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Day 11. "Nine little Indians sat up very late. One overslept himself and then there were eight." This was hammering itself into my brain this morning when I looked at my watch and realized that we (there are currently nine of us) had overslept ourselves. Fortunately, nobody else is gone (yet). Last night, while setting up camp, we were treated to fireworks in the form of a distant lightning storm. Very impressive flashes. On the other hand, the wind practically kicked up a sandstorm during dinner (miso soup). BITTERSWEET NEWS ALERT: E is slated to return to us this evening, but M is gone. Now we return to--never mind. Breakfast...As I was saying, this morning we packed our tarps to the tune of a downpour, and the mountains aheads of us are snow-capped. I thought this was a desert!...A bet is on regarding E's arrival time. If he gets here by 4:59:45, I win. The prize is TBA. Things are a bit slow right now, so I'm going to see how interesting conversation is on the other side of camp...Ha! I win! The others started saying that the prize would be N's underwear, which I then spun into a tale about one of my guilty pleasures being dipping freshly-cleaned sets of underwear in chocolate and sucking it out. We played some more rounds of a game where you draw a random M&M from a bag and share a personal piece of information based on the M&M's color. I drew red (your ideal date), which pleased everyone else, but I remained cryptic. S said that I look "hella different; it's scary" the other day. I want a full-size mirror! For solo I want to do something I'd never do otherwise, but what?

Day 12. Today I wrote up several alternate verses for Strident's version of "hush, little baby." I've also started work on a poem based on The Pillowman. All our hiking today has been and will be uphill. Grr. Solo is in three days. I have a hole in my pants, which is rather unfortunate as these are the only pants I have.

Day 13. We are stopping to have lunch ad refresh our water supply. We'll also be losing E2 until tomorrow as he smashed his knee yesterday evening. We're up at joshua tree elevation again, but there are also evergreens of some kind. I hope the girls strike up some interesting conversations today as the guys' conversations come in various shades of dull...Mmmm, chocolate. *drool* Yeah, we've been carrying around some chocolate that was divvied up just now. There's also the matter of the mysterious "High/Low Pack" that we have yet to open. Actually, it's not all that mysterious: we're all sure that it's chocolate, and it smells that way too. Two days until solo. We still have many miles to hike today...Funny moment: all of us walking in circles among the joshua trees, searching for the trowel that E2 lost. Speaking of E2, his knee injury has made it necessary to take an alternate route to solo. The going is flatter, but it's also a few miles longer, so I expect some late nights and early mornings. Oh, well.

Day 14. Solo is tomorrow! Unfortunately, we still have to hike nine to twelve miles today. We may be allowed to see some of our mail before solo. I hope that is the case, as I really want to know if I should spend the time working on lines...Lunch break. We'll be playing another guessing game, this time assigning ideal animals to ourselves. I'd be a dragonfly.

It's almost eleven, so I ought to hit the hay, but first a bare-bones life catch-up.

• I have lines to memorize this weekend.
• I saw Man & Superman on Wednesday. I also saw Ratatoullie, which was good, but not worth the rave reviews it apparently recieved.
• This afternoon I introduced Lilly (which would you prefer, Tam, Lilly, or Strident?) to Les Miserables.
• L. Peter Callendar is a god.
• I have begun taking voice lessons. Must remember to practice tomorrow, as I didn't get any in today!

If I have time (I think I will), I'll post my writings from solo. Those three days alone make up nearly half my journal! I wrote an average of three and a half pages per day!