Fridays!

Fridays are great. And there's more to it than just being the end of the work week. A few examples:

- Bagel Fridays at Digitas. We get bagels and cream cheese every Friday morning at work! Plus there's pastries, cider, and cocoa for the holidays! That is great. (This might come across as boasting. It's not meant to be... but I am pretty excited about it.)

- Friday Morning Introductions at 35 Brookline. It started a few weeks back with "pump up" music to get all of us excited about going to work Friday mornings. Then it turned into full blown introductions. You know, the kind you'd find before a basketball game: "Standing 5' 7" and hailing all the way from sunny California, Aaron KAAAAAAYE!" (Yeah. I know. It's kind of weird.)

- Crashing Holiday Parties. Last week I went to Dan's company's holiday party, and it was a-maz-ing. It was like a Bar Mitzvah party and prom all rolled into one. Forget about crashing weddings like they did in this summer's movie, "Wedding Crashers." I think that crashing corporate holiday parties is the way to go.

Ahh, the weekends

I'm a little bit surprised by how little I get done at home now that I'm working. When I get home at 6:00 or 7:00, I don't feel like doing anything productive. And as a result, clothes and mail and unread emails pile up. This trend has been compounded by the fact that last weekend I was down in Connecticut. Saturday I went to watch Tufts win NESCACs and also participate in an open race featuring a bunch of alums. (Oh boy, not so pretty...) And Sunday I was visiting a Tufts friend, Emily Macy, who coaches at Conn College. The weekend was great. Dan and I used my new Zipcar membership to get down there, which was pretty awesome.

This weekend, I got the chance to catch up on all that stupid other stuff that I mentioned getting behind on. That's not really worthy of being in the blog I suppose, but today's adventure might be. Our house of five is down to just Dan and myself this weekend (Nate went home to NH, Peter and Brian are in NYC) so we decided there was only one logical thing for the two of us to do on Sunday... spend some time in the kitchen. We checked out Epicurious for some ideas, and came up with a marinade and a risotto dish that will hopefully last us for a few meals.

Ambitious? Probably. Tasty? We'll see.

Work

So I'm now a working stiff. I've begun work in Accounts Payable at Digitas. The details of the job are relevant, but I don't suppose they're interesting enough to write here. In short, I get a bunch of bills from different companies, and then I help my company write the checks. At least that's the basic idea.
There's been a lot of new stuff these first few days. There's the commute, which is really pretty easy; I walk two blocks to the T, get off in three stops, then walk three blocks. I work on the 19th floor of a new building right on the edge of Boston's financial district. I've got a shiny new cubicle, which you can see right here. There's been so much to absorb, but it's all been pretty cool. I think part of that is the novelty of all these new situations. Hopefully when the novelty wears off, I won't become entirely disenchanted with riding the T with all the other commuters and waiting for the slow elevators and all that other stuff.

Through the first week, I had a wide range of emotions when I came home from work in the evenings. The first two days (a general orientation on the first day and exposure to everything I'll be doing on the second) were pretty overwhelming. I was totally intimidated by everything I needed to learn. But by Thursday, thanks to feeling more comfortable with the work and getting to know my coworkers better, I felt a lot better about it all. So things are good.

I got a job

I'm working for a big company in a tall building downtown and keeping track of their money.


OK, that's not entirely fair, and I'm not trying to demean the position. (Lord knows I'm pretty excited about it.) But that's kind of what I'm doing.

It all started in mid-September when I talked with an alum who works at Digitas. Soon after, I heard from HR at Digitas and set up an interview. I remember the morning of the interview clearly. I woke up with James Taylor playing in my head. I don't know why. It was "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)." I checked, this is the full name of the song. Needless to say, that first interview went pretty well. I got invited back for a second one. Apparently that one went well too, because they made an offer a few days later.

So yeah, I got a job. And I'm sure I'll have more to say once I start work (Monday).

Warning: this is an "AOK Story"

In an effort to help save the world, I gave blood at Mass. General this morning. It was my first time donating and a pretty quick, easy experience. While I was sitting in the chair giving blood, I was thinking about all the shopping trips we do at our apartment. Specifically, I was thinking about how quickly we go through bananas. The last time we went to the store I bought 10 bananas for the house. Before the end of the second day, they were all gone. This is a lot of bananas. Which reminds me of this time I ate a lot of bananas back in high school.

