Circus Time!!!

Karen and I went to the circus tonight. I never really went to the circus much as a kid (at least that I remember) but Karen likes to go every year. She really likes the elephants. She doesn't quite know why, but she finds them cute. We bought her a stuffed elephant with a pink circus-logo blanket on his back and it now lives on our bed with a couple of her other select stuffed animals. It's pretty funny. Karen wasn't feeling well today and I wondered if we wouldn't wind up canceling. We already had the tickets, though, and I was already skipping the Priesthood session of conference so we figured we should just go ahead and go.

The circus this year was a little less fanfare than I have seen in previous years. I had fun, but the acts were rather ho-hum. The big trick attempt for the trapeze guy was to do a triple somersault. ?!?!?! A triple? Really? In previous years I've seen them do four or five rotations. Hmmmm..... The worst was that the guy only did two rotations. I counted them and definitely only counted two. A woman in front of me heard me say something to Karen and turned around with two fingers held up, confirming that he did, indeed, only do a double. It was pretty funny/sad. Other than that it was a fun time, though.

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Rudy's Moving Day

Judith's nephew, Rudy, moved into his apartment today. His wife, Jenny, is still in St. George. She's waiting to find a job out here before she comes out. They were only moving into a two-bedroom apartment so there wasn't a ton of stuff. Unfortunately their apartment is up a flight of stairs, however, so we had to haul all of their stuff up stairs. That was a lot of fun. Our legs were dead after just a few trips. We worked for about an hour before Jim and Judith showed up. Jim had apparently thrown out his back so he wasn't able to do a whole lot of heavy lifting. We gave him the job of bringing things to the end of the truck so that we could grab it easier. He sent Judith home to get his moving straps to help with the heavy stuff. Rudy had an organ he was bringing in and none of us looked forward to trying to haul that up the stairs.

When Judith came back she brought the straps and the teenage son of one of their friends. It was incredibly nice of him to come and the extra pair of hands was helpful. Jim's moving straps were great, too. I had never used this type before but I'm now convinced that I want to go find some. They are the ones you see advertised on TV that go over your forearms. It apparently took five or six guys to load the organ into the truck, but Jim and Rudy were able to get it up the stairs and into the apartment by themselves. Jim's straps are much better than the ones I use because his leave your hands free. That allows you to stabilize what you're hauling. One of the things I hate moving is mattresses because they are so hard to hold and control. These straps made moving the matress a breeze. We were able to finish up the rest of the moving pretty fast. It only took us three hours, total. My legs were pretty dead for the rest of the day ... and the next day, however.

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Fall Camporee

I took some of my scouts to the district fall camporee this weekend. I had originally registered all three of my eleven year-olds to go but, in the end, only one went. That was a little annoying. One of them had a family event that he couldn't get out of. The other didn't want to come because he "was afraid of getting cold." ?!?! hmmm..... whatever... The big annoyance was that I put this campout on a calendar I gave to the parents two months ago but they acted like they had never heard about it. Why do I bother putting together a calendar if you aren't going to pay attention to it? Fortunately we had three Webelos go otherwise I would have just cancelled it. We got there late in the evening Friday night and had to hunt around for our campsite. They assigned us to a spot that wasn't marked and had no amenities (picnic table, campfire ring) identifying it as a campsite. We finally would up just picking a flat, semi-open area and went with it. The evening went okay. We got stuff set up, had dinner, etc. While desert was going on (smores roasted over the camp stove) Hank and I put together a bear bag. I had never done a bear bag before, so this was a new experience. In the future I think I would do things a little different, but we got stuff up there.

While we were putting up the bear bag one of the Webelos, Caleb, told us that he had a spider bite on his knee that was bothering him. He had apparently been bitten the night before at home while he slept. We took him back to the light and checked him out. The injured knee was swollen to twice the size of his regular knee. Unfortunately Caleb was the only scout there without a dad so it fell to Hank and I to make the call. We decided to take him down to the hospital and that we would call his mom on the way. We started down and, once we had a signal, called Marleah to have her be the liason with the mom, Emily. She let us know that Emily would meet us in Boulder and make the assessment from there. We met Emily and she took a look at his knee. It was swollen, hot and Caleb was walking with a little limp. She decided to take him to the emergency room. We went with her in case the doctor released him to go back to camp. Caleb really wanted to go back to camp and we wanted to be able to help him with that if it was allowed. We sat around at the emergency room for a very long before being able to see a doctor. The diagnosis was that there was no real reason to know what was going on with him. There were a couple of possibilities but only time would tell. The doctor did want to start him on some penicillin and antibiotics, though. The medicine became the real problem with sending him back to camp, though. Scout leaders are not able to administer medicine to their Scouts. We would have to turn it in to the first-aid officer for the camporee and the timing was such that we didn't know if that would work out. Also Caleb had never taken the medicines before and none of us knew how he would react. That became the biggest factor. We didn't want him to be up in the mountains if he had a bad reaction so we all ultimately decided to send him home. He was very sad about the whole thing. He kept it together during the rest of the time we were at the hospital, but, once we got in our separate cars, we could see him break down and start crying. It was like he didn't want to lose it in front of Hank and me and held it in. I felt very sad for him. By the time Hank and I got back up to camp we were getting to sleep around 4:45 AM. I had originally planned to get up at 5:30. To heck with that plan!

I wound up getting up at 6:30. Boys had started stirring and I knew that we had stuff to get done if we were going to be on schedule. The last couple of campouts like this I had been on we were notoriously slow in getting the cooking, eating and cleaning done in the alloted time. As such we were always missing flag ceremonies and late for the start of activities. I didn't want that to be the case this time so I wanted us to have plenty of time to get things done. I dragged myself awake, got dressed and headed out to get the boys started on breakfast. We were actually able to get all of the breakfast stuff done and cleaned up just in time to head over to the flag ceremony. I was very pleased. Despite the long night the day was starting off well.

