I forgot to mention earlier that today marks the one year anniversary of this site. That makes it the most thoroughly documented year of my life, since I was never very regular in my journaling/diarying habits when I used to use a pen and paper. I think I must have a need to have an audience, although I'm aware that my audience is small, and includes people who enter the most bizarre things into search engines. What's the big deal with portable stripper poles anyway? When I mentioned them a few months back, I was kind of joking about getting Google hits on that particular phrase. Apparently people are searching for them.
Of course, the flip side of writing for an audience is that I find myself editing what I write - this, at the moment, is a bit more surface level than the journals I used to keep. Being happy helps though. It'll be interesting to see how this evolves over the next year. It's also interesting for me (and probably me alone - okay, maybe Jen too) to look back into the early archives. It's like a window into a long gone slice of a day-to-day routine.

The boys are still ill. Jen isn't feeling so well either. The sky is cloudy and the air is humid. I cleaned the backyard today. I'm going to go have some coffee now. Until next time...

It's still overcast, but less windy, although there were moments of breeziness today. The kids made frames for their Polaroids today, and later we wove mulitcolored yarn through small branches. I have been giving the kids basic instructions for the various crafts, and then letting them run wild with ideas. Some of the kids spend a lot of time asking if it is okay to do things a certain way, as if they are not used to having control over their own projects. Some of the kids just do whatever they please. The end results are usually pretty good. If they have learned anything this week, I want it to be that doing things differently is a good thing.

Lexy is sick today, and Nate, who was throwing up a couple of days ago, is now leaking at the other end. Willow is on my lap, so I'm going to go pay attention to her now.

cds I listened to while enjoying the clouds: Thelema "Night of Pan", Kari Rueslatten "Mesmerized", and Current 93 at the Great American Music Hall, 5/9/03

I can hear the wind tossing the trees outside as I type. For some reason, today feels more like autumn, albeit a warm and humid one. It is overcast, and I heard several people say that rain was forecast. This morning, the wind spit oak leaves and brown pine needles across the park, which made the day feel much different. The wind always energizes me. Maybe it's all of the added motion - trees whipping back and forth, dust devils etching spirals in the dirt, leaves and other detritus skipping and dancing across the ground, hair and clothes being tugged this way and that...
We hiked right away. The kids seemed to have extra energy as well. Then we discovered that it is possible to make sun prints (using photosensitive paper) even when it is cloudy. Afterwards, we got out the river rocks and made art with them, laying them out in patterns on the ground, and balancing them on top of each other. One girl, inspired by the photo on the front of the Andy Goldsworthy book I had with me, made cracks down the middle of each of her rocks (with a pen, though, since it wasn't within our means to make accurate cracks of the genuine sort - I tried a couple of weeks ago and ended up with little splinters of rock).

When the sun peeked through the clouds, it painted the wind-rippled lake a sparkly gold.

cds I listened to in the night: Test Dept "Beating A Retreat", Thelema "The Vision and the Voice", and Current 93 at the Great American Music Hall, 5/10/03

We added one to our number today, so I had thirteen kids to lead around the park. For once, we actually spent the majority of the time doing crafts and painting. We made paper mache, leaf hangers (leaves dangling from a twig with a string tied to it for convenient hanging on a wall or ceiling), and paintings (using "natural" paint brushes - mostly reeds and feathers). Nobody could tie slipknots except me (or at least claimed they couldn't) so the leaf hangers ended up being assembled by me while the kids were in various stages of doing the other activities. Chaos! There is still a great amount of paper mache slopped all over one of the picnic tables, making it look like it is a meeting place for birds with diarrhea.
On our hike, we saw a turtle in the lake. It seemed to know we were watching, so ducked beneath the water before we could get a good look at it, rising for air amidst the flotsam that collects by the dam, which made it harder to see.
At the end of camp, a parent informed me that there's a picture of me in the Los Gatos Weekly, our local free paper. I'll actually have to pick it out of the driveway this week. I remember when the photographer visited the park a couple of weeks ago, but hadn't really been thinking about it.

cds I listened to while making sure I saved some papers to make paper mache with: Test Dept "Pax Britannica", Roy Harper "Folkjokeopus", and Faun Fables presents: The Transit Rider, 9/6/02

