A brief recap of Day one after arrival is in order here.
I relogged, several times. Mari finally TP'ed me to our cabin, and when the white HUD finally cleared away, I stood in shock. Because my bunk.. was right above Mari's! nextdoor neighbors at home, AND at camp!
The things that happened next are, unfortunately a bit of a blur. There was a gathering of everyone together for a welcome assembly, there was some free time spent running around the camp. I spent a lot of time trying to orient myself versus the HUD map. The fact that Up isn't north, and that the compass rose printed on the map is also wrong, made it very hard to get a sense of how things fit together.
I set up my towels at the camp store, and then snagged a cabin pillow from Mari's vendors, and a set of flipflops which I keep forgetting to dig out.
Cabin wars came and went. It was a stressful event where we had to walk a twisty balance beam across a pool of water, to go 'paint' our cabin logo on a wall. It was frustrating because everyone who wanted to go next, and people who weren't going at all, were all standing around "wherever".. it was one of those times when I'm glad we kids don't USE voice.. because I was very impatient at times.
Mostly what I remember is a lot of crashing and relogging, and rebooting.
We explored some of the caves that night, by flashlight. The visuals with shadows enabled and projected light from the flashlights was nothing short of amazing. I want to try and take a video of the effect.
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Day 2 is much clearer in my mind. I woke up in time to miss breakfast.
Morning brought cabin wars again, this time a sort of interpretation of "Twister".. with elements of "the floor is lava". Unfortunately lag and physics rarely go well together, and in all the bumping and overcorrecting that everyone was doing, I got pushed off one of the pillars. Apparrently we were allowed to get back up when that happened, but by the time I was made aware of it, the game had moved on without me.
The event left me in a bit of a dour mood, and I sat out the rest of the game.
Luckily, cabin wars ended just in time to make it to the yoga class. The classes this time are run by Miss Bella. She's certainly capable of guiding yoga.. but I still miss Miss Honey's yoga. The yoga class did a bit to resole away some of the poor mood I had, and when yoga was over, Mari was online and I decided to hunt the goose.
I'm going to try and explain the rules of "hunt the goose" here. This is a game I made up while looking for Mari one time, and being too shy to ask "hey, where are you at?" Instead, I made a game out of it, and it turned out to be a pretty fun way of looking for someone at camp.
This game is essentially hide and seek, or "hot and cold" using the SL Viewer's "People nearby" window. To play hunt the goose, you simply watch the list of people as you walk, fly, or drive around. when you're getting warmer, the name of the person you're hunting (the Goose) will move higher in the list. If you're getting colder their name will move down. You're allowed to look at the distance marker next to their name, and you can LOOK at the minimap.
However, you CAN'T hover your mouse over the dots on the map to see who is who, and you're also not allowed to select a name in the list to highlight their location on the map. The hunt ends when you can see the person you're looking for.. after which I usually run up and say "Goose!"
I found her.
Mari and I sat there on the docks for a long while, fishing and chatting about everything, and nothing.
We spent hours on the dock there, and others came and went while we talked. The conversation drifted several times, and we missed more than a few events. There was one or two I'd wanted to attend, but this 'beautiful zero' event had become much more important to me.
It was a perfect afternoon.
Eventually, it broke up, and Mari went off to her own things, and I went to mine. Eventually she called me up for a group photo of the other big kids from last camp's photo who had returned to this camp.
Afterwards, there was some time spent hanging out at the cabin, some time at a "U-Know" tournament (an SL implementation of a card game similar to "UNO"), and the ghost stories.
I'm an artist, and a frustrated musican. As a child, I never found an instrument I really connected with that my parents endorsed my taking up. So while many kids my age were learning instruments they wanted to play, I was often put on instruments I had little interest in (Hammond Organ, really?) I always wanted to play the flute or violin. I've talked a lot about wanting a playable flute or violin in SL, but when Mari showed up to camp with a playable Ukulele, I was hooked.
Made worse by the fact that her Uke has a very sweet sound, and has short catchy tunes built in.. and she kept going on and on about how awesome it was in 'duet mode'.. well..
I had my friend Ed go get one for me, since I couldn't leave camp. I'm glad I did.
What follows is hard to describe. The "Ghost stories" event ended, and somehow, Mari and I ended up on the beach by the dock. I pulled out my new Ukulele, and she showed me how the duet mode worked. We sat playing for a little while, and then two of the adults showed up, with Ukuleles of their own!
And the four of us sat on the dock as the sun set, playing.
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