Our first event of the day was shooting and was the one that everybody was looking forward to. What boy doesn't like to shoot guns, right? The Webelos got to shoot BB guns while our one Scout got to shoot shotguns. He was very excited. He had never shot a shotgun before. Neither have I for that matter. They had a skeet launcher (flinger? whatever the term is) and he had five chances to hit the flying skeet. He actually nailed one of them dead on. It was a great shot and he was all smiles. That one moment would have been worth the whole trip. The next activity was rescue throws down at the waterfront and the boys did okay with that. The last event of the morning was a first-aid scenario. The boys did okay eventually but it made me realize that I need to work more first-aid scenarios into my program. I teach them all of the stuff pretty well (in my humble opinion) but scenarios really bring it together. It was made worse by the fact that all but one of the scouts was a Webelos, but it still made me think. I will definitely be working scenarios into my first-aid program in the future. After that event we should have gone back for lunch and then back out for an afternoon of activities, but we wound up leaving instead. One of the Webelos was going to leave after lunch anyways and when we discussed it I found out the two of the other dads had to work this evening. Also factoring into it was the fact that Hank and I were dead tired. So, in the end, we decided to skip lunch and just pack up and leave. The boys were sad to leave, but that was a good thing because it meant that they were having a good time. I had been given negative advice about these camporees before but decided to try one out anyways. I'm very glad that I did because it was a great event and the boys had lots of fun. I will definitely be going back to the next one.

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Krav After Two Week Absence

Tonight was the first night that I have been to Krav for a couple of weeks. Life happened and I wasn't able to go for a short while. It happens now and then. It's also really easy for me to let myself be lazy sometimes. I always want to work on my procrastination, but I keep putting it off. Last night's class was pretty good. I had an epiphany about one of the techniques we were doing where it suddenly made sense what some portions of the technique were achieving. It was kind of cool. The last exercise of the night involved a lot of running and that kicked my butt. I can't run very fast or long. I know, I know; one look at my fat, out-of-shape body and you'd never be able to guess it. I need to start doing my morning exercises again. I was actually starting to lose weight for a little while but I've gotten out of the habit. Perhaps I'll push myself up tomorrow morning. We'll see.

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No Longer a Blank Amtgard Slate

This is one I feel a little bad blogging about. I don't want people to get the wrong impression about me. First some background.... In Amtgard they have recognition/awards that they give to people for all sorts of things: service, fighting ability, arts & sciences, etc. These awards work in a tiered-progression concept. They have have categories that these things are broken down into and each award you receive in a category is supposed to be a little harder to earn than the last one. There are no set rules/standards for receiving awards, it's just all at the discretion of the leadership. This is where the problem lies with me. Again, I don't want people thinking that I'm glory seeking or that I think I'm some great whatever. I really don't. I have done a few things worthy of recognition, however, and it's tough to see people receive awards and have your own contribution overlooked. I tried not to let it get to me but I am human after all. There was an even last weekend (which I couldn't attend) and they had court there as they do at almost all events. At this court I was finally awarded a few things. Previous to this my records page had been a big blank slate. I had received nothing. So, this was a notable thing for me. I received my first two awards for service, first two awards for jewelry making, and first award for fighting skill. I found out later that one of my friends had to resort to calling up the current leader and complaining on my behalf in order for me to get most of those awards. It kind of bugs me that that is what had to happen. I want to receive awards because my contribution is recognized, not because someone complained. I have been told that that is the way it has to happen, but I still prefer the route of quiet service. I don't like tooting my own horn. And I feel bad when others toot it on my behalf. Perhaps I'm being to humble. It will require some thought I guess....

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Three Cheers for the Finished Blanket

It may sound lame, but I'm cheering big time for finally finishing the baby blanket for Nadine. It feels like I've been working on this blanket for !@#$-ing ever. Karen and I guess it took something like seven months. Seven Months?!?!?! Sheesh! I have no real clue why it took so long, either. I actually picked the pattern because I didn't think it would take too long. Boy was I wrong. I'm so totally sick of making baby blankets. I've only got one more on my list to do right now and I've already gotten a good start on it. We've decided that there is one particular pattern I'm going to use from now on because Karen thinks it went really fast the last time. I don't really recall, but I will say that it seems to be going much faster. I've only been working for a few days and I'm already almost half done with the body. I don't want to give the same pattern to a family twice, but I will definitely use this pattern as a first blanket wherever possible. Or maybe save it for when I'm in a time crunch. The baby this blanket is for was born a couple days ago so I'm a little under the gun. My goal is to always have it done before the baby is blessed. I totally failed on this last one, but I hope she understands. I was going to have yet another blanket to do after this one, but it appears like that one might have been taken off my list this weekend. No complaints here....

