Divine Lunacy

I spent several hours today setting an orienteering course up at camp Webster (a BSA camp). For those of you don’t know, an orienteering course is a finite set of [hidden] points (in 3-space) that persons, armed with maps and compasses work to find. (I’m sounding more mathematical every day.) In short, there are a bunch of points on a map, and corresponding markers out in the woods. Participants must find these markers using only a map and a compass. (i) In my many years of scouting, I have set up many orienteering courses, and completed even more than I’ve set up (in record time, of course). This was the first time I used a GPS while setting up the orienteering course (without forsaking the proven compass and map method.). I must say: Those things are pretty damned cool. I was able to mark each point on the orienteering course on the GPS, which allowed me to easily take back bearings to verify the results we obtained using our compasses.

Time to get into some theoretical leadership stuff about the human mind… If a person gives you peanut butter, jelly, knives and bread, you’ll probably make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; if a person gives you a map and a compass, you’ll probably use them both to complete an orienteering course. In my years of orienteering, I have seen many people fall victim to the evils of compasses. Nothing against compasses, but who wants to take a bearing and pace 1500 paces on that bearing? When pacing such a long distance, the margin for error is very high, as I demonstrated today. Ok, so you can use a compass; I bet you feel special. I’ll beat you without one. If a marker is 1500 paces away, but right off a trail, don’t waste your time pacing that. Walk to the trail, then figure things out from there. This leads me to an interesting anecdote. There was no way I was going to walk 1500 paces and maintain a constant direction, so I let my father and company do that, while I walked my fat rear-end to the nearest trail (which isn’t on the map; I’m just that good.). I set one waypoint on my way, and beat them to the correct location by ten minutes. I actually had to go find them because they were 500+ feet off. Without further adieu, I give you the top x guidelines to better orienteering.

• If a marker is on top of a hill, walk to the top of the hill, don’t pace it, don’t take a bearing; use contour lines to your avail.
• Don’t shoot a 3000-foot bearing; you’ll just feel stupid when you’re 300 feet off of where you’re supposed to be. Use intermediate landmarks, such as hills and streams.
• Put down the compass, fool. You’re standing right next to the scream; the marker is right on the stream. I bet if you follow the stream, you’ll find the marker. (unless you just happened to find the wrong stream)
• If you’re looking for a marker at the convergence of two streams, find that point…
• Orient by inspection. If the road on your map is perpendicular to the roads real life location, you have a problem; parallel lines never cross. If the mess hall is on your left, it better be on your left…
• Use the force, Luke.
• back bearing = (heading + 180) mod 360; use it.

All that said, I think I’ll train an elite group of persons and call them ‘my’ orienteering team. With them, i shall claim first prize at the tournament that I have not officially created yet.

I had originally planned to postpone this entry indefinitely, but I’ve just realized that my keys are stuck in the truck. Now that I can’t go anywhere, I have some free time to blog. (As if I didn’t have time before…)

As many of you may already know, I attend Camp Yawgoog during their fifth week of operation every summer. As most of you are also probably aware, the camp was shutdown due to a norovirus outbreak that week. After being at camp for less than a day, I was sent home with hopes of returning week 7 or 8. My dream was finally realized last week. I returned to Camp Yawgoog for my 8th and final year at camp. (As a scout.).

Before I go into the events of last week, I find it necessary to waste a paragraph summarizing my previous two years at Yawgoog. In the fall of 2002 I was elected Senior Patrol Leader of My troop. I was then reelected For the spring-summer term in April of 2003. As SPL at Yawgoog, I had to take on a great many responsibilities that I wasn’t quite ready for. The week went kind of poorly for me. As I look back on that week, I think SPL’s have it easier these days, but perhaps this is just the result of greater experience. I was a life scout at the time, and nearly Eagle… Being such a high rank, I was under the impression that I didn’t need to take any merit badges. I now realize the stupidity of this assumption, and wish I could change things… The next year, I again didn’t take any scheduled merit badges, but I did complete wood carving and orienteering, which gave me enough merit badges for a bronze palm. I had been eagle for about 7 months at the time. If I had enough Merit badges, I could have earned a bronze palm four months earlier. If I had taken just two merit badges in 2002, I would have been eligible for a bronze palm exactly three months after my Eagle Scout board of review. These four months would have enabled me to get a second bronze palm, and perhaps even a second gold. Now I will have to settle with one silver. The morale of the story is: Lethargy Kills.

