I think I may have hit a critical point in running Scout events. It is the day before a Webelos overnighter and I’ll receive 8 hours of sleep. This marks the first time this has happened in the two years of me running District events. Were I to need something that I forgot, I could still got to a reasonable large store and acquire it. I could place a phone call to someone knowing I hadn’t woken their family. I feel a mixture of relief and deviousness knowing I’ve bucked my own trend.
Tag: webelos
Suspicious Search Pattern
I wanted a sample blueprint that I could show kids as a sample floor schematic. I searched for vectorized drawings of houses and such but found nothing and started looking for neat stuff with blueprints like fighter jets but also found little so I started looking for hi-res pictures of famous buildings. I searched around a bit and finally stumbled upon a nice schematic of the White House. I failed to save it properly and went back to Google to get it again when I noticed Firefox’s history of search terms:
white house blueprints exploded
white house schematics
how to build a missile
missile schematic
soyuz capsule filetype:eps
pentagon blue prints
pentagon schematics
monument drawings
famous building, exploded view
I wonder if DHS takes Cub Scout program into consideration when reviewing search history…
Mad Scientist Training Weekend Recap
I’d unwittingly volunteered to do a Webelos Weekend and spent far more time preparing for it compared to any program I’ve ever run. The theme was “Mad Scientist Training Weekend” and kids completed the Science related activity pins.
Highlights:
- A fight between the Scout professional and the event staff over the breakfast drinks between water and juice. The compromise: Tang
- A leader asked if I could leave the pavilion light on as he graded papers saying he was a college professor. I checked back and he was grading papers titled “and now you try: identifying nouns”
- The evening meal for the kids was a mini-pizza and pasta for the adults. A leader asked if he could bring out his propane stove to cook something and the administrative head shot it down. He later approached me and offered me an Omaha Steak in return for some black-market grilling.
- My dad was pressed into running a station after a station lead texted out sick. Normally he doesn’t smoke on Scout trips as the outdoors calms him, apparently Cub Scouts don’t as he decimated cigarettes between groups in about 8 seconds.
- The evening presentation involved five rapid-fire demos that Joe and I did involving Newton’s First Law of Motion and atmospheric pressure. Joe and I made up a neat presentation where he breaks a brick over my hand with a hammer without injuring my hand to which no one responded. HE BROKE A BRICK OVER MY HAND. But when I used a playing card to seal a graduated cylinder everyone was stunned. After the presentation no less than 5 kids approached doubting the card’s efficacy until they tried it. Each was completely uninterested in how a brick broke over my hand.
- I had to drive home to grab a broom to clean up the next day and picked up Max so he could go for a run in the park. He was very interested the trip until he arrived, took a massive dump and ran back to the car. I think my family’s dog may be responsible for a series of shit-n-runs.
Go Webelos.