The weekend... The weekend. Wherefore art thou, weekend? Monday morning, like a crocodile on a chicken farm, arrives without warning to wreak havoc amongst us sleepy chickens. Okay, maybe it's not that bad, but it was good to just lounge around and read yesterday. I don't get enough time to read. I really don't. Here's what I've managed to read lately:

Shardik - Richard Adams
Never Trust A Rabbit - Jeremy Dyson
The Thomas Ligotti Reader - Darrell Schweitzer, ed.
Crampton - Thomas Ligotti and Brandon Trenz
A Fine Dark Line - Joe R. Lansdale
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling
England's Hidden Reverse - David Keenan

I started a new week of camp today. I'm teaching the same camp as last week, but with slightly younger kids and at a different location. I think, due to the location being less interesting, that we will be doing more art projects and fewer hikes. Today we made journals, hiked, did leaf rubbings, created leaf and snakeskin prints, and told stories. Again, the girls outnumber the boys - I have four boys and ten girls (although two of the girls weren't here today). It's too early to tell if any of them will need extra attention (how's that for a euphemism?). That said, one of the girls seems to like wandering off. They all created cool art though, and really got into decorating their journals.

cds I listened to while being up while you were asleep: Test Dept "Ecstacy Under Duress", "New World Order", and "The Unacceptable Face of Freedom", and 2 Foot Yard "live at 21 Grand, Oakland, 5/7/03"

Yesterday's camp consisted mainly of one long hike back to the creek where we found the young salamanders (Pacific Giant Salamanders, I now know). We found more salamanders resting on the bottom of the cold, clear creek. One girl is absolutely obsessed with them, and I had to keep her from injuring any amphibians in her enthusiasm. We also found a beautiful Alligator lizard that looked like it was either gravid or a very efficient bug hunter. On the down side, the kids fought a lot, and I had to mediate a number of times to help patch wounded feelings. One boy kept picking up sticks and threatening people, especially the one girl (the salamander enthusiast) who seemed to delight in teasing him. By the end of the day the boy decided that he didn't want to come back the next day.

The Irr.App.(Ext.) show, which was part of the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, went by in a bit of a blur. I hitched a ride up with M. and R. in a minivan full of equipment, and we met up with G. at the venue. I had some great Vietnamese food in some hole in the wall place near Market st. with G., Jim (who was presenting and performing in the evenings festivities) and Sigtryggur, who had flown in from Iceland to headline the evening.
Jim's set was a nice drone, lit by little lights in colored jars attached together so that when he left the stage they all dragged behind him. I was pretty tired at this point, not having found a nearby coffee vendor, so I was a bit nervous about how things would go when we got on stage.
Before we knew it, we were all stumbling out onto the stage, groping around for our stuff, and putting on a show that was a bit rough around the edges. Some of the microphones stayed off when they should have been on. The sequence of things seemed mysterious. Timing was not always precise. The film from the projector bypassed the take-up reel and piled up on the floor behind G. The scorpions, who are miked for the cool scuttling noise they create when moving across cellophane, ended up merely being a visual element. Still, in reviewing the video, it didn't sound too bad. People clapped too. M. said that the whole thing was a blur - probably because he had been awake for two hours longer than me. I think the main problem is the complexity of our various props and sundry makes it a little difficult to set up and check everything quickly. We did get positive feedback, although most of it was from people we know.
Sigtryggur ended the evening with a solo set using a mixing board, some cd players, and a few other odds and ends. The hat and the large bottle of alcohol he kept swigging from were amusing, and so were his humorous pantomimes. The music ranged from gentle drones to savage waves of noise. His pelvis even impersonated Elvis. Silly.

Today, camp went much better. Everybody got along. We made musical instruments, followed by ruckus. Then we took pictures of everybody holding newts. Salamander girl hugged hers. Then we made frames for the pictures that came out pretty cool. We finally used the river rocks that I hauled up to our table a couple of days ago - I had the kids lay them out in a line that meandered through some of the plant beds near our table.

