November 2009
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November 25, 2009

Quiet

It's easy to tell in our office when a holiday is about to begin.  It gets very quiet.  Phones stop ringing.  E-mail beeps and chat window chimes are silent.

It's time now for Thanksgiving.  All of us here at Campus Kids wish you a very happy and safe holiday.  We are grateful that you are part of our camp family.  We value the many friendships we have with campers, staff, parents and alumni.  And we are thankful that we can be part of this wonderful thing called summer camp.

After this holiday weekend, we are looking forward to our 2009 camp reunion, December 6.  If you are planning to come (camper or staff) and you haven't RSVP'd, please do that right away (click here).  We'd love to see you there.

Then we get back to the job of planning for the 2010 camp season, our 20th CK-NJ summer.

Peace to you this Thanksgiving holiday.

Tom

November 18, 2009

Movin' On Up!

So I've been busy the last few days.  Vanessa and I bought our first home last Friday and have been busy painting walls, sanding floors and packing up to move.  It's been very exciting so far, but I'll be very happy to be done and moved in.   The previous owners took very good care of the house but had made some "interesting" choices in home decor.  For one, the bedroom walls are covered with some wallpaper your grandmother might find very stylish.  Second, the living room was salmon pink walls with a pink carpet. 

We closed on the house on Friday and after several trips to home depot, we began tearing up the carpet and refinishing the floors.  My dad and Vanessa's whole family came out and got messy with us.  Here are several pictures so far.  I will post more of the finished product when we are done!

Well that's all for now!  If anyone has any decorating ideas, shoot me an email (jeremy@campuskids.com).  Better yet, if you like lifting heavy objects, come help us move this weekend!  Yeah!  That would be great!   ~Jeremy

November 13, 2009

"The Office"

Tom’s son, Jon, was visiting and said he really liked how the office is set up now.  I guess it used to look a lot different—I can hardly remember now.  We’ve also added some dry erase boards, which make the many ideas we have bouncing around more “present” instead of just in our minds, they are written on the board so you can see it as you walk in.   Our office is a space of brainstorming, collaboration, laughter, all the while doing the business of camp.  It is really great!  I am so happy at my new job; my husband has noticed a change in my mood. 
 

So what’s been going on in the office?  Here are some of the things I’ve noticed in my three weeks in the office:

** We drink a lot of tea, all different kinds. Jeremy knows a lot about tea.

·    ** We go to the post office a lot. 

·    ** The automated postage machine likes me the best out of the three of us. 

·    ** Jeremy is almost always the first person to pick up the phone.

·    ** Tom has about 20 different magazine subscriptions.

·    ** It seems like everyone around town knows Tom and Jeremy.

·    ** The return of the camper Birthday card makes us all laugh every time we look at it.

·    ** Each of us have at least 30 different Pandora music stations.

·    ** Listening to our voice messages on the computer is 10x more fun than listening to them over the phone.

·    ** Jeremy has the funniest ways of getting off the phone with telemarketers.

·    ** Almost all decisions are made as a group after a discussion—from the reunion gift ( I’m not telling what it is!) to where to go for lunch (Tom & Jeremy used to go to Angie’s EVERY DAY!).

·    ** I still have the neatest desk out of the three of us.  Jeremy’s desk currently has a wiffle golf ball, the 2005-2006 CKNJ calendar, two decks of cards, a Campstock backstage pass, a pair of pliers and many other things on it!  Tom’s has mostly papers and that squeezy-hand-exerciser he uses.

·    ** I started a revolution in chair-updating.  (I mentioned I wanted a new chair and then Jeremy realized he wanted one too! Copier! Just kidding.  But I’m sure a future blog will be about my weird chair…)

·    ** The fax, postage machine, upstairs phone, and office phone all make very distinct ringing sounds.

  T** The official Campus Kids letterhead now has my name on it!!!  I just “Riso’d” a whole ream of them! (the “Riso” is the super-fast and advanced copy machine that makes the Sundial year-round, makes the Schedules that each staff member gets every day in the summer, and makes the staff assistants dance to the rhythms it makes while running!)

It’s just the beginning of my career here at CKNJ but I truly love it.  I’m not surprised, though, because I get to work with two of the best people I know!
 

Until next time,

Teri

 
November 5, 2009

November 1, 2009

Hey, it's dark already!

It's on this day, the first day back on Standard Time, that I really miss the summer when we had daylight for our entire Clubs activity period after supper.  Now it will be getting dark shortly after snack time!  I feel like we should be going into hibernation, waiting in the dark and cold for the the first signs of spring and the start of another camp season.

Hibernation may work for those black bears we occasionally saw in Blairstown, but it doesn't work for the CK-NJ office.  We are wide awake and active.  Our biggest news, which you already know (read the final blog of October if you somehow missed this) is that Teri has converted from a seasonal to a year-round member of our staff.  She and Jeremy are our assistant directors and her arrival in our humble basement office increases our staff by 50%!  While it's tempting to use Teri's arrival as a chance simply to straighten up the place (Jeremy and I are charter members of Clutterbugs Anonymous), there's a whole lot more that we are looking forward to.

First, I am very happy that we have a woman on the year-round team.  This already has improved our brainstorming and discussions about the summer and will be an important factor in providing even better leadership and support at camp during the summer, for both the staff and campers.

Second, we will simply be able to do more.  As hard as we work and as much as we have accomplished, we haven't been able to do everything we want.  We are looking forward to having the capacity to develop even more in depth training materials and orientation sessions for staff.  We will be able to increase our year-round contact and communications with campers and parents and inquiring potential new camper families.  We will be able to plan more special events and evening programs for the upcoming summer and we will also be able to develop more creative ideas for our regular camp activities.  This list could go on and on and it's very exciting.

I am writing this during part of Game 4 (sorry, folks, I'm one of those non-Yankee fans), looking forward to the week ahead.  Staff assistant applications are in and Teri and I will be setting up interviews.  Our work on next year's counselors and leadership team continues.  Jeremy is helping us launch new website design software.  We're getting ready for camp fairs.  We've got tours scheduled for the next three weekends.  We're finalizing bus routes for next summer already because we're adding in Westchester and the East Side of Manhattan to our CK-NJ pick-ups.  It's time to set up the 2010 Weekend Adventures.  We're discussing the bunk group theme for next summer (send suggestions, if you have them).

Also, Jeremy and I will be working through a bit of jealousy because Teri's new computer arrived on Friday and she has the biggest, best monitor in the room.  Oh well, we'll get over it.

I hope you had a fun Halloween.  You can send any leftover candy over to us.

Tom

P.S. -- Here's some pics of recent sports activity at Blair: field hockey and soccer.

November 2009
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