If I ever have to see another tentacle again, I'm walking straight into the Experimental Cursed Mirror hidden in the basement and never coming out again ever.

...I was just joking around. DO NOT GO INTO THE MIRROR. I know psychic kids tend to be inherently curious, but unless you enjoy an endless cycle of entering a nightmare, then waking up into a new nightmare, and then waking up into a new nightmare, etc. until the mirror has drained you of all neurotransmitters.... don't. Your friendly local upperclassman is warning you now. Don't.

Sorry about the tentacles everywhere. Not that you're likely to notice a few extra wiggly things around here. Some of the older kids were picking on little Samantha, and when they detonated a delphi miasma rocket in her room she had had enough. We counselors weren't aware of the problem, otherwise we would've stepped in earlier. So now the troublemakers are in The Cuboid (*shudder* It's an effective punishment.) until their parents retrieve them, and sadly I'm on tentacle duty. Though honestly, I think rounding them all up will be impossible. They get into everything! Fun Fact: They're the smartest part of octopi, even smarter than its brain or eyeball. Also, I think they're budding. Hopefully they don't try to regroup. That'd be bad, and that'd mean we'd probably need to test Samantha's blood.

Don't tell the kids, but I'm so looking forward to Last Day of Camp this Thursday. They're cuties, but they're more than a handful. They're twelve tentacles full. Thank heavens The Father didn't see this fiasco when he arrived on Sunday.

Well, the kids just started the special Ultra Dream activity. They'll be sharing a dreamscape, and a few (unlucky) volunteer mentors will be leading them through lucidity exercises. The older kids get to take a tour of the darker recesses of a sleeping mind. I remember my first time doing that... I didn't sleep again for a solid week. Not because I was scared; no, I'd just slept so DEEP, ya know?

So yeah, the mentors who aren't wrestling for control over +25 children in the infinite possibilities of a dream, we're in charge of preparing the next workshop (Molding and Placement of Dreams for Others) before the kiddies wake up. It's a fun one, where you try to make a pleasant or funny dream for a friend or family member. Too bad Mind Clay is so dang hard to work with. That's why I've been mostly focused on something I know I can do: securing the perimeter. This way, if anyone "accidentally" forms a night terror, it can't escape and terrorize locals. Remember the Night Plague of 2015? Yeah. A brat at this camp caused it. She's not invited back to the camp, but was offered a scholarship to Dark Coven Academy for Girls. Go figure.

You know, I've been talking with the other mentors, and it seems like we have more than enough supplies for Dream Molding this year. Maybe I'll talk the camp director into donating whatever is leftover to the Dream Department of Psyhigh. The hard part will be walking up Professor Ripvandyke so he can accept to donation... they say he hasn't opened his eyes in nearly a decade. I wonder what he dreams about?

ATTENTION ALL STUDENTS AND FACULTY CURRENTLY ON CAMPUS:

We have a missing camper. Aged 7, male, blonde wearing basketball shorts and a shirt with a rocket on it. He's also likely to be yelling in traditional Gaelic and throwing rocks at anything vaguely cat-shaped. If you spot him, DO NOT ENGAGE. NOT ONLY DOES HE GENERATE A DANGEROUSLY STRONG MAGNETIC FIELD, HE ALSO BITES. Just notify one of the camp mentors, you know, us frazzled looking people in the deceptively cheerful yellow shirts.

Don't notify me though. I'm on break with @Jess Gynn, so I don't have my neutralizing orbs on me at the moment. Sorry guys.

You know, I told the camp director that letting kids that young partake in the Ancestral Dream Connection workshop would end badly. They simply don't have the proper memory filters yet. *sigh* Poor little Alex....

@Dr Krimsborg, DPM and Jess Gynn, thanks a bunch for all the supplies. We've already had to use one of the fireproof plasters. My fellow mentor Hurggor is going to stop by the clinic during his next break to give you our most recent list of campers and their abilities. The camp director did a few tricks, and the list should self-update as kids sign-up last minute, drop-out last minute, gain new powers suddenly, and/or lose their anchor to this reality and de-materialize. Don't hold it with your bare hands, it'll give you a rash.

Oh, and thank you for telling us about OshLamar Winterglen. We'd forgotten his parent was dropping him off early! I hope he didn't try to manifest while staying in your clinic, that would be a mess! Ha ha... yikes... Hurggor will take OshLamar off your hands when he visits.

These first aid supplies are going to come in handy, I know it. I've been looking around with my Other Eyes and there are some bad energies around the section of the school reserved for the camp. I predict plenty of mishaps. Either that, or there's a Siberian Sulk Slug that's been leaving slime trails all over. That would be a problem, due to the camp's strict no-pets policy and the fact that Siberian Sulk Slug slime decays skin. But I'm probably just paranoid.

