Summer Camp Chic

Friends, I have not posted in many a moon. My apologies. I have broken my hiatus to tell you of my summer time obsessions, all of which revolve around the basics of summer camp. I was a camp fanatic, attending the lovely CYO Camp Howard from age 8 to 14. Every summer since my last camp experience I have missed being in the woods with a bunch of friends playing capture the flag and drinking bug juice all day, and therefore I try to bring the essentials of camp into regular summertime living:

1. Shower less. This is essential. You must have achieve the perfect scent of sunscreen, chlorine/lake water, and Clinique Happy as much as your day job will allow. And you'll be amazed at what you can get done in the ten extra minutes in your day if you eliminate showering (I'm not advertising to shower only once a week, but like, get it down to 3 or 4 times).
2. Engage in water activities. Wear out a swim suit. Plus, if you're following rule#1, it's really necessary to be in the water more, ya know? If you're in a chlorinated pool, rinsing off is permissable and not considered part of your 3-4 showers/week.
3. Devote yourself to perfecting an art/craft. My art/craft of choice is the ever-popular friendship bracelet. I'm an excellent braider. Potlatches, boondoggles, crayon-wax candles, dream catchers, and stamped leather keychains are other excellent options.
4. Share a book among friends. I mean this quite literally: buy a popular book-of-the-moment and share the single copy among a few friends. Make sure it gets kinda ragged and dodgy by the end of summer. Bonus points for sun-faded jacket covers and water marks.
5. Make new friends (but keep the old...silver, gold, etc.)
6. Go to karaoke; this fulfills the singing around a campfire requirement of camp
7. Practice an outdoor physical activity at least once a day; running, adult league kickball, biking, soccer, swimming (my preference, see point #2). You'll get a sexy lean bod and a deep tan!
8. Do your nails once a week. Weird colors only. What other season can you get away with neon orange? None! So take advantage!
9. Have sleepovers with friends. Non-negotiable. You need to have so many sleepovers that you get sick of your friends but then when you part ways the next day feel a sucking black hole of loss. Or, you know, something less middle-school intense.
10. Try to turn off the tv, shut down the computer, and put the iphone on silent. Technology was contraband at camp for two reasons: it's expensive and if you break it your parents will be pissed and might sue, and it interferes with friend-bonding and nature-loving. It does!
11. Take lots of pictures. These memories are precious, campers!
12. Do something scandalous. At camp it was sneaking from the girls' section to the boys' section or stealing extra desserts and eating them after lights out. Translate these activities to adult terms.
13. Become adventerous. This is akin to the above suggestion. At camp you'd run around in the woods during capture the flag, or go on an all day hike, or ask that special someone to dance at the End of Summer Social. Go out of your comfort zone!
14. Have a campfire. Except this time you can be drunk and can roast as many marshmallows as you want!
15. Go on an overnight! Go camping for one night and sleep outside. You can do this in your backyard if you are lazy and/or broke. It's preferrable if you can go to like, a state park campsite and pay 30 bucks to set up a tent and drink your PBRs amongst the trees.

These are my suggestions for a successful session of adult summer camp! Just guidelines, feel free to adapt to your own needs

Atonement

I have been a horrible blogger as of late, and for this I must repent.

Here's what has been keeping me from teh internetz:

MDawg visiting PDX

Lake Cabin weekend

Vampire Weekend concert

Buying Silly Bandz

Hot tubbing with Maddie

Weekly How I Met Your Mother nights at Emily's

Walking dogs with Katie

Planning a trip to DC/NYC with Lauren

Cousin's [dry] wedding

Trips to Seattle (zoo! booze! pizza!)

Reading the Italian translation of Harry Potter 2

Enrico and Rachel visiting PDX

Working, working, working

Interning, interning, interning

Figuring out WTF I'm doing with my life

The last point is an ongoing project. I feel like now that I'm not in school, I have to start some type of project in September to mark the passage of time in some form other than "long weekend", "end of fiscal year", "birthday"; this year my projects are "apply to international grants", "make yourself impressive" and "work a lot". Too bad you don't get As for projects you assign to yourself. I would kind of like a Life Report Card to know if I'm failing any subjects these days.

Night Drives

In case you were wondering, driving down a street parallel with your cousin, both of you going 30mph with the windows down and blasting the same radio station, is the perfect summer night.

Drizzle

I went to the beach house this week and played with my Hipstamatic app a lot. It was so gray and rainy all weekend that the manipulations the app makes aren't that exaggerated.

Crossing the Astoria Bridge

Beard's Hollow

View from friend's deck

Summa Summa Summa tiiiiime

It's summer time, guys. The weather is finally nice, and I have been taking full advantage! Here's stuff I've been up to in the last few weeks:

Saw The Lion King with dad's side of the family. It was AMAZING! Mind was blown. Puppets!

Meow meow meow!

