What am I doing?

My day consists of basically doing nothing. I just sit around all day and play video games. I don't think I've ever felt quite this unproductive and stagnant, like I'm not advancing anything toward anything. The obvious solution is to curl up in a little ball in my room somewhere. That'll make me productive. I know that the whiny posts are getting more than a little old pretty quickly, but I really don't know what I'm doing any more. When I'm not moving toward anything in any direction in any regard... The only progress I'm making is in FFXII, which is a pretty cool game, but even so... Anyway, what this translates to is that since I'm not making any progress, and am actually only making things (financially) worse...

I would really, really, really like to not have to, but I think I might have to give up camp this year. Unless something happens in the near future, that's the way it's going to be, giving up camp in favor of looking for a job that pays a bit more. Like, ~twice as much (which won't be difficult). The problem is that nobody wants to employ me for just a couple weeks, but I could find a job that would last me to the end of summer no problem. So yeah, I don't know what to do. I tried to talk about it with my father tonight, but his mind is completely elsewhere. My little brother's trial is taking up all of everybody's concentration, effort, and resources. So, I don't know what to do anymore. The therapy of camp is something I don't want to give up, but... if it's what I have to do, it's what I have to do...

I don't mean to mope, but I don't know what else to do...

Uvula, Bank Fees, Internet, and Shaving.

I had the most interesting experience the other day. Have you ever seen a baby in front of a mirror when they first realize that it isn't another baby, but is in fact themselves? Did you ever notice the way the seem so genuinely intrigued and interested in their own anatomy, and like to make cooing noises as they figure out what "hands" are and how they work? If only they knew...
Anyway, I had a similar experience in front of the bathroom mirror on Tuesday. At least, I think it was Tuesday. See, my braces like to tear parts of my cheeks away, and in the freshly opened gaps, different things happen. Food gets lodged, bacteria start to grow, new cheek starts to cover over it all. The point is, I have to do some regular maintenance. Every other day or so, I go in and clean them out. Well, on Tuesday as I was cleaning out my braces cuts, I decided to depress my tongue. You know that line that goes down the back of your mouth? It isn't a solid structure! It's your Uvula! I was astonished, like you don't even know. I probably spent the next fifteen minutes playing with my uvula (not a euphemism) and making funny sounds. It was nice to be able to return to baby-land for a while and get all excited about a part of my anatomy with which I wasn't intimately familiar. I'm still kind of smiling just thinking about it. If you haven't discovered your uvula yet, I'd definitely advise it; it'll put a smile on your face.

I went to the bank today. Always a harrowing experience. I found out that nine days ago, they had hit me with about 143 USD worth of overdraft fees for charges that I had made almost a whole week before that. Heaven forbid they TELL ME! Especially since it was almost the end of the day on the date of my overdraft when I went to an ATM to check and it said that I still had a balance. The bank very kindly agreed to reverse 81 dollars worth of them, but... growl. The teller tells me, "It's not the bank's job to monitor your money." I honestly don't know why I would use a bank instead of keeping my cash in a jar under my pillow (other than the fact that that would make sleeping uncomfortable) if that's the truth. The entire POINT of the banking system is that they help you monitor your money. That's why we use banks instead of piggy banks! Growl. So, anyway, I'm back to being broke. And I still haven't started. I've given up on that job at the computer place. It doesn't take three weeks to run paper work. He shouldn't have offered if he didn't mean it. Jerk.

The internet is working again. When my parents moved, I only had internet access when I sat in just the right spot and the wind wasn't blowing so I could steal the neighbor's WiFi. The comcast man came by today. He wasn't remotely attractive, but he activated our internet access! So I can now surf for longer periods of time uninterrupted and get back to making comments; I've fallen behind.

For those of you who don't know, I was until recently blessed with the ability to go for long periods of time without shaving. I could push three weeks and only people who saw me moderately often would notice. Oh cruel world, it is no longer so! My chin hair isn't as soft as it used to be, or as blond! Do you know what that means? I actually have to shave regularly now. While a part of me is kind of excited because it's something that everybody else does and it kind of vindicates me as a man, it means that I have to get up a couple minutes earlier to make it out the door.

