Man, lack of the ability to edit you posts and a dying computer waiting for a reboot.

What I wrote should have been:

Right now it was just "some art festival in out in the desert".

And I say "well ... yeah, but that's NOT why I go"...

Give me a break. There's no bicycle peddles or blinky light switches on this thing. I would really love to just light it on fire and spin it around my head. That's perfectly normal behavior, isn't it?

Hey, I know. I could build a 12 step camp at BM2008.

D'oh!

This year:
• I had an event in the guide (see P11) "When I rule the world..." (Tu/Th/Sa 1pm-3pm) in which I built a 14ft first order dome (icosohedron), which needed 15 10ft triangles for walls/ceiling shade, which I had the material and wood to do, but ran out of time, so only built 5, enough to shade the participants from the daytime sun. It needed chairs, carpet, throne, gifts and crowns to give out. I dressed as a jester, and enticed people to stop by. Don't think it all came together with little effort! It was mostly a success, except Wednesday afternoon a HUGE dust devil blew down the dome, and I spent all of Thursday (and Friday morning) rebuilding it, so no Thursday event. Unfortunately it was done single-handedly, since I thought my girlfriend would physically help with this, except she wasn't expecting to, and did other stuff instead (mainly radio station stuff, but also box office).

• I did ranger training Sunday, but because Monday/Tuesday morning was building the dome, Tuesday afternoon was the event, I got no time to do mentoring, so couldn't be a ranger :-(

• I did greeters Wednesday morning (8am-noon), dressing as a viking/warrior (which took a lot of effort to get all the parts to come together). I also wore that outfit for Burn night. People loved the outfit both times. I even wore it to SF and LA decompressions (see my photos).

• I built a centaur outfit (as part of a group of people who did the same), and we met up Wednesday at 1pm. What a serious effort to build it, but living alone I couldn't finish how my chaps would get fastenings without help, which my girlfriend said she'd do after I got back from greeters, which was 1 hour before I was meeting the others. She bailed, deciding to hang out at the radio station.

• I arranged (also Wednesday) to meet up with her (since she was off again: doing a radio show). That evening was our 3 yr anniversary of meeting. But she wanted to go off and meet a friend from previous years, and didn't want me to come, and later was going another radio show, so we delayed it to meeting at midnight, except due to a power outage there, she stayed to finish the show once the power came back. She got to the meeting point at 1am. I was then desperate to go to the bathroom. She stayed dancing to music while I tried to find a potty, I got lost, and near to our camp, decided to swap out batteries (for my ELwire suit), and go to the bathrooms I knew of there. She got pissed I took 30mins to go to the bathroom!

I'll own up to getting too emotional about the very little time i felt we got together, and in my stupid wallowing the next day (she had yet another radio show Thursday morning) I got dehydrated which made my emotional state really bad. I guess I should say I expected more together time since we are in a long distance relationship, and I miss her *SO* much. But I guess she's not too bothered by the distance and how little we see each other, since she setup her time there as she's done for many years at Burningman when she was single (and solo), and I believe still wants to do the same old same old things she's done in previous years, instead of doing other new things, together things, now I'm in her life! That doesn't give me feelings that I'm anything special.
Another emotional issue happened when after a good evening (Friday) when we got back to our tent, and she said she was tired and due to a radio show at 8am on Saturday, she wanted to sleep in her 2nd tent she'd setup at the radio station camp, so when she woke she didn't have far to walk. I was surprised since we'd (again) not spend time together, but she cycled off. I started to get ready for bed, but realized it was only 1am (or so), so what was I doing going to bed! So I thought I'd cycle by the radio station (I was suspicious about her claim of tiredness), just to view from afar, and my thoughts were true, she was on the station patio talking, laughing, and having a great time. This pissed me off BIG time! So I came to the patio myself, and joined in. But a little while later she was complaining at me being there. I was complaining at her claim of being tired with me, yet wasn't tired here, and wanted me to sleep alone, while she wanted to continue to party! We argued all night.
By the morning, I wanted to go home, and in my bad emotional state was claiming I should just commit suicide since she and nobody in my family, my kids, etc, care about me at all!
Yeah, dumb point of view, I know. But after a sleepless night of arguing, feeling totally rejected, lied to, used, broken promises, domes (and centaur costume) breaking, and really missing her too much ALL week, I was VERY low.
Some rangers saw us and took us to chat to some counsellors, and after much chat agreed to a compromise about when we were together and when apart, which we wrote down. It included not being together for the Man burn (argh... I really didn't want that - and it was my worst Burn night EVER - I kept seeing couples, which made me miss her more, and things I saw I ended up thinking how I wanted to experience WITH her). Over the last two days she didn't stick to the agreement anyway, saying it should be flexible, but it only ever was flexible in her favor, as she took extra visits to go to the radio station (which I was banned from going to, since she felt embarrassed to have me around - some of her friends there knew about my emotional breakdowns).
On the plus side, we did get the Temple & Waffle burn together, and had a great evening/night Sunday night, so the week ended quite well.
Well... except for the packup time. I did everything at our site, she did a radio show, then when she came back I fixed her bike and she went off to help with the regional camp (she's a regional contact) and said she'd come back if my help was needed, except she didn't come back for quite a while, so I ended up helping my neighbor to pack up. When she did come back, she immediated went to the radio station to help them. After an hour and a half, I got bored of waiting, it was getting close to sunset, and I felt I was wasting waiting time in Exodus. So went to find her. She was asleep in the radio station dome. So I left a message with a few of the station staff, and headed out to go to the hotel, but as we weren't sure which hotel I said to them to ask her to call me once she was in cellphone range.
She didn't get the message and thought I driven off in anger, and didn't leave until MUCH later, by eating and hanging out at the radio station! When she did leave I had been calling every 30 minutes or so, and at 3am she picked up. I told her where I was, but when she got there she was very tired, so I got to be with her, great, but she spent the time asleep.

The next day, we had breakfast, she went her way, I went mine, to go to our separate homes.

I'd put 2006 as 3rd best out of my 5 trips (2002-2006).

So how was other peoples experiences this year?