Well, I'm back from camp, and the strike at touchds is over, so I suppose it's time things got back to normal.

I guess I never really talked about my camp experience, so why not take the time to do so now? Anyway, I spent the last week at the Skymont Scout Reservation, for a short and fun summer camp. Most of our members were there, and we brought plenty of entertainment (books, chess and other board games, a variety of card games, ect), but of course no electronics. I suppose the first thing to get out of the way is that this is not an average scout camp. Sure, we still sleep outside, but other than that it's about as much summer camp as you can get. We have one bathroom with flushing toilets, a good sized dining hall, and a number of improvements made just this year. A rather unpleasant happening this year was the first female to grace our campsite in years... a cubscout mom (SATAN) 

First off, they put up a new pavillion for Polaris, a program for the new boy scouts, which looks quite good. They put a very large pile of gravel out there, and many of the scouts came around to help them put in some sewer pipes around there, including many of us. The next day of course, we had to undo, and then subsequently redo the project, because some idiot put in the wrong pipe. They paved the road going into the camp, so GRAVEL NO MORE! We got sunny ridge, one of the closest camps to the canteen and dining hall, which rocked. They even replaced some of the tent's rat-infested wooden stands with solid slabs of concrete. Of course, as is regular, we all quickly claimed our tents and laid some stuff in it to make sure there were no misunderstandings, but our relatively new scout leader, Mr. Lee, decided that we shouldn't claim tents, and that we should allocate them later, shouted so while he cleared our stuff out of our good tent in favor of his young son. We shall make him pay sooner or later.

The same thing happened to some of our other friends that also claimed cement tents, but this time because the cubscout mom kicked them out for her son that "needed to be closer to the road in case of a diabetic coma". While that sounds like a good answer, but there was another tent much closer to the road, but apparantly it's better to have a diabetic coma on cement. We, of course, ended up in tents with rats under them which kept us awake more than we would like. I personally ended up bunking with a someone that I hate, and he hates me back. Enough of my whining though.

After a rather rocky start, we went to dinner, hoping to raise our spirits a bit. The food wasn't any worse or better than previous years per se, but they cut down on serving sizes drastically. All of us being very rather active guys (at least for that week), this really sucked. Campfire wasn't any better. The same skits we've been hearing from the staff for the last 3+ years, and it's still not funny. Well, the OA guys came out in their loincloths, and that was slightly entertaining. The other guys played some capture the flag, but I refrained from it, having shown my grace while running to the campfire, tripping on a root, rolling several times, and bruising several nonvital but very useful parts.

I did however get a good running start at my book, War of the Worlds. While I 'd read it a couple times before, the last time was when I was 10 or younger, so I didn't really remember much of it, just that it was an awesome book with stuff exploding. I've got to say that other than some technological differences, I prefer the style of writing from 100 years ago to most of the stuff from today. Then again that's why it's a classic. Some of the technological differences were pretty interesting, such as when he learns that the aliens are building a flying machine, lets out great despair, since flight was not available but much sought at the time.

Well, after a really crappy first day, things started looking up. Breakfast was regularly abyssmal (including fake watery eggs and rubbery chicken), and I went down to the range to get through the boring first day of shooting with all the safety lectures. After taht I headed off to lunch... That was heavenly. I was a waiter, so I decided to sit at the adult table and wait that one, since none of the other bums wanted to. The upshot of that was, though, that there were less people, hence more food for me. And it was pizza day. I had 5 peices, and double that in water. I think it would not be an overstatement to say that some of my crap from the last day still consisted of digested pizza. Of course, the rest of the day I got some chess in, killed sheffey. Of course I lost my queen like I always do... but as usual I made a very careful and creative checkmate after eliminating some of his more evasive pieces. Sheffey isn't a big chess player anyway, but he wasn't bad.

I read more of my book, getting up to the part at the ferrey where the kick the ass out of one of the tripods. I also headed down to the shooting range to do a bit more shotgun, since I needed to get used to the new guns... Once I got used to them I was doing quite well though, and I got qualified after a couple days of shooting. Archery was another matter however. There we had to continue with the safety and stuff for another day and a half (hey arun if you're reading this from your camp... the archery chick did in fact remember you)...

Ah, this playlist sucks... that's better.

Anyway, the rest of the time I enjoyed some chess, some boring and one fairly lively match. The less lively ones were with some of the new scouts, which sucked. The more lively one was with Nick, the guy I hate. Well, I didn't lose my queen without reason for once. I traded for his queen. That n00b, the only thing he ever did was check me with his queen. I'm used to losing mine, so I knew how to deal without mine all too well, but he sucked without it. He started playing more defensively, and even though he did better, he was only dragging it out. While his queen was prancing around my king, I had his king pinned down in a corner. Once I got rid of that nuisance, it didn't take too much more to finish him. Just had to get them dang rooks out of the way.

As for the rest of camp, I finished off all my merit badges, and qualified for archery after some amount of shooting... On the last full day I took a nice nostalgic walk out towards the waterfall. It hadn't rained, so the creek that fed it wasn dried up, but that didn't stop the memories from bubbling up. Of course corey was once more temporarily known as slush for blood, and me as Steve, and shortly after Steve the Stinky Fresh. For OA we had three options. I didn't want to do it quite yet this year, so that left three: Ben, Sheffey, and Nathan. Of course ben is an ass, and no one likes him, so he was obviously out. However, the other two have been around a long time, and really earned it.

I finished up my book by the third day, and I'm really looking forward to the movie on wednesday. From the look of the trailers I think it might actually follow the story a bit well even though it's placed a century after. I do have a bit of a problem with the choice of tom cruise... Sure he's a big name actor, but he's certainly not what I would invision as the "hero" of the story. Not to mention he has a daughter... what's that about? He had a wife in the book, but she was a minor role. I'm especially curious as to how they play the ending. If they do it like the book, they better play the downfall of civilization right, or it will come off crappy.

Another thing that I'm worried about is the protrayal of the martians. They would have to beef them up since a lucky cannon shell took out one in the book, but if they make them impervious that would ruin the story. I hope they include the part about the Thunder Child, because that was my favorite part of book one, but how they would do that I don't know. Well, all I can say is that both H.G. Wells and Spielberg are geniuses, but I hold Wells in higher regard, so let's just hope this turns out well.