I still haven't gotten my car looked at. The place I usually go, which I like because it's open on weekends, doesn't fix transmissions. They recommended a place called Tranny Man, but I don't know if I could go there with a straight face. It sounds gender conflicted. It's almost as bad a name as this linoleum place that used to be in the area - a place with the mirth inducing monicker of Linoleum Dicks.

cds I listened to in between times of much business: "Clear Spot with Steven Stapleton" - a two hour radio show of Steve playing stuff, including one hour of different versions of Mack the Knife, and Test Dept/Brith Gof "Gododdin"

Here's some art from earlier today. The first picture is a collaboration with a couple of Turret spiders, whose homes can be seen near the top.



The second pair shows a sculpture by some of the girls in my camp. They built a framework of twigs across the gap between trees, covered it with leaves, and sprinkled it with charcoal they had scraped off of a nearby piece of burnt wood.

Today we all pretended we were Andy Goldsworthy and wandered into the woods to create art out of whatever was on hand - leaves, branches, rocks, etc. Most of the kids really enjoyed it, and there were some creative results, which I'll post here later. The two boys were more interested in harassing a banana slug than making art, so the girls came up with more impressive pieces. On the way back, one of the boys, upset at being called names by fellow campers, sulked and hung back. I let him have some alone time, provided he didn't hang back so far that I couldn't see him. It's kind of funny to watch the social dynamic, and how it evolves over the course of the week. There are definitely some conflicting personalities in this group, but over all they're pretty good at working together. I think the boys feel outnumbered though.

My car, which had been behaving pretty well lately, is showing signs of imminent transmission collapse. It is shifting strangely, and shudders when put into reverse. I'm going to try to make it through the next couple of days. Fingers crossed.

I spent some of the money I got from the church yesterday on another jaw harp (it's always good to have a backup, especially since I'm using one in performance tomorrow night - provided I'm not sitting on the side of the road in a pile of transmission pieces) and a little "rock a bye baby" music box for The Dickens (or "awkababy", as she says).

cds I listened to while warily shifting: Tehom "Dispiritualization of Nature", Hedningarna "1989 - 2003", and Test Dept "Proven In Action" and "Atonal and Hamburg - live"

I think I planned to many activities this week for camp. This, of course, is better than planning too few. Today, in the midst of it all, we told more ghost stories while seated beneath the trees that Jen and I got married under. Then we made little pendants out of creek rocks. Earlier, while down at the creek getting the rocks, I spotted a tiny little tree frog. It jumped into the water when I tried to gently lift the rock it was sitting on. The girl who had been so keen on catching salamanders yesterday probably would have spent the rest of today in the creek looking for the frog if I had let her.
We have been trying to stay away from our assigned table in the afternoon. The sun seems hotter there than anywhere else. Today it melted all of our crayons into a sticky, multicolored lump.
It's funny how this camp seems to be over much more quickly than last week's camp, even though it lasts an hour longer. I must be having fun.
On of the moms of one of my campers from two weeks ago stopped by to tell me that her daughter had enjoyed my camp much more than the one she was presently in. I like hearing that sort of stuff, although it's too bad she isn't having as much fun this week.

And then, this afternoon I went to church. This all came about because a woman from the church had seen my name on the museum's calendar, in association with a blurb about how I introduced people to "wild things" or some such. So, after some phone calls and some phone tag, I talked with the woman, who asked if I could bring some bugs to show the church's preschool summer camp. I told her that for twenty bucks an hour I would. So today I arrived with my cockroaches, scorpions, millipede, and tarantulas and spent an hour showing them to hordes of little kids. They were quite an excitable bunch. Some of the teachers were a bit freaked out by the bugs. When the director was paying me, she said I could get away with charging a lot more. I told her I would after I had done this sort of thing a bit more. Like I have time. I suppose I can always find the time somehow. I could be the start of a business. Who knows?

cds I listened to while transporting the news and later some bugs: T.A.C. "Ouvrez vos Auditifs Canaux", "La Nouvelle Art du Deuil", and "Hypnotischer Eden", Howden/Wakeford "Wormwood", and Tangerine Dream "Zeit"

