The rest of my day today

Well, I had three significant things happen today. All three were good (for me) and two were fun (for me.)

The first was a good/not fun thing. I got a really good score on an English test today! I'm quite happy for that. :D

Another great thing is the Buckeye's basketball team is advancing to the Championship game! Let's hope they do better than the football team...

OK. The other thing was fun and good. I got to ride with a couple friends up a railroad bed behind our house and up to a creek. It's rained a bit here lately. I got muddy. Here are the pictures.

Me from the front

Me from the back

I'd show you more pictures but I only had one more and it came out horribly. Anyways, I just thought I'd update again to make up for all the times I've gone long periods without it. Bye!

*Yawn* I'm tired

Maybe next time I'll skip staying up until past 1:00. Oh well.

OK. Wednesday was schoolwork some more, except that we (Mom and I) were so infected with spring fever that we blew off school in the afternoon and went outside for a while. This meant that we did work that evening. You might be wondering how we did that with prayer meeting on Wednesday evenings. Well, Dad's been gone since that afternoon out in Columbus, IN, for a presbytery meeting. He's supposed to get back in today sometime.

Thursday was much the same as Wednesday, except the weather was even better. We did our first yardwork of the year, which was simply cleaning up a yard. Not much.

Yesterday was a first. Neither Mom nor I remember ever having mowed in March before. Well, we do now! It was really nice for three different reasons. (1) The yard looked very nice when we were finished with it, (2) it was wonderful outside yesterday (close to 80º F) and (3) even though I'm not mercenary (usually!) the $30 was quite nice. I always enjoy the first time in the year that I have some money in the wallet. However, most of the money entering the wallet will probably be leaving it for the airport cash drawer (or whatever they keep money in) this summer. Hopefully, I'll be able to get a job there and get going with lessons. However, that's all up to what God wants. If you think of it, please be praying that it will indeed be God's will for me to do flying this summer.

OK. That brings you up to the minute (or close to it) with work. Now, on to an update for Eagle.

I'M DONE WITH THE RESEARCH PHASE!!!!!!

Thank the LORD for getting me done with it! Don't take that as meaning that I hated it; rather, it was actually not that bad. However, it was tiring at a few points. As well, I might not have enough time to have the monument completed and erected before Memorial Day. As yet another thing, please be praying that I can find a company that will have what I want for the price I want in the time I want!

Alright. Now, it's on to something else. I'm just wanting to put up all the things I want to do this summer. I'm not sure by any means that I'll be able to do all of them, but I wanna get some done.

(1) Become a better Christian.
(2) Earn (at least) my recreational pilot's license.
(3) Earn my driver's license (yeah sure.)
(4) Earn my Radio Operator's License.
(5) Go to COVFAMIKOI (church family conference.)
(6) Keep in shape with bike riding (see #10.)
(7) Get a job at the airport.
(8) Become a better shot (hopefully I can do plenty of shooting.)
(9) Go to summer camp and do COPE again (ropes course.)
(10) The Mortons have invited me to help them hoe beans this summer. I'd like to do that and spend a Saturday riding my bike back from their house--70-mile trip! :)

(11) Spend a few days with Milkdud at his house and bum around.

(12) Spend at least 1 night with another couple friends from Scouts.

(13) Keep mowing yards.

These aren't really in any particular order, except that the first one is the main emphasis. That one I will especially strive for, as I normally try to do at all times. The others--some are more important than others. I'd really like it if I could do all of them, but that would mean very little free time. Oh well. I just thought I'd post this list and let everyone know about what I'm planning/wanting.

I've gotta get going now. There's a fair bit of school that I have to get done today. Unfortunately, when the weather is SOOOO nice, we get behind in schoolwork...

Not as many people as we were hoping for...

The title says it. We really didn't have that many people show up. One prospective Cub scout, and one prospective boy with his dad. Oh well. Hopefully we can get some more people some way.