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Computer Repairman - Will Work for Free

I've been playing computer repairman for the last couple of days. One of my friends was complaining that his computer was running really slow and had a bunch of garbage popping up all of the time. I suggested that a full rebuild might improve things and he decided it was a good idea. So, I've spent the last two evenings helping him back-up and rebuild his machine. For the most part it went okay. We got the OS back up and running with all of the appropriate drivers. One of the ancillary things he wanted fixed (playing DVDs) got fixed and I have loaned him a boat-load of software/games to play with. I wasn't using them so I figured, "what the hey?" The only thing we didn't get setup was his wireless network. He's got a wireless router already setup that he's hard-wired into but he wanted to get the wireless portion working so that he could use his laptop with it. For some reason the computer won't see the router to configure it even though it appears to be running through it. I traced the cables through his rat's nest tangle as best I could and it seems like the computer is physically connected through it. But the computer has an IP address that makes it look like it's not using the router at all. Most home routers are configured to use similar subnets and this one is not using any IP subnet that looks familiar. Plus, when I run the router setup software (which we shouldn't really need) it fails on the detecting-the-router step. But the computer connects to the internet just fine. It's very bizarre. I told the guy that we needed to verify the physical connections beyond a doubt. The two options were to bypass his rat's nest tangle with new wires (which he didn't have) or de-tangle the cable mess. He kind of opted for the second option and I left him for the night to de-tangle on his own. I kind of draw the line at figuring out someone's cabling issues. I have my own rat's nest at home to deal with and I don't want to deal with someone else's. I haven't heard back from him yet, but I also haven't seen him since then. I'll follow-up with him at church on Sunday and make certain he knows I'm still willing to help him once the cabling mess is sorted out. Fun, fun, fun!

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DragonMaster Competition

Today was a DragonMaster competition at the IMD park. It was for all of Iron Mountains, but it was held locally which made it very convenient for me. I entered three pieces of chain mail jewelry as well as my belt and one of my swords. I put in the belt and sword as a, "what the heck" kind of thing. I mainly was entering the jewelry. I entered a bracelet I had previously made for Karen and the necklace I made for Marleah. The only thing I made fresh was a new bracelet similar to the one I made Kathy for her birthday. I made it mainly purple so that Karen would like it. This was my first time entering one of these competitions so I didn't really know what to expect. One guy brought 23 entries. My five seemed fairly pitiful. He didn't have anything in my category so my jewelry wasn't competing against him. He had a ton of stuff, though. He really inspired me to beef up my tailoring and leatherworking skills. I have already started doing a little sewing, but I need to see if I can get a little tutoring from one of my friends. It would probably help if I had a project in mind before I asked for assistance. I saw a nice (from what I can tell with my limited knowledge) leatherworking set on sale from Tandy. It is kind of expensive, $500, but it has a bunch of tools in it. My concern is that I would get these tools and have no clue on how to use them. I thought about seeing if the local Tandy store offers any classes, but I haven't done it yet. In my mind it would be in their best interest to offer free (or very cheap) classes. It seems like it would create more business for them. I know, the last thing I need is more hobbies to dabble in. Oh well.

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Weekend Recap

Here's the recap of our whirlwind weekend. I don't know how much of a whirlwind it was, but I was definitely tired when Sunday night came. Friday night started out pretty quiet. We went out to Chili's for dinner. It was a nice little dinner, just the two of us, followed by a trip to Target to see what was there that we couldn't live without.

At the end of our dinner I got a call from Jim to ask me a question about his Varsity Scout program. I don't really know much about Varsity Scouts but I gave it my best shots. I guess there are pins that you earn as part of your participation in things and he was trying to get his scouts awarded a bunch of pins for the things they had done over the last year. This was the first time he had gotten stuff together and tried to award pins so the process was new to him. The advancement chairman in his ward, though, didn't want to let him award these pins because the scouts hadn't also earned merit badges for these things. Jim and I were of the belief that these pins were completely different things from merit badges and the former does not require the latter. I suggested that he talked to Bill, who is my reference for the Varsity and Venture programs. I called Bill first and confirmed that we were exactly right. I relayed the information to Jim and he called Bill himself to chat about other things Varsity Scout related. By that time I was sitting outside Target waiting to go in. So I went ahead in to do some shopping.

They had some "Tribute to the 80s" DVDs that were fun to look at. It was basically just movies from the 80s that they were re-releasing but there were several that we liked that we didn't already own so it was, of course, required that we get some of them. After that we went home and got to bed. I stayed up playing video games, but there is nothing new about that.

I got up nice and early on Saturday morning to mow the grass. The actual mowing went pretty smoothly but the trimming had problems. Part of the wire assembly broke on the trimmer so I need to go buy a new assembly. I didn't actually get a chance to buy it this weekend, so it's still on my t0-do list.

Karen and I ran over to Costco to get some needed things. There was a show setup at the entrance for Roland pianos. I have been thinking for a little while that it would be nice to get a piano. Neither one of us play but it would be nice to learn. I sat down at one of their digital pianos and saw that it has a whole teaching program built into it. It's kind of cool how it works. It has a variety of songs at different levels built into it and it shows the score as well as a keyboard graphic. As the music goes along it highlight the note in the score as well as the keys you should be pressing on the keyboard. You can then slow down or speed up the tempo of the song to match your playing ability. It actually does this for any song that you load into it. It's just that in the "teaching" mode it will grade your performance. You can apparently load any song you want in MIDI (I believe) format. Then you can slow it way down so that you can follow along at your own pace. The thing I liked most is that it looks like a regular upright piano. It doesn't look like a techno-keyboard thing. It even has a way to slide the key cover just a little bit and cover all of the buttons so that it looks identical to an upright. Also, the sound that comes out of it is just gorgeous. There is a setting to have it mimic the sounding board of a grand piano. It sounds beautiful. I thought it was really cool but wasnt' going to buy it because I figured it was too expensive and unnecessary. I did the rest of my shopping and went and found Karen. I told her about the piano and it turns out that she has been wanting to get one. She wanted to ask me to make that her birthday present. She wasn't looking for the big, expensive piano like I found but definitely wanted something. She took a look at the piano they had and agreed that it was really nice. I figured we should go ahead and spend the money as this would be something that could meet our piano needs for years to come. So we went back and bought it. It's going to be delivered in about ten days. The sales-lady is even going to give us an in-home demo and give us a ton of MIDI files to use with it. She even agreed to give us free delivery because she didn't have any more of those pianos on hand. Karen and I are both pretty excited. Here is the site that has all the info about the piano if you are interested.

