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.