Let the battle begin!

I know, I know. Given the current maelstrom of public policy coverups, attempts to socialize our health care, and other random bad news from the political realm of the good old USA, you might be expecting the title to be serious. You never know - I have been known to branch off into politics before if the situation was aggravating enough (as it jolly well is now). But that's not my concern at the moment. (And before I begin arguing against the proposed national health care, I want my facts sorted rather more neatly than they are now.)

When I say battle, I mean, all-out paintball war!!! Who'd've thunk it? Ostensibly quiet, reserved me turning into a paintballing maniac. Well, I'll admit that there is a good handful out there in the world who might have suspected. But, hey, this was totally sweet! A family in northern Illinois invited all 20 something of us counselors and teachers a few weekends ago to their house for a couple of days just so that we could enjoy their epic-awesome paintballing paraphernalia. They're actually a family that I already knew slightly from UD - one of the classic dynasty families with a sibling graduating nearly every year for about ten years. Pretty awesome.

They have a house near a largeish pond, and for the paintballing, after we got all geared up, the dad and one of the daughters (a recent UD grad!) took us out to a thickly overgrown island just off shore. The actual wars lasted only about 20 minutes each, but we had 4 or 5 of them in one afternoon, and given the strenuousness of even moving a couple of feet while staying undercover, that was plenty. Just to brag a little bit, I have to say that I was pretty amazing at sneaking. I would come up about a foot away from on of the other team's snipers and then they would have to fall back out of position as I hooked around and snuck up further.

It's acutally not quite as great as it might sound, because when you get that close, you can't fire at all...so it wasn't completely effective. Add to that the fact that I used less than a quarter cannister of ammunition per game in my enthusiasm for thriftiness. Ah well. C'est la vie. It was jolly fun overall.