i make post.
hello. this is your friendly neighborhood Sarah.
I am back from the camping! The camping was stupendously awesome. Happy Birthday, melannen--your choice in celebrations did surely rock.
i've been a limp noodle since i got home, but let us speak of the joys of the tweedling birdies and the cheappelling buggies.
Friday: lindentreeisle gave up on being a studious and devoted member of her work place and ditched work early. YAAAY! this meant that i was able to pick her up from baltimore before the traffic got bad, before dark, and before it started raining. We got to the campsite and enemy_anime, stellar_dust, melannen, and the Mom had all gotten the tents up and the food out. It was like arriving in a little canvas-covered resort.
The trees were terribly green and bushy. The undergrowth was thick and lush. I received the first lesson i've ever had about Poison Ivy Recognition (very important is PIR) that has ever stuck for more than 2 or 3 hours. Hell, even now, away from 'nature,' i think i could use the PIR skill to avoid that most nasty of nettles. Birdies were chirpy-burping and we pretty much had the campgrounds to ourselves. (Or we were the ones making the most noise--either is possible.) I believe that the rain forecast scared off the non-hardcore camping enthusiasts. Or they couldn't get out of work early like the rest of us could.
I was put in charge of the fire. My pointy little heart did flutters. I have been taught the ancient art of fire-building by my step-mother.... but never before had i attempted to use the skills imparted unto me under a light rain. Yes, Step-mother! Where ever you are--be proud! Your pupil made fire in the rain! (with an umbrella high over the pit and lots of matches, but it took! it counts!)
We made AWESOME POTATOES, using nothing but the most AWESOME of aluminum foil. They were, in fact, awesome. We had hot dogs we roasted on sticks. We had smores. We had off-key singing and limited visibility. We had a screen house for eating in so we could still be together and out of the wet. We had cake. (Oh GOD, the CAKE.) The rain went away and--well, let me spare a moment to explain the CAKE...
The Mom is a long-standing enthusiast of yard sales. Somewhere along the way she picked up one of those fancy cake pans. She made melannen a checker board cake. It was delicious! It was savory! It melted in your mouth! It looked most excellent! It was three layers tall! IT WEIGHED AT LEAST 5 POUNDS.
You will rarely find such dedicated cake aficionados as the six of us who were on that camping trip. Yet even so, we were hard pressed to put that cake into its proper place. You know that scene from "MATILDA" where the nasty principal tries to punish the boy by making him eat this HUGE cake in front of the entire school? It was just like that... except there were six of us battling the cake... and the principal wasn't being MEAN, she was just lamenting how sad it would be to waste such glorious cake.
It is an odd sensation to be guilted INTO eating cake.
Enough of the cake. (Though it did hound us at all mealtimes up until our final lunch on Sunday when enemy_anime cracked under the pressure and tried to absorb the cake through the skin on his face rather than through traditional consumption methods.)
Saturday: We took a roadtrip to a local cultural festival. I think i enjoyed the roadtrip more than the festival--though the festival itself was quite delightful. The scenery there and back was just too pretty and covered in un-name-able wildflowers for any collection of human handicrafts to top. (Though the fifty cent funnel-cakes certainly came closest to doing so.)
When we returned to the campsite, we did not linger long. We hauled on our hiking shoes and stromped off into the woods in search of HISTORY! (and geocaches). We found both! Apparently, the Cunningham Falls Region had a long tradition of iron smelting, and there were many left over relics of the period to be found. All had been swallowed by the forest--except for the handicap-accessible parts which were also lawn-mower accessible. We learned that the giant furnaces; those blistering, sweltering maws that claimed the lives of countless men to exhaustion and the lives of countless trees to feed the hunger of their inner fires; they were all named after women. Go figure.
Saturday night we had a new lantern and no rain--so the beetles were out in force. lindentreeisle felt that the beetles' indiscriminant attacks upon her person were in fact part of some higher plan to punish her and had nothing to do with the fact that she was the one sitting closest to the light. Her palpable rage against the beetles topped even enemy_anime's laments over the fact that we put MORE THAN ONE KIND OF CHEF BOYAREDEE PASTA into the SAME POT TOGETHER for comedic value that evening.
Sunday: We managed to put all the early risers in one tent, and those of us who just enjoy a sunrise best with our eyes shut into another. There was some dismay on the part of the first tent's occupants over the late start caused by us in the second tent. Oops.
