After A Week Off

I took all of last week and this Monday off, and I'm here to tell you that I am not ready to be back at work this morning. It feels like... I don't know, it feels like I was just finally getting relaxed, and now I'm going to have to sort through the previous week's worth of email and get back to work on some projects that were already behind. 

I did get a little writing done, though not as much as I would have liked. More importantly, I got to go camping this past weekend, and -- while this trip didn't work out quite the way we hoped -- camping is always good. But it's also true that some of my being tired and unenthusiastic may be down to me recovering from a bit of sunburn. I should have brought a hat. So hopefully the ennui is temporary, and I can get back into the swing of things fairly gracefully. 

...Though I suppose I'm also about to find out whether we're still in our Very Temporary Offices, or whether I need to move all my stuff over to the new Somewhat More Permanent But Still Temporary location. Hmph. 

I don't know. It was nice to be off work for a bit, but whenever I hit this point of having to come back in I always wonder if it was worth it.

The Tree of Agony

So out at one of our favorite campsites, there's this... tree. It is not a large tree, but it is a tree with very firm personal boundaries... which it enforces with thorns. My friend insists, half-seriously, that it is a local temporal manifestation of the Tree of Pain from Dan Simmons' Hyperion; if the Shrike were to show up while we were camping out there, he wouldn't be a bit surprised. 

It grows beside the path down to the lake, and periodically it will reach out and grab an unwary traveler. (Or maybe it's more like an incautious traveler will stumble into it and get an unexpected wakeup call...) To fully appreciate this tree, you kind of have to see it. Soooo:

So what kind of tree is it? Well, according to one of the naturalists at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, it's a Honey Locust, which means that if we dropped back by later in the spring we could see it flowering. It also produces seed pods, and apparently the pulp of the pods is edible -- as are the seeds themselves. 

So all in all, a pretty cool tree. Which does not mean that I won't use it to torment some PCs in a D&D game, or that I wouldn't name my next D&D character Honey Locust.

Camping!

So, a friend and I our took our younger sons camping this past weekend -- slid into the campsite just after the massive rainstorm had blown through, and had a lovely weekend after that. 

 

The boys spent most of Saturday playing on the beach and hitting dead trees with machetes, while the adults read, napped, made fires, and otherwise amused ourselves. 

They built a fairly extensive city of sand, and decided that they were now gods for whatever tiny little ants might live there; discussions of ant theology followed. "Why would they need money if we can just make anything they might need?" 

Regardless, they built a home for the ant blacksmith, with a forge just outside of it:

And, of course, the temple where the ants could come to worship their giant gods:

From an adult perspective, this is definitely the way to go camping: the boys kept each other occupied, while the fathers got to trade off on cooking meals. And despite the effort involved in hauling everything (including firewood) in and most of it back out, it was a relaxing, refreshing weekend.

Camping

 There was camping. I am sooooo tired.

Follow-up:
So, the campsite we got this time is about 1/3 of a mile from the parking lot. The parking lot is where the restrooms are located. I am here to tell you that if I had to walk 1/3 of a mile every time I needed to use the restroom and/or brush my teeth, I would be in ferociously good shape. 

Plus, of course, that means that we had to haul everything we wanted out to the campsite. 

There were four of us out there -- myself and another dad (who is the GozarTD of the GozarTD D&D campaign), plus Secondborn and GozarTD's younger son. The boys are about two years apart in age, but they got on splendidly and just generally had a good time playing on the lake shore or whacking dead trees with machetes. 

Anyway, GozarTD came up with a more efficient way to get the Cart o' Stuff out to the campsite: he puts on a day pack that has a rope attached to the loop on the back; the other end of the rope is tied to the handle of the wagon, so the wagon just sort of follows him along. I liked this so much that I actually ordered one of those training harnesses that they use for football players and did basically the same thing. 

It is so much easier than pulling the wagon by hand. Except... part of the trail to the campsite is covered in sand. Soft sand. And we made several trips in, and several trips back out. And the wagon sort of... drags, when it hits the sand. So right now my legs and calves feel like I've been, I don't know, doing a lot of squats. Or dragging something heavy while using a harness. 

Camping with another adult lets us trade off on the cooking, which is nice, and also gives us an adult to talk to, which is also nice. Also, since this was Easter weekend, we went ahead and set up an egg hunt -- but no candy, because candy is bad for woodland critters. Instead, the eggs contained either money (small change) or D&D miniatures. Plus, GozarTD has an inflatable kayak, which allowed us to go row around Murder Goose Island, with the result that yeah, my arms are sore too. 