Regardless, I think I ask Myuri if she still has any jarred positive energies that she left at school. I'd like to put some in a spray bottle and mist it over the worse-looking areas. Like air freshener or something. Hopefully the stuff hasn't fermented yet.

Tomorrow the kids arrive for the camp, so for today all of us "Camp Mentors" are just setting up stations, getting settled, removing monsters from beneath bunk beds, the usual pre-camp junk. It's eerie being back at school, but now with an actual position of authority. Well, besides the pseudo-authority that comes from being an upperclassmen. I feel like an impostor. Hopefully the kids don't pick up on that... but according to the list of kids in my group, one of my charges has strong empathetic tendencies. So I guess there's no hope in bluffing confidence tomorrow -- with my luck this little girl is going to call me out on it as soon as she sees me. Great.

At least with this camp stuff I'll be distracted from the college application stormclouds looming over my head. Did you know State of Sybils University does an entire scrutiny of your five most-likely futures while you're sitting right there in the cavern with the Admissions Elders? Ugh. Stressful. I know, I know, applications aren't open for a long while still, but you never know what's going to happen. As experienced Psyhigh students, I'm sure you guys have already heard the many rumors about people triggering time jumps on accident. There are, like, at least twenty different ways to do it, and with varying radii of effect. If I get caught in another time jump because of someone misusing a Pocket-Chronos (TM), I'm going to throw a fit.

Luckily, once I'm on-duty for this camp I won't have time for worrying or fits. Psychic kids are great at keeping you preoccupied. Even with my Other Eyes, it's hard to keep track of them all and/or prevent their mischief. Last time I worked with a group this age, two boys found a way to grow their horns to full size temporarily. When they weren't falling down and knocking things over due to the change in their center of gravity, they were challenging each other to head-butting contests. We had to tape pillows to the tips of them so nobody got impaled on accident.

Actually, that reminds me, sometime today I should probably get some Anti-Hex Powder and some of those band-aids that hold up against high-viscosity. Maybe that visiting doctor person, uh, @Dr Krimsborg, DPM has some in stock I could buy. At the very least I should touch base with the clinic. I'm sure I'll end up taking a camper or three there for patching-up before the week is out.

Finally home and everything is the proper temperature again. Phew! Though... with how the summer is heating up, I'm kind of wishing we'd left a little bit of ice in the attic or something. I'm sure the Rats of Unusually Large Size living up there wouldn't mind.

Of course, I can't get too comfortable. I'm packing my bags again already, because I signed up to help run an event back on our school grounds. It's a camp called like "Delving Deeper Into Dreams" or something, and it's to get kids that are in Children's Circle more interested in Psychic High School (and, you know, help them learn how to handle the unpredictable components of the dream realm). Another thing to put down on my college applications! And as long as none of the kids do what happened last year and start trying to break into the camp mentors' dreams, I think it'll all be okay. ...They should've known better than to try and hack into Dean Hammer's brain. Poor little criminals....

For everyone else still on-campus, apologies in advance if the camp-kids get in your way, wake you up at night with their youthful shrieks, spontaneously combust, or try to use you in a ritual to summon a higher-being. Keep in mind that we did the same stuff when we were their age.

Ughhhhh college application essays are such a pain. I hate writing about myself.... And yes, I'm aware of the irony of the situation, seeing as I'm writing about myself every time I log on here. No need to point that out. Though I'm sure I'll get at least two people pointing that out to me regardless. I'm warning you now guys, nitpick my stuff again and I'm sending you one of those chain emails. One of the REAL ones, where if you don't follow its instructions misfortune will descend upon your household and banshees will be attracted to your property. I'm just not in the mood, okay?

So, yeah, for this first one, I'm supposed to be writing about "why" I want to go into the major I'm applying for and something I've done recently to "further my interest or involvement in that field!" I've got a major in mind but... I don't know. I guess the thought of actually committing myself to a specific practice is kind of daunting. I know that they say that switching majors is super easy now of days, but I don't really want to go through the Moon Ceremony of Study Devotion more than once. My older brother says that the ritual takes FOREVER to complete, and you end up with suspiciously low iron count in your blood for a whole week afterwards. Some people have been saying that it attaches the spirit of a dead alumni to you, to help guide you through your studies. But I'm pretty sure that's just a conspiracy theory.

I'll figure something out eventually... maybe I should just listen to my parents and take a break from school stuff... enjoy the vacation. Run with the wolves. Catch will-o-wisps for the lanterns. Watch the Northern Lights through my Other Eyes. Collect murmuring mushrooms from the sacrificial meadow. Go fishing off the coast for the midgard serpent. You know, enjoy nature.