Now that's more like it - I'm back at Sanborn Park this week, teaching a camp called "Wild Images". I only have seven kids (2 boys and 5 girls), as opposed to the fourteen (11 boys and 3 girls) I had last week at Vasona. These kids are a bit older too, in the 4th - 6th grade range. We hiked up past Ghost Rock (a large Ohlone mortar that at some point was turned on its side so that the holes resemble the eyes and mouth of a screaming ghost - although some people claim that it looks like Elvis) today, and I asked the kids to imagine a story about it. For the rest of the hike, we all took turns telling ghost stories, and some of them were pretty grim. One girl told a story about a man who ground up his wife and turned her into sausage. One of the boys told a story about Jack the Ripper. One girl told several stories, all beginning with "It was a dark and rainy saturday night...". I told one about the fairy ring where we ate lunch, in which a group of campers are trapped by the roots of a large, old tree, which then disappears into the ground and sends up trees in a ring where the campers are held prisoner, enclosing them inside the trunks to wait for centuries until another group of campers sits down on exactly the same spot. The spirits are then released from the fairy ring and follow the campers home, where they take up residence under their beds.
After this cheerful little lunch break, we went up to a creek beyond the hostel and caught salamanders (not sure what kind, so I'll have to do a little online research). Most of them still had gills, so we didn't take them out of the water. The little creek, which seemed extra clear and refreshing after a rather hot, buggy hike, was also home to a number of dragonfly nymphs, some about to make the final metamorphosis into their adult forms. While there, we also ground up rocks and used the resulting paste as face paint. In other words, we got dirty and wet, which is what you're supposed to do at camp.
It seems like a good group. Hopefully the rest of the week will be as fun as today.

I'm supposed to go to a church tomorrow with a selection of bugs. Some sort of church camp thing. Should be interesting.

cds I listened to while lamenting the name change of Highway 666: Etant Donnes with Michael Gira "Offenbarung und Untergang", Blackmouth "s/t", Thread "Abnormal Love", C17H19NO3 "1692/2092", and T.A.C. "A Circle of Limbs"

Remind me to never buy another watch on sale. Our camp went a little over time today due to the fact that my watch ended up being an hour slow. I should learn to listen to my internal clock and ignore the one on my wrist. The kids were all pretty worn out after a long day of hiking around and catching bugs. Several of them managed to find some old fishing line and a jar of something called "power bait". They fashioned a fishing pole out of a stick and pretended to fish off of the pier. Out beyond their range, large carp floated lazily near the bottom of the lake. Nearby, a noisy coot was making a nest. We caught a couple of minnows and put them in our bucket, where they floated dejectedly near the bottom until we tossed them back in. The air was thick and hot, and I was actually glad when when one of the moms tracked us down and let us know what time it actually was. There followed a chaos of goodbyes and the kids all went their respective ways. One girl had her mom take a picture of us together. Oh yeah, that reminds me, a photographer for one of the local papers came by a few days ago and took pictures of our camp. I wonder if any of the photos will actually end up in the paper.

Lexy keeps coming in and asking me to go close the screen door. It seems that he's afraid of raccoons. Well, I guess they do wear those masks - it makes them look kind of like burglers. Burglers are scary because they take things without asking. Of course, Lexy sometimes takes things without asking too, and he's not scary. Therefore, if we follow this logic, maybe burglers aren't really scary either. In which case, raccoons shouldn't be scary just because they look like burglers. Can you tell that I need sleep?

cds I listened to while needing sleep: Jarboe/Telecognac "Over", Current Ninety Three "Live at the Teatro Iberico, Lisbon, Portugal...", Swans "Public Castration Is A Good Idea", Michael Gira with guests "Benefit cd - Jarboe emergency medical fund", Jarboe "Sacrificial Cake" and "Disburden Disciple"

You would think that kindergarten and first-graders are old enough to know that they aren't supposed to eat paint. Apparently they're not. The boy who performed this little experiment said that it tasted, "yucky". Earlier, on our daily hike around the lake, we went out on one of the little piers and discovered that nearly every available corner space in the railing was home to little Garden spiders. Their perfect little webs billowed like miniature sails in the gentle breeze. The kids, while somewhat intrigued by this, were more interested in the family fishing nearby.

I'm pretty tired this week. There's this headache that has been going around as well. Jen and I both had it. One of the boys at camp has it. Perhaps it's some sort of bug, or maybe it's all coincidental. Who knows? Next week I have a longer camp, but fewer campers. So far it looks like there will only be seven of them. They're also a little older (4th and 5th graders) and will presumably not eat paint.

cds I listened to while needing sleep: Bohren & der Club of Gore "Midnight Radio" disc 2, Young God Records: Compilation 2000 A.D., and M. Gira "solo/acoustic cd 2001"

Shit, I just lost a post...

