Happy independence day! WE aren't doing anything special here, I hope you are going to see fireworks. The last two days have been sort of weird, because the university is officially closed for the holiday. Half the buildings are locked, and the only meals they'll serve us are brunch and lupper. So I've been eating a lot of junk food. :). We also get to sleep a little later, which has had the effect of making everyone much sleepier. Yesterday I got to bed early, though. It was official clean-out-your-room night, and the counselor had to check it before you could go to sleep. It took me less than five minutes, so there. And that was mostly folding the laundry I did at rec. Today I wrote the class report that will go in the newspaper, and we worked on our class presentations that we do tomorrow. Tonight's evening program is the talent show, which should be fun. Oh yeah. My new elective is so-be-it, an elective emilypost teaches on debate, which she does at college. Except today was her day off, so we just sat around arguing.

See you all Sunday!

Love, Sally.

Well, we lost. But we didn't do too badly. We eliminated the annoying little kid & his partner to come in second, the π guy called us the best four π players in the world.

That night was the ball game. The shorebirds crushed the crocs, despite getting in a big fight in the middle of the game. And guess who was there: shinyhappygoth! We watched the fireworks together.

Shad landing yesterday was fun, & then we had a fun scavenger hunt (even though one group cheated.)

Love, Sally

(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

I got your second letter yesterday. Hope you guys are having fun & Katy isn't being too lazy.

Yesterday we launched rockets, so of course it drizzled all day. But we still launched, and it was fun. My rocket actually survived to launches! (Only about half of them did.) One of the rockets from my table went up & never came down. We think it's in orbit. Rec was cancelled cause of drizzle, so the choices were hang around Murphy or watch Spaceballs in Carver. I stayed in Murphy, of course.

Today we go to Wallops Island, so I think it's drizzly again.

Love,
Sally

(Wednesday)

I got the last couple of postcards today, so I guess you & katy have been getting my letters. If she's nice to you, you can read her this. Oh yeah. Tell her I'll have to miss the party, can't do anything next week. I talked to shinyhappygoth too. She invited me & Kara to go along to the HP overnighter.

Tommorrow we go to Ocean City & ride roller coasters. I thought about visiting speakerender, but I can't remember where he works. Darn. I hope you're having as much fun as I am & stellar_dust feeds you better than they did me.

Love,
Sally

I got your first letter yesterday. Some of the teachers are different, but the main one was assistant last year, and he's pretty good. We made our rockets yesterday and then painted them; I got spray paint all over me but the rocket looks good (whether it will fly ...) Marianne accidentally messed up hers, so I helped her make one from an extra kit that had no instructions, which was fun.

It stormed last night, but we were in evening program & missed it all while a guy gave a talk on "card tricks & dynamic computer memory"

Love, Sally

First day of class! Yay! Well, the morning was fun, at least ...

We played with CBLs, graphing calculators, and motion detectors, and then the kids at my table (me, Marianne, and Dodd) talked about um ... ahh.. anime while the rest of the class tried to do distance-velocity-accel problems. The afternoon was very boring. One of the teachers, with a very thick accent, first taught us how to show our work when we solve algebra problems, and before we woke up started on vectors and momentum. Oh well. Evening program was very fun. A non-NSA cryptologist talked to us! He was from the FBI... He gave us a talk on forensic cryptology, and it was better than the NSA talks, because the real-life examples he gave us were simple enough to be solvable. We also became "the first non-government people to see" the private codes of Ted Kazcynski, which he had decoded.

Haven't gotten any letters yet. Hope you get this soon...I was going to date it, but I forgot the date. Miss you all!

Love,
Sally

1st day is over. I figured I'd write since I had time. Today was fun, if hot. My counselor group is all 11th and 12th graders and we have the whole third floor to ourselves. Kathy says we can stretch the rules as long as the other floors can't hear us. Most of the 9 people in my group are old CMST'rs; all but two have been at least three years. And the two new girls are nice. We did trust games today, and we set the time record at emilypost's even though we stopped to tie a shoe. Kathy had fla-vor-ice for us at hall meeting! She has a hermit crab. Maybe I should have brought my sea-monkeys instead of trusting stellar_dust...

My group is now named Penthouse Solo.

Love, Sally