Oops, mom's hand mirror is signalling an incoming communication. I better pick it up, it /feels/ like it's the guys working on our ice-encrusted house. I hope they aren't calling about a problem.

My computer is still frozen. Well, to be honest, my entire home is frozen now. The workmen told us that they would be able to thaw out the house completely by Wednesday, at the soonest. So until then, we're visiting my grandparents in the Járnviðr. My mom is kinda miffed that Dad wouldn't let her handle it herself -- she's convinced she had an old chant that'd dispel the ice within an afternoon -- but he said that that wouldn't deal with the source of the problem. Seeing as the workmen agreed to SAFELY remove and dispose of the computer for only a small additional fee, Dad decided to leave this to the professionals instead and take us all on a spontaneous family trip. Hooray. Nothing like spending a week in dark, dense woods with tired, grouchy, and B.O. scented family members.

Alright, I'm probably exaggerating the discomfort a bit. If I'm honest, I really enjoy trips with them. The close quarters sometimes grate on my nerves, but for the most part we have fun. And my grandparents' secluded fortress in Járnviðr is rather serene -- if you ignore the murky shapes of troll-women and vargr stalking prey through the underbrush.

Grandpa promised me that he'd take me to this Cave of Whispers he found during one of his hikes, and I'm super pumped for that. It's got Pools of Remembrance and everything! But first he and the other men of the house had to go gather some more iron nails, salt, and black candles (all necessary for keeping my grandmother under control), and until they comes back I'm just kind of left to roam the property alone. Mom is too busy dealing grandmother and the younger ones to bother with me. I guess I'll just poke through grandpa's archives or work on college application essays to pass the time. I just wish that University of Chillingois didn't require you to seal a sliver of soul onto your essay's opening sentence. The process to extract it is exhausting, and I can never think of a good hook for my papers.

Anyone else having issues accessing the school servers from home? I wanted to check out the summer assignments for my AP class, but whenever I tried to log on I got an error message from @GROTTO G.S.M. INC.

I know that there was a security issue -- er, a JOKE about a security issue -- earlier today, is that why I'm having issues? After my last attempt to gain access, the computer started making eerie noises and its screen froze. Literally, it's so cold ice crystals are forming around it. On the bright side, now I've got extra air conditioning in my bedroom.

If any of you guys that are more technologically-inclined (looking at you, technomonks and technomages) know what's going on, could you let me know what to do? I borrowed my neighbor's robotic butler to run a troubleshoot, 3DGAR-12 is surprisingly good at it, but when it plugged itself into the USB drive it got... overwhelmed? 3DGAR-12 is still plugged in as I type this on my brother's begrudgingly donated tablet. I'm starting to worry that the low temperatures will corrode its joints and such. I really hope GROTTO G.S.M. INC. doesn't get upset that I connected an unauthorized device/robotic butler.

Well, my dorm is all packed up. It didn't take very long. My roommate had already taken her stuff out on Friday, and everything else I just stuffed into the circle my parents brought with when they picked me up. It's a nifty little thing -- a portal straight to the 18th dimension of this universe (18D, if you will). People are always confused when they first see it, but it's really not that hard of a concept. Imagine you drew a picture of a lamp on a piece of paper. The lamp is currently two dimensional. Now, imagine you just put your hand down and, well, grabbed it. Pulled it straight off the paper and into the air. If you looked at the lamp now, it'd be three dimensional, like everything else in this present spacial situation. That's what my dad's circle does. It let's you grab something from one dimension and expand/compact it into another. And as long as you put it into a number of dimensions completely incomprehensible to yourself, it's basically an "out of sight out of mind" situation until you pull it all back into your dimension. I've used it for the past three years, and only once did something go horrifically wrong! I highly recommend it, one student to another. My dad just bought it online.
Here's the link if you want to order your own: http://www.purple.com/purple.html

Of course, just because I'm officially home and on summer break doesn't mean I'm abandoning Psychic High School. Heck no! College's love to hear about applicants applying themselves "in and out of the classroom" (and some of the more prestigious ones demand you apply yourself in-between, too). I talked to my counselor(s) -- this time it was a friendly old guy named Mel that periodically coughed up maras, and then had to try and bottle them up so they didn't go off and attack people -- and they helped me set up a couple of summer courses (yuck) and some other camps and stuff to keep me busy over break. My counselor(s) also really really /really/ wanted me to sign up for the Student Volunteer Brigade. Like, to the point that I noticed they were trying to hypnotize me (Good luck! I just switched to my Other Eyes). I'll try it once or twice I guess, and if it's lame I'll bail. I already do plenty of volunteering. But, hey, maybe I can rope a friend or two into joining it with me. That'd be fun, right?