My cousins moved home from Brooklyn and Corvallis, and we've been cavorting around town together. We took my single aunts to dinner at Montage the other night and were rewarded with scandalous stories about our mothers' youths. And by scandalous, I mean pretty tame. But funny.

Dessert night with Em and Kels! Two words: brownie boat. Ok, three: yum.

Toy Story 3 with K, who brought along a bunch of girls from our high school class who she re-met at Yoga. It was weird, but fun. New old friends! I heard lots of gossip. We're doing happy hour next week. Ps. the movie is awesome. Maybe I cried a little.

WORLD CUP! My boss is foreign-born, and therefore legit knowledgeable of and way into soccer, so I get to watch early morning games with him in his back office. He tells me little stories about all the players and doesn't make fun of my interest in teams based upon their uniform colors. Win-win!

Picnic in Laurelhurst park with Kels and Em! There was LARP-ing. What is LARP-ing, you ask? Live-Action Role Playing. Except it wasn't medieval knights; it was a Jane Austen society. We quietly mocked them while secretly feeling jealous of their feathered hats. We also got to work on our tans; and by tans, I mean burns that will fade into some mildly golden, mostly freckled skin.

In the midst of all this fun stuff, there's also been work and internship, both of which are fun, but I won't bore you with deets.

I'm heading to the beach for 4th of July with my extended family, so I'm detoxing this week to prepare for the amazingness of a beach holiday with relatives. Drinks galore!

SUMMER!

Oregon Trail

After many miles of metaphorical diphtheria, coxing the wagon, and shooting birds, my little pioneers are close to returning to the promised land: Oregon. They had to throw out several boxes of bullets and foodstuffs between Missouri and here, but they've survived! Lots of family and friends are coming home for summer/forever, and I'm stoked! I'm especially excited for my cousins E and C to be here--adventures here we come! They are very silly and enjoy boardgames and the Gidget series as much as me, so it should be a good summer. C is back after 5 years in Brooklyn, and E is here for the summer between graduating and starting a teaching job on an army base in Brussels. Or Bruxelles. Whichever you prefer.

Pretty much the entire East Coast is making the migration out west this summer: L & MDawg from NYC, two friends from DC, one from Connecticut, one from Louisiana, and one from Georgia (not Paula Deene. Dream!). I can't wait to have you all back in the land of plenty, taking manifest destiny by the reigns, tending your tracts of land. Jettison your extra clothes if the oxen are slowing down, but for god's sake, don't take any rest days!

Wedding Skanks and Mullets

Yesterday Kelsey, Emily, Emily's roommate Mandy, and I spent the day at Laurelhurst park, where we engaged in some heavy people watching. Laurelhurst has a wonderful mix of normal families, young people like myself, and freak-a-leeks. Obvi the weird people are the best for people watching, but it's fun to watch families parade around in their smugness, too. One particular family had a ginger baby. It was terrifying. Which led us to wonder WTF gingers look like when they start to go grey. Do they just look like albinos? Do they retain their red eyebrows? Mind-boggling.

Other great observations from yesterday:

1. A skanky wedding!!!! A D-Bag was marrying a Trout Pout skabimbo (skank + bimbo, if you were wondering). He had frosted tips, she had orange skin. It was obviously a match made in heaven. The wedding colors were teal (like pool-blue teal) and brown. Did not work so well with the groom's platinum highlights. The wedding party were all shot-gunning Red Bulls while the groom and bride were getting pics taken. I can only aspire to this state of perfection.
2. A super hot step-dad/partner/boyfriend there with his lady-love and her daughter. His name was Asa. Kelsey thought he was Jewish, Emily thought he was Brazilian, and I just thought he was really good looking. We spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out their family situation and staring at him. Oh, Asa.
3. Lots of dogs in ridiculous outfits. WHY?
4. A lot of mullets. For whatever reason, mullets are still popular in pockets of Portland.
5. Have you ever noticed that sometimes it's hard to tell the height of an adult when s/he is next to a child? It's really hard to tell if they're super tall or just with a kid. Which is why we were contemplating the idea of a blog called "Tall or With Child?".
6. Weird old guy practicing tai chi across from us. He also had a mullet.
7. An Andrew Dean look-alike. I hope all of you SU readers can appreciate how amazing spotting this creature was for K, E, and I.

That was pretty much it for people watching in the park, although we did get in some more top-notch observations while drinking in the McMenamin's outdoor seating of their Hawthorne Blvd. branch, The Bagdad. We practically had to cut a beez for our prim-o seats, but it was so worth it, because Hawthorne was full of crazies last night, like a woman wearing tie-dye and acid washed jeans, and rocking a mullet. Oh, Oregon.

When Will this Madness End???

It's super gray and depressing here today in PDX. I've been browsing through my collection of photos from warmer climes as a remedy for Ihatewinteritis

seattle summer 08

San Diego March 07

San Diego March 08

San Diego, Sea World, March 08

Vatican City July 07

Cinque Terre July 07

Cinque Terre July 07

Viareggio June 07

I hate January