To recap: On sunday, we awakened once again to the sound of The Dickens dumping things out on the floor. Less that two hours (and very little breakfast) later, we hit the road, filled up with gas, and gingerly eased onto 404, headed north towards I-5. We navigated the Grapevine in the slow lane, and descended once more into the Central Valley where, after driving for awhile, the van shut itself off again. It started right up, but it's still stressful to suddenly have no power while driving down a hot freeway in the middle of miles and miles of farmland. The kids complained. After the third semi-stall (rpms dropping from 2000 to 1000 for no reason) we elected to stop using the air conditioning to see if it helped matters. It did (or seemed to - maybe it was a placebo effect). This, of course, meant that we had to lower all of the windows while driving past the Coalinga cow yards. Thousands of cows! All just standing there in their sad, barren pastures with nothing to do but chew cud and manufacture tons of cow shit. We breathed in this heady aroma for a couple of miles.
We stopped briefly at a gas station to watch the green liquid pooling under the van and scratch our heads in puzzlement at the fact that we weren't low on any of our fluids. Oh yeah, The Dickens walked over and roared at the large, white metal Allosaurus with the bird's nest in its mouth. It didn't roar back.
Back on the road, we made pretty good time until the van stalled on the uphill grade on 152, near the San Luis reservoir. I cursed a bit, and the van started up again. A short time later, and not far from where we had been stuck in traffic on the journey out, we got stuck in traffic again. At least this time there was a discernable reason. We could see helicopters in the distance dumping some sort of fire retardant onto a smoking patch of ground. We inched forward. At one point I looked to my right and saw a lone doe munching contentedly in the shadow of a huge Oak tree. That seemed to me to be a lot more appealing than sitting in traffic. Of course, if we all got out to eat grass, we would never get home, so we waited. Some time later, we passed the clusters of emergency vehicles and some helpful farmers pitching in to make sure the fire was out. The kids thought it was pretty cool.
We did finally get home, with the van behaving for the final leg of the journey. We walked in the door sometime after 7:00 pm. Two hours later I went to work.

This week I've been teaching at Vasona, which isn't as interesting as Sanborn, but we're making things work anyway. It's back to Bugology, but without the wooded trails and without the huge selection of critters in the visitors center. I have fourteen kids. This time there are three girls, as opposed to the one girl the first time around. Nobody really stands out as being really unmanageable, and there are a couple of kids who seem to have a pretty good knowledge of the subject. One girl keeps giving me hugs, and a couple of the boys get a little teary when their moms leave. One boy keeps trying to catch bees and yellowjackets. I keep telling him he has great bug catching skills, but poor judgement. I hope he doesn't get stung. Today we made Paper Wasp nests in the forks of twigs, using the left over paper mush from last week. It's getting kind of stinky, but the kids, for the most part, had a good time doing it, and the other staff members who saw the results thought they were pretty neat.

Time to nap.

cds I listened to while being sleepy: M. Gira "Drainland", Jarboe "Dislocation", and Bohren & der Club of Gore "Midnight Radio" disc 1

