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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