Dianne had just come back from the store, and had bought five bananas. And I was pretty hungry, as I'd probably just come back from practice or something. So I had a banana. And since it was really good, and everyone knows that bananas are the greatest snack ever, partly because they come in their own disposable wrapper, I had a second banana. I ran off to my room, thinking, "man, I'm still pretty hungry..." So I came back to the kitchen and had a third banana.

At this point only two of the five original bananas remained. To be honest, the fourth banana was a blur. I don't really remember eating it, though I do remember throwing out the peel and thinking, "there's four banana peels in the garbage. That's pretty funny." My thoughts then turned to the fact that if I'd come this far, I might as well eat the fifth banana. So I did just that.

Dianne realized a while later that there were no bananas on the fruit stand and figured she'd forgotten them in the car when she unloaded the groceries, so she checked the trunk. When she returned I told her that I'd eaten all five. She didn't really believe me and just assumed that she'd forgotten them in her cart at the supermarket. Then she checked the garbage and saw five banana peels and realized what I'd done and laughed at me.



And that's the story. I'm sure you can't believe that I just wrote all this about eating bananas. I can't believe it either. But going back to when I was sitting at the blood center... I think the moral of the story, if there is one, is that bananas are a great thing. And that while my housemates may be prolific in their consumption, I am a bigger fan than they can possibly fathom.

Get busy

So here's where I'm at right now. I've been looking around for jobs a lot. This includes looking at job sites, as well as looking at company sites that aren't hiring, but that sound pretty cool from what their websites say (that sounds like a pretty unintelligent search, I know). Also, I've been emailing a handful of Tufts alumni I found online, and I've corresponded with a handful of them. But as I'm sure I've lamented before, I'm not really sure what I'm looking for. (Dangling participle?) This of course is a problem when one piece of advice I've received is to be tenacious.

** Yes, Aaron's easy-going ways aren't exactly helping him get a leg-up that might separate his application from those of the competition. **

But I'm convinced that I'll figure out sooner or later (yes we all hope sooner) what looks good. And while it might sound like I just don't care about ever finding something, that's not at all true. It's just that I'm not feeling horribly defeated by my lack of direction. At least not for the moment. It isn't all that exciting, but it's really not such a bad thing.

On a somewhat related note, my apologies to anyone who, along the way, might have suggested someone I get in touch with. I think that a couple people gave me names, and I remember not really paying attention to those names, and it probably came off as me ignoring the suggestion. At the time I think it had more to do with not being sure what to do with a bunch of names that didn't mean anything to me. Well now that I'm used to emailing complete strangers whose names don't mean anything, I'm more than happy to try again with those names you suggested. So if you're reading this, and you know what I'm talking about, hit me up with those names again. I'd love to network with them. Thanks.

Not much

So I've got a library card.

That's the latest (and really the only) news. I swear I'm not trying to sound excessively sullen (sigh).

Newness

So I'm going with a new layout for the blog to go along with the whole "new" theme I've got going on right now. I'm in Boston at the moment, moving into a new apartment, hopefully finding a job somewhere. It's pretty odd. I don't know how to describe the feeling. I think mostly I'm feeling a little bit "out of it" due to the red-eye flight last night and the lack of sleep. But it's also just weird to be back. It'll take a few days I think.

Trying to be profound

I feel like I should have something deep and meaningful to say about this summer, since it was (as this website has hopefully shown) a pretty cool summer. As I think I've shared before, my experiences as a camp counselor this summer were at once exciting, scary, enlightening, challenging, tedious, eye-opening, exhausting, and rewarding. I really feel that I learned some valuable lessons that were only possible in the camp environment. For example, I had the unique opportunity to work closely with with teens which really taught me a lot, though at times I wanted to pull my hair out. I got the chance to work as a team with with fellow counselors who offered me support and friendship, which I'm totally thankful for. Finally, (and I feel most importantly,) camp gave me a chance to have a lot of fun. I know that there's going to be "fun" out in the real world, but having a summer filled with an overload of activity every single day was definitely a good time. There's so much I could say about camp, but there's no good way to write it all down, so I'll leave it at that. This summer was a good time.