We awakened on saturday to the sound of The Dickens dumping things out on the floor. After picking up the mess, we ordered an in-room breakfast that set us back nearly as much as a nights stay. The young 'uns showed their appreciation by eating very little of it (not that I blame them - it was very average fare).
After making ourselves presentable, we began the long trek to the elevators. Then, after a long wait while people on every floor got on or off, we descended to the second floor to drop off the three older kids at the official mamagathering childcare center. Then we snuck away to listen to Ayun Halliday talk about autobiographical writing. This was helpful and enjoyable. Lexy showed up towards the end because... well, because he's like that. Then came the long process of trying to get certain members of our party to nap. I ended up going to the panel on feminism in the media by myself. Music was represented by Kristin Hersh, print was handled by the editor of Bitch magazine, visual media was presented by... a gorilla (actually a member of guerillawomen wearing a mask), and film was handled by a screenwriter (who somewhat sheepishly admitted to being currently employed writing for sitcoms). They got a good discussion going about the insidious influence and general crappiness of popular media and popular culture, with general agreement that "things gotta change, dammit!" The gorilla had some cool pictures of billboards that her group was responsible for - the anatomically correct Oscar stands out: a hairy, middle-aged, white male. Kristin Hersh came up with the best two-word definition for top 40 that I have yet heard: "fashion sounds". Of course, I had to leave in the middle because Lexy once again wanted to check to make sure we hadn't decided to leave without him.
Later, we went to the beach so that the kids could run around in the sand and get sandy. The Dickens decided that she was "scared of the wawa". The boys decided that they weren't scared of the wawa, at least until the large, dead jellyfish (the size of a hubcap, I kid you not) started appearing at the tide line. Lexy moved away from the water at this point. I looked around for something to scoop it up with so we could examine it more closely, but the ocean took it back.
Then, sandy and tired, we went in search of the Veteran's memorial auditorium, where the dinner was to be held. We found it without too much trouble, and a good time was had by all. The Dickens charged up and down, and at one point liberated a fake baby from the doula table and loudly refused to give it up every time I tried to give it back to its rightful owners. Lexy ran around with a boy he had met in the childcare room earlier (and whose mom has actually read this - she recognized Jen earlier in the day from our blogs - If you're reading now, I'm sorry, I forgot your name. My memory isn't what it used to be. Of course, I forget what my memory used to be, but I digress...). The food was good. The people were cool. The product on sale was radical, which is a good thing. I'm only sorry that we couldn't buy anything from Ayun Halliday's table (we already have everything). The table was manned by none other than the famous Inky for a good part of the evening. I was too starstuck to talk to her.
Willow now owns a little jumper that reads: "I would rather grow up than be born again".
Later, tired and still sandy, we drove back to the hotel and began the long journey to our room. Outside our window was L.A.'s attempt at public art - a large circle of 100 foot (or more) columns plopped down in the spaces around a freeway interchange. They looked like huge, glowing sex toys. As we watched, they gradually changed colors. If there was a pattern to it, I couldn't figure it out. It was kind of cool though, and it sure held the kids' attention for awhile.
At last, exhausted, we fell asleep.

tomorrow: the journey home.

cds I listened to while enjoying another night of small papers: Roy Harper "Come out Fighting Ghengis Smith", Dar Williams "The Beauty of the Rain" and Beautiful People ltd "s/t"

There and back again. (or, "a papa's journal of a mamagathering")

I started the day out on friday with one last, chaotic day of Mighty Forest camp. We netted some really damn big crayfish in that little pond! At the end of camp, we ceremoniously released them. By the time I got back home, Jen had things pretty ready to go, although the young 'uns were being less than cooperative. With various complaints emanating from the back of the van, we hit the road. On highway 152, the road hit back with a traffic jam that didn't let up for miles. On I-5, it hit back harder with the van stalling. We briefly contemplated turning around at that point, but I knew that Jen had been looking forward to this trip (one of the rare times where she was getting to do something for herself) so we elected to continue. After all, we had already been on the road for a couple of hours. I slowed down a bit, and we stuck to the outside lane where we could quickly drift onto the shoulder in the event of another stall. The new Gillian Welch cd helped me keep our speed down. Ahead of us, the moon rose. I told the boys that it was watching over us. I put on a cd by Bohren & der Club of Gore, who play languid, spooky nocturnal jazz (sort of similar to some of the music on Twin Peaks), and it set the mood perfectly as the sky darkened - a long stretch of highway cutting a beeline across the central valley, with scrub and farmland receding into the distance on either side. Occasionally we could see old, wooden farmhouses or strange piles of cast off equipment in the gloom of oncoming night. Sometimes dust devils danced along the median, illuminated by the lights of passing cars. The kids, being kids, didn't appreciate it at all, and asked the stereotypical questions that kids always ask on road trips. "Are we there yet are we there yet?" In fact, early on, while we were still on 152, Nathan, upon seeing Casa de Fruta (sort of a glorified fruit stand with a bit of nearby forest) asked, "is that Los Angeles?" Lexy kept asking if we were closer to home or closer to L.A.
Finally, after a rather nervewracking drive through the Grapevine, we descended into the L.A. basin and wound our way towards the hotel near LAX. By this time all of the kids were asleep. I quickly discovered that our room was on the 12th floor, all the way at the back. There were no luggage trolleys in evidence. The air conditioning didn't appear to be working either. I grumpily made a rather large number of trips back and forth with our stuff as Jen watched the sleeping kids. I even more grumpily discovered that there was no in-room refrigerator. We made the best of it, even though we had to call down and remind them to bring up the roll-away bed that they had promised. Oh, and we also had to let them know that the wine and fruit plate in our room were not ours. Finally, we sweatily went to bed in our less than airconditioned room. The air quality can best be described as "swamplike". We did have a pretty good view of the airport though. The Dickens thought this was pretty cool (or at least she would the following day, since she was carried into the room asleep).

