Snapshots

It's been a busy last few weeks. Since I last posted I have spent two weekends out of town; the first was Easter with my family and the second was Camp School. Here's some highlights:

Northworst: I hate Northwest Airlines. The only reason I flew them was the price. Taking off from Milwaukee was funny, though. For whatever reason, the flight to Detroit was on a 50-seat regional jet. As usual in MKE, the flight began to taxi on time, but then stopped inexplicably on the tarmac and people were being asked to move around the cabin, specifically overweight people. Fascinating. Apparently the weight has to be redistibuted better in relation to the center of lift so the those folks were moved. The downside was that one of them took the empty aisle seat next to me. Upon sitting down he asked that the armrest between us be put up for his comfort. I obliged, but muttered something under my breath, I don't recall what, that caused him to go from chatty to quiet real quick...Most likely something about the invasion of my personal space.

Otherwise the trip home was uneventful. It was nice to see family and friends again. I had forgotten how much the roads suck in MI, but got the reminder quick enough.

The week between trips was busy, but not particularly noteworthy. Mostly meetings and talking.

Camp School: Awakening at 5am on Friday was rather a shock to the system, but I had to be west of Racine by 8am and there is construction between here and there. Thus began a long weekend. I was attending the Day Camp Director National Camp School in Camp Lake, WI. The site was a Salvation Army camp that was the ideal of a Hilton-camp. The room I shared bore a striking resemblance to a typical hotel room minus the TV and alarm clock. It even had the wall-mounted HVAC system and a sleeper couch with the two full-sized beds. Class ran from 8:30am to 9:00pm both Friday and Saturday, most of it boring. There was some amusement, however.

Part of it was the Cub Resident Camp Program Director class. These were mostly college students or not much older (like myself) with a good sense of humor. Their cheer which they used frequently was: "Enthusiasm! H-A-P-P-Y! We love our job!" every time the word enthusiasm or a derivative was used. I plan to teach my co-workers that cheer for the next staff meeting... My den ended up being the other rowdy group such as it was. We were the first with a den cheer ("The Crossing--The meeting of great minds."--our assigned symbol was a RR Crossing sign) and flag to go with it that I created. Having heard the enthusiasm cheer, we devised and used our own: "Fun! F-U-N! Fantastic Unbelievable Nonsense! We're here to have fun!" every time fun was said. Eventually the staff had to put the kibash on such cheers for certain parts of the training (Interfaith service, case study presentations, graduation, etc.).

Even though I was bored for a lot of the class and didn't get much sleep, it did recharge my batteries a bit to focus on the part of Scouting I enjoy most--camp.

Till I post again.

Scrat Returns

As should be unsuprising, I went to see Ice Age 2: The Meltdown last Saturday. It was good. I think I actually laughed more in this one than the first. There is more Scrat in it and the other part that was sappy in the first one, was more entertaining. The level of adult humor was also higher especially revolving around the relationship between Manny and the female mammoth. All of the characters had good lines. Ninja Scrat is my favorite.

The marketing is also better this time. A couple of weeks back Brian told me about a new Scrat toy which I promptly ordered online. It's about a foot long and scampers about with its acorn. When you take the acorn away, it throws a fit just like in the movie. It's awesome.

I plan to see the movie again.

For those I did not talk to, I will be in MI this weekend due to a last minute change of plans with my family. They were originally coming here, but that changed so I am now flying in Thursday night and back here on Sunday afternoon. That's the second weekend plane trip in three weeks. Fun.

Just one of the pictures I took of the Cherry Blossoms in bloom in DC. 

Into the District and Back Again

I just spent another long weekend out in DC visiting with Tim. It was a good 4-day weekend that was really busy. Man, I am tired. Here are the pictures.

I flew out on Thursday night on Midwest Airlines out of Milwaukee. That is a great airline. The DC route is signature service. This means large, leather seating and warm, cooked-on-board chocolate chip cookies. The best part is that it was still the cheapest ticket to fly.

It just so happens that the cherry blossoms were in bloom this weekend. They were really stunning. I spent Friday walking around the monuments especially on the Tidal Basin taking pictures and people watching. This was tiring and led to a nap on Teddy’s island where I had gone to pay homage to him.

Friday night I went to an exhibition game between the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles. I can’t say that I enjoy baseball, but it was fun. GO NATS!

On Saturday, we journeyed to Baltimore. There was some misadventure in getting to the rental car, but we did succeed. The first stop on the trip was the National Aquarium at Baltimore. It was a really good aquarium with a neat shark display, exhibit on Australia, and a dolphin show. I felt bad for the dolphins living is a rather small area, but they seemed happy. The other stop for the day was Fort McHenry. For those history-impaired, this was the fort being bombarded during the War of 1812 when the “Star Spangled Banner” was written by Francis Scott Key.

After a longer drive back, we dined and did a night tour of the monuments. Tim showed me how to get better night shots with my camera. I’ll have to make another trip with a tripod to make it really worthwhile.

Sunday we visited some museums and hung out with his kickball team. The new(ish) Museum of Native Americans was a little disappointing. It was more cultural than historical, and a lot of modern natives describing how they were trying to maintain their traditions. I was not that impressed. The post-kickball game festivities were entertaining with about 10 teams there all drinking and competing with each other in large games of flip cup. As far as I can tell, kickball is the excuse to have bar time like that.

We were home relatively early that night (11:30pm) since Tim had school in the morning. I spent my morning getting up early to head out to the Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport which is a 45-minute shuttle ride from the flagship building on the Mall. I had been once before, but there were new exhibits to see especially in the space hangar. The shuttle Enterprise is there surrounded by various rockets, missiles, early space capsules, satellites and space probes. The star of the show besides the shuttle was the Pathfinder rover replica and Pegasus rocket. It was worth the ride out there again.

I flew home Monday night after a two and a half hour flight delay due to weather. Sitting inside the terminal during the storm looked like being inside a Van de Graff generator. It was cool.

Visiting was nice, certainly not relaxing, but worth it.