We packed swiftly and with vigor and after a swift and equally vigorous breakfast (with cake), we departed for the lake. Trees kept us from flying kites, and a lack of canoe-availability kept us from paddling the lake. However! Nothing kept us from geocaching around the lake's trails. Not even a washed out bridge kept us back. Well... it DID keep my one shoe very wet, but that's only b/c i'm a total klutz. I had a spare shoe back at the car though, so though the creek dampened my toes, it did not dampen my enthusiasm. (I made it back over the same creek without falling in a second time. I was quite proud.)
We then picnicked most gloriously! There were sammiches (and cake) and strangely flavored pringles chips. enemy_anime did his cake-face-plant, and i can only kick myself for not getting pictures.
We hiked up to the Falls (UP!! very very UP!!!) and marvelled at them--and all the freaking inconsiderate assholes who'd wandered off the trail and climbed the rocks and blocked all attempts at photography by insisting on dragging their two year old up the cliff-face. That's the best and worst thing about the state parks. They let anybody in.
We took down the tents at long last and shook all the caterpillars out of our clothes and hammocks. A number of un-identifiable bugs were discovered and marveled at. lindentreeisle took some left over vengeance on some beetles un-related to the ones who had assaulted her the night before. And we bid farewell to the campgrounds.
We stopped on the way home at a used bookstore. I had no money and less energy, so i stayed in the car and took an hour's nap in the shade. Very pleasant. enemy_anime bought me a muppet cd which soothed my spirits during the prolonged car-chase that served as the pre-amble for dinner. stellar_dust, no matter how awesome you are, i'm not following you through a city when you don't know where you're going again. Next time, i'll stay put and wait for you to call me when you've found the object of your quest.
Speaking of lost... the trip to drop off lindentreeisle was also fraught with complications. Along the way through Baltimore, the pair of us agreed that the city must have been designed by drunken, retarded lemurs with pencils nailed to their little hands. I can just imagine the sect of drunken, retarded monks with lemurs nailed to their hands that PERFORMED the ceremony that yielded the urban UN-planning that is the Baltimore sprawl. In the end, we did get to where we were going, though, so perhaps the offering of wasted gas pleased the perverse deity that reigns over Baltimore.
I got home around 11ish, checked my email (b/c i am a junkie), gave a silent prayer of gratitude that the cake was gone, and fell over into bed.
Monday and Tuesday Kevin took me out to dinner and to see Shrek 3 in the theater. Very funny. Very tasty. Very good time. Now i'm doing about 8 loads of laundry and wondering WHEN this lj entry will end.
Now.
Thank goodness.
I am back from the camping! The camping was stupendously awesome. Happy Birthday, melannen--your choice in celebrations did surely rock.
i've been a limp noodle since i got home, but let us speak of the joys of the tweedling birdies and the cheappelling buggies.
Friday: lindentreeisle gave up on being a studious and devoted member of her work place and ditched work early. YAAAY! this meant that i was able to pick her up from baltimore before the traffic got bad, before dark, and before it started raining. We got to the campsite and enemy_anime, stellar_dust, melannen, and the Mom had all gotten the tents up and the food out. It was like arriving in a little canvas-covered resort.
The trees were terribly green and bushy. The undergrowth was thick and lush. I received the first lesson i've ever had about Poison Ivy Recognition (very important is PIR) that has ever stuck for more than 2 or 3 hours. Hell, even now, away from 'nature,' i think i could use the PIR skill to avoid that most nasty of nettles. Birdies were chirpy-burping and we pretty much had the campgrounds to ourselves. (Or we were the ones making the most noise--either is possible.) I believe that the rain forecast scared off the non-hardcore camping enthusiasts. Or they couldn't get out of work early like the rest of us could.
I was put in charge of the fire. My pointy little heart did flutters. I have been taught the ancient art of fire-building by my step-mother.... but never before had i attempted to use the skills imparted unto me under a light rain. Yes, Step-mother! Where ever you are--be proud! Your pupil made fire in the rain! (with an umbrella high over the pit and lots of matches, but it took! it counts!)
We made AWESOME POTATOES, using nothing but the most AWESOME of aluminum foil. They were, in fact, awesome. We had hot dogs we roasted on sticks. We had smores. We had off-key singing and limited visibility. We had a screen house for eating in so we could still be together and out of the wet. We had cake. (Oh GOD, the CAKE.) The rain went away and--well, let me spare a moment to explain the CAKE...
The Mom is a long-standing enthusiast of yard sales. Somewhere along the way she picked up one of those fancy cake pans. She made melannen a checker board cake. It was delicious! It was savory! It melted in your mouth! It looked most excellent! It was three layers tall! IT WEIGHED AT LEAST 5 POUNDS.
