przed

Got home yesterday from the lovely annual camping meet-up with my mates from university. We met in the astrophysics program at the University of Toronto, bonded strongly due to the insane demands of the course work, and are still good friends a million years later. The gathering is held on the 50 acres of farm property where a couple of friends moved to years ago, and now includes partners and kids ranging from 2 to 16. There is swimming and talking and eating, and things culminate on Saturday night with a full-blown jam session--with drums, guitars, bass, and a Japanese flute--fireworks, and our very own burning man.

I also ended up in wicked sleep debt, since we got hit with a huge thunderstorm in the night that kept us up between 3:30 and 5:30, and I'd only been sleeping fitfully before then. (The storm did blow down one friend's tent, but fortunately she had the house to run into.) I held it together for the drive home, but then did a credible zombie impression and collapsed as soon as we put Ros to bed. But this morning I feel great. It's amazing what eleven hours of sleep will do.

I'll just end with a goofy Caramilk commercial one of the group did recently. (Jeff really is a statistics prof. He was the boy genius of our group, a math major who was two years younger than anyone else and taking specialist physics courses because he thought they were fun.)