DONE.

So it's been a crazy week. And I should definitely mention my trip to Half Dome, but first, I just have to announce that IT'S ALL OVER. DONE. NO MORE. There's no next session, no next week, nothing.

But yeah, I got the chance to do Half Dome for the second time this summer with Dan, Peter, and Pete, friends from Tufts. It was a ton of fun, though pretty tiring. I think they enjoyed it too. And I'll leave it at that because I've got to go celebrate the end of camp with my counselor friends. (The owner's preparing steak and lobster for dinner....)

more insanity

So we had another Special Day on Saturday. And it was pretty nuts. In the morning we had Regatta Day, which was relatively tame. Each cabin made a "boat" out of cardboard boxes and duct tape, and in the afternoon everyone got to race the boats down at the lake (the regatta part of Regatta Day.) So it was fun, but nothing huge.

Things got pretty crazy after we put the rest of camp to bed. The CILTs transformed the dining hall into a pirate ship with treasure chests, cannons, parrots, treasure maps, and big signs that said "ARRRR!" At midnight we went around and woke all the campers up and brought them down to the dining hall for a big carnival. There was eye patch making, sword fighting, alligator wrestling, fishing, and of course tons of candy and ice cream (exactly what every camper needs at midnight.) It was a lot of fun, and all of camp is absolutely wrecked this morning. It's good that there are no more special days because I think staff is pretty much spent at this point.

Here we go. One more week.

zzzzzz

I woke up at 3:00 this morning to canoe for one of my camper while he swam the length of the lake. I'm really really tired.

Running

This one is about running for two reasons. First, my own running. It's been around three months that I've been without running (due to a weird injury). May 5th was the last day I competed, and I've probably run four or five times since then. I tried running on Wednesday, and I don't think there's much improvement in my leg. This is discouraging after many many weeks of rest. But then again, my running career has pretty much been defined by injuries, so it's somehow appropriate that college running came to an end for me because of an injury. I feel totally powerless to do anything about my leg at this point, so I'm trying not to worry about it.

During my senior year when I was still competing I wondered if I'd still want to run after graduation and how often I'd do it. Well, this injury has pretty much not given me a choice in it. I'm hopeful that it'll all sort out eventually.

Not running has really been a bummer. I've been feeling lethargic, and I feel like being able to run would help. Also, I feel like I've lost a ton of fitness (I guess not running for three months will do that. Go figure) and I'd really like to be able to get some of that back. It'd be great to have a run every morning... but again, I don't know what I can do about it.

Now the second reason I'm writing about running. I learned this week that my college coach, Connie Putnam, has retired after 21 years as head coach at Tufts. It's really hard to put into words how I feel about this. At first I felt kind of lost. I think that despite the fact that I'm done competing, knowing that Connie was still coach made me feel like I was still part of the team. Now it feels like a big part of that connection is gone. On top of that there are so many other things to consider that are just too numerous to name. This will sound a bit elitist, but you just wouldn't get it unless you were on the team.

Basically, just some serious shock and surprise, and serious thought about how this changes the team that was so important to me.

No Muggles Allowed

Every other Saturday throughout the summer we have a Special Day where all of camp takes on a special theme and counselors and campers join teams for special activities. Previous days this year included Halloween and Gold Rush Day.

Well on Saturday the absolute cult-like insanity of Harry Potter descended on camp. The campers got excited out of their minds, as did most of the staff. There is serious devotion to this book/movie franchise. From the seven-year-olds, to my fifteen-year-old CILTs, to the 20-something counselors, there was unreal commitment to the theme. The decorations that the CILTs put together helped transform camp into Hogwarts (that's Harry Potter's school, I've learned.) There were skits, spells, a carnival, and a game of quidditch (you gotta read the book.)

I'm not really up on any of the Harry Potter books, nor the lingo or characters involved. However, this wasn't a huge problem, as all of the campers were more than willing to explain the dozens of characters over and over. Still, it did make me feel really old, in the sense that this story, which is very much pop culture, means almost nothing to me. I'm wondering if I'll ever work up the strength to read all six books (the seventh is on the way...)