I think you get the point. I have seen the error of my ways. I took, and passed both Wilderness Survival and Forestry this year. By this year, I was accustomed to doing nothing all day. I could not bear to fill all of my free time with merit badge classes. As a result, I left my two afternoon classes free. I regret this even now. had I taken two more merit badges, I would be only one merit badge away from a silver palm now. As you can clearly see, I am full of regret.

As my Scouting Career comes to an end, I feel myself rushing to become even more decorated than I already am. By my eighteenth birthday, I WILL have attained the rank of Eagle Scout, Silver Palm, thus having thirty-six merit badges, including both life saving and Emergency Preparedness’s. I spent twenty minutes looking over the Yawgoog leadership handbook this past week. Again with the regret… I have this sudden affinity for Yawgoog Segments. I WANT MORE!… had I shot just one round at the trap range, I would have a segment. Were I not too cheap to join the YAA, I’d have another. Damned order of the arrow segment. There’s an OA ordeal in September or something… Perhaps I should get myself voted in and go. I’m rambling…

Yawgoog was weird this year. John could not make week eight. My mom was there all week. I’m too lazy to go into the evils of Women in Boy Scouting at the moment, but I’ve surely posted something to that effect in the past. Most of the Philmont crew decided not to come. I was left with Tim, Kevin, and a bunch of eleven-year-olds. Monday went about the same as usual. Jerry was once again the Sandy Beach Waterfront Director. YAY JERRY! (He hails from my troop.) Those scouts who attend Yawgoog during week eight seem to be perfectly content with it. Perhaps they’ve never been during one of the better weeks. Week eight seems to be the least tradition filled, the least spirit filled, and the least exciting week of camp. On top of all of the rag tag troops like 28 Primrose, and 102 Chopmist, the process of breaking camp for the winter begins during week eight. In week five when the staff starts a song, all of the troops stand and participate. We have all been coming to Yawgoog for years; we know the routine. Such is not true with week eight. They seem to lack the brains to sing, and furthermore, they fail to comprehend the idea of a Moo-moo. Even the staff seemed to sing a bit slower. (though I am now told that we sing too fast.) On a final note, I can’t imagine any troop in week five toilet-papering all the shooting ranges. I lied, here’s the real final note: There was a week six Three Point troop staying with us. They actually had the audacity to start Three Point cheers in the Sandy Beach dining Hall. This would not have gone unstopped in week five. But alas, the staff alone could not overpower this enormous troop.

If you’re a good Blog reader, you’ve already read last year’s post about camp. This means that you know all about the cargo net, right? I decided to make something this year as well, but more of a web than a net. I made it exactly like a spider web. (using three trees.) if came out perfectly, but the holes were too large for people to sit in without the fear of falling through. My work around for the large holes turned the web into a net, but it was still a web at heart…

My out of country Aunt (Africa), her out of state daughter, and my out of state second cousin all flew in on Tuesday. They usually only make it up here once a year, so it’s a pretty big deal. (I guess it will be twice this year.) As a celebration type of thing, they took my Grandma out to eat yesterday. There was room for everyone except me. Even my brother went. :(, I suggested that they give me a ride home, so I could pick up the truck, but apparently they were rushed for time. The baby (second cousin, who is old enough to talk) has to eat at the same time everyday. They agreed to bring something home for me. That was nice of them, but they’re lucky I’m not spoiled like that baby. I had lunch around 1400, which seems kind of late… I wonder if I could have gotten away with saying that I need to eat lunch at the same time everyday…

