Camp Wightman, Camp Wightman, our dear summer home...

As of yesterday, I am home from camp!

What a fun week! Of course, it's impossible to talk about EVERYTHING that happened in just one blog post, so I'm gonna try to hit the highlights.

Sunday: The first night there was a blast! Some kids brought their iPods (blatantly against the rules, but our coordinator, Harlan, didn't care. He mostly just let us do what we wanted), so we stuck them in an iHome and had a random dance party, which was fun. Then we found a bunch of New Year's Eve noise-makers, which we played loudly and obnoxiously until Harlan said "That's it! If you guys are gonna play those things, you're gonna play them along to something." He then put in "Don't Stop Believing" and we kazoo-ed along to it. Which was freaking amazing.

Monday: Since this is a Baptist camp, we had Bible study with Pastor Greg, who is pretty darn awesome. He went around asking our names and what church we were from. Since I'm a Pagan, I replied "I'm not affiliated with any church. Nature is my church!" He grinned and said "Ok, so First Baptist of Leaf." It was so funny! I then impressed him with my knowledge of the Old Testament, leading him to dub me "The Leaf-Worshipping Bible Queen". I bear this title with pride. Another fun thing about Monday was the ropes course. Mo and Mel, the girls who run the ropes course, taught us the rules by having us raise our hands and explaining that each finger represented a quality you needed for ropes. Ironically, the middle finger was the "Positivity Finger". We all got a good laugh out of that, and for the rest of the week yelled "Positivity Finger!" at one another in lieu of flipping each other off.

Tuesday: Near the lake, we have these huge rocks that form some interesting caves. A bunch of us went spelunking. That's a fun word, spelunking... Anywho. It took some difficult climbing over big rocks and crawling through small spaces and running into spider webs, but it was still a lot of fun. The caves are amazing! Two guys even saw a bobcat in one of them! Also for xkcd readers, the caves provided something VERY funny: I heard one kid yell in the caves "I almost fell down the big-ass hole!" :D Other things that happened on Tuesday was playing volleyball on the beach to Beatles' tunes and making tie-dye shirts. One guy, Texas (his real name's Tim, but he's from Texas) couldn't find a white shirt big enough, so he just tie-dyed a tank top that came out looking so gay it was hilarious, but Texas wore it well and proudly.

Wednesday: We had a cook-out on this day and played a game of "Wax Museum". This game involves all of the "statues" to assume various poses and try to move when the "curator" isn't looking. If the curator sees you, you're out. While playing, two girls who'd seen the Doctor Who episode "Blink" decided to be Weeping Angels. Unfortunately, I was the curator this game, and the entire group decided to slowly converge on me, reaching out with their arms Weeping Angel-style and frightening the hell out of me. Fun, but scary.

Thursday: Two days before, Pastor Greg asked me to write and perform a monologue about the Biblical figure of Sarah, Abraham's wife who was told she would have a baby at 75. So Thursday morning at chapel, I got up, nervous as hell, in front of the whole camp and performed the monologue I'd written. It actually came out really good. No one really cared about it, but the camp director, Greg, and Greg's wife all said that I did really amazingly. So that made me happy. It is a camp tradition to always have a square dance on Thursday. The square dance is basically an excuse to dress up as crazily as possible, and do fun line dances like the Cotton-Eyed Joe, the Macarena, Montego Bay, and the Camp Wightman dance. Since I always forget to bring crazy clothes, I just put on a black t-shirt and shorts, put a blue skirt over it, wore my sarong like a cape, rested my sunglasses on my forehead, wore a bunch of blue eyeshadow and drew swirly lines on my face with eyeliner. I asked my Doctor Who-obsessed roommate how I looked and her immediate response was "Time Lord. You look just crazy and mystical enough to be a Time Lord." It was the best compliment I ever recieved! After the square dance, we built a campfire and made banana boats, which involves stuffing marshmellows and chocolate chips into bananas, wrapping them in foil, and cooking them over the coals. Best. Dessert. Ever.

Friday: The last real day at camp involved a luau (We heart Hawaii). While helping set up, my friend Zac and I were carrying a big thing of whipped cream down to the beach. I tried to take it from him, and he wouldn't me. I said to him "What do you think I'll do? Run out into the woods with it and eat it all myself?" He replyed "I wouldn't put it past you." My indignant response was "I wouldn't do that.... often!' Thus an inside joke was born....