Ummm... Other news. Yesterday evening I went to another troop's meeting. They're pretty new, so I'm kind of helping them out, showing them how to do things, etc. It's fun! Really. It is. Anyway, I got absolutely no school done yesterday, but did get some Eagle work done. Today was a bit of school, but not all of a day's work. Oh well. I'll finish it up sometime. July, most likely! Really, it won't be that long, but it could be later than sometimes.

I think that's about it. I kinda need to get unpacked from this evening. Milkdud and I did a backpacking demonstration at the open house, and I need to get the pack unpacked. Good night!

Hi

Interesting title, huh?

I don't have a ton of time for a post right now. I'll probably update this evening. One thing, however. Our troop is having an open house tonight for recruiting. Please pray that it'll go well and that we can get several more boys and parents, particularly dads. Thanks!

Now THAT was fun!

OK. This is (first) a post over the past few days. As you've probably noticed, the rest of it focuses on the campout/hike yesterday.

Thursday was busy. We had bowling with the homeschool group in the morning, so I didn't get going on school until about 1300. That meant a long day of schoolwork. I finished it up, however. The bad part about the whole day was that Mom beat me at bowling! :)

Friday was also busy. I had plenty of schoolwork (as normal :) to get done, and I did get most of it done. Nothing much was out of the ordinary, except of course the campout.

We went down to Camp Birch overnight. For those of you who don't know, Camp Birch is our local council's camp. If you're curious about it, click here. Anyway, we had been hoping to lock in to the campsite that we had last summer for summer camp, but it was already taken when we finally figured out who to contact to make reservations. We ended up with the one next over, Shawnee campsite. Yet again, if you want to see where the stuff on Birch is, here's the map. It's in a PDF format.

We got to Birch about 1830. Thanks to Daylight Savings Time, we had plenty of light left over. Earlier in the week, the weather forecast was for bright and sunny skies. We had about 2 inches of sunshine overnight. Ha. Well, we got there, or at least two of the vehicles did. Unfortunately, the SPL and his brother and dad were all a bit late, since their furnace suddenly died that afternoon. However, from what I understand, they got it working again and headed down.

Almost all of us carried our gear in from the parking lot. On that map, the parking lot is all the way on the right side, while Shawnee is about in the east-west middle of the camp, just south a bit of the middle. We really found out on the way there what the registration guy meant when he said it was a tad bit muddy. Throughout the day, I became increasingly glad for Gore-Tex boots that are completely waterproof. We got to the campsite and it was a mudball. There was a stream running through one side of the camp where normally there was no stream. We nicknamed that our slip-and-slide, but nobody wanted to try it out.

After getting our two tents set up, we got the lantern working and started our cracker barrel. Most of the guys stayed in adirondacks, a three-walled log cabin, so we only needed two tents. The picture doesn't show quite what we had, but it's similar. The cracker barrel is just a snack time. This campout everyone just brought lots of chips, and a couple guys brought Jiffy Pop. Yummy!

We ended up doing a couple miscellaneous skits, including the Black Knight skit, before evening devotions. Taps was at 2300, and everyone drifted off to sleep sooner or later.

My alarm went off at 0610. Within ten minutes, I was dressed and outside. To my amazement, there was a distinctly noticeable lack of rain. Don't think I'm complaining! :) I blew reveille at 0630, later in the day receiving joking "death threats" for blowing it that early. Everyone, yet again sooner or later, got up and started on breakfast. Very little during the day was actually cooked, since we were emphasizing lighter-than-usual camping.

After breakfast everyone packed up. Everyone was either totally packed up or just about (I was in the latter category for a couple good reasons,) so we started to brief on the orienteering course there on Camp Birch. We did that, discovering a small patch of either quick or semi-quick sand. After that was completed, we headed off to John Bryan State Park and Clifton Gorge State Nature Preserve.