After Costco we ran home and I changed clothes to go out and play Amtgard. I only had a couple of hours to play as Karen wanted me back by 3:30. When I got there there was only a couple of people there. One of the Golden Lions, Hannibal, was there which I was glad to see. I went ahead and petitioned them last week. It still felt weird because I only know Hank and Marleah. Hannibal moved here this week, though, and now I'll have another Golden Lion to hang out with. He looks to be more regularly active than Hank and Marleah so that will be a good thing. If I'm going to join this company it will be nice to have one of them around on the battlefield on a regular basis. After a little while of being there some more people showed up so we were able to do some reasonable ditching. By the time I left I really wished I could have stayed but that's the way things go. I got to be out for a little bit at least.

I went back home and got cleaned up so that Karen and I could go out to the races. Jim was bringing a bunch of his scouts so he needed us to give his kids a ride. We went and picked them up and headed off to the races. The race track is really close to us which is nice. In California it was a really long drive. Here it takes us less than half an hour which is very nice. It was an okay evening of racing. There were a lot of cautions during the figure-8 which was kind of boring. The figure-8 is definitely one of the most exciting races that they do. We went home around 10:00. I stayed up playing video games again (no surprise) but I actually had a purpose this time. A new game, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, went into open beta on Sunday. So I stayed up until after midnight to see if I could get in. Unfortunately I couldn't so I wandered off to bed.

Sunday morning I got up and immediately went to try starting the download of Warhammer before I got ready for church. I was able to get in this time and the download started. I went off to church anxiously awaiting the time to come home and get into the game.

Church was just whatever today. No terribly interesting talks/testimonies or incredibly insightful lessons. I got to chat it up with a few people which was nice. I'm still trying to get to know people in the ward so it's good to have that chance. I had a scoutmaster's conference to do right after church so that got me out of doing a fast-offering route. I hadn't planned it that way, but that's the way it worked out. I don't really mind taking a youth out on their route, but I'm just as happy to not do it, if you understand what I mean. This time I had a SM conference so I wasn't available. I enjoyed having the conference with this particular scout. He's one of those youth who is just a joy to have around. I wish all of my scouts could be like him. I've said before that if I did have kids I would want to take parenting lessons from his parents. He's such a great young man. Once the SM conference was over I went home so that I could take Karen over to one of her visiting teaching lady's homes. It was her birthday and Karen had a little present for her.

Once we got back from the birthday delivery I was finally able to play Warhammer! My first time into the game there was a glitch which made me worry that the game wasn't going to work on my computer. I started the game again and everything went fine. I got to play for a couple of hours. I'm not terribly over-whelmed with the game right now, but it's fun to be doing something different. I'll give it a chance and see how it goes.

I got a call from the scoutmaster of the older guys hassling me about the fact that I wasn't willing to award Tenderfoot to a scout that had only been with me for three meetings. I don't really know who was pushing, but it really ticked me off. I think they were thinking that I would count the stuff he did when he went to half of the 11 year old scout camp. They never really talked to me about it. I even told the dad during our last committee meeting that the new guys wouldn't be getting anything at this court of honor. Yet I get a call from the boards of review trying to push this kid through. I was really ticked off. I try really hard to keep my nose out of the program for the older guys and here was their scoutmaster trying to meddle in mine. I am going to have a sit-down with some folks and hash this out. I'm not going to continue this way.

After all of this fun stuff I spent some time getting Karen's printer and label-maker setup. She's been wanting me to do it for a while and I haven't gotten around to it. It's not that I have been actively avoiding doing it, it's just that I don't think about it during those times when I could do it. Regardless, I have set them both up for her and made certain they were working correctly. The label-maker has all sorts of fun options so I hope she will enjoy that.

Hank and Marleah and kids came over for dinner Sunday night so that we could watch Burn Notice. We truly didn't know if they were still coming over. They have had lots of drama at their place so it wouldn't have surprised us if it just didn't happen. They still came over, however, and we had a nice evening. After they left I went up to play some more Warhammer but I kept falling asleep. It was only 9:30, but I was ready for bed. I went in to read a little and fell asleep around 11:00.

There you go, that was our fun weekend. I'm going to go and do real work now.

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Scout Meeting Last Night

The Scouts worked on their patrol flag last night at the Scout meeting. Karen and I decided we should have them glue pieces together. We figured we could always sew them together later. If the guys had to wait for every piece to get sewn the flag would have never gotten done. It wound up taking the whole night the way it was. I was actually planning on being able to do other things last night but that didn't work out. Oh well. Their flag doesn't actually look that bad. They are the Piranhas.

!!!!

I have to laugh. One of the guys supposedly looked up how to spell "piranha" so that we would know the right way to spell it on the flag. He came back with "pirahna" as the spelling but when we put it on the flag we screwed up and put "piranha". I was feeling bad because the goof was primarily my fault. Now when I just typed it the supposedly "right" way the spell check showed that his spelling was wrong and that mine was right along. I now no longer feel bad at all. That makes me laugh hard.

Their flag has a half-red and half-black strip going along the top; a large blue area in the middle with the patrol name and three piranhas drawn on it; and an orange section on the bottom that is cut to appear all ragged. It's not a bad design at all.