One thing that was really neat to see was how the older campers were sooooo into all the Harry Potter stuff. They lost all their inhibitions and forgot about being cool, impressing their friends, putting up a front, or feigning empathy. They loved the acting and the dressing up, they loved comparing how much they knew about the stories, and they practically tripped over themselves trying to get me up to speed and involved with all the make-believe. It was really cool to see these kids, freshmen and sophomores in high school, having that much fun.

(My campers did get me into character. I dressed up in a pillowcase and played Doby, the house elf, for anyone who reads Harry Potter.)

Half Dome again

So Dan and Bromka have told me they're flying out to the west coast in August to climb Half Dome. I'm really really excited that they're coming, and I can sense their excitement too. It's going to be a ton of fun.

Last night on my night off I walked through the A&W drive-thru in town. They wouldn't serve me. Going to try the McDonald's drive thru next time (walking through, of course).

finally rain

So it finally rained up here, but it just happened to be when we were camping out on an overnight trip for the CILTs. The trip went really well, the kids seem like a really good group and they seem to be pretty close already. But at 2:30am it started raining. As soon as we got up to figure out what to do about the rain, it stopped. So we went back to sleep. Then at 3:30am it started again. But again after five minutes it stopped. Then at 4:00 the thunder and lightening started up. We stayed awake for awhile listening to see if it was getting any closer. But it didn't so we went back to sleep. Then it started again at 5:00, and it rained for 25 minutes. Yes, it's all whining.....

I'm tired. I'll come up with something better to write about later.

the computer died...

The computer has been dead for a while because it can't function in this heat. But it cooled down slightly this evening. It's been 100 for the past week. And my brain's starting to melt.

In other news, I've got a whole new batch of CILTs yesterday. This group is slightly smaller, and seems to be much more tame and relaxed. I think this means that the session will be a little less hectic. But at the same time I think they're going to be less fun than before.

We'll see.

Also, I'm told that it's necessary to log in to view photos. The login username is skylake@skylake.com, and the password is skylake. (brilliant, i know)

That's it for now

"You're making Aaron Kaye cry"

So there are several conclusions I've come to during my first couple weeks as CILT trainer. First of all, I had grand ambitions for what I wanted the program to be about, and the ideals I wanted to convey to the campers. I think I've run up against a challenge that I'd guess many individuals in a leadership position face; that it's one thing to come up with a plan, but it's quite another to actually implement it. I've found that while I had all sorts of big ideas for the program, I've not been able to put them into play as much as I would have liked.

Secondly, I've found that I'm a horrible disciplinarian. I'm not very good at keeping my kids strictly adhering to all the rules. The fact is that most of the time they fall into line out of respect for me. For example, they started quieting down the other night because one of them pointed out, "guys we need to quiet down or Aaron's going to get in trouble." It's not really that they're bad kids and want to flaunt all the rules. But I definitely feel like they behave as a favor to me. Another example came when another counselor was trying to get all twenty-five of them to be quiet. Nothing worked until the counselor told them "Guys, you're making Aaron Kaye cry."

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I have a problem with my kids being into me. It's just that I'm fully aware that's the only thing that's making this all work.

Dome at Dawn

Today (Tuesday) for our day off we climbed Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. For an extra twist we started climbing around 1:00 in the morning, hiked some SERIOUS uphill for four hours, and got to the top around 5:00. We watched the sunrise, and hung around the summit for a few hours, dangling our feet over the edge of the 5000 foot drop.... We bombed back down at around 8:00 in the morning and passed all the other hikers who were heading up during the heat of the day.

It was an awesome trip, I wouldn't ever do Half Dome during the daytime after having done it at night. An awesome trip with an awesome group of day-offers. "Ballsy Tuesdays" is the name we've given our day off.

big trees

I had my first real day off Tuesday (last week, my day off was abreviated by an overnight trip with the CILTs on the preceding evening.) We went to Sequoia National Park and saw the biggest trees in the world. They were really big.

My kids are really into me right now. I'm not sure what I did to deserve this... they bought three cakes for me the other day by paying a counselor who was going into town. But they can still be punks.

All the CILTs together put together an awesome haunted house last week for Halloween Day. It was really cool. I feel like a proud father.

