We've never been to this particular campsite before, but it's been cool so far. Our plot is right on the edge of a treeline, so we get the benefit of shade without the gritty floor of dirt and leaves. We're a tad exposed here, but it does afford a great view of the camping pros in the open field nearby.

It occurs to me that some progressive campground ought to slap wireless access points on the bathroom hut roofs.

So begins CampCon, our exclusive gaming convention. Camping is, for us, simply a different venue to play card games.

The series so far: I've won a reasonably quick round of Battle of the Bands, using a surprisingly uncontested band of The King, Kym and Santa, all with positive reps and instruments (two on Kym.) We did three games of Fluxx, resulting in two wins for Rhon and one for me. All the Fluxx games were astonishingly short. My win took only two turns.

After that, we played one game of Doomtown... Rhon's Blackjacks vs. my new Collegium deck. Collegium won, thanks to multiple Bioengineered Ezzies and Suzies and some lucky shootouts. Then some Harry Potter reading, some napping, some IMing over Hiptop, and two late night games of Jacob Hollow by lantern-light. Rhon won both Jacob Hollow games, both via the Investigation Point win... as opposed to the Dead Opponent win which seems more common.

I hung the iPod in the tent's spidernet roof, where our TMBG playlist could softly rain down upon us.

I never sleep well in a tent, although our air mattress helped substantially. as I've already admitted, I often have trouble sleeping in a controlled-environment bedroom, so you can imagine how I react to a tent in the woods, the very habitat of spiders, wind-blown tree limbs, and squat crawly mammals. But the toughest bit of camping is the morning after. Morning breath, tent hair, sticky clothes... general camp funk. It's that first night camping - prior to sleeping - that holds all the romance for me.

We woke up around 9am, had some peanuts and diet soda for breakfast. Home by 11am.