Saturday: On Saturday, we cleaned up our cabins, got packed, and prepared to be picked up. My Dad brought one of my best friend's Kevin/Kelsey (who I hadn't seen in years, she lives in Washington) to pick me up. Kevin/Kelsey is a male-to-female transexual and is thus extremely feminine. When I saw her, she had long hair, pierced ears, and a hat and glasses covering part of her face. One of the stupider kids at camp mistook her for my mother. We had a good laugh about that... Anywho, Dad brought us home and me and Kevin/Kelsey spent some time catching up, hung out, went to Paul's Pasta, and she set up Skype for me, so now I can chat with people via webcam. Which I broke in with a two hour conversation with Katherine from midnight to 2 in the morning.

Wow. All in all, it's been an amazing week. Camp was great and so was seeing Kevin/Kelsey and talking to Katherine. I can't wait to see the rest of my friends, I've missed them!

~Laura

Going to Camp!!

Okay, so I know I've been pretty terrible with regular posts, but here's a warning that I will not be posting AT ALL for the next week because I am GOING TO CAMP!!!

Every summer, I spend a week at Camp Wightman. This will be my third year doing this.

I love camp! Yeah, sure, it's a Baptist camp so it's pretty Jesus-y, but they're actually really tolerant of heathens like me. Plus the grounds are gorgeous and there is SO much fun stuff to do (swimming, sailing, kayaking, ropes, campfires, singing...), and the food is AMAZING!

When I return, I shall do a post solely concerned with the amazingness that is Camp Wightman.

~Laura

P.S. In honor of mandachan, I will be forcing my cabin-mates to learn/sing "The Campfire Song Song" Every. Single. Campfire.

Another One Bites the Dust

MUAHAHAHAHA!!! Yet another of my friends has been initiated into the cult of Firefly!!

Yesterday, I went over to Tara's house with Hannah. After being mobbed by her puppies, we sat down to watch the first episode of Firefly. Hannah LOVED it! We're going to try to get together to watch more of the series soon. Hannah is the seventh person I've indoctrinated in Firefly (Laurel, Tang, the EGE, mandachan, Tara, and Matt).

It makes me happy to bring another person into the Firefly fold. :)

...Yeah, I'm weird.

Hannah and Tara also showed me a funny script for a mumblecore movie (an extremely low-budget movie starring the writer's/director's friends) that they're making. They apparently created a character specifically with me in mind: The Not-So-Fair Maiden. I am actually very amused by it.

Anywho, an awesome fun day with my buddies.

~Laura

Beach Day of Amazingness!

Yesterday, I jumped off a bridge because my friends were doing it.

No, seriously! That's what I did!

My mom took me, Kyla, and the EGE to Esker Point Beach. It was amazingly fun!! We sat on the EGE's "Thomas the Tank Engine" blanket and had a nice lunch, built a causeway out of rocks (well, the EGE built it, me and Kyla just threw rocks), swam through this little channel, and most fun of all, we jumped off of the bridge over the channel!

This bridge carries Groton Long Point Road over the Esker Point channel. It's about an 11 foot drop into the channel (14 feet, if you're jumping from the ledge). When we saw some kids jump in, the EGE and I immediately wanted to try. So we climbed up onto the bridge and... well, jumped.

It was amazing! Normally, I hate being in free-fall, but this was just FUN! It was made even more hilarious by the fact that, right before I jumped, Kyla started whispering Edward's lines from "New Moon" to me. Wacky fun.

So, me and the EGE jumped off a bridge about a dozen or more times. We even got Kyla to jump once. Kyla and I both got horrendously sunburned and I sliced up my foot on some rocks, but all in all... It was an utterly AMAZING day. I can't wait to go bridge-jumping again! Next time I'll hopefully have Tang, Katherine, and mandachan to convince to jump with me! The EGE even had this funny idea of "let's convince passer-bys that one of us is a suicidal jumper and the other is trying to talk them down"

Lots of fun death-defying stuff!

And now I go to nurse my sunburn...