On a completely separate note one of the parents annoyed me. Their son wasn't at our first two meetings so he is already behind the other guys. Then, at the first meeting he's at, his mom takes him out early and says that he'll never stay for the full meeting because he's got to get home to bed. So now I will have a scout that is always behind and I'll have to figure out what parts of the meeting he was there for when I put it in my records. My meetings only go until 8:30. I have never had a parent complain about that before. Sheesh!

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DragonBlade Wars

I went off to Nevada this weekend with some friends to attend an Amtgard event called DragonBlade Wars. Hank invited me at the last minute and I decided to go ahead and give it a try. It was only the second event I had ever been to. It was just four guys going up in a van together and I had a lot of fun. It was great just doing guy stuff. We left here Friday evening a little later than planned due to schedules. My job was to stay awake and keep the driver company and be ready to spell him in case he got tired. So I blathered away about nonsense for hours on end. A little bit before Salt Lake, about 4:00 AM, we had a flat tire. Fortunately the spare wasn't underneath all of the junk we had packed in the back. That would have been really annoying. We were just finishing up when a cop stopped to check on us. After seeing that we were almost finished his first question was, "Are you guys on your way to a rave?" We just stared at him. We didn't quite know how to answer. The first thought was "do we look like the type of people who go to raves?" The answer for me is... maybe? I don't really know what the "rave" type would be. I'm guessing it wouldn't be the mid to late thirties crowd, though. My second thought was, "do I really want to get into an explanation about what Amtgard is to a cop in the middle of the night on the side of the road?" That was a definite "not really." In the end one of the other guys said something that satisfied him and we moved on. He gave us the number of an all night tire shop and we said good-bye. Unfortunately the tire shop wasn't open and we couldn't find any other place open. We ate a little breakfast in a diner across the street from the first tire shop while we looked for another. We finally decided to just get a room for a few hours and sleep until places were open. This started a whole line of thinking about the weird look we would get when four guys asked for a room for "just a few hours." Apparently one of the other guys had actually been refused a room when he was in a similar situation before. In the end a casual explanation during the purchase of the room answered any concerns that may have existed. The fact that the guy on duty was younger probably helped out as well. After a few hours sleep Hank took the van over and got them started on it. He came back and got us after a short while and we walked over to see how it was going. The tire was done but the guy came out and told us that the other rear tire was just about to blow in the same way. His exact words then were, "Given the size of your friends it might be a good idea to replace it as well." Again we just stared at each other. Fortunately we're all pretty good-natured so we didn't get upset. We joked that Hank should have said, "Given the size of my friends you should really re-think that statement." We let them go ahead and change the other tire while we waited for a few minutes. After that we were on our way again. We went the rest of the way without incident and arrived at the site around 10:00 or so. They were in the middle of doing battle games and I took that opportunity to get my tent setup. I'm not really into battle games so it was good timing. We had lunch and some ditches before court that evening. After court people basically sat around talking. I chatted a little bit and then headed off to bed. After taking out my contacts and calling Karen I went out to use the bathroom one more time. On the way back I saw a group of people I knew sitting in a group talking. I thought about just heading back to my tent but then decided I should try to be more social. I was very proud of myself for going over there. It is the type of thing where I normally would have been too shy to join the group and would have went off feeling kind of sad. Instead I overcame those shy tendancies and went over. I know it wouldn't seem like a big deal to most, but it was a huge deal for me. All went well and I had a good time chatting with people. We broke up a while later and I went off to bed.

The next morning Hank invited me to go to the Lion's breakfast with him. Hank and Marleah belong to a company called "The Golden Lions". Every time they are together at an event they go out for breakfast together. I understood that and was surprised that he invited me to go with him. This again butted up against my "don't want to impose" instincts. He assured me that it was fine so I went ahead and joined him. I was a little nervous because it was a group of people that I didn't know and didn't really have anything to chat about with. In the end I just stayed quiet and listened to everyone. I had a good time, though. Marleah would like me to petition to join the Lions but I have always been a little hesitant. I don't really know any of them except for her and Hank. I wouldn't want them to feel like I was "friend-stalking" them by joining even though they are the primary reasons why I would join. I could appreciate them thinking, "Must you do everything we do just because we're friends? Go out and do something for yourself!" Going to the breakfast gave me a chance to get to know other Lions a little bit. They were all nice people. It turns out that one of them is moving to our area so I will probably get to see him a lot more. Hank and Marleah would still be the reason why I petitioned the Lions, but at least I would know some of the other people. Also, they would know me. I'll need to give the whole thing more thought.

We got back from breakfast just in time for the tournament to start. I almost wasn't going to get to participate because they were already full for a 32-man bracket. Fortunately several other people wanted in so they opened it up further. I did better in this tournament than I ever have before. I've only been in two other tourneys before so I suppose it's not really saying much. In my previous tourneys I only won one match all day. This time I won three or four matches in one event. I did a fairly decent showing in the other events as well. I was quite pleased with myself. After the tourney we did a single-sword circle and later single-sword ditches. I did quite well (for me) in both. Up to now my fighting has been very random. I throw random shots and get lucky if something hits. I still did that a lot this time but I also had occasions where I saw and made targeted shots. I got a couple of compliments on my fighting from Hank and Jody. That made me really happy. I know I still have a long way to go but it felt good not to be stinking up the joint. As I told a few people, it really sucks sucking all the time. This event was a chance for me to not suck as much. It was quite a confidence builder.