Uggs at summer camp

Well, having fifteen-year-olds is both a really cool thing, and not a really cool thing. The group of 25 kids that I'm in charge have an awesome amount of energy and creativity, but sometimes they are such tools. We went on an overnight trip on Tuesday night and they moaned and groaned about everthing - tools. But then I put them in charge of making a haunted house for the younger kids and they totally got into it - cool. And then they reverted to being tools by acting like five-year-olds at the lake. And then they were back to being cool again at campfire.

At that campfire the program was for counselor mud wrestling. We filled a kiddie pool with six bags of topsoil and water and had counselors dressed as funny characters go at it. I went at it with the eight CILT guys and "won". It was fun. And there's still dirt in my hair.

At the overnight I mentioned we had the most car trouble ever. It was awesome. We were driving off-road and as we tried to drive back we got one of the vans stuck on a berm. Everyone got out and pushed... anyways, nothing worked and we had to get pulled out by some guy who had a pickup truck. In the process of trying to move the van we blew one of the tires on another car, so we had to change that tire. And then on our way out we lost part of a bumper and had to stick that back on, at which point we realize that the bumper of another van was busted and prevented the rear door from opening.... But like I said it was awesome.

More later.

water water everywhere

So it rained all day yesterday. It's mid-June and it's raining. Such a bummer. It was cold too. Camp is a great place to be when it's sunny and hot out, but it's no fun at all when it gets rainy.

All this rain has been part of a really wet season in the Sierras as a result, all of the local creeks and rivers are too high. Normally the staff takes afternoons off at the waterfalls, waterslides, and pools in the area. So that's been a bummer. We've been told that Yosemite's annual rainfall is at 187% of normal. So the rivers and waterfalls in the park are raging. (Rafting down the Merced, another popular day-off option is also out of the question for at least another month.) Half Dome is still covered in a few feet of snow, so that's another day-off that will have to wait until some time in July.

The kids finally show up tomorrow (Sunday). It'll be great to have them here, but it's going to be absolute insanity.

a million things going on

Staff training has been underway for just a few days now, but so much has been going on. The biggest happening is that I've been crowned C.I.L.T. trainer. This means I'm in charge of the Campers In Leadership Training, 26 fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds upon whom I must instill the values of responsibility and leadership, while keeping them from getting in trouble and hooking up. It should be a handful.

Camp life has been good. I went wakeboarding the other day. Also, the camp just got a new banana boat (two long tubes side-by-side that can pull eight people behind a ski boat) so we tried that out too and flipped it and whatnot.

The weather's been really nice, the food's been pretty good too. There's only one computer working, so all of staff has to share a dial-up connection (the reason for the poorly-structured, brief entry). Tonight is a huge party on the Bass Lake Queen, a paddle boat that will hold all of staff. It should be tons of fun.

back to camp

I got a huge group hug from old friends as soon as I rolled in to camp yesterday. It feels great to be back. It's been really wet recently, so there are tons of mosquitoes right now.

I'm excited. There are a lot of familiar faces and a lot of great new people. I have yet to pick a new book to read. I'm considering one that's titled something like "A Rock and a Hard Place." It's about a guy who got his arm caught while climbing alone... it sounds goodish. Maybe not literary enough. Though at camp I don't think I have to live up to any standards in my reading selections

a Blog is born

I'm heading to camp today. And I guess this will be my attempt to keep track of my summer for those "on the outside." Maybe you're thinking, "Aaron, you've finally sold out. Blogs are for losers." This may be the case, but the principle of having a blog for camp seemed to make sense during the last frantic hours of packing. I can only say that I hope I don't lose any points in your book for doing this.

I can't say what exactly I'm going to write here. And I can't say if this will actually work, because I'd guess most blogs start off with high hopes but end up being forgotten. So without committing to anything, I'm going to try to keep this going. My apologies if it doesn't work. Sadly, camp's got two dial-up connections for 60+ college-aged staff members. The lines for the compy are often REALLY long...

Hopefully I haven't doomed this thing to failure from the outset.

As I mentioned, I'm driving up to camp today (Friday, June 10th). I'll be up in the mountains for nine weeks. I'll be here:

Skylake
37976 Road 222
Wishon, CA 93669

or, if you like, www.skylakeyosemite.com

or, 559-642-9271


Thats it for now. Be good.