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During Spring break I enjoy the long-time tradition of college students with jobs: overtime.  Yesterday I was tooling around the building look for morsels and scraps from meetings when I hit a stockpile of goods: 12 bottles of water, 6 granola bars, about 20 cans of soda and a bowl of mixed nuts.  From the fact that there were no Brazil nuts in the mix I could tell this meeting was for important people.  Then I found a cache of leather folios for the meeting attendants.  I took them, in an effort to curry favor with my coworkers as I couldn’t reasonably use more than one.

I brought them back to the lab and presented them, in a moment one person asked “thanks, but who’s Rebecca Stimpton?”

Apparently I didn’t notice the engraved steel name plate on the back of each.  Oops.

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I had a co-worker propose the following riddle:  In a sealed room there’s a refrigerator with the door open.  Will the room increase or decrease in temperature?  I said it’d increase over time due to the 2nd Law of thermodynamics and after I got a blank-eyed stare stated that “the fridge generates more heat than it takes away”.  He looked at me grinning, said I was wrong, and stated that he never said it was plugged in.  I said his point was stupid and he called me unobservant, I shucked off the point until I remember as with most situations at work, there’s a XKCD comic that discusses it.  I found it.

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Cat is fine.  Wound is scabbing over nicely and he’s lazy and cranky again.  And yes, Joe, should my cat ever die (which seems pretty unlikely at this point considering how long he’ s already lived) you may mock his passing incessantly.  Should I feel insulted, I will do the manly thing and re-direct all my incoming voicemail to the program director’s mailbox.

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The lodge banquet went surprisingly well. Why you may ask? Well, THE FIREPLACE IN FOSTER HALL ACTUALLY CONTAINED A REAL FIRE.  That was the first time it’s ever been lit for a public event without the building having been smoked out.

The food was unimpressive and the quality has dropped each year but there were some redeeming aspects.  Dave Hasel, the council executive, made a delightful little speech about the importance of the Order of the Arrow, so short in fact, that Bill Schilling and I didn’t have enough time to make a complete Buzzword Bingo board including such phrases as “this is their Philmont” and “the average time a boy spends in Scouting is”.  He did bring up the cliche of “it doesn’t matter how much money you have when you die as long as you helped a child” crap, this statement obviously ignores the deceased’s children as well as their family’s financial needs but after the “I have nothing profound to say” affair I’ve kept my mouth shut at Scout funerals.  Bill Schilling whispered to me “God, this speech is so boring the fire’s falling asleep” and I agreed.

Then, I saw a whole bunch of people get angry as Dave left before Bill Kuhn’s memorial.  It was the first time I’d seen the Broken Arrow ceremony done and it was impressive as the folks standing directly in front of the fire didn’t say anything as their pants nearly caught on fire and the ceremony was done from memory.

Towards the end, I had an idea.  Every major Order of the Arrow event attended by Unami Lodge #1 involves their stupid film canisters full of dirt from the first ceremonial site.  Now that they’ve gone underwater so many times I think they should now give people flood water from the first ceremonial site.

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For the last year I’ve supported a few local Magic players by providing them cards in exchange for any promotional cards they win as part of their regular playing.  They cover entrance and what not and get any prizes except for those scintillating slices of cardboard periodically dispensed to participants.  Anyway,  a local player who I think is about 12 wanted to compete in Grand Prix: Philly which is a rather large (850+ people, is my guess) tournament coming up soon and asked to borrow cards.  I refused his offers of payment and had him email a deck list of stuff he wanted the proximate week.

He sends me the list and I reply telling him I may not have everything and that he should be prepared to pick up some cards himself but after using some favors, doing some bad trades and using some of my own promos I get 71 of the 75 cards he needs and bring it to the next event.  I give him the pile, tell him that I’ve gotten 71 of the 75 cards he needs and he immediately starts pestering me for the last 4.  Why don’t you have them? Is there anyone you can buy them from? How am I a supposed to get them? Well, can’t you’re friends that actually pay you use something else?  I get him 94.6% of the cards he needs and he bitches, I let people borrow 3 or 4 cards and I practically get a shrine and receive burnt offerings, and he bitches about four god-damn cards.

Kids today.

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Each Tuesday and Thursday, I have a 3 hour break at midday between two classes and it doesn’t make much sense for me to go home, so I tool around Temple, hit up Turkish Lunch Cart #2 or Greek Lunch Cart #4 (combine them and you get Cyprus, oh!) for a wicked gyro (they like that I don’t pronounce it JI-rho).  Today, I ate my gyro and promptly fell asleep in the Speakman study area.  For some strange reason, when I fall asleep on the train or at school, I don’t move around nor make much noise compared to my normal heavy breathing when sleeping.  Today was an exception.