We originally had planned on leaving Monday morning but everyone decided that we wanted to take off early so we packed up and left right after court Sunday night. We were all pretty beat when we got in the van and I could tell it was going to be a long night. We stopped at a McDonald's on the way out and discovered that it was the worst McDonald's ever. We had to wait at least 15 minutes to get our food to go. They were out of apple pies and were substituting with ice cream. When I picked up my food I swear I heard them say in the back that they were out of meat. Out of meat?! How do you get to be out of meat?! It was pretty sad but we had a good laugh over it. Hank started out driving but only got an hour or so down the road before he needed me to take over. Like I said, we were all pretty wiped. Right after I took over it started raining like crazy. I drove through the rain all the way through Utah and part of the way through Wyoming. It was poor visibility, twisting mountain roads, standing water and a heavy downpour. I was not at my happiest. I have decided that I really don't like driving through bad weather at night. I'll do it when I have to, but it is not tops on my list. I have also become a really cautious driver. More so than I ever was before. That has really surprised me. Anyway, I drove for a few hours and then Hank woke up and took over. It was good timing because I was starting to drift off. My co-pilot had already fallen asleep and had done a poor job before that of chatting me up to keep me awake. All in all I was quite happy to turn the wheel back over to Hank. I still stayed up to keep him awake, but I didn't have to drive through the bad weather and that made it better for me. We had bad weather the bulk of the way through Wyoming. After that we made it back home without many problems. I started to drift off between Cheyenne and Denver but the sun was coming up and Hank was fine by then. When we got into Denver and started heading toward Jody's house I really hit the wall. I was pretty done. After we dropped Jody off I was fine again, but it was a moot point because the trip was basically over. Hank dropped me off around 6:30 AM or so. I unpacked my junk while telling Karen all about the trip. It didn't take long before I was passed out on the bed snoozing away. I pretty much slept the whole day away.

It was a long weekend, but I had a ton of fun. It definitely made me interested in going to another event in the future. It also renewed my flagging interest in Amtgard. I can't wait to go out to the park this Saturday and play again. So, in the final assessment, it was a great weekend for me and I'm really glad I went.

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Feeling the Pain From Krav

I am really feeling the pain from Krav tonight. Not "pain" really, just worn out. I wasn't able to go last week and I wonder if that affected me tonight. Probably not. Tonight would have kicked my butt no matter what. We primarily did a lot of front and roundhouse kicks. We worked on choke defense a little as well. I love choke defense. It feels awesome, like it would really work in real life. At the end of class we did kicks as hard and fast as we could for a few minutes. I thought I was going to pass out. I was barely able to stand in the line at the end of class. I made it through and everything, it was just a hard workout. It's a great reminder of why I go. I need that kind of workout to get me in shape. I was working with a first-timer tonight. He looked in great shape, but the class wore him out as well. There is something about the class that can be a challenge even for those in good shape. Ah well. I'm going to sleep well tonight.

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Happy Birthday to Me

My birthday was yesterday. I turned 35. Karen worked really hard to make the entire weekend fun for me. All throughout the weekend things would occurred related to my birthday. It was kind of fun. On Friday evening we went to the ham radio store to buy me my first ham radio. I didn't actually get it until my birthday party, but it was fun to pick it out. I finally got to play with it a little bit this morning. It's very confusing and the instructions seem to be very wrong at times, but I'm trying to learn. I'm certain it will get better. After the radio store we went to See's Candies. Apparently they are only five minutes apart from each other. That is a very handy thing to know. In my mind the radio store was way out of the way. We go to See's every month or so, so it's nice to know that we can just swing over to the radio store if I need. After getting some yummy chocolate we went over to the Church bookstore. I wound up buying a couple of books that interested me. To be honest, I haven't found this bookstore as interesting to browse around as I did the one in San Jose, but I'm certain that's just me. They have a bakery attached to this store and there was a great smell when we came in. They were selling orange rolls at half price because they had a bunch of them to get rid of. We wound up getting a dozen. Later on when we tried them we realized why they were having a hard time getting rid of them. They were nasty! We had already given half ours away by that time and I think we're looking for someone to take the rest of them now. It was quite disappointing. After the bookstore we drove over to a nearby mall to see about getting some dinner. We had never been over there before and it turned out to be a happening little mall. We didn't actually go into the mall, but I have since heard that it is a very nice mall to walk around. We're going to have to go back there and check it out. We decided on eating at PF Chang's, but this particular one was too busy so we headed out for one of their other locations. We ran into a really nasty accident on the way. Traffic was backed up pretty bad. We also ran into some rain which really annoyed Karen. She had just gotten the van washed and now it was raining. Doesn't it just figure? We made it out to the other PF Chang's and had a really wonderful dinner. We've become very fond of their lettuce wraps and they didn't disappoint. We had a couple of other dishes that were somewhat new and they were quite nice as well. Add into that the atmosphere and the company and it was a really nice dinner. Afterward we went next door to Border's Books. Like we hadn't had enough bookstores for one evening, right? :-) I don't know that I had been to that particular Border's before, but it definitely won me over. They had a great science fiction section with a few rpg book options. They even had some of the Munchkin card sets which really surprised me. We were able to find a few things worth spending money on, so it was a good time.

