After the dive a few of my friends met me to hang out. The first thing I told them about was the snake we saw in the spring while we were diving. Matt just stared at me and finally said that he couldn’t believe I just said that. Apparently he’d just spend the last two hours explaining to the two girls how there were no snakes in the springs and then I went and ruined it. What can I say? It’s a gift.
Another scout meeting, more scout funnies.
Scout: Neither of our leaders are here. You run the meeting.
Me: Oh I don’t think so.
Scout: What are we going to do?
Me: Sit here and look at each other until someone steps up and takes charge of the troop.
Another scout: I’ll do it!
He had everyone vote to decide what game they wanted to play since we couldn’t play the normal outside game due to inclement weather.
Leader: OK, who wants to play four corners?
Five people of twenty raise their hands.
Leader: Good, that’s what we’re playing.
Group: Wait what about all the other choices? We didn’t vote on those!
So he didn’t get away with hijacking the vote but it was close. They did wind up playing four corners anyway. During the presentation, one of the scout’s parents started plinking around on one of the pianos in the back of the room.
Scout, yelling: Really poppy? Really?
That was all it took to restore order.
One of the scouts in the patrol I work with suggested it would be really fun if I came and worked cub scout day camp with him. He's right, obviously, camp counselor is my True Vocation but I pointed out that I would have to be working at my day job and wouldn't be able to go.
Scout: You mean you don't get summers off?
Me: No, I have a regular job now.
Scout: So all you have to look forward to is death?
You just never know what's going to happen when you put a bunch of middle schoolers in a room together. This episode is from last night's scout meeting.
Scout 1: Take the F out of way
Scout 2: There is no F in way. Even if you spelled it whey there still...
Leader 1: I think you missed the joke buddy.
Scout 2: Ohh...
Leader 2: You've got a bat in the belfry.
Scout 2 rubs his nose
Leader 2: You got it.
But when we looked on the floor there was a chunk of pineapple or something that looked like a big booger. We started laughing.
Scout 1 walks up: What? Did something fall on the floor?
Leader 1, laughing, nods.
Scout 1: Where is it? I'll eat it.
Leader 1, still laughing, shakes his head.
Scout 1: Yes I will! I'll eat anything. Unless it's a booger.
Leader 1, still laughing, nods and motions in the direction of the thing
Scout 1: Eeew!
Later we were practicing our edge training technique with snorkeling skills and we had one scout laying on 3 chairs demonstrating the dolphin kick. A couple of the other boys started recording him with their cell phones. He said if it wins money we can all split it. The younger scouts demanded exorbitant fees from $1 to $100 if we won the $10,000 prize. The swimmer wanted $5,000 which makes me think he's the only one who got the math.
Lately I’ve been going through Bluetooth headsets like popcorn. My motorola flip one wore out, the replacement for that got run over by a car, the next one got eaten by my house I think, and now there’s this one. I like it a lot for its voice features and I think this is the way that future headsets are going to go as well. It reports its status by speaking to you, “call terminated” for example, and it also lets you give it voice commands such as “check battery”. As much as I like it I need more time to get used to it. Either it has trouble understanding me in noisy environments or I can’t remember what the correct phrasing of the voice commands are. When I say something it doesn’t understand it just chooses a random command and does that. I keep having to cancel calls as it tries to dial people. Everyone I’ve talked to so far says the sound quality is great and the wireless quality is essential for my Palm Pre. Since the Pre eats battery so fast I often keep it plugged in and charging. Trying to move around the house with wired headphones and having the thing plugged into a power source just was not working for me at all. It also works well with the PS3. I sure do hope this one lasts a while, I’m going broke buying these things!
Today Mom and I celebrated a bit more mother’s day with a trip to Bok Tower Gardens. I really like the place because of its many varied flowers, shady paths, interesting wildlife, and peaceful atmosphere. We walked about a mile and a half but there were quite a few trails we left untraveled. There is also an estate on the property that I am told is very nice, but we had neither the time or money to spend on it. I noticed upon my return that most of my flower pictures were from only one angle and many were overexposed in one spectrum or another. On my next flower photographing excursion I’m going to try to be more creative and monitor the camera’s technical readouts more carefully. Still, the photos did come out pretty nice. The one on the left is one of my favorite flowers because it looks so alien, but nobody has been able to tell me what kind it is.
Greg had been wanting to go kayaking at Weedon Island and he was kind enough to invite me to go along. The first leg of the trip was getting from the boat launch to the actual course. That was about half a mile of paddling. Once we found the course we navigated it backwards. We arrived at the park as the tide was rising so we needed to let a bit more time go by so we could get through a shallow area by marker 12. Navigating the course was a bit tricky at the beginning (actually the end) as the signs weren’t always visible from the previous marker. We passed several docks that looked almost identical. If I didn’t have the GPSr I would’ve suspected that we were coming up on the same dock. The best part of the trip was the mosquito trenches through the mangroves. In some places it was too narrow even to use the full length paddles so we just pulled ourselves along. We also saw a baby raccoon among the mangroves. He was really cute. The roots of the trees were covered with little black crabs. They made good projectiles for a certain person who kept running his kayak into mine. They had the desired effect but they bounced off the hull of the boat. Next time I’ll try to find some armor-piercing crabs. The paddle back from the course to the boat return was upwind all the way. It was tough going. Afterwards we went to Wendy's for lunch. Great trip.
