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Troop 5’s Court of Honor saw four new Scouts join, of which one appeared to be different than the others.  Whenever there was a part of the ceremony that involved talking, he was very loud and very clear, blasting over the rest of the Scouts.  At one point, the new Scouts were called up to receive their Scout badge:

Scoutmaster:  Scouts, On your honor, do you promise to do your best to do your duty to God and your country?
Kid: I DO!
Scoutmaster:  Do you promise to obey the Scout law and help other people at all times?
Kid: I DO!
Scoutmaster: Do you promise to keep yourself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight?
Kid: I DO!
Scoutmaster: Fathers, do you promise to support your Scout through this process.
Kid: *pause* HE DOES.

Good to see he can think on his feet.

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Housemate’s Girlfriend:  Terry, do you have any weights under 10 lbs, like 3 or 5 lb?
Me: Hm…. if you take the weights off the free weights in my room the handles are 5 lbs or 4 without the nut on them.
Housemate’s Girlfriend: Great, can I use them?
Me: For what?
Housemate’s Girlfriend: Forever.
Me: Um…. no, I use them three days a week.
Housemate’s Girlfriend: Oh, you actually use.  I just.  Wow.  Sorry.
Me: I’m thinking of switching to something with a nicer handles if you…
Housemate’s Girlfriend:  No thank you, I’m just going to walk away now.
Me: Your hair looks nice.
Housemate’s Girlfriend: Thank you.

I’ve found a hair compliment functions like sherbet and can erase the taste of bad conversation in your mouth.

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A recent weight victory has been the ability to use Boy Scout knee socks again.  Previously, they got stuck on my calf and just fell down, now they come within an inch or so of my knee and I was keen to show this off.  The socks went on, I donned my Scout uniform, and went to camp for a day of sock showcasing and photography.  The heavy cotton/poly blend protected me from grass, mud, and thorn bushes as I captured toasty pics and it was awesome… until about 10 AM.  Heavy cotton/poly socks are heavy socks and my shoes quickly saturated with my own sweat.  My legs got quite hot so I rolled the socks down which looked ridiculous as I had two pounds of sock around my ankle.  Never again, or at least until September.

Life Lesson: Just because you can wear knee socks doesn’t mean you should.

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After the October Webelos Weekend, I had 40 lbs of pasta left over that was the property of Bucks County Council.  I brought it to roundtable with no takers, posted it to Facebook with no takers, and send out a few emails with no takers.  Not wanting to throw it away, I brought the bags up to camp in their industrial packaging and standardized cardboard box like any pasta for institutional use would be packaged and left it near the kitchen door of the dining hall.  It was gone the next morning and didn’t appear to be any of the trash cans.  This is the one time I’ll thank OSR for their thrift.

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The Ninja Master Prep Professional Blender is not a blender, it is the hybrid of a abattoir and a snow blower.  The 3 ice cubes I put it in were not broken nor crushed but teleported away and replaced with snow during some moment where I wasn’t paying attention.  I now make 3 days worth of smoothie at one go and the thing laughs.   There is but one speed “holocaust” and but one button, the on button, which should be marked “PAIN”.  The blades have a visceral curve in the sense that it doesn’t induce an emotional response but it is made of the viscera of some HR Giger creation.  This is the first blender I’ve owned where I can put in strawberries for a smoothie and they don’t have time to let out a cry before being obliterated.

I am up to two blenders in my blender graveyard.

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The length of my commute has increased by about 5 minutes over the years.  Stop signs, traffic lights, and other control devices have slowly lengthened it.  The most recent addition was a traffic light near a farm.  There are no visibility problems; the area is flat and the nearby trees are well trimmed.  I don’t know why it was added, but regardless, it’s there.  So far, I’ve not actually been stopped by the light yet so I’ve not complained, although it’s been close.  I’m fine as long as it stays that way.

Today, the light was red as I approached it at 4 AM.  There were no other headlights, no signs of cars, no joggers, and no cyclists near the intersection as I blew through it.  There were no lights as I checked my rear-view mirrors.  The lengths I go to preserve tradition.  Also, that’s a tradition I probably shouldn’t try to keep.

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A friend requested something with chocolate and mint, so I figured I’d brush off my ganache-manship skills and try making chocolate mint truffles.  Truffles are crazy straight forward and only involve making a ganache of dark chocolate and cream, dipping a spoonful in tempered chocolate, and dusting with cocoa powder but to this I added a vial of mint extract.  The product of this mixture can be described as Whitman’s Sampler piece filled with mouthwash or a chocolate treat made with Hall’s throat lozenges.  Only then did I look up a recipe for mint chocolate truffles where I learned I used a mere three times the amount of mint extract that one normally uses.  Next time, I go for four.

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Skype video chat has proven to be the best proxy to keep track of distant people.  Its sound quality is superb and its ability to do voice cancellation is stellar, but stopping retransmitted sounds of other types has prove more difficult:

Friend: So how’s Max been?
Me: A red fox had a litter a few years ago and the kits are now old enough to howl.
Friend: Do you have a recording of what it sounds like?
Me: Yes.  But it makes my dog go crazy, I’ll send you a youtube video.
Friend: Wow, that’s loud!  *turns back* Honey, listen to this.

Max heard the noise coming through my speakers having been rebroadcast from his and ran to the door barking and having no idea that his quarry was 1700 miles away in Texas.

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In 2009 or so, I started a list of all the reasons I didn’t want to be fat anymore.  An accounting of minor nuisances that I wrote that eventually numbered slightly over a hundred and this wasn’t for want of more, but for want of more index cards (this is the time before the coming of the small black book when I still recorded things on my hipster PDA).  Now, I’ve made a habit of every two months reviewing and striking off items from the list.  Some came off early like “having to undo my seat belt to open my gas hatch” and others will take a good while still like”doing a half marathon”.

I did my bi-monthly review and shaved off a few, nothing major, but my way of marking progress besides the enigmatic readings of my bathroom scale that transmit a number but with no visceral aspect to it.  There were the ones I removed:

  • Feel comfortable wearing a white t-shirt
  • Fit into a pair of size 46 pants
  • Fit into a size 20 shirt
  • Not seeing arm fat wobble while brushing my teeth

Small, but progress.  There was also one I was thinking of striking through that was “not having a waiter go ‘so what will we be having for dessert’ at restaurants” but that may be removed on the simple fact that some servers do this to everyone, although the “will we be having dessert” is probably more common.  Maybe I should keep tally.