You will rarely find such dedicated cake aficionados as the six of us who were on that camping trip. Yet even so, we were hard pressed to put that cake into its proper place. You know that scene from "MATILDA" where the nasty principal tries to punish the boy by making him eat this HUGE cake in front of the entire school? It was just like that... except there were six of us battling the cake... and the principal wasn't being MEAN, she was just lamenting how sad it would be to waste such glorious cake.
It is an odd sensation to be guilted INTO eating cake.
Enough of the cake. (Though it did hound us at all mealtimes up until our final lunch on Sunday when enemy_anime cracked under the pressure and tried to absorb the cake through the skin on his face rather than through traditional consumption methods.)
Saturday: We took a roadtrip to a local cultural festival. I think i enjoyed the roadtrip more than the festival--though the festival itself was quite delightful. The scenery there and back was just too pretty and covered in un-name-able wildflowers for any collection of human handicrafts to top. (Though the fifty cent funnel-cakes certainly came closest to doing so.)
When we returned to the campsite, we did not linger long. We hauled on our hiking shoes and stromped off into the woods in search of HISTORY! (and geocaches). We found both! Apparently, the Cunningham Falls Region had a long tradition of iron smelting, and there were many left over relics of the period to be found. All had been swallowed by the forest--except for the handicap-accessible parts which were also lawn-mower accessible. We learned that the giant furnaces; those blistering, sweltering maws that claimed the lives of countless men to exhaustion and the lives of countless trees to feed the hunger of their inner fires; they were all named after women. Go figure.
Saturday night we had a new lantern and no rain--so the beetles were out in force. lindentreeisle felt that the beetles' indiscriminant attacks upon her person were in fact part of some higher plan to punish her and had nothing to do with the fact that she was the one sitting closest to the light. Her palpable rage against the beetles topped even enemy_anime's laments over the fact that we put MORE THAN ONE KIND OF CHEF BOYAREDEE PASTA into the SAME POT TOGETHER for comedic value that evening.
Sunday: We managed to put all the early risers in one tent, and those of us who just enjoy a sunrise best with our eyes shut into another. There was some dismay on the part of the first tent's occupants over the late start caused by us in the second tent. Oops.
We packed swiftly and with vigor and after a swift and equally vigorous breakfast (with cake), we departed for the lake. Trees kept us from flying kites, and a lack of canoe-availability kept us from paddling the lake. However! Nothing kept us from geocaching around the lake's trails. Not even a washed out bridge kept us back. Well... it DID keep my one shoe very wet, but that's only b/c i'm a total klutz. I had a spare shoe back at the car though, so though the creek dampened my toes, it did not dampen my enthusiasm. (I made it back over the same creek without falling in a second time. I was quite proud.)
We then picnicked most gloriously! There were sammiches (and cake) and strangely flavored pringles chips. enemy_anime did his cake-face-plant, and i can only kick myself for not getting pictures.
We hiked up to the Falls (UP!! very very UP!!!) and marvelled at them--and all the freaking inconsiderate assholes who'd wandered off the trail and climbed the rocks and blocked all attempts at photography by insisting on dragging their two year old up the cliff-face. That's the best and worst thing about the state parks. They let anybody in.
We took down the tents at long last and shook all the caterpillars out of our clothes and hammocks. A number of un-identifiable bugs were discovered and marveled at. lindentreeisle took some left over vengeance on some beetles un-related to the ones who had assaulted her the night before. And we bid farewell to the campgrounds.
We stopped on the way home at a used bookstore. I had no money and less energy, so i stayed in the car and took an hour's nap in the shade. Very pleasant. enemy_anime bought me a muppet cd which soothed my spirits during the prolonged car-chase that served as the pre-amble for dinner. stellar_dust, no matter how awesome you are, i'm not following you through a city when you don't know where you're going again. Next time, i'll stay put and wait for you to call me when you've found the object of your quest.
Speaking of lost... the trip to drop off lindentreeisle was also fraught with complications. Along the way through Baltimore, the pair of us agreed that the city must have been designed by drunken, retarded lemurs with pencils nailed to their little hands. I can just imagine the sect of drunken, retarded monks with lemurs nailed to their hands that PERFORMED the ceremony that yielded the urban UN-planning that is the Baltimore sprawl. In the end, we did get to where we were going, though, so perhaps the offering of wasted gas pleased the perverse deity that reigns over Baltimore.
I got home around 11ish, checked my email (b/c i am a junkie), gave a silent prayer of gratitude that the cake was gone, and fell over into bed.
Monday and Tuesday Kevin took me out to dinner and to see Shrek 3 in the theater. Very funny. Very tasty. Very good time. Now i'm doing about 8 loads of laundry and wondering WHEN this lj entry will end.
Now.
Thank goodness.