~Laura

Meh, Haven't posted in a while...

I've decided to be supremely lazy today. I'm just going to lie in bed all day, watch Doctor Who, perhaps a bit of TrueBlood, and read fanfiction. I'll tell you a bit about the party that I went to yesterday, and then I'm going back to my laziness.

So, my amazing friend Hannah had her graduation party yesterday. And there was silliness and "What do you mean I'm supposed to act like a grown up?!" all around. We had a confetti poppers (loud), Apples to Apples: Jewish Edition (the one Jewish girl in attendence kicked all our asses, surprise surprise), dinosaur cake (supposedly the only reason Kyla came to the party), Reduced Shakespeare Company (hilarious), Scattergories (I suck at it), fireworks bought by Hannah's older brother ("Aren't those illegal in the state of Connecticut?" "SHH! Keep it down! ...Yes, they are.") and Candy Land (Because we're five).

It was amazingly fun! Another "Happy Graduation" to Hannah, she's amazing, and I'll try to see you again sometime this summer!

...And now I go back to my laziness....

~Laura

New Obsession

Yesterday, Mom dragged me and Katherine to the Esker Point Beach Concert. She's been trying to get me to go for weeks, but I never wanted to. Finally, I went because it was an excuse to hang out with Katherine.

We did not listen to the band. We did not dance. We talked about Doctor Who for two hours.

I had never seen it. Katherine is a Doctor Who aficionado. She told me to look up episodes on youtube, gave me a list of the first season's episodes (First season with the Ninth Doctor, that is), and then we talked about how cool and funny the show is. Then, after bringing her home, I went online looked up the first episode, watched it, and was hooked.

Thank you Katherine, now I'm obsessed with another Sci-Fi show because of you. Thank you, EVER so much!

Ah, but it's okay. I love this show. The Doctor kicks ass.

~Laura

Libraries and Monopoly

Today was a lot of fun. Tang came over for a few hours. We hung out, played Monopoly and such. I couldn't tell you who won though, we couldn't finish the game because I had to leave. All I know is, in the end, he had more money but I had more property. And I didn't get as badly ass-raped as I do when I play against Kyla.

At two-thirty, Tara came and picked me up because we had to go do volunteer work at the Library. Which was... okay, I guess. Two hours of explaining the summer reading program to little kids. And lots of waiting for kids to come in to explain to. We only really got two or three. That's about it. Giggling madly over a funny book was the highlight of it all. And then at six o'clock, we went home.

And here I am....

~Laura

:D

Sorry I didn't post yesterday, but I was busy hanging out with Katherine! We decided to go to the Galaxy Roller Rink for Late Skate. It was hella fun!

We got there around 7:30 and after some slight problems with Katherine's skates, we had a blast skating around. And then we got bored, sat down, and started talking about an amazing idea for a story that I had. Turned out that we did very little skating after that. Just got into an epic discussion of the story, character traits, and science stuff that we'll need to know. We're all excited for this. It's a thrilling tale of technology crashes, seduction, a futuristic dystopia, evil plots, and badass librarians. T'will be a fun summer project.

And then at 11, when late skate ended, Mom attempted to drive us home, got lost, and we didn't get home til midnight... oh, well. Gave me and Katherine more time to discuss.

Anybody interested in this story is welcome to ask about it.

~Laura

Very nice...

So my friend Adam is a member of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) and I bugged him into letting me go to one of his combat practices today. You know, just to check it out.

It was pretty cool. Watched Adam get the crap kicked out of him by guys in home-made armor. Froze my ass off. They even let me take a few whacks at the pell (practice dummy). I broke it.

Decided that, fun as it is to watch, fighting isn't for me. When I do get more into the SCA, I'll prolly go more into the Arts & Sciences field then into the combat.

~Laura

THE TIME OF MY LIFE!!!

I'm sorry I haven't posted since Thursday, I've just been so busy and having so much fun!!

Friday was the final performance of the drama show and we all did totally AWESOME!!! We all chipped in to by flowers and cards for the adults that helped out with the show, and a plastic lightsaber that we all signed for Kato. After the show, we had the cast party!! For the first time, I was the host of the cast party, and it was SO much fun! Food, and silliness, and cuddling (Tori glomped onto Nate, and me, Kyla, and Hannah formed a cuddle group).