And I'm headed back to camp this weekend. I love camp. Really, truly, I won't ever be able to get married because I'm in love with camp. I may have already said that, but I'm too lazy to check. Less-journaly post to follow in near future.

-Stephen

Back from camp

I love camp! Love, love, love, love, love. Especially now that I'm a director and I actually have my own staff to deal with. It's a stressful job with more politics than any other workplace I've ever heard of, and I absolutely love it. Love, love, love it. If I had the money, I'd bring all of you up to my camp, and show you just how wonderful/beautiful/incredible it is. And the people are all so friendly, it's right on the beach, we have our own small desert, it's just the most perfect place ever for a boyscout camp.

One of the things I look forward to a bit less about this summer is that since it's a boyscout camp, I get to pretend to be straight. I'm also the only Mormon other than the camp director on senior staff. This is the first year in over a decade that's happened. That means I get to participate in such interesting conversation as, "When's the last time you got some?" "She's so hot" "If it was the only way you were ever going to get off again, would you take a blowjob from a guy?" and "What if you had to reciprocate?" All from the straightest perspective ever. I think that I can fake it with the best of them, and I managed to escape most of these conversations relatively unscathed, until about 6:00 in the morning when I suggested that we might want a couple hours of sleep. It's good practice, I guess, because if I can fool these guys with whom I'll be living and in constant contact for eight weeks this summer, I can fool anybody. But it is a little stressful, at times, to try to keep up that image. Meh, it just adds to the fun, kind of.

Oh, and before I go and leave you hanging, my blood results show that I have type 1 HSV. It sheds about 3 days a month, and 90% of the time is responsible only for oral legions (cold sores). The chance of it shedding and another person getting it from me unless I have sores of my own is negligible (said the physician). They think I've had it for a long, long time, and when I said my baby sister used to get cold sores all the time, she said, "oh, well you probably got it from her then!" So yeah, I'm fine. That was the only abnormal thing in my blood work. I don't have diabetes.

Camp

It's been a less than pleasant week for me. There was the whole Kevin thing, although he's tonight expressed that he wants to try spending more time together, I'm still pretty solid on the fact that he's just too young for me. There's the nightmare with my job. I still don't know when I'll be starting, and I really would like to have been working these last two weeks... that's over 600 dollars in missed wages we're talking about here. I would really not mind having that money, and I might need to go out and look for another job. The one place still needs translators... That's to say nothing of my car problems, which have thankfully been resolved, but were way less than fun anyway. And then, to top it all off, I went in for my pre-camp physical earlier this week, and they wanted samples of blood and urine to do some lab work. They just called and said that they wanted me to come in (tomorrow morning) to discuss my lab results with my DR. When I asked if it was bad, all they would tell me is that it wasn't HIV. At least I'm not dying... from that...

But, in much better news, I'm going to camp for the weekend! I'm not going camping, I'm going to camp! My lovely camp on the coast, that is the love of my life. Of course, I JUST realize that I haven't made up my lesson plans yet... they were due about a month ago and I was asked to bring them tomorrow... I might be spending some time working on that, but yeah... I'm just so excited. Not only to I get to spend the weekend in a place that makes me smile wider than Disney World, but I get to spend time with a lot of really close friends I've come to know from camp. It doesn't pay that great, but I love it too much to just leave them, you know? So, anyway, you can expect a post from me after the weekend, or during if we've got the internet access set up in the management areas already. I'll be giddy, and speaking gibberish, but you can expect a post.

I could ramble on for hours with stories about camp, but the short of it is, I love it. I love the camp itself, I love the people I work with, I love the program, I love everything about camp, and even these work weekends which I'll spend most of working are a cause for a massive celebration. So I'm celebrating. Period. I don't know if any of you can understand why it makes me so happy, but... I'm ecstatic. Or maybe even more. This place is like home... Where you feel a metaphysical connection to everything around you, deer, tree, fern, ocean, mountain, hill, gravel, lake, dirt, buildings, everything. It's just... it's... Yeah. It's just that good, and I don't have the words to explain it in either language.