San Diego Campout

Big weekend down at Campland in San Diego with the Indian Princesses. It's our annual Family Campout, so all the wives and siblings were there as well, and we have the annual sand sculpture "contest", for which, for the 7th year running, I'm responsible for design work, and, usually, 90% of the construction work also. This year, though, I had lots of help from the other dads and even the girls. I got them started building me some bumps that I could carve into the pieces I needed, and they went to work! And even closer to the end, when it's usually all me trying to carve the details, I had several dads that could do good work with just some instructions. It came out pretty good, though I think the face came out more gargoyle than sea-serpent. I knew I needed more time to prepare -- if I'd'a done a mock-up in Play-Doh beforehand, I'm sure I could have done a better face. I need that 3D vision in my head. Next year.
I also brought 40 copies of my newly-recorded Kids' CD, and "gave" them away. I suggested that people could throw a couple of bucks at me for supplies, but then the Nation Chief layered on a bit more guilt than I was comfortable with, and increased my "take" considerably no doubt. I didn't know if 40 would be too many or too few (there were about 80 families there), but it turned out to be just right -- I "sold" 'em all, and didn't have anyone asking for one after they were all gone. I'll have to burn some more before the next Borders gig -- I think they'll be popular when kids come in. (Acacia loves to help -- pushing buttons, feeding the drive, peeling the stickers, sticking them on with the little machine, putting them in the cases -- she thinks it's an Arts and Crafts project.) They needed some "stall time" during the Saturday night Campfire, so I got to play several songs. Unfortunately, the way the light was set up, I could (mostly) read the words, but the shadows of the binder's rings were covering big chunks of the chords. I've never played that badly, but I just kept the vocal coming as I played random chords hoping to eventually hit the path again. I was awful, but nobody complained -- they either didn't notice, or were too polite. Let's hope it was the former.

I played a lot better in the big tent on Sunday morning, with my ever-popular "I'm an Indian Princess" song. Maybe it helped blur the memory of the fiasco the night before. I looked up and it looked to me like everyone was singing along...