This part of the trip was great. The water was much higher than usual, creating very forceful rapids. We got to see waterfalls, geese surfing the rapids, and a port-o-john (not in the river). Afterwards, we headed home, hitting Young's Dairy ***NOTE their site has cows mooing loudly--put down your speakers!*** along the way for ice cream.

Today was enjoyable. We had generally good attendance, except for one family that wasn't able to be here for an unknown reason. After worship we had a congregational dinner. The sermons were both quite useful. On a slightly to-the-side remark, if you ever want to listen to the sermons and psalm meditations from our church, just go here!

OK--I think that's it! Wait, I have pictures...

This is me before the hike. Excuse the look--Milkdud didn't tell me he was just about to take the picture...

Some of the group before the hike. I'm playing recall to get the two guys back in that aren't back in. Note two interesting things--the muddiness of the ground and Dad's headgear.

Me having fun packing my load. I think it was around 35 pounds or so. All the guys are ahead of me--since I'm ASPL, I got to be the rear guy, picking up the stragglers. As one assistant scoutmaster said, I could also help "the old geezers when they fall down." None of the adults had that trouble, thankfully. None of them are that terribly old, either.

Most of the guys, in various states of readiness for the picture.

Our first main break, located on a scenic overlook. All of the guys are in this picture. See if you can find ten! Not everyone has much showing.

Dad's boot had problems... It kinda looks like a little crocodile mouth, without the teeth.

Temporary fix--it didn't hold the best, so we reinforced it with more. After about five yards of duct tape, it held (until the whole sole finally came off!)

Bumpas and I doing CPR on Milkdud. He recovered fully.

"Hey, let's rifle his pockets--we might find some money!"

One section of rapids. A professional white-water enthusiast could probably navigate this area, but he'd have a challenge!

One of the numerous waterfalls that's normally just a trickle--this time, it was bigger. I probably should explain that everything was bigger, due to all the recent rain.

A very nice waterfall picture, complete with a small rainbow

A really nice picture of the path ahead. The waterfall is the one from the previous picture. I cut out the hat and now have this picture as my background.

A narrow chute of water. The hydraulic power was amazing. I sure don't want to try this in ANY type of boat!

The group shot at the end. Sorry about the picture--I'm not sure what caused the break in it. Try finding me!

I think that's it for now. That was a long one. Thanks for putting up with it!

+New Post

The title is the button that I hit to put up a new post. Original, ain't it? :)

Monday was pretty good. We all went down to Springfield, about an hour south of here, and got a bunch of work done on my Eagle project. Thankfully, the research is about over. Praise the Lord that I don't have to be doing any more research! Well, at least not much more. It was rather difficult, even though I didn't do all of it.

The rest of the day was dedicated to school and a Cub meeting that evening. Hey, that almost rhymes! Anyway, I got some school done before going to the meeting. Unfortunately, there were only 5 boys there, which is a little less than the usual dozen or so!

Yesterday was schoolwork as well. I had a long chemistry test. Well, the studying was long, but the test wasn't terribly bad. I ended up with a very good score on it, so I'm happy. After that, I hurried up and got ready for the scout meeting. Since this was the first meeting at which I wasn't the SPL (at least for a long time,) it was difficult. During the flag ceremonies, I almost started commanding, then suddenly realized that I wasn't supposed to be! I caught myself a couple other times starting to do/say something, then realized that it wasn't really my place to do so. Oh well. It's good that Milkdud is able be SPL, especially because he's the only Eagle scout in the troop (for a few months...)

Well, I think that's about it. O yeah. There's a campout this weekend. If you think of it, pray that it'll go well. I'm not anticipating anything more than the normal problems, so we'll probably be having a great time. Seeya!

Hebrews 9:27-28

Well, hopefully you've either looked up these verses or else you have them memorized and don't need to look them up (Psalm 119:11). Anyway, in case you've done neither, here they are.

