Barrels of Monkeys

Oh yes, there was much fun to be had, and I had as much of it as I possibly could.

We camped for four nights in a state park at the northern end of Kettle Moraine, and the park was quite beautiful. I haven't done a whole lot of camping, and I don't know that I'm particularly well-suited for camping without a few amenities--showers, for example, are nice--but I do like it. I like the replacement of city noises with birds and critters and such, and, thus, the relative quiet; I like seeing stars (I keep forgetting how many there are; I've lived in cities for more than 25 years, and there aren't a lot of stars visible in cities); I like the closeness of the outside, through the thin walls of the tent; I like the small towns that are the only thing near such campgrounds (though I suspect many such small towns wouldn't like me so well).

And the races were extremely entertaining, too--lots of little cars going really, really fast. This particular venue is a road course (rather than an oval), and it's not created from city streets or airports (like some road courses), and there are lots of trees and grass, so there are quite a few different views. We managed to spend time in nearly every turn on the track over Friday and Saturday's practice and qualifying sessions and American Le Mans Series race, and we watched Sunday's races from a hill that is just past the number 13 on this map (PDF), so we could see cars coming into turn 5, going up the hill to turn 6, then coming out of 13 and into 14, and we could see them through the trees, going hell-bent up the straightaway toward the start-finish line.

Sunday night Friend and I decided to stick around for meteor showers, and even though I only saw a half-dozen or so (at 3:30 in the morning), that's a half-dozen more than I've ever seen before, so I was excited. And did I mention that you can see the stars?

I'm tired and a little depressed today--the thought of how much I completely hate my current job situation kept popping into my head over the weekend, whereupon I'd promptly beat it back with a mental mallet, but it served as a reminder. The problem, of course, is that it's not entirely in my hands to change the situation: I have to find the person or people who are willing to take a chance on me, in one way or another, and pay me more than Bossman does, and provide me with paid days off (or the means to earn enough so that I can "buy" my days off). I still don't want to think about all that shit today, however, so I'm going to ignore it resolutely and go make some tea for the week.