LIVESTREAM UPDATE:

Okie dokie, I’m all back from the summer camp work weekend (more on that in a bit), so here’s the livestream schedule:

The last two livestreams before I’m officially gone for the summer (the comic will still update, though!) will be the next two Fridays (June 14th and 21st), both starting at 10pm est!

END LIVESTREAM UPDATE!

May it never be said that I passed on any opportunity to rub “it” in Dan’s face.

For the fifth year in a row, a small group of counselors (led by fearless leader Dan) made the trek up to camp a few weeks early to get some preliminary work squared away.

The major job this time?  Why, replacing cafeteria ceiling tiles, of course!  As exciting as that may sound, the job was pretty gross; every time a tile was removed, roughly half a pound of dust and rat poop rained down on us.  We piled up all the old tiles, tossed them (neatly) in a dumpster, and had replacements up the next day.

Extra odds and ends included a bunch of new computers for the office/computer room that had to be set up, which was a welcome change considering we had been using the same computers since 2004.

But that’s just work nonsense, let’s talk about the fun stuff.

On Friday we went out to a local restaurant/bar for dinner, and wouldn’t you know it, it was karaoke night!  Those of you who’ve heard me warble Disney tunes during livestreams will be glad to know that I did not sing that night… but Dan did.

Coaxed onstage by our friend Elisa, they attempted to tackle “Unfaithful” by Rihanna.  Unfortunately for Dan his co-singer’s mic was pretty quiet; the whole bar was treated to nothing but his voice, which more often than not was off key.  For those of you unfamiliar with the song, the chorus goes like this:

“I don’t wanna do this anymore,  I don’t wanna be the reason why.  Every time I walk out the door, I see him die a little more inside.  I don’t wanna hurt him anymore.  I don’t wanna take away his life.  I don’t wanna be a murderer.”

Well, when chorus came around for the second time, rather than singing, Dan spoke loudly into the mic, “I don’t wanna do this anymore,” and attempted to leave.  The song was eventually cut short, and it took a stellar performance of “Tearing up my Heart” by another group of counselors to make everyone else forget what happened…

…or so we thought.  “No one can unknow what just happened,” quipped Dan.

A slightly different but equally fun story from yesterday:

With all the planned work completed and all our stuff packed up and ready to go, we had a bit of time to kill before heading home.  A small group of us decided to hike to “the cliff,” a super elevated location in camp discovered last year from which you can see for miles.  There’s also a sixty foot drop, so that adds to the fun.

Anyway, once we got there we took some pictures and marveled at how great the view was.  Just around the time when we were getting the itch to return to the cabins, a hawk flew out in the distance.

We all stared, spouting off random cries of “did you see that?!”  “oh my god!” and so on.   Within a minute two more hawks joined the scene and were flying much closer to us, really allowing us to see how amazingly beautiful they were.

Then two more arrived.

Then another.

Framed through the trees, we had an astonishing view of six hawks tearing up the skies…

…and then shadows started passing over us.

Now we were a little freaked out.  The hawks were getting closer and closer with every passing second, and were now flying directly overhead.  I’ll be the first to admit that I know next to nothing about birds, so I say this with little scientific confidence, but those birds were totally teaming up to kill us.

Tails between our legs, we fled the scene and retreated into the relative safety of the woods.

Whether or not those hawks were actually territorial I may never know, but it was totally worth the scare to see them up close.

One final note: while driving back on the Palisades Parkway, my friend Arno and I saw a pedestrian bridge up ahead.  On it, a number of girls were waving their arms around and generally being nutty.

Just before we passed the bridge, one of them flashed the entire highway.

What a strange weekend.