Hebrews 9:26-27: And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: (27) so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

This is a post asking for prayer. A college girl from church had been asking for prayer for a woman from her home congregation who'd been sick from cancer. Last week, the doctors thought she was doing remarkably better. However, this week, they found out that the cancer had spread throughout her body, making it vastly more difficult to eradicate. We prayed for this woman at church today, and half an hour later, she had met her Lord in His Glory. Please be praying for this woman's friends and family!

I really got hit by this and by the psalm meditation today. We were doing Psalm 9. Verse 10 really hit home to me, as I pray that it did for many others who heard the meditation. Here's the verse.

Psalm 9:10 And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, LORD, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.

This is such a rich verse! Mr. Bump, our other elder, made a strong application from this verse (at least I believe it was this verse!) He basically looked straight at this girl and made the application that, since her friend was a believer, God would do what was best for her. I am pretty sure that he said that, even if it was His will for her to die, then she would, and it would be the absolute best for her! This really spoke to me. Since I am a child of God, He will look after me. I put my trust in Him. He will reward by not forsaking me! What a wonderful thing this is to have such an assuring promise, telling us that if we trust in Him He will never forsake us! I would elaborate more, but I can't really come up with words to describe it. If you're a believer, I'm sure you know what I'm meaning.

OK, now we're on to another part of the post. As I'd mentioned before, the Mortons came over for dinner today. That was both a useful and enjoyable time. The food was excellent, the conversation was "excellenter," and the chair held together! I'll quickly put up a couple pictures from today's dessert period.

Ummm... This is Dad. I think he likes the food or something

A couple of the Morton girls and a college girl that they bring.

OK. I think that's it for right now. Oh, one last thing. I'm sure that someone will ask this, so I'll answer it right now. The dessert is strawberry shortcake, complete with strawberries (of course) and Redi-Whip. Bye!

New Record! (I think)

I'm about certain this is a new record on my blog for longest time periods between posts. I'm not certain, but I think that's the case, and right now I don't think it's important enough to use precious calories by clicking the mouse a few times to find out! :)

OK. Last weekend, we had (for one of us anyway) surprise visitors. The Bussell family (or part of them) from the Southside RP congregation came for the weekend. Because of them being here, along with other visitors, we had close to 40 people at church! While some of you are thinking this is tiny, bear in mind that this is better than usual for us. Anyway, because of all the visitors, we had a dinner at church after both services and class. That was enjoyable--everyone always has something that they like!

Monday and Tuesday were nothing out of the ordinary, school-wise. The weather on both days was wonderful, especially Tuesday.

A couple of other things happened on Tuesday. Tuesday was when Nathaniel had to go back from Spring Break. It was really nice having him home for all that time. Dad and "Bumpas" got to go out with him. Apparently everyone had a nice time. They got back just before we had to leave for the scout meeting. This is where the other interesting occurrence happened. I'm no longer the troop SPL. "Milkdud" is now the SPL, but he's appointed me the ASPL. For those who don't know, the SPL is the Senior Patrol Leader, meaning he's the boss. The ASPL, as you might have guessed, is the Assistant Senior Patrol Leader. The SPL's job is the hardest in the troop. However, the ASPL is in some ways the easiest! I'll now have more time to work on Eagle stuff and schoolwork.

Wednesday wasn't anything special except for our weekly prayer meeting. While some people made it that don't normally, some people that normally do didn't. Diagram that sentence. Anyway, it was a profitable and enjoyable time.

Thursday wasn't anything special. I had a history test that I did OK on. That's all that I'm coming up with for importance.

Friday was finishing up schoolwork. That's about it.

Yesterday was business all day long. We had the second day of our "Scouting for Food." We dropped bags off at houses in a local town one week ago yesterday, and then yesterday went around collecting them, hoping that some people at least would put them out with food as we'd asked. A few did, but not many. We collected about 200 pounds of food, compared to last year's 350 or so. Oh well.