Then tonight was... MY FIRST JUNIOR PROM!!! It was AMAZING! The time of my life! My dress was so beautiful! I looked and felt more lovely than I have in a while. Hung out with the EGE and mandachan and Tang. Tang was kind enough to be my dance partner for most of the songs and he's pretty good! Lots of fun. SO much fun. So many amazing memories made!! I'll never forget any of it.

And now, I must go, as it is midnight, and I have some interesting new developements in my life that I must mull over.

~Laura

Music Trip Amazingness

On Friday: Spent three hours on a bus watching "Avatar" with Laurel/Eliz and Cela. Went to the Museum of Natural History and spent forever in the Gemstone Room just for fun, hanging out with Laurel/Eliz, Cela, mandachan, and the EGE. Loads of random fun. Then dinner at some pizza place with very tasty garlic bread. AND THEN WE ALL SAW "WICKED"!!! Which is, of course, the best play ever. Twas my third time seeing it, mandachan's second, and the EGE's, Laurel's/Eliz's and Cela's first. Amazing as usual. Loved it. The guy who played the Wizard came on our bus to say "Thank you for coming to the show!" Awesome. Then we all went to the hotel. And dropped into bed.

On Saturday: Woke up and had a tasty breakfast. Then went and sang at this school. "I Want to Be Ready", this spiritual-type song, and "Finale B", the finale from "Rent". We did pretty awesomely. Won first place in the competition. Then we went to Six Flags! I even tried to conquer my fears of big scary rides... by riding what mandachan calls "roller coasters with training wheels" which are smallish coasters for kids. I even rode one of those spinny, centrifugal force thingies. I also held everybody's stuff while they rode the big coasters because I'm a huge wuss. I also rode my favorite rides: the tame ones. The Ferris Wheel, the cable cars... yeah, I'm a total scaredy-cat. Then we all headed back to the hotel and had tons of fun and randomness.

On Sunday: Woke up and had an even tastier breakfast than the day before. Piled on the bus. Got a little emo, got a little happy, the usual. Then got home and did my thesis paper.

All in all, the most amazing trip I've ever had!!! Would kill to do it all again.

~Laura

Feels... wow

Just back from the awesome-est trip ever!!!

... and dead tired. After 3 days of awesomeness, music, Broadway shows, theme parks, bus rides, and tons of fun with the EGE, mandachan, and Laurel/Eliz, I'm about to drop.

(Plus as soon as I got home, I had to work on my thesis paper which is due tomorrow...)

Anywho, my apologies. I'm just too damn tired for a proper post. I'll tell you all about the trip tomorrow.

Nightnight!

~Laura

Long day...

After staying up until three in the morning (I couldn't sleep because of the muppets!), I woke up today at eight o'clock to go to a bloody tech call for drama at the school.

I got there at nine because my mom needed to be at work by 9:30 and I had no other way to get there. Of course, I was locked out until Mrs Gwin (the nurse that helps out with drama a lot) let me in... blah.

Once we got in, it was three hours of hauling big pieces of wood that were once sets that have really piled up backstage. Like, seventeen years worth. Ugh. That's pretty much what I did. Since I can't be trusted with power tools (some sets needed to be dismantled), my job was basically to try to rearrange what we were keeping so that we'd have more space. I also went on several "dumpster runs". Those were actually really fun. Me and my friend Tang (who is also involved in drama) loaded up all the pieces of wood that we were throwing away onto this cart-type-thing that the janitors gave us (it's called a "dolly" I think...) and dragged them all out to the dumpster, where I threw them all in javelin style. And when we had room on the dolly, Tang and I took turns riding on it... because we're so very mature.

After all this work, my dad came and picked us up and took Tang and I out to lunch at Valentino's.... (their garlic bread is AMAZING, but there isn't much else there that I like.) and then on the way home, Tang completely astounded me in that he could identify the song "Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones just by hearing the first two notes! But anywho...

Very long and tiring day but also lots of fun with Tang and other awesome people!

~Laura

What a day....

Today, as a sort of last minute thing, I went with my friends Cela and Tara (who is my oldest and bestest buddy. Seriously. We've known each other since we were like, eight) to find some shoes to go with my prom dress. It turned into an epic drive around Mystic full of fun and randomness.