On Saturday I got up early and mowed the grass. This may not sound fun, but it made me happy. Mowing the grass is definitely work, but I love the feeling of accomplishment it gives me. I love looking out at our yard and seeing it nicely trimmed. It's weird, I know, but it makes me happy. I had decided a couple of months ago that I would mow the grass every Saturday morning. Doing it once a week keeps it looking nice and makes it not that tough to maintain. Unfortunately circumstances had conspired to make me unavailable the last three Saturdays so it didn't get mowed. I could have mowed it during the week, but that would have missed the whole point of me making my Saturday mornings available. Silly, I know. Regardless, by the time this Saturday morning came our grass was looking pretty bad. The back grass was especially thick. I probably could have gotten it done in under two hours, but our neighbor came over to chat in the middle of it. It was nice to chat with him but it did throw a little wrench into our schedule. Especially since Karen was feeling a little bit of a time crunch on the day. I got everything done except for the trimming in the back yard and we decided that could wait. We got cleaned up and headed out for the day. Our first stop was to the office supply store. Where else would a guy want to go on his birthday weekend? hehehe. I actually did want to go there. I had some office organization stuff I wanted to pick up. Again we found plenty of things to spend money on, so the trip must have not been that bad. After that we went to Macy's so that Karen could get some more make-up. We found out that they stopped making her old make-up so she had to try to find the equivalent in the new stuff. She played the smiling customer while the little make-up lady picked out just the right hydration cream, foundation, blush, red dye number five, weed whacker, post-hole digger and cement mixer that we just couldn't live without. I dutifully guarded the purse and smiled and nodded at all of the appropriate places. I'm just joking, though. It didn't bother me at all and Karen seemed to be enjoying herself so I was happy. After that we went over to get the balloons and cake for my party on Sunday night. It was an ice cream cake so we had to run it home before we could do anything else. After securing the cake we went to a place called Boondocks. It is one of these mini-golf/video game/go-kart/laser tag/everything-under-the-sun-to-entertain-kids type of places. We had never been there before but it sounded like it would be fun so I chose to go there as one of my birthday activities. Our friends, Hank and Marleah, came with us along with their kids. It was a lot of fun. We had to duck out early as we had a family birthday dinner at Olive Garden.

On Sunday morning I had to hop up and prepare a lesson. I was teaching for the first time in Elder's Quorum and hadn't prepared my lesson yet. I got it finished and ran off to church. I think the lesson went okay, but nobody really said anything so I can't be certain. As Karen said, I guess we'll know if they don't ask me to teach again. After church I went home teaching. I like my families and I like chatting with them so home teaching isn't really much of a chore. Even though I put it off as if it were. After I got back home it was almost time for people to show up for the birthday dinner at our place. Karen fixed a wonderful dinner of turkey and mashed potatoes. I loved it. The birthday cake was my favorite ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. We did the whole present opening thing where I got way more presents than I deserved and then everyone went home. Karen and I did a little bit of cleaning up and then went upstairs for some well-deserved sleep. It was a long weekend. Whew!

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Stupid Windows Long Path Names

I'm so !@#$ frustrated right now. I've been working on a program to export documents out of our portal and onto a file system. This is enough of a pain in the neck as it is because the documents are stored in four different places. The portal just contains links to the native document. Adding to the problem is that I have to replicate the portal directory structure on the file system. So, my app has to replicate the portal folder structure, figure out where the document that is being referenced actually lives and copy it into the new location on the file system. All of that would be fine (somewhat) if it were for how Windows handles path definitions. Because the portal didn't care how long a path might wind up being it let people create folder structures that stretched over twenty levels deep with folder and file names that were hundreds of characters long. Of course when I try to recreate this on a file system Windows barfs all over it. Or, to be more precise, .NET barfs all over it. In some way Windows can deal with the long path, but .NET can't at all. I say that Windows can deal with it in some ways because the reality is that it's very spotty in its handling of it. You can navigate through the folders. You can open the documents. You can even move the folders around as long as it is on the same drive. If you try to delete something or move it to a new disk then Windows starts barfing on it. There are .NET tricks to getting around these things so that you can build these offending folder structures, but it's not all peaches and cream. Copying from one location to another can apparently only be done if the source does not have the "long path" designator in front of it. Dynamically created shortcuts appear to vomit all over the long path issue no matter what I try. I even tried creating the shortcut in a path-friendly location and then copying it over to the final, long-path location but it doesn't seem to like that. To make matters worse, the methods you use for long paths from .NET are actually calls to the core Windows API. They apparently didn't write any useful error/debug messages into this API because all of the methods either succeed or fail with no explanation of the problem. It's not like a specific exception gets raised that you can work with to trace down the problem. No, the method just doesn't work and continues happily on. I'm left totally in the dark as to what the heck the actual problem is. It's driving me nuts. I've spent the last six days beating my head against these problems and they currently are only sort-of resolved. I think I'm about ready to say screw the whole thing. This is the best you're getting; deal with it and shut-up!

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First Ham Radio

It looks like I might be going out this weekend to get my first ham radio. I've had my technician license for a couple of months, but I haven't bought a radio yet. The primary reason is that I have no clue what to buy. There are all these different options that I no absolutely nothing about. I feel totally and completely stupid about the whole thing. I wish our class had included a trip to the local store with buying tips. I even joined a radio club without any real clue as to what I was doing. One of the guys from church took me to a club meeting and told me it was a good club and that I should join. So... I joined. Part of joining a club is getting to use their repeaters and that part made sense to me. Considering our location I'm guessing most of my chatting would be done on a repeater. If I do any chatting at all, that is. I got into this thing for emergency communications and now I feel like I actually have to do something with it. Otherwise the whole thing will have been just a waste of time. So I'm going to go and buy my first radio and start in on the whole thing. We'll see how it goes. Wish me luck.

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Terribly Exciting Day

Terribly exciting day yesterday. Nothing very amazing happened. I worked late and we had IHOP for dinner. Then I was up late watching our friends' kids while they went to the emergency room. It gave me a good excuse to get a lot of reading in, though, so I'm not complaining too much. I'm working on an application to export documents out of our portal onto a file system while recreating the directory structure on the portal. This has caused me to bump into the dreaded path-length issue that I have been skirting during the last three projects. So, I finally have to deal with it. It's rather annoying, actually. I spent all day yesterday writing a class to handle the main file operations we need using p/invoke methods from the Windows API. It's not nearly as much fun as it sounds. The special part of the fun occurs when the method doesn't work for some reason but doesn't bother to give me any debugging error information. It just fails and moves happily along. I'm stuck with a big ol' question mark on my forehead wondering what to do now. I've actually gotten the primary part of the app working, so that's good. I just have to write the code to extract from a secondary source, but that shouldn't be too problematic. Oh well.... back to the grindstone...