I woke up with my arms flung out to the size of me my head back, mouth open and somehow I was in the exact middle of the aisle of 10 partitioned desks in the study area.  Apparently I’d been like this for some time, as the aisle  dead-ends and to the right of me all the chairs were full while those to the left were empty.  Temple follows the urinal rule of only using every other desk space when possible, I’d clearly broke that up.  I went to the restroom and I had sleep lines on my face like I’d rested on something, yet I had no jacket, pillow or bag on which to sleep.  So I think someone’s got an odd story to tell about a man stealing their jacket to use as a pillow, I hope that person comes to school on Tuesday and tells me.  Hopefully I don’t fall asleep.

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The planned program for the Playwicki Klondike looked dreadfully dull so I volunteered to come up with a few afternoon activities.   This is my initial list, comments appreciated.

Competition ideas
I. Blind tent set-up – Scouts set up a standard Y-tent and dome tent blindfolded.
a. Blindfolds
b. Tents
c. Stop watch
d. (?) Extra pole
II. Atlatling – Competitive atlatling
III. Dirt fishing – Unit broken into two groups, one lashes a giant fishing pole where the other draws a map of an area containing the traps. Once done, the groups switch, and one group operates the crane while the other guides it.
a. Rat trap/mouse trap
b. Barrier (tarpaulin over some sort of 6’ upright
c. Staves
d. Break up traps into two types, one gets points the other loses one (size difference, color?)
IV. Slingshot Art – Groups must draw a deer using 100 paintballs (?), TAKE PICTURES, run by lodge
a. Paintballs
b. Sling shots
c. Tarp
d. Squeegee or scraper
V. Gumdrop direction set – one group of Scouts receive a hat made out of gum drops held together by tooth picks. Group must describe the toothpick structure without using charts or diagrams and gives directions to another group who must construct it. Eat the gum drops when they’re done
a. Gum drops
b. Tooth picks
c. Lined paper
d. Clock
VI. Floating fishing weight activity (is there a way to set up
a. Water tub
b. Corks
c. Fishing weights
d. Fishing hooks
VII. Garden hose splicing – unit must straight splice together two ropes made out of pool noodles or garden hoses.
a. Lots and lots of garden hose or pool noodles connected (heat bond polyethylene
b. How about plastic conduit
VIII. Dressing in layers, how many shirts you can wear at once, alternatively Simon says game with layers of clothing. End of day for SPL activity (?)
a. A lot of clothing
IX. Scout bowling
a. Balls
b. Pins
X. Balanced Scouting – Team goes successive rounds of adding square 1-5 lb stones to each side of a balance, goal is to get as many rocks on as possible without scale tipping.
a. Various weighted rocks
b. Stop watch
c. balance
XI. Magnet orienteering – I was rethinking this and thought it might be neat to do a rough orienteering course using water/needle/leaf compasses and quarter/paperclip magnets
a. Small water tubs
b.
XII. Giant clove hitch – giant clove hitch, preferably at least 20 to 30 feet around.
a. Stakes
b. 150+ feet of rope
XIII. Vertical Styrofoam shoot – I wrote this down, but can’t remember for the life of me what it means.
XIV. Spaghetti knots – some activity where participants either lash or tie knots with cold cooked spaghetti. Maybe lash a little spaghetti tepee.
XV. Keep aloft – Scouts are given a soda bottle and various materials to make a water-bottle rocket that stays aloft for the longest time.
a. Parachute materials
b. Soda bottle
c. Soda bottle launcher kit

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The cat came in today with a heck of a dent in its head.  Over the last few years scabs have been appearing from his frequent scrapes with owls, other cats, a small fox and in one case what looked like a wolverine.  The dent had no scab and was quite white and about the size of a dime, which is pretty big on a cat’s head.  My dad said it’d been there for a day or two and may not just be a scab and that it had a lump under it while at the same time the cat’s been far nicer than normal.  The cat had to go to the vet anyway but I started to envision the conversation with the doctor.

Me: What’s wrong?
Doctor: Your cat has one of the most adorably deadly diseases in the animal kingdom: kitty cancer.
Me: Well, what can we do?
Doctor: Well, sit by and watch him nuzzle against you as he descends a cute spiral of snuggly death.
Me: That’s terrible…
Doctor: Terribly soft and cuddly.