to be continued...

cds I listened to while all of a sudden being back at work: Jarboe "Thirteen Masks" and "Anhedoniac", Beautiful People Limited "Three Mixes by Michael Gira", and M. Gira "The Somniloquist"

The Youth Science Institute office at Sanborn park has, like most organizations, someone in charge. She wasn't there today. Unfortunately, in addition to overseeing the various camp-related activities, she is also in charge of feeding the cat who hangs out on the porch. None of the rest of us knew where the cat food was. The table where my camp meets is on the porch near the cat food bowl, so I spent the morning being glared at by the cat, who seemed to think that I must be to blame for his missing breakfast.
After the campers arrived, the cat slunk off in digust. For our part, we spent a lot of time in the shade, making leaf print shirts and paper. Earlier in the week, we had made model trees out of old copies of the Wall st. Journal. Today, we turned the trees back into paper by ripping them into little pieces and submerging them in water until it resembled porridge. Then we sprinkled in liberal amounts of leaves, petals, and lichen. The resulting greyish, color-spotted circular patties of moist paper were a definite improvement over the newspaper we had used to make them.

I'm juggling wrapping up this week's camp with preparing for the upcoming one, so I think I'll go get busy. Tomorrow after I get home from camp, we'll all pile in the newly repaired van and hit the road for L.A. Wish us luck.

cds I listened to while finally being on time: Swans "Soundtracks for the Blind" and "Swans are Dead"

We hiked past the campgrounds and up into the hills today, and everybody held up pretty well. On the way, we found a tiny, jewel-like, Blue Tailed Skink. It could have curled up on a nickel. Two and a half hours after we started, we arrived back at our table and proceeded to inspect owl pellets, carefully clearing away matted rodent fur to discover the fragile little bones inside. I found feathers in the one I took apart, but no bird skull. It was almost as if some lucky owl had eaten a feathered mouse. hmmm. Feathered mice are quite rare. Most of the kids enjoyed doing this. The kid who doesn't listen spent another day wandering off and trying to climb things.
The Gopher snake that I had relocated to the garden has stubbornly found his way back over to the lawn. He was discovered with his head in a small hole, looking for small hole dwellers. One of the other instructors pointed him out to me, and I reached down and touched him, causing him to back out of the hole to see who was bothering him. As we stood over him and talked, he looked uncertain about whether to go back to inspecting the hole or not. By the time I left, he had made up his mind and was back in the hole. I hope they don't mow the lawn often.

The van has a broken air intake and needs the transmission fluid changed. That's a lot better news than it could have been.

cds I listened to while being even later and staying up way past my bedtime: Swans "Children of God/World of Skin" and "Die Tur Ist Zu", and Skepticism "Farmakon"

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!)

My weekend had one extra day in it but Monday still came. Most of the weekend has been recounted in Jen's blog, so I won't commit redundancy here. I did have fun taking Lexy and The Dickens out on friday night to watch the neighbors light fireworks. Lexy loved it, and The Dickens had fun too, although she wasn't too sure about the loud ones. She kept asking "what dat?", "what dat?' everytime any fireworks went off. By the next morning, of course, she was an authority on fireworks. It all kind of reminded me of being a kid and running around in front of the house with sparklers and lighting those little "snakes" - you know, the ones that expand from a little black button into a snaky pile of ashes... Holidays always tend to bring out a nostalghia for childhood.