When I finally finished lunch, I ran off to attempt to drown myself. Last year, sailing didn’t seem to be a very blog worthy topic. I went sailing every chance I got last year, but I’ve only been twice this year. The weather yesterday was like gnarly dude…(uh..yeah.). I was out for about for hours, and only flipped once, which leads me to the point of this whole paragraph. I actually flipped three times, but only one of them was an accident. The wind was blowing from the South, and I had to go North to get back… Naturally, the ride was quite fast… a little too fast. The rudder on my 30+year-old sailboat decides to ‘pop out’ sometimes. Unluckily for me, this happend when I was sailing right next to a jet ski lane that borders a VERY rocky area. When the rudder popped out, I completely lost control of the boat. All the slack that was then in the rope somehow managed to wrap itself around a buoy three times. The boat didn’t really care, it just wanted to keep going, so it did, but I wasn’t in control. In order to fix everything, I had to flip the boat. While I was busy untangling the buoy, the boat began to flip all the way over, such that the bottom of the boat would be horizontal. The sails on these boats are pretty much water tight, so righting a boat with a water-logged sail can be challenging. I was lucky and managed to finish with the buoy before my situation got any worse. I righted the boat and was ready to sail away when I noticed that the boom was pointing straight up into the air. For those of you who don’t know, the boom is the pole on the bottom of the sail. During normal operation, the boom is perpendicular to the mast, not parallel. I decided to flip the boat before it flipped on it’s own. The people who watch and laugh can never tell the difference, but it makes me feel better anyway. Although the boat was lying in the water waiting for the sail to be unwrapped, my predicament was far from over. If I had left the centerboard to unwrap the sail, the sail would have filled up like a bucket and sank… I needed help from someone, but who? Being a Boy Scout, I’m always careful to follow the buddy system. (ah..sometimes..) My brother was in a kayak not too far away from me—or so I thought. He got tired and decided to rest about two hundred yards back. So there I was: Sitting on a half overturned sailboat waving my arms frantically to get his attention. He finally noticed me, and rushed to the scene, only to stop and ask me what was wrong when he was fifty feet away. I’ve had my suspicions about him, but they were realized that day: my brother is an idiot.(oh, hi Jeff!). I would think that upon seeing the boat, he would instantly realize what was wrong. I’ve been sailing for years. I can right the boat in a number of seconds after flipping.(providing everything is normal) He should have realized that. I yelled at him for stopping, so he he quickly hurried along. By the time he had arrived, I had explained my problem to him. All he had left to do was solve it. His solution: float around in the Kayak while I sit there and wait. Again I yelled at him, and again he rushed to my rescue, and again, did nothing. I yelled at him some more, this time explaining in detail how to lift up the end of the sail and throw it over the mast. That went surprisingly well and I had the boat back upright in no time. I was ready to sail off when I noticed that the sail had done a 360 around the mast. The wind was too strong for me to just pull the sail back to the other side. I had to use the wind to turn the sail… I began turning the boat and again yelled at my brother for just sitting there. He came to my rescue by pushing the boat in the wrong direction. I pretty much gave up on him after that. The whole thing took between ten and fifteen minutes.

Congratulations to Steve Lafaille for passing his Eagle Scout board of review! yay!

Introduction

I have put the writing of this summary off for sometime now. The only reason for my procrastination is laziness, but although procrastination is bad, it has given me time to think about how I intend to organize this. I had originally intended to make a straight chronology. I stick to my original plan, but with the addition of chapters, to add some sense of organization. I’ve written about 1.5 pages at this point, and I haven’t even finished the first day. For this reason, my experiences will be split across several blog posts. The cuts will be dependent on the volume of information.

The beginnings

It being summer vacation, I was accustomed to going to bed at 0100. Going to bed at 0100 is a bad idea for one who needs to wake up at 0300, but after trying to get to sleep since 2200 the previous day, I finally managed to sleep at 0100.

After a mere two hours of sleep, I woke up, put the finishing touches on my packing and departed for Logan airport. My lack of sleep made the whole experience feel surreal. I needed coffee…

Our flight was scheduled for departure at 0700. By then I had already devised a most ingenious plan to get coffee. Between my two personalities, it was decided that a large black coffee would be my main priority at our Layover in St. Louis. I spent a large amount of the first flight drawing graphs of orders four and five. (still haven’t completely completed that.)

By the time we disembarked from the plane, my want for coffee had consumed me. I needed coffee, and I needed it immediately, lest I fall into a deep caffeine deprived insanity. My wants were quickly satisfied, when upon looking around the Airport, I spied not one, but two Starbucks. I’ve always thought that those “Caution contents hot.” warnings on coffee cups were stupid, but when I tried to touch my coffee cup (without the cardboard insulator thing), my hands were instantly scalded. I learned a few very important lesson that day: (more…)

Since we were given the boot, yorti has been working ’round the clock to get us back into Yawgoog. Alas, we have been given a site. We were prepared to take a side in Medicine Bow or Three Point, but we ended up being lucky and manged to get a site in Sandy Beach. We’ll be staying in campsite Autobon during week 8. (Autobon, yay?). I was kind of looking forwards to singing Sandy Beach songs in the Three Point dining hall, but whatever… Even though we were only at yawgoog for two days week five, we were given the Honor Troop and the ‘A Scout is Reverant’ award. Now I’m wondering… Can I get an eight year segment for week five and a nine year segment for week 8? (They are year segments, in my book a year is a week.)

I really need to stop procrastinating and start writing! I wake up everyday and I think to myself ‘I really need to write about Philmont today’… I still haven’t finished the first paragraph. Pathetic. Maybe when I finally finish, I’ll finally get around to alerting the press. Damn, I’m slow.