After that in the morning, I helped out with a Cub Scout Scouting for Food thing here in Belle Center. That was over quickly. As soon as I got back, I got lunch (at 1430 by the way) and got ready to go to a friend's house. This was great. He's another guy from scouts. However, this wasn't a scout event. He and several of his friends were getting together to have fun with Airsoft! It was great fun. The little BB's hurt a bit, but not for very long. "Bumpas" and I both got to do it for several hours, complete with a pizza-and-pop break in the middle. After everyone else was done with the Airsoft, "Bumpas" and I dueled a couple times and headed inside. Here, we just sat around having a great time. My friend's mom had made lots of grilled cheese sandwiches, so we gorged on these.

We ended up leaving a little after 2000, which was later than I was planning on. I got home and after a few minutes of resting up got to go to work on my Eagle project. There's a chance that I'll be dropping the Civil War and the Spanish-American War from the lists, since we can't find anyone KIA from either one. The records are horrible! I'm glad that nowadays records are kept a bit better...

This morning I managed to sleep through my watch alarm and my clock radio alarm. I woke up about 0910, a bit later than I was intending. I read my Bible and studied my assignment for class today, then came downstairs. Since then I've been doing one of three things. The first is getting ready for church today. The second is getting ready for the Morton family to come here after church for dinner, including making a basic repair to a chair. Hopefully, it will hold later when I sit down on it, or else I'm going to create an interesting diversion in the conversation! The third is doing like I've been all week: reading Pilgrim's Progress.

John Bunyan was certainly quite gifted in his writing of this great book. It sums up the Christian walk through life (pun not intended) very well. It's been quite profitable for me to read it again, since the last time was easily six years ago or more. If you have access to this book, I encourage you to read it again or for the first time. I'm about certain that you won't regret it!

Well, I must get going. I need to finish up getting ready. Hopefully this long post didn't bore you. I'll try to be a little more regular. Bye!

Video

I thought this was an interesting video. Enjoy! However, I'm sure this pilot didn't...

Yeah yeah it's been a while...

I know it's been a while since the last real post. Sorry. I've been busy.

OK. Monday we went down to Cincinnati to visit my dad's mom. That was really nice. We got to go to this mega-mega-mega grocery store called Jungle Jim's. It supposedly has everything edible. However, it didn't have the Warheads that I was wanting. This is a kind of really sour candy that I really like and I can't find anywhere. On the long shot that anyone reading this knows where to get some, let me know!

On Monday evening, I attended the pack meeting for the cub scout pack I help out with. We had decent attendance. Nothing special.

Tuesday I was working a bit online for Eagle research. Not a ton got done, but I found an interesting website. The meeting that night wasn't quite so well attended but we still got a lot of work done. Several boys completed numerous requirements for rank advancement. We even got to play Carpetball! There's a table at our meeting place, but it isn't too fast compared to the one at Winter Conference. Oh well. It's still plenty of fun anyway!

Wednesday was a lot of work on Eagle. That website that I found on Tuesday was a real blessing. I managed to get almost all of the research for World War One completed, along with some on the Spanish-American War. It's been rather interesting so far. Unfortunately, several people in church were sick so we weren't able to have prayer meeting this week.

Today was more work. I didn't get a ton done this morning or afternoon on Eagle stuff, but I did get around to cleaning my room a bit (it actually wasn't all that bad) and working on a couple merit badges I had to finish up. Nathaniel and I had fun playing a sort-of baseball using a shovel and snowballs. That was amusing as well as intriguing. Anyway, tonight I started doing some more online research, but caught myself running right past things several times. I'm getting quite tired, meaning that I'm missing a few important things. As a result, I quit the research for the evening and instead talked a bit on a couple different IM clients.

OK. I think that's about it for my activities the past several days. I'm only coming up with one other thing. I'm sure that you remember me talking about that square dance a couple weeks ago. Well, there's another one scheduled, this time on a Thursday night! The Lord has heard my prayers, and, I'm sure, those of several others as well! Hopefully, I'll see several of you all at the next one.

I need to get to bed now. Bye!

Praise the Lord!

