It's a bit warmer today, and those who make their livings predicting such things promise that the next few days will bring yet another rise in temperatures. I just got back from taking the van to get it looked at. It just wouldn't do to have it quit working on southbound I-5 next weekend, in the middle of our insane plan to drive for six hours with four small children. Some people climb mountains. We go on road trips with small children.
There's a boy at camp who, while being artistic and intelligent, seems to share one of Nathan's less endearing traits - his name has to be repeated five or six times before he'll stop doing whatever it is that he isn't supposed to be doing. I think we'll manage somehow though. At least he isn't getting in people's faces like one of the other instructors said he did during the previous camp. Most of the other kids are a bit easier to guide through our brief four-hours-a-day camp. We ended the day today with a friendly round of dice - using my Tuvan sheep knuckle dice. Don't worry, I wasn't teaching them to gamble. I was instructing them in the fine art of fortune telling. The idea is that the bones, depending upon which way they fall, symbolize different animals. Horses (as anybody who knows anything about Tuva could probably guess) usually mean good fortune. Sheep, goats, and cows are more ambiguous. Camels and yaks are so hard to get that they aren't included on the interpretive chart. One girl claimed she got a yak, but I couldn't confirm this because I was doing about five other things at the time. I rolled them myself and got a fortune that said, "your thoughts and ideas are bad." One of the girls very nicely told me that my thoughts and ideas were very good. I think I'll believe her over a little bag of sheep knuckles.
We got the bonus surprise of catching a Gopher snake today. After a period of inspection, we let it go in the garden.
Tomorrow, thanks to my new knowledge of a long loop trail, we hike them into the ground.

cds I listened to while running a bit late: Firewater "The Man on the Burning Tightrope", Swans "Cop/Young God - Greed/Holy Money", and Thomas Ligotti "The Unholy City" (thanks David!)