I started week three of camp this morning, and I'm teaching kids who range in age from 6 to 9. We created journals, and some of the kids really got into decorating them and writing about their days. The good thing about teaching the older kids is that they know how to do these writing-based activities, and they can hike for longer distances than the little ones. On the way back from our hike, I caught one of the big "pond" crayfish (not to be confused with those wimpy little "creek" crayfish). It took exception to being caught and dug both pinchers into the soft part of my palm, only to let go when released.
I also got crapped on by not one, but two snakes. The first one was the center's Mountain King snake, who didn't feel like being taken out to visit kids. The second was a Garter snake who was hanging out by the juniper bushes outside the center. He voiced his displeasure at being caught by voiding his bowels all over my arm.
I keep seeing one of the kids I had in my camp for the first week. I guess his parents must have decided to have a summer to themselves by signing him up for camp every week. He seems to be having fun though.

We have a lot to do this week, so I think I'll go do something besides typing now.

cds I listened to while wondering why long weekends last no longer than short ones: Swans "Filth/Body to Body, Job to Job", and "Various Failures"

I keep forgetting it's only thursday. I get the night off because of the holiday. Funny holiday it is too - just one more excuse for people to get drunk and blow things up. How many people will take the time to actually sit down and have discussions about just what patriotism means? Probably very few. Everybody is going to be too busy waving their little flags around and barbequeing vast quantities of meat - and then, after they've all gorged themselves, they're going to either light small explosives or go to some gathering place and watch professionals light vast quantities of large, colorful explosives. There won't be much talk about the concept of "countries" and "borders", or what "national pride" really means (Question: how can you be "proud" of something that you had no direct hand in helping shape?). Nope. Just another excuse to go party. Of course, if you're the average american, everything is about partying, isn't it? Oops, there I go again, painting with a broad brush. We cynical armchair commentators often do that.

The iguana eats toast. That means that I now know that I have two lizards to help clean up the mess that grows every day under the kitchen table. Toast-eating lizards! What next?

cds I listened to while musing about the state of the nation: Swans "Omniscience", "Real Love", "White Light from the Mouth of Infinity", and "Love of Life/Amnesia" (great music to wallow by, if you should feel the need to wallow), and Ida Kelarova "My Home is Where I am..."

So here it is - three in the morning and Jen and I are sitting around the computer. Willow is sleeping on the bed behind us, and the other kids are in the other room, also sleeping. If I listened more carefully to my own body, I would also be sleeping. Why do we do this? I think it's a societal thing, this forcing ourselves to stay awake when we're tired, or to eat when we're not hungry ("it's dinner time, so I must eat!"). We work when we don't feel like it too, just because we're told to. It would be much healthier for all concerned if we didn't force ourselves to keep going. We need to become more in touch with our natural cycles.

Earlier, I cleaned the old sand out of the sandbox and poured in some brand new sand. The old sand was full of lumps of finely aged cat poo, left there by the opportunistic neighborhood felines who always seem to know when somebody has left the lid off of a sandbox. We'll do our best to prevent it from continuing to be a kitty commode, especially since The Dickens seems to confuse poop with chocolate.

cds I listened to while wondering what my natural cycle is: Sun Dial "Other Way Out", Bohren & Der Club of Gore "Black Earth", Sulfur "Delirium Tremens", Swans "Anonymous Bodies in an Empty Room", and Tor Lundvall "Under the Shadows of Trees"

It was cool (relatively speaking) and breezy today. I took a nap after Jen, Nate, and Willow got back from the dentist. When I woke up I lounged around the house and helped Jen and Nate plant some lavender plants in the yard.

Lexy spent the day watching Harry Potter movies, except for a brief moment or so when he tried to get Willow to smile. This backfired on him, so after he had washed the spit-up off his arms and legs, he went back to watching movies.

The moon is a sliver lurking above and beyond the layers of crap that blanket the valley. I wonder if one day we'll wreck the moon too.

cds I listened to while thinking negative thoughts about humanity: Eric Serra "La Femme Nikita" soundtrack, Somtow Sucharitkul "Symphony no 4 - Pridi Gitanusara"/Phra Chen Duriyanga "Sri Ayudhya", Howard Shore "M Butterfly" soundtrack, Paul Chain/Johar "Split", Somtow Sucharitkul "Mahajanaka Symphony"/Simon Wallace "People's Acclamation of the Great and Glorious King Symphony", and Suka "Spitwinterspit"