First we went to Bass Outlet, where we found these gorgeous dark brown sandals that strap around the ankle. They are probably the highest heels I've successfully walked in. They look absolutely AMAZING with my prom dress and I cannot wait to go to prom all dolled up and show those dumb boys who rejected me what they missed out on!

Next, we checked out this awesome consignment shop that was just FULL of these really awesome dresses. Some of them looked really old-fashioned, but most of them were still really pretty. So, just for the hell of it, the three of us decide to try to climb into these monstrosities that would take a dozen slaves a dozen days to get us into. There was this really beautiful giant gold dress with this ridiculous petticoat and train, and I loved it, but it didn't fit me. But that's ok because I already have a really pretty prom dress!

After that, we went to Angie's Resturant, ate ridiculous amounts of food, and me and Tara danced around like drunkards while Cela pretended she didn't know us.

Then, we went to my mom's boyfriend's apartment to scout out if it would be a good place to have a party (since he generously offered it for both the Cast Party for the drama show and my "End of the Year" party). It passed inspection, and me and the girls acted like little kids for a bit (I tried to eat Cela a couple times...) and then we went for ice cream at the Drawbridge. Because Drawbridge Ice Cream kicks ass. I had a Caramel Lover's sundae. Once you get down the bottom of it, you're just eating straight caramel.... yum!

Finally, we went to drop off Tara, but my mom got caught up in a conversation with Tara's mom and we wound up staying there for like an hour, but that was ok, because we got to play with Tara's puppies. (Puppies = smiles). When we finally got around to leaving, we dropped Cela off, came home, and now here I am...

And that was my day! Which was awesome. Happy. :D

~Laura

That was fun...

So I went with mandachan and Kyla to see "How to Train Your Dragon" (Because we're little kids. Seriously, we sang the Campfire Song Song in the car on the way there).

CUTEST MOVIE EVER!!

Just really adorable. Full of historical inaccuracies regarding Vikings, but still awesome. This is the first kid's movie I've seen in a while and definitely one of my new favorites! The main character, Hiccup (great name for a Viking kid...), is awkward, clumsy, and full of deadpan snark. Very lovable. Actually, he reminds a lot of the EGE! He's even an engineer! A Viking engineer...

And of course, Hiccup's dragon (His name is Toothless...) is amazing. He's very cute and his antics caused much loud squealing from me and Kyla, to the ire of the other theater patrons (Yeah, me and Kyla are going to the special hell for people who talk in the theater, we had a whispered argument about Death Note in the middle of the movie).

I really love this movie. If you couldn't tell. I certainly recommend it for people who like cute kid's movies. The music was awesome too! Very Scottish sounding. Plus the fact that there were Scottish accents.... I love Scottish accents... Even though the Vikings were not Scottish... like I said, historical innacuracies.

But yeah. Getting this movie when it comes out on video. Love it! I love dragons. I want a dragon of my very own.

~Laura

I May be Getting Cynical in My Old Age, but that Doesn't Mean I'm Getting more Mature!

So today, I went with my Grandmother and my cousins to Dave & Buster's (the greatest arcade in the history of ever). I quickly decided to forgo all the games that didn't give me tickets to redeem for prizes (there's the cynicism). My younger cousin, Ethan (I really love that kid...) showed me a game that requires you to simply drop coins in a slot and you can get a lot of tickets for it. Since this was a game which would give a large number of tickets for minimal effort, this was the game I decided to play for the rest of the time I was there (evidence of my total laziness...). I also became so paranoid that someone would steal my tickets that I was constantly moving my four cups of tickets around so they'd constantly be in my field of vision as i played this game. Even as I bent down to take the new tickets, I had to pull all the old ones down with me... Yeah, I'm lame.

Anywho.

I spent all thirty-three hundred of the tickets I won at this little kiosk where you trade the tickets for songs that they burn to a cd for you. I bought a bunch of Celtic Woman songs, which makes me happy 'cause now I don't have to buy them at $1.99 apiece on iTunes!! Yay!

So yeah, that's what I did today... and now I go to put my new music on my iPod. Happy face.

~Laura