The Actual Day, And Other Events

Posted on by Jordan

I know, the last post already covered my birthday, so I won’t go into much detail, but there are a few highlights I though should be covered.

It isn’t every day Heather does baking, and I don’t think I have ever devoted much blog space to her endeavors in that arena. Also, Heather doesn’t generally make desserts. Apparently turning 30 is enough of an occasion to warrant making a cake though.

I encountered this cake at a Church function about a year ago, and really liked it. Heather took note, and managed to obtain the recipe from the aforelinked blog. The results were every bit as good as I had remembered!

In passing I should mention that I thought it was cool that the recipe used a technique I sort of stumbled onto a few weeks ago. Because our oven’s “broiler” is just turning the top heating element on continuously, I started throwing the oven to broil for the last minute or two when making pizza to produce a more pronounced browning/crispy/almost burnt appearance like you would see from a restaurant pizza.  The cake uses it to more or less rend the butter and cream out of the coconut, leaving a great crispy texture on the top of the cake.

So, enough about food. What else have we been up to?

Well, Heather has taken family pictures for a substantial number of people. It’s still just a hobby for her, and she seems to really enjoy the process of getting to work with people, and produce something to remember this time with. She is really starting to produce high quality results with the camera.

And me? I am still working with the scouts. Just this past weekend I got to sleep in “Fort Pella” a sort of novelty structure standing on the grounds typically used for summer camp, but accessible to Troops during the off season.

It’s distinct in that whenever the troop has the opportunity to use the fort we don’t setup tents, and instead the boys sleep under the roof sections of the tower.

My role with scouts has changed quite a bit over the past few months. I now work directly with a single patrol of younger scouts, and am responsible for helping to provide the opportunities they need to actually advance in rank. The troop works really hard to stay true to the “boy led” philosophy of Scouting, but I had no idea how much of a balancing act that turns out to be. It’s probably more of a challenge to get all the adults on the same page as to what that means than to actually implement with the boys, but I think we are starting to find a good approach everyone is happy with.

aaand I should stop before this gets too introspective 🙂

Suffice to say that I am enjoying scouts more now that I have a more direct responsibility instead of simply being a warm trained leader body for camp outs.

-Jordan

Camping

Posted on by Jordan

I went camping over the weekend with the Boy Scouts.

Sorry for the terrible picture… I have some much better ones, but I feel like posting pictures of the guys online would not be the best way to endear myself to the troop parents…. Maybe they wouldn’t care, but lets don’t find out eh?

There are a lot of things I probably could say about the trip, but I wanted to keep this post focused. The single biggest takeaway I have is this:

I hate ticks.

Not on me, or even dug into me… just the idea. It is a terrible moment when you realize your going to have to explain ticks to the new guy (or in this case, the new parent)

It’s terrible. I have gotten to explain ticks quite a few times in my outdoor career, and you can just see the, ah, subject start to get the heebie-jeebies and involuntarily start checking their scalp.

it’s hard to be honest and downplay the things:

“oh don’t mind those!”

“what are they?”

“ah, parasitical arachnids… you know, just part of nature!”

“whahh!? are they poisonous?”

“No, no… well there is the lime disease thing, but nothing to worry about…”

So, the conversation is going to be unavoidably alarming, and then, it always turns out I am blessed with whatever trait it is that makes me unattractive to bugs to begin with, so despite the people around me finding ticks left and right, I never had to deal with one. It makes it that much harder to demonstrate the proper stoic response to our spider-like adversary.

Ignoring some minor disappointments I had over the reaction to ticks, I had fun on the camp out. Not quite the laid-back peaceful trip I had been imagining, but I continue to be impressed by the group of boys I am working with… it makes up for not getting much time to read 🙂

-Jordan

Footnote: Heebie-jeebies must be a word, because it’s on Wikipedia!

Winter Camping

Posted on by Jordan

The past weekend saw Heather and I apart for a large amount of the time.

I went camping with the Boy Scouts, and Heather had a movie night with some girls from church.

In the days leading up to the weekend, Heather was making phone calls and sending e-mails to entice people to come over. I meanwhile, was rapidly eating through my Christmas gift money buying cold weather camping gear. The premiere purchase:

A sleeping bag rated down to ZERO degrees! The picture isn’t from the camping trip, but Heather thought she should record my testing the bag for proper fit.

By all accounts, Heather’s movie night went really well… and the camping was kind of cold 🙂

Actually, it wasn’t so bad. We had access to cabins, so weren’t out in the cold the entire time, nor did I really need the ultra cold weather bag when we were sleeping inside. I am prepared now though!

It was my first trip camping with the troop as an adult leader. The trip back in November was a training event and I didn’t camp with the troop.  I had fun, but it was challenging to know exactly how much guidance I should be giving.  Doubly hard when many of my meals were being cooked by 14 year-old boys. In the end though, I think the boys had fun, and hopefully learned a few things.

I had fun, and learned a lot, even if the boys didn’t! I don’t know if I can quantify it as easily as saying “I learned square-lashing” but I am sure I will be better at working with the troop next time we go out.

-Jordan