All summer I’ve had a few random hours off on Saturday, running into Sunday afternoon and then a sporadic weekday off, and I’ve tried to become the master at making sure that I have a productive time. Theres only a certain amount of sitting around home doing nothing (what used to be my favorite activity) that you can stand when you still live in a large 5^th wheel trailer. I’ve found myself coming up with lists of small tasks to accomplish on my day of rest every week. Maybe we need some frozen shrimp from Costco in Tumwater (50 min drive from home), or it could be something from Home Depot in Lacey (45 minutes away), and even when I didn’t have errands to run I was quick to hop in the truck on behalf of work to pickup some craft supplies, or that print job that I sent to Office Depot the day before. It was hard for me to “just be” when at home….not only do I live at work (literally, not just figuratively) but the space that we do call our own, is small. I’m ready for our vacation…. A few consuctive days off to relax sound really nice right now. I need to de-stress.

I attempted to just “chill” all day today. I did some sleeping in, talked to a good friend on the phone for an hour or so, watched some tv….and then it happened, the feeling of “if this day is going to be any good, you’ve got to get out of here!”. I drove to Lacey and had lunch with Lydia, and did some websurfing/vegging out at a nearby starbucks. The only thing that could have made it better would have been remembering to bringing my golf clubs with me and getting to the driving range…maybe next week.

The Bluetooth on my Motorola V710 stopped working a while ago, I took the phone into Verizon and they said that even though I’m paying for an extended warranty that because a little red sticker detected moisture had gotten on my phone they couldn’t do anything to help me, besides recommending I pay full price for a new phone. Isaac & Justin had taught me a cool way to turn my Bluetooth phone into a wireless cell modem on my laptop…..but it doesn’t work anymore. When I told the Verizon employee that I hadn’t ever dunked my phone in a bucket of water or anything of that nature, he told me that maybe someone squirted me with a hose while I was on my phone, and I just don’t remember…

Its been over two years since northslope got a makeover, and I figured it was time to try something new. The blog is also up and going again, over there you can find out what we’ve been up to during the last few months. Stay tuned for a launch of the northslope podcast, Lydia & I have already recorded a test show and have talked about doing another… We need a good name, I don’t think “The Edge” will work anymore…any ideas?

Well, here we are.  I’ve had a few weeks or even months of absence from blogging, but nothing this long before.  Where to start?  First off, I’m not dead…..just busy.  Camp this summer has been amazing and even though things are winding down on the program side of things, I’m remaining just as busy with Marketing/External Relations items that were put on the back burner while we had 250 campers to tend to.  I don’t know who (if anyone) reads this thing anymore, so I don’t know who my audience is….I’ll try and cover as much as possible without going on and on.  Recruiting season finished up in March and that’s when  I started with the Iditablog thing, I started a second website and mirrored all the posts on here as well.  I played around with a little bit of Google’s search engine marketing in order to get readers to my new site, it was a big hit and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Springtime brought lots of hiring and interviews at work and led up to a handful of fully programmed spring weekends.  At the beginning of June summer staff started arriving and just a few weeks later it went from 7 of us year round staffers, to over 75 people living here.  For over 5 weeks in the summertime we run 4 camps at the same time, 2 of them have capacity of over 90 kids and the third/fourth ones have room for almost 40.    I enjoyed jumping around from camp to camp all summer and helping make sure things were running smoothly.  We’ve also hosted a few family camps since memorial day, the largest of them having almost over 500 in attendance.  We built a new building at camp, our first large indoor meeting space which has been named the Rainier Center, it’s construction was finished last week and the dedication will be on Labor day.

Enough about work, whats been going on in our life?  We’re enjoying life living at camp amongst all this craziness…  Lydia has gotten a few opportunities to spend time with staff  outside of her work, everyone enjoys her company.  Lydia is still working for the local agency on aging, helping family members who are taking care of aging loved ones connect with local services.  She is enrolled at St. Martins University in the fall, and will begin working on her master of counseling program.  We’ve been enjoying our puppy brando, who as I type this outside on our patio is currently busy destroying a bucket the we had given him as a water bowl.  He is almost 7 months old, and looks like he might be a smaller dog than we expected. For me, life has been work this summer, but I’ve enjoyed golfing on my days off when I get the chance, and watching terrible summer tv.  We’re planning a two-week trip to Greece in October, and talk about our vacation every day (we’re very excited).

I hope to re-invent this blog, I’ve always struggled with its purpose since we got back from Nome as talking about daily life isn’t as compelling to do or interesting to read (I’m guessing) when you are in a routine.  I enjoyed the Photoblog Friday, and the devoblog….but the last thing I needed is a hobby that has another deadline.  I’m going to try going in a different direction for the next few months using this as a outlet and forum to talk about random things that are on my mind whether it be what I happen to be up to, or technology, news, the church, or life in a trailer.  In the same respect Lydia and I have been talking about working on an occasional podcast (I’ve been talking at Lydia about helping me with said podcast) and I think we might try a few test shows in the week to come.  Its been almost a year since we gave up the microphone and I’ve never quite adjusted…. It could be a total flop, or it could be something really fun and entertaining.  Regardless, I’ve enjoyed setting up a makeshift studio in our shed….its awesome.  I’m sure most people have completely given up on this website…..but keep your eye on it, It will be moving again here soon I’m sure.