Smashing.
In the photo below, note well the smiling faces: the pic was snapped this morning after the blueberry pancakes. I cropped the photo to include the tent off to the right -- I was going to make some wisecrack that we all slept in the red tent, but it's just not a funny joke.
Less funny was the wisecrack I made to Tommy as we got ready for breakfast.
"Let's raise the stakes next time," I said. "We'll do this on a weeknight, when we all have to go to work the next day."
"I have to go to work today," was Tommy's informative way of telling me that my sense of humor is no more appropriate now than it was when we were living in the dorms at Purchase.
This year I packed an inflatable sleeping-bag mattress -- it made a huge difference for me as I lay on the cold hard ground, staring at the stars through the mesh top of our borrowed tent, contemplating spine-disc surgery.
And the whole event was a ton of fun, as usual.
But here's where it gets strange -- as a Mastandrea, I would normally take this time to re-tell the entire story of last year's event (only this time it would be longer, with new insightful detours and other inventive commentary). But blogging allows me to simply refer to last year's account without the need to embroider any new description.
Suddenly this blogging thing doesn't seem so much fun anymore.
BTW, no one saw a muledeer.