Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Troop Senate

Saturday was the 2010 Troop Senate. It is the annual planning conference for the troop and spring SPL elections.

I know I have whined about this in the past, but one of the frustrations about being a Scoutmaster for a long time is reinventing the wheel every few years. You have a group of boys who finally get it and they turn 18 on you.

That being said, the next group of teenagers are now in charge of the troop. This group of 13 year olds have quite a bit of promise, they just need to focus. That can be said for lots of people I suppose.

One of the lessons of a Troop Senate is to put together a meeting with an agenda and follow it. I have been in many meeting with people with MBAs. MPAs, JDs, etc. that have not known how to run a meeting, so I need to give a 13 year old a little slack.

The boys started out a tad bit adrift, but I kept steering them out of the ditch and finished strong.

I was most impressed with the SPL election. Four boys stepped up to run and it was a thoughtful and closed election.

The calendar for next year is set, just waiting for approval from the troop committee.

The boys have a big 2011 planned, now to the implementation.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Cat Issues

Carol feeds the stray cats. I always say I am blessed that she takes in strays. However this past Wednesday, one of the strays caused a major problem

We have two inside cats, both were former strays. Oreo is a big black fat cat that was just a kitten when I rescued him at the lower water crossing in Dalworthington Gardens. I made the mistake of letting my girlfriend know about it at the time. She took the cat into her home. When Carol and I got married, she brought Oreo with her.

The other is Possum. She was the runt of one of a stray cat litter that Carol was concerned would not survive. She is a white and grey smallish cat. She was part of the problem on Wednesday.

I was coming into the house and there was what I thought was Possum in our mud room, I showed her in the house only to discover that we now had three cats in the living room. I had let one of the strays into the house.

This stray was not greeted kindly by Oreo and Possum. I reached down to pick the stray up and it let me know that it had no desire to be handled by scratching the heck out of my hand. The stray proceeded to run into our tool closet to hide.

Since Carol was not home, I knew that she needed a funny story on how I got the cat out of the house, not that there was an extra cat in the house. I grabbed a towel and found the stray. I successfully captured the back half of the new cat, allowing me to hold a screaming, yowling, flailing, biting, clawing creature towards the door. Possum and Oreo responded to this activity by getting into their own tussle.

I did get the cat out the door. Oreo spent the evening hiding under our bed and Possum would not come near me, but did continue to patrol the house to make sure the cat was gone.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

White Rock Half Marathon

This past Sunday I did the Dallas White Rock Half Marathon. My time was 2:06. Not a personal best but based on my level of training, I was very pleased.

It was rather cold at the start and I wore my Texas Tech Football Under Armor Shirt over a running shirt. Not a fancy running shirt, it proved quite effective in keeping me motivated. All along the root I kept being cheered on with Go Tech, Get your Guns up, Wreck’em. I would flash the “Guns Up”. It is always nice being rooted on.

It was rather an uneventful run; I just plugged along with my goal of a two hour half. The course was different than the previous three times, so it was difficult to gage where I was based on my pace. In addition, this was the first year they started us in corral, so I was 20 minutes behind the gun time when I started.

It was quite disheartening in the last three miles, when I was giving my six minutes back to have the lead Marathoners run past me. They were moving at mile 23-26 faster than I could run or ever run period.

I wager I will train again for next year so I can do a sub two hour run.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Frying Turkeys

Brett and I fried two turkeys for thanksgiving. This was our first attempt. You cannot get any manlier of a thing to do for Thanksgiving than frying turkeys. You are outside; it involves fire and the positional of expositions.

This being the case, we fried the turkeys in the front yard. This way we figured the Dalworthington Gardens Fire Department would have easy access if we somehow caused a problem.

Truth be told, two Eagle Scouts through proper preparation, successfully fried two turkeys without any major problems. We had some challenges with the oil level, but handled that with no panic.

Since we did not need them to come by, we brought one of the turkeys up to the DWG Police /Fire/Dispatch to feed our Public Safety Personnel working on Thanksgiving.