The beach was all right yesterday, though we only got to stay for an hour or so. The water was 62 F according to my watch, and I got cold, then numb, then warm, exactly the way I'm supposed to (considering this is about the temperature I'll be swimming in in Boston). I had fun diving over and under waves with a couple of girls - one of them, the nurse's daughter Amanda, who's 13, seems like she has a little bit of a hero-worship thing going on with me. She's really nice, though, and not annoying about it at all - but she agrees with EVERYTHING I say, which gets kind of amusing after a while.

The rest of the day wasn't quite so great - at the movie theater, I got stuck seeing Superman instead of Pirates II or Devil Wears Prada, because there was ONE girl (among the 30-some-odd boys) who wanted to see it, and since she was my camper and a female staff member had to accompany her, lucky me got picked to go with her. I was pretty bored through most of it, but she liked it, which I guess is what's important. I don't know why they wouldn't let the counselors give a preference, though - I realize that they have to put us where they need us as far as coverage, etc., but they could have at least made an EFFORT at giving us the movies we wanted. Upon coming out of the movie, someone who'd seen Pirates II told me she'd really wanted to see Superman, and I of course had wanted to see Pirates (again), so they could easily have switched our assignments. Sigh. And then they decided to send all five buses to ONE Wendy's instead of splitting us up amongst the McDonalds, Burger King, and Arby's that were also on that very same street - so we lucky Bus 5 riders had to wait in the parking lot for 30 minutes. (Reasoning? Because Craig didn't want to have to drive to more than one restaurant to pay people.) Welcome to Camp All-Star.

On a better note, I think I've secured a babysitting job in Chapel Hill for one, and possibly two, nine-month-old boys. A fellow new grad student, Sheela, has a 9-month-old named Kaya, and I'd watch him every Thursday morning. We're still waiting to see if the other mother with whom Sheela wanted to split childcare is going to get on board or not, but either way, it's 99% a done deal, which is awesome. Sheela was really excited to hear that I'm in the department of linguistics, because she and her husband are using Baby Signs with Kaya, and she thought (correctly) that I'd be excited to jump on board with that. Neat.

Today is my last day off - I went back to L.L.Bean and exchanged the bag I bought before for a different one, because I'd realized in the course of dragging it around over the past few weeks that it's driving me just as crazy as all the other messenger bags I've ever owned, and that I should really just give it up and stick with backpacks. Then I had my last Ben & Jerry's cone (which, incidentally, was free, because the credit card machine wasn't working and the guy was nice) and went to Target, where I bought floss (exciting, huh?) and the DVD of Kindergarten Cop for $5.50.

I also got more cash back, so I now have the full $100 cash ready to pay to my Boston Light swim pilot - the only problem is that he hasn't responded to my emails in the past couple of days. I can't think of any reason why he would have changed his mind - I met the price he asked for, and he responded quickly three times before - but I'm getting worried because I don't have any other way to contact him (yet). I just sent him another email, and I also looked him up on whitepages.com and found only one J Dicato in the Boston area, so I supposed I can try calling if he doesn't answer soon - but it's just making me a little nervous. Oh, well. Maybe he's on vacation or something.

One more week until the kids go home!