Kevin and I just returned from our church's Family Camp. It was a lovely weekend held at Camp Oski, a camp owned by the Berkeley Alumni Association. There were platform tents, but we stayed in the "hotel"--a lodge like building with bedrooms much like, well, a motel sans private bathroom. Everyone at church still thinks my health is much more fragile than it is, so we got assigned to the hotel along with the senior citizens including the woman whose 92nd birthday we celebrated at camp. Talk about an amazing woman--she still camps, walks around, is as sharp as a tack, and sings in the choir. But anyway...
Our camp days were lazy and relaxing. The main camp activity is fishing at a nearby lake, but since I don't like to fish and Kevin's not totally crazy about it either we skipped it. We also skipped the horseback riding as I pretty much wore out my horseback riding desires at Girl Scout camp (1991-1995). We did some arts and crafts and of course made lanyards. But I had a lanyard failure! I tried to start someone's lanyard and failed twice! After that I was able to start with ease, but it looks like I'm finally losing some of those hard-earned Girl Scout skills (she said sarcastically). And it only took 8 years for that to happen.
Each night we had a campfire (yes, I led some GS songs, of course) followed by marshmallow roasting and S'mores, and then games in the dining hall. The first night I played Scrabble, and was quickly reminded of why I hate Scrabble. It's boring! Someone plays a word, and then you wait and wait and wait and wait for the next person to think, and then they put down something like "Hi" and get their 3 points or whatever, and then the waiting, etc. And then there's the hard-core players, like the guy in my group, who came with his own copy of the Scrabble dictionary and proved that "Ay" is a word (interestingly, Kevin learned on his second game of Scrabble that "Bi" as a short version of "Bisexual" is an acceptable Scrabble word--who knew? The Scrabble Dictionary, that's who.). I came in second, beating Kevin and a 16 year old but losing to the hard-core player by over a hundred points. My big move of the night was adding an S to COMB and racking up 33 points on a triple word score square.
The next night I played an appalling game of Euchre, but I'll talk about that in another post for the Euchre fanatics so you won't all have to read about it.
We spent most of the days napping and reading and taking in the beauty of our surroundings. Camp Oski is located in the Sierras near Yosemite and is really very nice. It's tiny compared to Camp Scherman (my old GS haunt), but then again, every camp is tiny compared to Camp Scherman. The weather was beautiful--sunny but not too hot. And I only got 3 bug bites. That's a record low for me. Bugs love me.
At the last night's campfire, it was skit night. I abhor skit night. It almost always involves the same 4 skits recycled over and over again and none of them are funny. We were surprised by one skit which we'd never seen before. And then the same skit was performed by a second group of people. The second group was better and it was kind of funny. Still, skit night was agonizingly long.
So that pretty much covers our weekend at Family Camp!
Posted by Shelby at September 1, 2003 07:40 PMOn my last Scrabble game, I was about to break into the ranks of the hardcore players with what would have been the play of the game -- 'PENNY', situated so that the Y landed on the triple letter score and the entire word qualified for a double word score. Of course, I overlooked the fact that a lamer had her turn between the conception and the planned execution of my brilliant next move. Naturally, she played 'PIE' or 'PEA' or somesuch ("Sigh . . . looks like this is the best that I can do . . ." -- not so; looking over her shoulder, I'd found two or three better moves), taking the squares that were rightfully meant for *me*!
Far more than any Euchre hand, this was the true travesty of Game Night.
Posted by: Kevin at September 2, 2003 05:59 PM