Plus sunburn. 

I'm starting to think that I should schedule to do this like every other weekend, at least through the end of May. I'd be in much better shape, much more able to face actual sunlight, and also pleasantly woodsmoke-flavored. 

Secondborn by Firelight

Adventures in Camping

So... Secondborn slept in a tent last weekend, and then we had High Winds situation early in the week and the tent was trying to blow around the yard, so Beatiful Wife collapsed the tent and set something heavy on top to keep it in place. Unfortunately, she didn't look inside the tent first -- too busy getting it to stay still -- and we had a solid night of rain later in the week. So when I went to try to clear it out/break it down last night, I found: 

• A pillow
• A blanket
• A sleeping bag
• An entire outfit including shoes
• The box for the Nintendo Switch, without the Switch but with a number of games

 All of which had been stewing in a couple of gallons of water (held in place by the waterproof floor of the tent) and two slices of week-old (and thoroughly soaked/half-dissolved) cheese pizza. 

So, I have now explained to Secondborn the Two Iron Laws Of The Tent (which, honestly, I probably should have gone over with him earlier, but I don't generally worry about raccoons and bears in our back yard): 

1. No food in the tent.
2. No electronics in the tent.

In the interest of preemptive safety, I should probably also cover #3, which is No Fire In The Tent; I'll do that tonight. 

All of this is in part because a friend and I are taking our younger boys camping in a couple of weeks. I'm actually looking forward to that, but... y'know... cautiously. At least with two of us we can split the cooking, which will be a huge load off. 

In other news, I'm still writing on the latest project, I'm finally finishing some of my more recalcitrant projects at work, and I'm sort of maybe getting my sleep schedule back under control. Trying, anyway. We'll see how long that lasts, but the more energy I have to work with the better off we all are. The weekend was busy, but fun: a night out with friends, the youth D&D game, the weekly D&D game I play in, and a bit of writing and other things. (I'm still studying Spanish and German in Duolingo, for example.) 

I am... cautiously optimistic about the next couple of weeks.

Secondborn's Marvelous Weekend, Part One

Secondborn has been asking about sleeping outdoors in a tent in the backyard. So (entirely against my better judgement) I told him that he and I could camp in the back yard on Friday. I had hoped to spare Beautiful Wife and Firstborn, but... no, they got roped in too. Fortunately, we have two two-person tents. (I think they're technically three-person tents, but the official tent rating appear to be based on the presumption that you can merge your flesh with that of your tent-mates, and also that you can all lie there like mummies, with no need to stretch out or roll over.) So I came home from work to find that both tents had been set up in the back yard, and when bedtime rolled around we all went outside to "sleep".

I was fully prepared to sleep. I was absolutely exhausted, coming off a very long and stressful week, and completely ready to crash and burn. I warned Secondborn that when we got into the tent, he'd need to be still and quiet because I was going to read two pages of my book and start snoring.

It... didn't quite play out like that.

Tents are just cloth. They are the exact opposite of soundproof. So we listened to Beautiful Wife and Firstborn chatting quietly, until they got quiet. Secondborn settled down next to me... and then started trying to set up a nightlight. I told him not to bother, and he settled in. Then, just as I was falling asleep, he sat back up and started trying to play something on his tablet. I told him to put it down and go to sleep, and he settled again. I settled too, and was just starting to drift to sleep when he sat back up again. This time he was worried because we couldn't hear Firstborn and Beautiful Wife. "That," I told him with some asperity, "is because they're asleep."

Secondborn settled in again, and this time was quiet and still for a good half an hour. I'd missed my window for falling asleep by this point, so I was reading. (Space Unicorn Blues as it happens, and I highly recommend it.) Then the wind picked up a little, and started rustling the rain fly (which at first made me think we were maybe getting drizzled on, but no: no precipitation, just a bit of wind). That woke Secondborn up again, so I asked if he wanted a little bit of Melatonin. He agreed, and we went inside and did that, and then came back out and settled in the tent again.

It was now 11:15, and the child was A. still awake, and B. chatty.

But, I got him settled again, and the Melatonin did its work, and he finally really slept.

