The first preamble into America out of the way, and Day 19's (Sunday's) lazy schedule the following weekdays should have been extremely difficult if karma had anything to say about it. Instead, the kids have got into the routine and those who've a bit more of a challenge have passed on the disease making life interesting. I still haven't seen the last half of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1', and with the third trip for those with Saturday off being going to the cinema to see Part 2 that could be a problem... if I weren't taking the day completely off to sort out my travel plans.
Tonight (Day 24) was the third movie night, and since last week's movie night was missed because of the phone call mix-up the movie of choice was Tim Burton's 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'... missing the first half – me sharing the evening off with Tekno - was disorienting enough but Johnny Depp and Tim Burton are a loony pair as it is. Roald Dahl was rather eccentric, brilliantly so of course, and some of his darker stuff is as creepy as spider soup… thinking about it C&CF is fairly dark: a lone loon touring terminal teens and tots through an eclectic physics-defying TARDISian expanse. What it means I don’t want to know, but I had the thought while watching that it would have been so much better to have gone for an 18 movie and really let the weirdness out… as Virus-man said, what would have happened if Verruca had been a bad nut?
As a group of 10, the ‘Saturday off’ers and I went into Philadelphia on Friday night. Four and a half hours later we got into Philly and checked into a sweet executive suite at the Hilton… 2 people checked in, 10 people walked in. 10 people walked out the next day, but there was quite a risk of a fatality from the balcony – as Sully told me when I arrived, it takes a full ten seconds for a drop of beer to reach the ground from the 24th floor. Photos of the evening cannot be included naturally, we had too much fun for this temperate forum. I went to bed at about 4 o’clock.
Tonight (Day 24) was the third movie night, and since last week's movie night was missed because of the phone call mix-up the movie of choice was Tim Burton's 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'... missing the first half – me sharing the evening off with Tekno - was disorienting enough but Johnny Depp and Tim Burton are a loony pair as it is. Roald Dahl was rather eccentric, brilliantly so of course, and some of his darker stuff is as creepy as spider soup… thinking about it C&CF is fairly dark: a lone loon touring terminal teens and tots through an eclectic physics-defying TARDISian expanse. What it means I don’t want to know, but I had the thought while watching that it would have been so much better to have gone for an 18 movie and really let the weirdness out… as Virus-man said, what would have happened if Verruca had been a bad nut?
Today is also the first day of the trip to Lake George. I was so hoping that I'd be on it even though it wouldn't be a holiday, because even though camp is fantastic a lot of the time it can be a bit much without a break. Only one of my kids is on the 3-day trip to Lake George, the rest going to Dorney Park & Wild Water Kingdom on Thursday. With only two kids to look after on Thursday, both of which enjoying roller-coasters, it should be an acceptable consolation.
I’ve had to read my own blog to work out the chronology, but here goes. After a week last Saturday’s karaoke came a wet Sunday, a disaster for kids and counsellors alike because a) none of the sports or swimming can go ahead and (more horrifying) b) there is a 50:50 chance that we are the victim of bingo….. It will forever elude me why sliding a translucent red marker over a number on a card corresponding to that on a small ball that rumbles from a cooky cage and called by a very eager Steve; the numbers aren’t even up to us, they’re random, on a kid-friendly cardboard grid. No direct dislike for those that like bingo, but it is random, anyone can win, the kids have more fun at karaoke and the only fun the counsellors have is the diverting challenge of ‘How many bingo cards can I do at once?’. </rant>
Last Thursday was Crazy Hair Day, and at breakfast me and my kids greeted the rest of camp with one attempt at Sonic the Hedgehog (in reality closer to a cross between Fat Sam’s slick-back and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s stick-up), a passable McCauley Culkin and my Mohican… due credit to the girls in camp for outshining the boys, with a million mis-directed pony-tails, but it’s hard to do anything with skull-short hair without dye (complete respect however to Sk8er for being a girl, having long hair and using glow-in-the-dark green dye).
Other significant events of last week were Camp Sing on Sunday evening, for which cabin 1D did ‘We Will Rock You’ and the highlight – I couldn’t possibly vote for my own cabin – was Cabin 5’s ‘Bananas of the World Unite!’. Of course, the talk of camp of Sunday was the day off prior…
As a group of 10, the ‘Saturday off’ers and I went into Philadelphia on Friday night. Four and a half hours later we got into Philly and checked into a sweet executive suite at the Hilton… 2 people checked in, 10 people walked in. 10 people walked out the next day, but there was quite a risk of a fatality from the balcony – as Sully told me when I arrived, it takes a full ten seconds for a drop of beer to reach the ground from the 24th floor. Photos of the evening cannot be included naturally, we had too much fun for this temperate forum. I went to bed at about 4 o’clock.
A day off in Philadelphia was lovely. A Subway breakfast and a steak sandwich dinner bordered an afternoon of wandering through Reading Terminal Market, a couple of fountains (for one of our company, quite literally) and thence on to the Museum of Art. While wandering the gallery is on my to-do list, doing the Rocky steps was higher up for the group… G-bear beat me up to the top. A wedding group was also on the steps; I don’t want to know how hot the guys were in black, in weather that was throwing the rest of us to the shade.
Before the Rocky Steps we saw the Liberty Bell and had ‘rest hour’ in one of the gardens nearby. The queue for the bell (I know I should say ‘line’, but dammit I’m British!) was too long so I got a shot of it through the window… an interesting factoid: the bell is British-made, an interesting irony despite it cracking repeatedly over a century or two.
One draw-back of going to Philly was getting back too late for Counsellors Entertainment. Don’t worry Barry, we’ll do our duet soon. Oh, and a second drawback was the deliciously toxic steak sandwich, ‘wit’ onions & provolone… greasy would be a deadly understatement. There was enough vein-clogging fat to drench the bread, the paper the baguette was wrapped in and my leg when it dripped through the metal-lattice table. Incidently, there’s a lot of competition for the death-diet steak sandwich near Pat’s King of Steaks but Pat has it covered, the steakhouse across the road had solid-top tables and the thought of eating in a pool of grease is even less appealing. My poor heart with have to deal with a few guilty indulgences before I get home.
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