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Good Little Scout Leader

As intimated in a previous post, I was dealing with the dilemma of having to come up with a new meeting plan for my 11-year old Scouts. I decided to be a good little Scout leader and just do it. It really wasn't as hard as I was expecting. I created a meeting plan oriented around earning the ranks up through First Class in order. I had originally been worried that I would have a hard time spreading the topics out across meetings, but it wasn't that bad. There was only a couple of times where I had to have two different topics in the same meeting and that's not really a bad thing. About the only topic I refused to split up was the practical part of the swimming stuff. If I'm going to the trouble to organize a swimming activity to get the Second Class requirements covered, then I'm just going to do the First Class ones at the same time. It seems ridiculous to plan another swimming activity a month later to cover those two additional requirements. I'm doing swimming toward the end of the Second Class curriculum any ways, so a little overlap isn't bad. The plan for each rank also includes one campout; because a campout is required for each rank. This presents a slight problem because it winds up giving me more campouts in a year than the Church allows for 11-year old Scouts. This program is a six-month program so the idea is that it gets repeated twice during the 11-year old's time with me. This means that I can have Scouts start at any time in the plan and they will definitely get everything covered to get them to First Class. The only thing is that the stuff at the end of First Class is a little more geared toward older Scouts. It's not enough to really worry about, though. The plan actually allows for seven flex weeks in the six month period. The idea is that there will be meeting cancellations occasionally for holidays and other things so this plan allows for that. I presented the plan at our committee meeting today and everyone seemed to like it. Now I just have to execute the plan and see if I haven't overloaded a meeting some place.

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11th Anniversary

This was our anniversary weekend. Karen and I have been married for 11 years. It's amazing. The time seems to have flown. We didn't really do anything incredibly exciting to celebrate, though. We went to the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder and did a little shopping. That was fun. There were several things that Karen had wanted to buy when she took Sheila there last Monday but didn't get a chance to. There is a kitchen store there that she loves to look through. They've got a little game store that I enjoy patronizing. I wound up buying a couple of games. I got Settlers of Catan. I have been eying that game for a long time now, but never bought it. So I decided to treat myself. I also bought an add-on to Munchkin called Munchkin Dice and a new card game called Gloom. Gloom seems pretty fun. The whole point is to make bad things happen to your characters before they die and good things happen to your opponents characters. It's pretty weird, but it seems to fit my sense of humor. The guy running the store said the game was great so it can't be all that bad. For dinner we went to The Melting Pot. It's a fondue place not far from here. We went there for our last anniversary and Karen's birthday. It has become a favorite celebration place of ours. It's really expensive, though, so it's got to be only for special occasions. After that we came home and went to bed. Not really exciting, but it was fun.

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New group of Scouts

Last night was my 11-year old Scout meeting. I'm starting with a new group. It's not completely new. I have one hold-over from the last group who doesn't turn 12 until October. I'm supposed to have two new guys starting but only one showed up last night. That always tweaks me as I now have to figure out how to go over that information with him at another time. The first couple of meetings I always go over all of the basic Scouting junk. It's stuff I tend to not go over again later on because it's kind of boring. Of course I also have two more new guys starting in January, so I guess they'll get it again. I've never quite gotten the hang of having guys starting at different times. I much prefer to have a group start all at once and bring them along together. I suppose this is just an opportunity for me to get my program a little more organized rather than "free-form" the way it is right now. The other part is that I'm getting pressure to have these first two guys done with Tenderfoot by our next court of honor in a month. Personally I don't quite agree with it. I don't run my program following a rank timeline. Instead I go with monthly/block focus areas. All of the things get done, but we go all over the place on the "Trail to First Class" requirements. I don't really know what I'm going to do. I suppose I could push the rank timeline with these guys and switch to the block method once the next group starts. Thinking about it I suppose following rank timelines could give me more opportunities to repeat/reinforce information. As we do stuff for Second Class I can make certain they still remember what we learned for Tenderfoot. That just means that I'll totally have to reorganize my program. Could be fun, though. I'll have to try it out...

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Krav class tonight

Krav class tonight was excellent. It kicked my butt as always! Our warm-up included three laps around a small area of the strip mall. It shouldn't have been tough but I was dying. When did I get to be in such bad shape?! One of the exercises we did was pretty cool. We split up into three-person groups. One person was to punch a pad held by a second person. The trick was that a third person held a belt wrapped around the main person and pulled back as much as possible. The pad holder would constantly step back forcing you to fight forward so that you could keep hitting the pad. It was tough and a half, but I really enjoyed it. We worked some of the choke defense from behind as well. I really like that defense. I feel really powerful when I'm doing it. It feels incredibly effective. I know that someone wouldn't normally choke in that manner, but I also know that the technique will lead into more advanced stuff. All in all it was a great class and I got a great work-out.

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First time out

So, this is my first attempt at blogging. The hard thing is that my life is not terribly entertaining. I do my little bits each day and move on. Nothing terribly noteworthy. Sheila went home today. We left the house at 4 AM to take her to the airport. Ouch! We were only gone for a little over an hour, but it put a big dent in my sleep. I expect to be dragging tonight at Krav. Oh well. Life is back to quasi-normal again.

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