It still wasn't quiet outside; we're talking about the Metroplex on a Friday night, and it has a deep, steady roar composed of hundreds of engines carrying people around the city. But it was quiet enough. And while we hadn't put down mattresses, I had thrown a sleeping bag under us and the tent was set up on a nice stretch of smooth grass. I'd been worried that I might not be able to sleep on a (relatively) hard surface like that, but while I'm definitely older than I used to be I'm not old enough for that to be a problem. No, the real issue with getting comfortable is that I'm almost exactly as tall as the tent is long, which makes it impossible to sleep with my head on one arm and my legs fully extended. (Secondborn, of course, does not share this problem.) So there was a lot of shifting around and rolling over, and having my limbs in strange but not really uncomfortable positions. All in all, though, it wasn't bad; I was aware of those things, but I still managed to be asleep.

Sometime the next morning when it was starting to get light, I heard the door to the kitchen open and close. Beautiful Wife and Firstborn had retreated into the house. It had turned chilly in the early morning, and Secondborn was cuddled against my back and rapidly taking over my pillow. (I really should have seen that coming and had an extra blanket ready, but oh well.) We slept a little longer, and when it was bright enough that I couldn't sleep anymore I nudged Secondborn awake and we went inside to join them.

I went to the back room and slept a little bit longer on the bed. (Not all that much longer, really; I'd actually slept pretty well in the tent.) Secondborn, meanwhile, immediately dropped into his mother leftover (and still very hot) bath water to warm up.

Secondborn was thrilled, y'all. Not only had we Had An Adventure, but it was an adventure that he'd come up with and largely directed. Bonus points for the fact that it didn't start to rain until mid-morning, after we'd had a chance to haul in everything that had been in the tents. Double bonus points for the Beautiful Wife making scrambled eggs for the boys and bacon-sirloin and cheddar omelettes for us.

But the weekend wasn't over yet...

I forgot the spider!

So, the cabin had its very own watch-spider to stand guard while we slept. It had set up just to one side of the door.

Also, there's a new episode over at Surreal Situations.

Camping

We took the boys on their first real camping trip this past weekend. Camping as a parent is pretty much what I expected:
1. The adults did all the work while the kids just ran around unsupervised.
2. The boys claimed that they were going to sleep out in the tents with their friends, but wound up in the cabin with us.
3. As a result, I wound up sleeping on the air mattress that was slowly deflating, so by morning it was pretty much just a tarp.
4. Fire is endlessly fascinating.
5. Rocks are much more interesting than you'd think.
6. Nature has spiders.

Wanna see the pictures?

Courtship and Marriage

This is... not even remotely how the Beautiful Woman and I went about doing things. And yet, I giggled.

Don't read the map, read the terrain

Okay, one final parable to finish off the week's discussion of Things You Shouldn't Say To Unbelievers:

I was... I don't know, fourteen or fifteen when I finally decided that I'd had enough of the Boy Scouts. There were a lot of things that contributed to the decision, but there was one particular incident that served as the tipping point.

It was a camping trip. I don't remember (if I ever knew) the location, but it was a reasonably woodsy area. The landscape was not so much hilly as it was a series of ridges and valleys. A couple of the adults had hiked in a week or two earlier and found a good place to camp, which they had helpfully marked on the topographic map. A week later, our scout troop hiked in for a weekend campout.

Thus it was that my best friend and I found ourselves standing on the top of a ridge, holding the topographic map, while our Scoutmaster stared perplexed at his compass. Being thus engaged, we glanced at the map, studied the landscape, and looked at the map again. So, given the shape of the hill and the presence of that creek over there, we must be standing on this ridge, right about here where it turns. That would mean that the campsite is...

"It's over there," I said, gesturing off to the right.

"Can't be," said the Scoutmaster, barely looking up from his compass.

"Look," I showed him the map. "If we're here, then the campsite is there." I pointed about eighty degrees to the right of the direction he was facing.

"No, no, it's this way," he insisted. Then he boldly led us forward, and completely failed to find the campsite. Needless to say, I was not especially surprised by this. We made camp anyway.

Much later, he came striding back and loudly announced that he'd found the spot where we were originally supposed to camp. He conspicuously failed to mention that he'd found it exactly where my friend and I had said it would be. I was, of course, not the least bit irritated by this. Who would be? Nevertheless, I withdrew from the Boy Scouts soon after.

As you might expect, there's a moral to this story. If you want to keep people in your organization, try not to be an utter prat. Well, okay, that wasn't really what I had in mind, since it was the conversation with the Misguided Christian over on Ken Pulliam's old blog that reminded me of this incident. So maybe there are two morals. Anyway, here's my point:

Your compass may be in perfect working order, and your map may be correct in every conceivable detail, but if you're not looking at the terrain you're still going to get lost.

Also, while you're at it, try not to be an utter prat.