wtf. our fourty-five minute meeting didn’t give us enough time to find any crafts, so jeff and i set up shop at the sign in table and partook in an intense brainstorming session. suddenly, it hit me. we can have the campers design their own superheroes, and then make costumes, and then effing be superheroes. hells to the yes. so on monday they will think up their superhero—choose a name, design a logo, and stuff like that. on tuesday we’re going to make masks. on wednesday we’re making tie-dye (because only the coolest superheroes wear tie-dye). thursday we’re designing utility belts. and friday we’re putting it all together and parading around the school.

basically, i work at the funnest camp ever.

the three things that take up the majority of my life at this point of the year:

(1) work (40 hours per week)
camp is going swell. the staff is doing pretty good, but it still feels weird telling them what to do (”set up the slip-n-slide!”) or what not to do (”don’t chuck that kickball at that kid!”). i also have the sneaking suspision that they are the cause of the boondoggle shortage our camp is facing. i had to hide the boondoggle because it’s half gone, and it’s on the second week. so yeah, not good. um, the kids themselves are awesome, despite the fact that i’m 89% sure at least half of them are certifiably INSANE. but it’s not like that’s new news.

(2) sleeping (45 hours per week)
sleeping is nice.

(3) movies (10 hours per week)
i have watched 70 new movies this year, 10 so far this month. this doesn’t include the fact that i obsessively rewatch my favorites (yesterday i watched mulan and batman begins, for example). hahaha i think i’m certifiably insane also.