Thursdays of Death and Doom

Okay, here's a post I started Thursday night and never got around to finishing ... so I finished it to the best of my ability (it's denoted where the additions begin). Enjoy...

Took Ashton and my Pops today (I say that because I drove, so I did take...), which means it was a Jeep morning! Although randomly, after I put up the back window to give Ashton room to sit I noticed that I had blood trickling down my right index finger. It bled for a while and that sucker really bled! I gotta pretty good little gash there with no idea how I got it. I never felt nothin' and I am not sure I understand how it could have happened ... another mystery to life.

Ashton is a real hoot in the morning. She totally makes the trip a blast! Especially on the mornings she is barely alive at first, but then comes more awake and alert as the little drive progresses. She was awesome helping me put up the two side windows right before work, we did it in like 3 minutes .... NO PROBLEMO! Oh, and as we got there Redneck Yacht Club and HickTown came on the radio, which are two of my favoritest songs out right now. So we got to jam really early. great way to start the day!

Played kickball, campers vs counselors. Great game ... I love Thursday kickball. Made a couple of sweet plays ... played the right side of the field with Walter, Ken, Zach and Hos ... we rocked.

The Thursday campers are awesome! They are all great kids ... and they have great names .. how's this for a news team: Jackson Grant and Charlie Robinson seriously, awesome! Um, Kim made a mess of our morning tally sheet and it was way confusing, except her handwriting is amazing ... sooo it looked great. I really can't complain, I asked for a PB with no J and I got it, despite the facts I had my doubts.

Kelly made me an amazing ankelet since I've whined about it ... it's black with yellow glow in the dark beads that spells out I AM BATMAN. It seriously is amazing! She even got on one knee to tie it to my ankle! *INSERT OBLIGATORY JOKE TO KELLY ... "While you're down there...*

Games first: We played Nuke 'Em out in the sand volleyball courts. I love my pod on Thursdays, especially at games, so it was sad that we played Nuke 'Em thus counselors didn't play. Aaron Cleaver did another amazing job supervising kids while everyone else just sort of half-supervised or just chatted. We all got our feet or shoes dirty in the sand though, so at least we were present if somethign went down. Hos and I took this hysterical flaming picture that I am sure will be used as attempted blackmail in about 10 years. Good times...Oh, and Melissa, Kimbo and Kelly shared stories of dancing around their dorm rooms in their underwear, or of just changing and thus being naked or partially naked. Since I'm apparently already the pervert of camp, I'll say it: "Gigity-gigity, ALRIGHT!"

(BELOW HERE IS EVERYTHING ADDED TODAY)

Swimming second: Began with an attempted nap ... however, I randomly felt some movement and as I open my eyes I realize I am about 5-6 feet off the ground still laying on the chair. The guy counselors of the pod decided to toss me in the pool (assuming of course I was planning on napping the whole hour and not swimming). At first I debated hopping off the chair before we got to the pool, and they all realized it and later said they thought I was going to, so Cleaver joined the crew to make sure I didn't jump. For a few moments I was like a king, as the chair was being hoisted by bodies on all side carrying me ... they then tossed me off the chair face first into the water. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! It was awesome! A little shocking, got some water up the nose, but overall good times. Sadly, the session was overcast and breezy so while I did spend some time in the kiddie section with Kelly, it got too cold and I sat with a camper who came late most of the time. Fortunately we had swimming second and not third, as we actually got pool time. While we were herding kids into the locker room it thunderd and lightninged thus canceling pod 3. Woot woot, it wasn't us!

Pow-Wow: For the final installment of the morning, we did macrame (SP?!?) for Pow-Wow. It's essentially making bracelets, anklets, etc with beads and hemp. At first we had to recruit Kelly as I was worthless, but Kelly did teach me the very basics ... During Pow-Wow it did rain very minimally and thundered a bit, but eventually amounted to nothing.

Sadly the afternoon campers at Soccer this week were no where near as amazing as last week. The first period just whined and chatted and were an overall real bratty pain in the patella. However, group two was a little better and group three the best of all! For the second group Kelly and I created a name which was affectionately called Ring of Doom! There's five goals set up in a circle of cones, so their are five teams. At first we had it so that each team had one goalie and it was just every team for themselves, trying to score, with 3-5 balls ... and if a ball went outside the circle without going through a goal it was brought back in and still live and if a ball went through a goal it counted as a score and was dead. We had to keep tweaking rules as game play kept being interrupted. Essentially our field wasn't big enough, so we developed the game so taht there was one goalie, one scorer and one Ringer (also known as a circler) who circled the outside of the ring and retrieved any balls that lef the circle for their team only.

Here's where it gets really good ... for the third group I had this total moment of genius which Kelly and I took and ran with. We eventually dubbed this game Agent of Death (or something like that, I am sure Kelly will post the correct name). It uses the same field set-up of the circle and there are five teams of three with three balls in play. We had 13 people, so u do the math and u'll realize we had one odd-man out, which we further tweaked the game for. Here's the game, we split them up into their five teams and then gave each player a starting cone. They start at that cone at the beginning of each round and can either run to their goal to defend it or run to a ball to try and score. We made it so their start cones alternated by teams (so each player was 4 players away from a team-mate) and so that they didn't talk to their team-mates before the first round. Made for interesting chaos. But here's the best part of the whole game, each team had what was called a "Double Agent". That person actually played for another team, but they were the only ones who knew it. For example Players 1,2 and 3 were on red. Except Player 2, while still wearing the red jersey, was actually playing for the blue team. They had to try and play so that the red team wouldn't catch on, but so that the blue team would ... so u're essentially playing with no one knowing who's on ur team, if u're not a double agent u're constantly trying to figure out who is and if u r then nobody on ur real or fake team knows it. It's brilliant and the kids loved it! After all 3 or 5 balls had been scored, that round was over and kids returned to their starting cones. Oh,a nd the odd player was callled the "Super-Villian." They wore everycolor jersey and had the main job of just running around disrupting every other team and scoring pretty much anywhere they want, and tht person is their own team. And fianlly, since balls leave the ring at all times, we made the rule that whoever kicked the ball out of a ring had to retrive it and bring it to Kelly and i before re-entering the game. It was ana amazing game and an amazing success. Their are a bunch of othe rlittle rules, but overall I thought we created a kick-butt game I hope we play again sometime!

My final story is that of during check-out. While at check-out, I decide I have to check my voicemail to see if ISU called me to let me know about the RA position. My phone said I have one voicemail, so when I listened to it and it was Brian, I was pretty dissapointed. Humorously enough, it was Brian, my little brother tellling me that "Uuumm, Jim, it's raining...HARD and the windows in the Jeep are home ..um And you need to ... um, uh ... come home immediately!" ...

I cracked up! As if 1) Being outside all day versus Brian who's inside most of the day, I wouldn't know when it was pouring down rain. He said he called just in case I was in the storm shelter, which I responded with, ...I'd be there because it was raining! 2)It's not like bloomington-normal isn't big enough and oddly shaped that often when its raining at home its sunny at camp or vice-versa. 3) NO FAITH! I was the one who took the windows off the Jeep, left them int he backseat all week in case it rained, and told Mom the night before I thought it was going to rain and I'd need to wake up early to put the windows up. 4) If I'm at work, wouldn't it be easier to send Jason to me rather than telling me to come home? 5) I'm not allowed to use the cell at work ... haha, so had all the above not been true, I still wouldn't have ever known 'cause I wouldn't have ever checked! Too funny! I love my little bro ...

So Um, uh, COME HOME NOW!

-Jim-