Unless you’re blind or stupid, you’ve probably noticed the ads at the top of this page by now. Yes, they’re by Google. Thanks to Josh, I’ve been accepted to AdSense. The search box in the navigation bar displays ads in the results… When I get around to it, I’ll make everything look pretty. (or something like that.)

When we’re hiking for Philmont, the slowest person leads a what is called the all day pace—a pace that the whole crew can comfortably maintain for the duration of the day. If you have a fast crew, the all day pace may be a truly comfortable pace, but for me it is hell… My normal pace is around twice the ‘all day pace’. Consequently, when I am forcedto walk the all day pace, I feel like a cyclist who is going just fast enough to avoid falling. ( Yes, I wobble like that too! ). The pace we walked on flat ground was depressingly slow. There were two times my legs didn’t hurt yesterday during our third Philmont shakedown; one of them was when I was leading and the other was when comrade Brian was leading ( Neither of us lasted long as leader. { we were fired. } ).

I started working on a new template today… Anyone who happend to visit this morning should have seen the beginnings. ( I’m actually altering this template drammatically. ) Well… umm.. This is actually the new theme now… It is very far from done, but I’m sure I’ll finish it before summer’s end. Edit: I just changed my mind and put the old one back.

I feel that I have so little to write in this post, yet there is a vast number of ideas swimming around in my mind. Now, with no further digression, it is my esteemed pleasure to explain the title of this post. Usually when I go to camp, or any other Boy Scout function for that matter, all the songs are ones I know…Just take a look at where I have been, you will understand why I think I know all of the songs.

• Mass Jam 99
• 2001 National Jamboree
• White Stag
• Yawgoog 7 times
• Mass Jam 04
• District Camporee
• Council Camporee

Perhaps the list continues, but that is a lot of singing! I learned a song called “I point to myself” last week. It is a German song, with a very catchy tune. Here it is: (I googled it to verify the words)

I points to my self, vas is das here?
Das is my topnotcher, ya mama dear.
topnotcher, topnotcher, ya mama dear
das vas I learn at dis school.
Clap clap

I points to my self, vas is das here?
Das is my sweat browser, ya mama dear.
sweat browser, topnotcher, ya mama dear
das vas I learn at dis school.
Clap clap

That is repeated several times, each time adding a different body part in order of appearance from topnotcher down…I don’t feel like listing all of them. Be thankful that there is no audio file here so you can here it. It is a very catchy tune. If you ever sing it, I guarantee you will not stop!!!

Back to the other part of the title, with slight digression. I did almost next to nothing today. I ate lots of Fusilli and drank coffee in the morning. Eventually, I got sick of sitting here, running to the kitchen for coffee, taking a sip then running back here (a whole 15 feet!)..so I solved this problem very quickly: I moved the computer into the kitchen! No…Just kidding…I went kayaking! I took tyler along this time. It was his first time in a kayak and he did pretty well. I find it hard to go anywhere without swamping, which is half the fun. I love to ride into big waves from boats, as that gets a lot of water in the boat. At one point, I was trying to get a lot of water in my boat before I caught some waves, but then I accidentally flipped. I thought to myself, no problem, I will just do a T rescue. I do it all the time. Then more waves came… big ones. These waves ended up completely swamping the kayak. I happened to have the kayak that was losing its foam flotation, so it sank pretty far. Alas, many crushed fingers later, I had the water out. It was a laughable incident when my fingers felt better. By the time it was time to head back, my kayak was pretty full of water, so I decided to empty it. That went fine, of course. The real trouble came when Tyler decided to get out of his kayak too. He had some trouble getting back in. We were near nirvana at this point. He finally got onto the kayak, but never situated himself in the cockpit, when he eventually tried to do so, he swamped and began just swimming back. This was a very amusing sight to see. He finally realized that he was going nowhere and made it into the kayak. A fun time was had by all.

