Princess Campout in san Diego

Low turnout for our tribe, but a pretty fun campout anyway. Daleen kinda liked the less-large crowd, which made it more friendly.

First thing Saturday, every year, is the Sand Sculpture Contest. This year, in homage/sympathy to the "theme", we/I built a penguin. He actually came out cuter than the drawings -- usually it's the other way around. I had less time than usual, so it's not as finessed as usual, but I was sufficiently sunburned already, so maybe it's for the best.

At Saturday night's campfire, the Hosting Tribe had decided to try something different, so instead of skits, each tribe had to come up with a video, which were projected in alphabetical order. Most of the other videos were invented mini-movies starring the girls and/or dads, and were pretty cute, if usually overlong to make their point. They each had a flavor of "Ain't our daughters the cutest!", which, frankly, falls in the same category as watching somebody else's vacation slides.

Our "Penguins on a Bus" video (see the "San Mateo Campout with Acacia" blog entry 6 previous to this one), on the other hand, involved the girls only as puppeteers, never showing their faces or names. I came up with that specifically to avoid the "other peoples' kids" syndrome, but I was the only one. I think it was more entertaining this way, but I feel a little bad about it, in retrospect. I could, at least, have put their names in a credits sequence (but what about the girls that couldn't be there?).

Anyway, it was well received, and immediately followed by my "Waltzing With Bears" cartoon. That went over even better, I think. I was watching the audience from up front, since I've seen the cartoon before (several million times by now), and they seemed to be enjoying it. Most of them were singing softly along for the choruses, and laughed out loud in a few places -- especially the scene where the bears "drag him away". I happen to know the guy who runs the Friendly Spirit Nation website pretty well (me), so it's posted up there for future generations to discover.

Sunday morning was the annual hand-off ceremony, ringing out the old chiefs and in the new. Of course, I'm Website and Music Guy for life, but they throw me a plaque every year in appreciation. Rodney said some really nice things about me, and several guys actually stood up during my acknowledgement round of applause. They managed to talk me into One More Year (which is feasible because of Acacia's pretty-good attitude about it), so "I'll be back." But the year after, I think they're gonna miss me.