LiveJournal Camp @ Burning Man

It's 6 days till I leave for the Playa!!! I'm still sick, have been since Sat and I'm waiting for auntie flow...Grrr.
I'm so freaked out, feel like I'm not ready. I'm one girl, going alone, I hope I'll have what I need to get by. AAACKKK!!!
I have water, sunblock, tent, shade that I can't put up by myself, chapstick, my ears and tails, and a few other things. OMG!!!
what am I doing? am I nuts!? can I do this? will i be ok? AACCKKK!!!! I'm not looking for feedback just kinda freaking out!!

This is going to be my second burn.  Last year I was so overwhelmed and on the playa for such a small amount of time that I barely started getting a taste of things and it was already time for me to go.  So this year I'm heading out early, staying late, and I'm thinking I'd like to dabble in being a bit more involved by volunteering somewhere.

It looks like there are still plenty of opportunities to do so on the playa even though I didn't even think about this until now.  My question to you guys is... well, any recommendations?  I've heard & read great things about Greeters and Lamplighters.  Anyone out there have a suggestion for something good that's outside the norm?  Maybe some personal experiences to share?  Random streams of consciousness?

I'll probably just wing it.  But everything I needed to learn in life, I learned from watching G.I. Joe.  Knowing... mattered for something... I think... but I forget.  I'm sure it wasn't that important. I got nuthin.  So what do you guys have?

http://www.studioninedesign.com/heaven2004.jpg

I am very excited, however my heart is a little sad my boyfriend will not be joining me on the playa. Any thoughts on how to deal with this?

This will be my fifth year on the playa, and for a while now, I've been giving friends of mine who were new to Burning Man two guidelines for avoiding disaster. No warranty is express or implied.

RULE 1: No plummeting.

Sometimes to avoid unintentionally breaking rule #1, you have to just not climb whatever it is in the first place.

RULE 2: The phrasing of this rule won't make sense unless you played Dungeons & Dragons as a kid. Or maybe as an adult; I don't know -- I haven't touched the stuff since I was 12.

Okay, so, let's figure that on your average Wednesday night at Burning Man, there are, I don't know, 20,000 people on the playa. At any given moment, about 100 of those people are about to take their Saving Throw vs. Stupid.

Fifty of them will miss this saving throw. So here's rule #2: you want to avoid, at all costs, being within about five yards of any of these fifty people. Furthermore, if one of them is controlling something that contains a motor or a "fire" button, you don't want to be anywhere in front of them at all.

Actually being one of those fifty people is dangerous, but at that point survival rules aren't going to help you much. The best you can do is to not get hurt at times when you yourself aren't the one fucking up.

These two rules were largely inspired by an incident around Illumination Village where, if memory serves, some guy broke the first rule by intentionally hanging off the human-powered ferris wheel the wrong way and then either leaping or falling off of it, at which point he hit someone who was breaking rule #2 by getting within fuckup's distance of this doofus.

dilettante suggested I post these to the community. If you like them, thank him. If you don't, thank me.

Please drive over to NJ, find my place of work, and kidnap me. Hide me on the playa while you wait for someone to offer up a reward for my safe return.