I Think I should take this time to report on some stuff that has been going on for a few days. As you may or may not know, CVS and Brooks bought up Eckerd. I will give some background and some interesting information before I get to the point of this paragraph. It was like a 70/30 deal or something. CVS bought all of the stores in Florida, a warehouse in Florida and a warehouse in Texas. Florida is a good place for Pharmacies and there were no CVS’s there. Brooks bought the headquarters and 1500 stores. At the time, brooks had only 400 stores. So, some smart people in Brooks decided to rename the 400 stores to Eckerds in order to save money. They will also be closing the other headquarters and moving here to Rhode Island… So for those of you who drive by Eckerds….BROOKS BOUGHT ECKERD…not the other way around. CVS plans to convert the Eckerds over a 6 month period, beginning last Saturday. Any drug store can be completely gutted and turned into a CVS overnight. CVS employs a specially trained team for that purpose. The conversion that started on Saturday is what all of this is about. My father works in systems and will be taking over the warehouse systems that are being converted. The conversion was supposed to be simple. Using a find command similar to grep(or a shell script with grep) to search through many text files and change all references of JCprenny.com(former owners of eckerd) to cvs.com. The conversion also included checking for product numbers to make sure no store or Item numbers were used by both eckerd and cvs, which would lead to BIG problems on the Main Frame. If a store number came up twice, when that store put in an order, things would go bad, especially if it was for a product number that had two different meanings depending on the warehouse. In order to make things work, all product numbers that are carried by both stores will be converted by a script running on the mainframe. Back to the point… My dad left Yawgoog on Friday night to start the conversion on Saturday. He made it back to Yawgoog on Sunday in time for the cancelled dress parade. As soon as we got home, it was back to work. He came home at 0400 hours the next day. The madness did not stop there. The next day he did not make it home till 2300. That brings us to today. SO far we have no word of when he may be home.

I forgot to keep a journal…bad me. (If you’ve read any of my future posts, you’ll notice this happens often…) I had slight problems sending a letter to Sara…again, bad me. This could be a long post, I will try to do it in some form of chronological order. God!!! things get redundant when you go to yawgoog for your 7th year. For instance, “When I shout swim, you will loudly shout back qualifications and then you will be dismissed.”

Although we brought at least 400 feet of rope to camp with us, I managed to cause a rope shortage in only one day. Under my leadership (of course), we made a cargo net between 4 trees behind my tent. We had at most 5 people on the net at a time. It showed no signs of breaking, and the sag was minimal. As I later learned, It was not a good week to use all of the rope, we had about 5 guys taking pioneering and the instructor was a really arrogant, 12-year-old-looking 15-year-old jackass(James McCarthy)! Enough about him for now though. I believe it is time we go into the scrabbit and the chipmunks, but first a little fuzzy-nuts background. My first year at camp, I became obsessed with capturing/killing/torturing a chipmunk, who was somehow (different story…) given the name “fuzzy nuts.” I took a picture of him that year. We never really had chipmunk or even squirrel problems that I can remember, but this year was an exception. It was not uncommon to walk behind a tent and see 5 squirrels just sitting there, never mind the chipmunks! Now, if this has you excited, keep reading! It gets worse. We saw a Squirrel with no tail!!…It conducted itself like a rabbit, and looked like a hybrid between a rabbit and a squirrel. It quickly was named “the scrabbit”. I have a picture of the scrabbit, which I will post when I get around to it. (one year later: oops…) Usually, we have been able to leave food out during the day without worrying about the mini-bears. It was the skunks at night that we were worried about. Turns out mini-bears will eat just about anything, including:

• Toilet Paper, even 2-ply!
• Twizzlers
• Hot chocolate
• Doritos
• Bread
• cookies
• What Don’t they eat? (Fusilli)

John and Al both arrived slightly before dinner on Monday. Moving on to Tuesday, the only thing I can really think of at the moment is troop tournament…It was baseball with a tennis racket and a tennis ball. I made three outs by catching some really far balls. We lost to a troop that is about 4 times our size….get to them later. On Wednesday, we had a challenge with Abby’s troop to a game of water dodge ball, which was changed to water polo. John and Al were on Abby’s team, but Jerry Labonte, the waterfront director, who hails from my town and troop was on my side. Within the first 10 minutes, I made 4 goals, but they soon caught up. If I correctly kept score, we tied 4 to 4…there was already another game scheduled for Friday. Thursday is when everything happened. My friend Mike, who hails from Burrillville’s other troop works at Ashaway. It was nice talking to him. I meant to take kayaking BSA on Thursday, but why bother? I own kayaks…..and I have access to a lake…so I took 2 hours and did two merit badges, I made a dagger for wood carving and wrote a report for orienteering, which I had a partial for carried over from the 2001 national jamboree(all they offered for orienteering was a partial.) Thursday brought me up took 26 merit badges, enough for a bronze palm. Now back to that other troop that we lost against. They stay in the campsite right next to ours. Every night they were VERY Loud….at VERY late hours. On Thursday night, their insanity was stopped—forever! Our SM and ASM, John, went over there and told them that they were loud…apparently they had no idea. We also notified our P.C., Lou Persigen, who threatened to take Honor Troop away from them. Now, Leaving Thursday for Friday…Picked up my woodcarving blue card….that is an easy 1 hour merit badge. The highlight of Friday came at 7:30–our final game of water polo with campsite George Washington. This would decide who would leave Yawgoog as the losers and who would claim victory. we scored 5 goals, the final score was 5 to 0. Their scoutmaster played rough. I was swimming for the ball, when all of a sudden, he grabbed my bathing suit and swam right over me—It was all in good fun though. I am now the second scout in the history of my troop to get a palm and I plan on going all the way to silver.(where no Scout of 102 has gone before!) I might to fill out an application at Yawgoog this year. I think being on staff might be fun…I just wonder why I didn’t decide to apply earlier.

