I cleaned out a dusty closet with a floor covered in drop-down ceiling pieces and grabbed a broom from housekeeping. After sweeping I tried returning it but a member of housekeeping was in the storage area and gave me a quizzical look. So, I did what I always do in these cases: I butcher the language of Cervantes.
In Spanish: Yo necesitaba una escoba para poder cortar el piso de las heces de techo.
In English: I needed your broom so I could mow the floor of ceiling feces.
Joseph Csatari is considered the successor to Norman Rockwell for doing Scout prints. Norman Rockwell was a titan of illustration who even won over more chic artists with his perennial onslaught of Americana and unyielding talent. Csatari is a competent artist with command of color but the command of emotion that Rockwell honed. Anyway, there was a display of their work at the Mitchner Museum including a book signing by Csatari. I stayed to help clean up after the event and a Scout chum took advantage of the clean up time to pepper his hero with questions.  Mr. Csatari’s age and experience quickly became obvious:
Chum: Who modeled these?
Csatari: They were my neighbor’s kids.
Chum: And these?
Csatari: I don’t recall.
Chum: Do you remember your inspiration for this piece?
Mr. Csatari: It was…. no. No I don’t.
Each day, the group in charge of providing songs and such for the day would receive a set of large wood beads to be taken with them everywhere. At the end of their tenure, the group would return the beads with some sort of modification. The group before my group served attached a “weather” rock to the beads in the name of functionality, easily increasing the mass of the thing by a factor of 10. I decided to one up them. When we were asked to return the beads and explain our adornment, I drove a tent spike I’d attached to the beads into the ground and announced that to further enhance the functionality the piece I’d attached the field to it. The bead owner accepted my adornment and instructed the next group to receive the beads to visit the field once every 15 minutes to make sure it didn’t get lonely.
Getting last minute things for Woodbadge proved to generate several Walmart trips grabbing rainbow card stock, hot glue sticks, lamination pockets, tongs, and propane tanks. Each time I grabbed one or two gallon jugs of Light Hawaiian Punch each time. I was unsure of how many I got until I put them all together and found that I had enough to fill a medium fish tank. I think I’ll just grab a 20 gallon tank and put a piece of hose and a pond chiller into it and call it a day.
I experienced the world’s loudest hinge today. It was part of the Presentation Project used for Woodbadge on Wood Fires. I heard it opened outside and it was noisy, but when transported into the warm and enclosed environment of my room it became something else. Closing the door sounded like the scream of the demon love-child of a harpy and a pterodactyl. It blew out glass (hyperbole), it set off my neighbor’s dog (not hyperbole) and it caused screws on desk to rattle and jump (completely fabricated). It was loud.
I was very relieved to find out our presentation would take place outside in the cold and we wouldn’t shatter the glasses of our audience.
I use Goodreads.com to keep track of books and hopefully ward people away from crappy science books. Their landing page lists the top and bottom rated books and I thought it neat.
Twilight’s on both. I suppose it’s rated by the number of 5 star reviews and 1 star reviews rather than the average.
On my landing page it lists my rank in some trivia game in which I’ve apparently participated.
I suppose there are six non-persons who are ahead of me allowing me to be in a place lower than the number of participants.
Me: When Dave gets back, I think he’ll be miffed the mice ate into his box of mini-muffins, Pop Tarts, and Cookie Bars.
Dad: Do you think he’ll believe the mice have built an arctic outpost in the freezer?
Me: Why?
Dad: Because I’m slowly eating through all his ice cream sandwiches.
I arrived for the echocardiogram early as instructed and making chit-chat with the technician who was warm and pleasant. I removed my shirt and laid down on the table next to the 1994 Packard Bell that ran the diagnostic devices. I made small talk about the requirements to be a technician and my work in medical devices when she suddenly stopped talking when the setup finished booting. Then the technician turned from person to cyborg using the sonogram probe to complete some set of ancient wand-katas that she’d practiced since birth. One could retrace her route based on the friction burns and the molten chest hair despite the sonogram gel. I thought her done when both hand stopped but she started making little circles that widened and narrowed and rotated left and right at speeds that could buff my nipple off like some sort of diagnostic Spirograph. Apparently there was something interesting in my chest and the nipple marked the spot.
I overpurchased matches and returned the extra set today and decided to do a round of the store to see if a sale from the previous visit had been extended. On the way I passed a teeny bopper in front of the poster rack that changed the poster on display and let out an excited yelp. I passed the rack showing the Jonas Brothers on the left and Eminem on the right. I rolled my eyes until she said “I loved him in 8 Mile”. I wasn’t ready for that. The war of pop culture makes strange bedfellows.
Program so innovating someone would shoot me? No such luck, my red pen exploded. It looked most like blood on my notebook where it looks very close to blood on paper (go experience in the medical device industry!) I was trying to think what I could put there to look best and think that these would be my top 3:
Got a good idea as to what would look awesome on a fake-blood-soaked paper page? Comment!