(Friday Night)
A lot has happened in the last two days, so this'll be long. I was wrong in my last letter - it didn't drizzle, it poured. But it cleared up in time for the field trip & we had really nice weather at Wallops. We saw the control room, where they weren't launching anything (the weather was wrong; it wasn't storming), a payload testing place where a guy offered to let us see how a vacuum canister works from inside, and the airplane hangar where we talked to an *aerospace engineer* who fastens nuts & antennas to obsolete planes in a program that is about to be eliminated. For rec, I did walk & shop because I needed a light bulb for my desk lamp, only it wasn't walk & shop, it was Walk & Sobe. Sobe is a weird brand of healthy drinks that emilypost is fanatical about, & now the whole camp is into it. About a hundred people came to buy sobe. So I tried one, they're pretty cheap. It's okay. Better than soda. And I got a nice long walk, which I needed. E.P. was fun & short.

Today started off bad & improved. I didn't solve problem of the day, to launch rockets we had to go to a pig pasture, and my group's rocket broke the egg that was supposed to be its payload. But things improved. My little rocket launched four times in the afternoon, and nearly survived unscathed when most of them were going up-up-disappeared! or exploding or crashing. Dodd (one of my group members) launched our payload one and it stuck on the launch pad, which was cool even though it ruined the pad. For rec I swam, which was very fun. We dunked emilypost, and I actually dived off the diving board! Then it was run to announcements. Evening program today was π chess exhibition & movie, or social, or π tournament. I was planning to just sit around at the dance, but Kara (Kara K------; stellar_dust should remember her) asked me to be her partner since hers canceled last minute. I agreed. & we were table leaders at exhibitions, which means we taught the beginners how to play & refereed. I was double fools-mated early on, which was embarassing, but I didn't care. Then we had to go on to tournament. Kara & I played a really cautious, defensive game while the three teams of boys reamed each other. Three minutes before the came ended, we had lost only four pawns, and won only three. Then we went into blitz and took three bishops and a queen in our last two moves. Since they were scoring total pieces *including* those still on the board, it was a fairly good strategy. Espcecially since there were no checkmates. It was about the funnest game of π I've played. When time was called and Jon came running in from swing dancing (Jon N--------, who's now a counselor) to count the points, we thought we might have come in second. First count he did had us winning by 1 pawn. This made us very happy. But since it was so close, he recounted. This made us very tense. The recount came out that he had counted wrong the first time - we had actually won by 19 points!! This made us very, very, very happy. We stayed behind to clean up and danced back to Murphy.

Only three bad things. One, it means I have to get up tomorrow for final round. Two, we made a lot of hasty promises of good behavior while he was recounting, which now we have to fulfill ..... Three, it will be very tough tomorrow, and we have a slim chance of winning. It'll be played to the last checkmate - no playing tricks with points. We face last year's winners and this annoying kid from the chess elective who constantly brags that he's going to nationals in a week and a half and that he beat a grandmaster. His partner is last year's middle school champion. We're sort of underdogs. Oh well. Wish us luck & maybe it'll help us pretroactively.

Got your tues & wednes letters yesterday. Kathy likes the postcards you pick. Didn't know about the calc book - which one? I thought I turned 'em all in - no one told me anything - hope it wasn't too much.

'Kay, long letter. Hope ya'll are having fun & Katy isn't working too hard (hah hah) Did you go to OpSail?

See you in about a week! Miss Mom's cooking!

Love,
Sally