I would be quite remiss if I didn’t mention my most unpleasant experience at Ashaway. Five of my friends and I went kayaking one day, and had a Kayaking war. We flipped each other, and saved each other, etc. ( I am told that I was the only one who didn’t flip. ) We were unaware that as we had our fun, the lifeguards at Ashaway were watching us. When we left the roped in area two by two, the Lifeguard at the buddy board accused each scout of jumping out of the Kayak, saying “YOU JUMP OUT OF KAYAK!!!”. Each scout, of course, denied having jumped out of the Kayak. Unfortunately, I was the last person to leave the roped in area. I was busy putting gear away for the lifeguards (I’m just that nice…). Everyone else having denied jumping out of the Kayak, the lifeguard was positive that it was me. As I walked up to the buddy board, he roared “YOU! JUMP OUT OF KAYAK!”. After denying this, the Large, Jamaican Lifeguard retorted “NO!!! I SEE you jump out of kayak!”. Feeling quite defeated, I admitted having jumped into the water, but also provided a reason. I told him that I had to help my buddies T-Rescue as they were too weak to lift water-logged Kayaks. He seemed reasonably satisfied with this and sent us all on our way back to camp.

Edit: How could I forget? The dress parade was cancelled. apparently there was thunder in the forecast, we have had it in rain before. I live only 40 minutes away and It is a bright sunny day still..no sign of thunder…not even a drop of rain since I left the reservation.

Bon Voyage! Adios! Yes, Today I leave. The day may be kind of rushed, so I am writing this post now instead of right before I leave. I hate packing for campouts. I have done it so mawny times, that I can do it very quicklly and mindlessly, which is a bad thing. It seems so easy that I think I am forgetting something, when I really am not. I think I have everything packed, but in the nether regionsk of my mind there is a voice! It is a Soft, whispered voice telling me “THat was too easy! You are forgetting something…But I will not tell you what it is.” Voices like that in your head is enough to drive even the toughest to insanity. MOst years, I have trouble fitting everything in my trunk, but now…everything fits fine…I really must be forgetting something. Now while I sit here, I have two very big problems. I have nothing to write…and I don’t know what I am forgetting….Well..Interesting posts in a week…I promise!

Edit: I feel much better now that I am no longer forgetting my pilllow!

A bunch of Boy Scouts came to my house today to have a troop gear cleaning frenzy. I must say, I am impressed. Stuff actually got done!!! I was stuck cutting ropes and sticking them into polyurethane. I had to cut 3 50′ lengths into 10′ pieces and 1 50′ piece into 2 25′ lengths. Took a while, but I was rewarded with Goldfish afterwards, so It was well worth the effort. I made absolutely no packing progress today. Oh well…A full day and a half left. I spent like the whole day re-style zing this Blog. For some reason, I didn’t use CSS the first time, but now it is all good, though I used more tables than I would have liked.

Looks like I am into multi-Paragraphed posts :-p. I watched a movie tonight. It is called the abandon. It is about a girl who was left by her father at a very young age, which troubled her throughout her life. It is a very good mystery and pretty creepy at sometime. I highly recommend it to anyone who has watched everything else and/or loves mysteries that have odd turns.

My computer is constantly on and gaim is very good with log files, so naturally I have the activities of all of my buddies logged. Dick has not been on aim in the month of july. My event log is fragmented before that, but the last conversation I had with him was on June 22, coincidentally the date of my eagle court, the last time I saw him. I think he dropped off the face of the earth, or died.

I leave Sunday, and I will be taking a notebook with me. Perhaps I will have some interesting posts after spending some time around real people. I am feeling quite tired now. It is actually an hour later than the post time reads. I did other stuff after I opened the page.