I've managed to find a website that's going to be incredibly helpful for the research part of my Eagle project. I don't have a ton of time to post, but I wanted to put this up. Praise the Lord for leading me to this site!

Another funny pic

I just got an incredibly hilarious picture in by email and I figured that most of you would enjoy it. Here it is!

Music change

I decided that the helos were done. This is a composition and performance by a friend of mine, so I thought that possibly others would like to hear it. Right now, the download speeds are kinda slow, so you might wanna wait for it to load before starting the music. Anyway, that's it for right now.

Well, as promised (or threatened) I'm putting up a bunch of humorous pictures. They're mostly military humor, but you should like them.

Great!

Umm... I wanna know if this really happened. I doubt it, but I suppose it's possible.

Wide turns? LOL!

I'm sure someone got in trouble for this!

Ummm... that's interesting.

Supposedly, this is a new french recruit...

Not military humor, but oh well.

Hope you all enjoyed these. I gotta go!

Wow!

Sorry. I know it's been a loooooong time since I've posted. :(

OK--Wednesday and Thursday were simply working really hard on the schoolwork. I generally did well on the tests that I had, but I did have a little trouble with a couple of them.

Friday we got up early to leave for Pennsylvania. We got to see my grandparents (my mom's parents) and we got to bring Nathaniel home from college! It's quite nice having him home.

Alrighty--we come to yesterday. Yesterday was busy. I left just after 0830 for a Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. In case you don't know what this is, the cubs make these little wooden cars, and then come to this event to race them. If you want more details, click here. I ended up, after commanding the opening flag ceremony, running the concession stand most of the time. That was actually quite nice (mostly), especially because, since I was on "staff" for it, I got to have whatever I wanted free! This ended up being about 3/2 cans of mountain dew ("bumpas" had the rest :) and a lot of nachos, complete with nacho cheese. Yum!

After I got home, I mostly did two things: movie watching and wireless network setting up. We'd had a wireless router for some time, but it never worked "wirelessly," so we always had to use cables. However, Mom and Dad got a new router in town, so I got to set it up. The setup software didn't work the best, and I ended up having to call tech support, which I had never done for anything before. It was actually kind of enjoyable. The hold music was really nice, the technician's name was Isaac, and his personality almost seemed like mine. He was kind of joking around a little, which really eased my tension. The router had been giving me fits! Anyway, he helped me get past the step in the setup process that hadn't been working. However, the last step failed. By this time, I'd gotten off the line, and I didn't really want to call back. I ended up not bothering setting it up any further, since I'd already gotten a wireless network set up and secured.

I watched one whole movie and part of another. The part was the second half or so of Mansfield Park, a TV mini-series of a Jane Austen book. I didn't like it as much as Pride and Prejudice, but it wasn't bad. The second movie was The Guardian, semi-based on a true story about Coast Guard Rescue swimmers. *note: little bit of bad grammar ahead* I ain't doing that job. I couldn't do it, or anything even close. The pilot's job--possibly. I don't really like the idea of it, but I probably could if I have to. Anyway, the movie was good, except for one of the main character's interactions with his girlfriend.

OK--rebuttal on the previous post. Some of the stuff about Jane Fonda is true, and some of it isn't. I'm not going to bother with what is and what isn't, so if you want to know, check it out here. I'm sorry for putting up the lies, and I'll try to remember to check things like this out in the future.

Today was quite good. We had (nearly) everyone at worship that's normally there. As well, we (my family) ended up staying there at the building for dinner with the Morton and Probst families. The dinner was make-your-own-sub. Yum! It was really good. After the dinner, we had a church psalm sing and evening worship followed that. We all stayed around and talked for a while afterwards, which is normal. I'm thinking we talked a little longer tonight than normal, but that isn't normally something that's annoying!

Well, I think that's about it. I'll leave you with a humorous picture that a friend sent. Thanks to you--you know who you are! I'll probably put up a bunch of funny pictures later in the week...