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.

I hit a diminutive pre-dead deer the other day while driving.  I thought it was a lot smaller or my car was a lot higher (apparently I nearly bottom out over speed bumps) and I ravaged the corpse fiercely.  My car began making rather loud (Harley with a glasspack loud) so I swapped it out with another car at home.

I got a call from my dad:

Dad: Did you hit a deer?
Me: Yeah, how did you know?
Dad: Two things: the size of the dent, as well as the deer fur, deer blood, deer guts and what I think was a deer tooth lodged in your undercarriage.

I have many boxes of Magic cards and the bulk total is about 60,000.  I stack them in cardboard boxes but over time, their shear weight crushes these boxes leading me to replace these boxes annually at a cost of about 24 dollars (8 5000 ct boxes at 3 dollars a piece after tax).  I hypothesized that I could double the lifetime of a box by putting it on shelves.  Being an actuary, assuming a 5% annual rate of return and 10 years more of Magic I could spend 95 dollars on getting kickin’ shelves and come out ahead actuarially, which is how I’d always preferred to come out (… I should probably rephrase that).

I tell my dad of my revelation and head to Lowes, hit home organization and see the $60 black matte shelf unit I wanted.  I pump my fist in actuarial triumph and grab the box and two extra $12.00 shelves… which are only available in chrome.  I put the shelf unit box down and go to the chrome shelving unit and stop in horror upon seeing it’s a model-busting $75.  I could have off color shelves but then how could I sleep at night?  Could I be so callous and just let my model?  I sigh, grab the chrome shelf unit and slump home.  I get home, and my dad asks me why I look so glum to which I respond: “My model couldn’t survive my dedication to looking fabulous.”

Afterword:  If I can get the boxes to last 16 months, my model will live again.  Keep this cardboard in your thoughts and prayers.

My weekend project was setting up my file server with Windows Home Server and organizing the orgy of cables in my closet.  I didn’t trust my ability to find the studs in my closet as they were irregularly spaced and the drywall was double-thick so while I was out buying a shelf I picked up an inexpensive stud-finder.

I returned home and my dad, seeing the stud-finder entered a diatribe on how stud findered were plagues upon the planet as they were nothing but handyman snake oil.  I explained how the device could either be based on capacitance or ultrasound (turns out it was capacitance)  which my father immediately dismissed with an argumentative fervor rivaling WWII Germany’s dismissal of nuclear chemistry as Jew science.  I was using it post my router when he walked in and saw it in use.  He watched for a moment and left saying “that thing wouldn’t work if the nails weren’t so obvious”.

I received a packet to fill out for re-employment at BMS and my father asked about the drug test portion.  I told him that I took the packet to a local testing center and they sent the results to BMS to which he responsed. “You can just go when you want, and to any location?  In my day, when we had to do a mandatory drug test for our employer we got a cup and a finger pointing to the door, none if this ‘schedule it when you want stuff’, yeesh” I think that may get an award as the world’s oddest “In my day” speech.

Dad’s jean collection for the most part consists of things that lie somewhere between “rugged” and “vapor” so for Christmas I decided to get him some jeans.  To not give away the secret I looked through the laundry to find the smallest pair knowing it’d be my father’s.  I found a beat up pair of 32 x 29s and quickly purchased a number of pairs and put the laundry back in my dad’s hamper.  This morning, my brother’s girlfriend was unable to find the pair of jeans she threw in my brother’s laundry and I quickly realized I had 4 incoming pairs of jeans that would fit no one in my house but my brother’s girlfriend.  I found out that Chris Lutz wears a 32 x 30 and figure I can unroll the cuff to cover the difference.  No one tell him from where the secret bounty of denim he received for Christmas came.