Pictures to the Family Vacation...

...are over here at the very pink blog.

Cub Scout Day Camp

Our boys got picked to do the flag ceremony. Yup, that's my boy facing the other direction!

Waiting for a turn at the pellet guns...

Ready...aim...

Fire!

Next up: Practicing basketball skills

...and a half-court game

"Bottle Rockets!" Huzzah!

T-minus 10, 9...

After lunch we go to nutrition and camp cooking

"Look Pa! Stick bread!"

Yum!

Although they titled this station "Catapults" it was more of an atlatl class...

Leatherworking...or more appropriately: "Smack-a-piece-of-wet-leather-with-a-big-mallet-and-then-stitch-it-to-another-piece"

Tah-dah!

I didn't want to get close enough for a picture while he was wielding a pocket knife, but here he is sanding his wooden whistle.

"Tweeeeeet!" Yet another inanimate object banned from being used in the house (it was a looong ride home...)

Overall, we had a lot of fun. I a day off from work so even if it had been the worst experience ever, I would have still enjoyed myself. It was nice to be able to just hang out with my son for a day.

Poverty Line, I Bid Thee Adeiu!

Although I haven't mentioned it much (or at all, really), this past month I have been wandering my way through an interview process for a promotion here at work. It finally came down from on high yesterday that the Powers That Be have lost all common sense and have given me the position!

There are a bunch of changes on the horizon, but let me just share a few numbers:

Previous - 30,160
"The Line" - 33,270
Current - 37,440

I'm not going to give too much commentary on the above numbers. Yeah, the bottom one might still seem a bit low to some people, but I have no complaints. I am now able to take care of my family without government assistance. And that is a big thing for me.

In other news, I have a bunch of pictures from Cub Scout Day Camp and our vacation to the Zoo and Aquarium that I keep intending to post. Hopefully soon...

War and Peace

I finished Huckleberry Finn last week. It had been about two decades since I last read it, so it was nice to read it again. I've also come to the conclusion that I would rather hang out with Huck Finn that I would Tom Sawyer; not because Huck is more of a wild-child, pretty much the opposite. Although Huck is fairly ignorant about a lot of things, he has his head screwed on better than Tom. Tom, being raised "proper" and all, goes out of his way to cause problems for other people. During the last few chapters, I just wanted to reach through and smack Tom upside the head.

Anyway, now that I finished, I've decided to tackle a book that I haven't read yet and that has intimidated me for a long time: War and Peace.

I've generally heard this book described as a story about people with incomprehensible names, going to places with incomprehensible names, doing incomprehensible things. That and the fact that it is a REALLY long book kept me away from it for a long time. But I got started on it this week. You know what? I'm really enjoying it!

Yes, there are a lot of people with Russian names and titles to keep track of (and they seem to be all related somehow and all their stories intertwine), and there are a whole pile of sub-plots (actually, you might say that it is nothing but sub-plots and therefore everything is a main plot...go figure). But I've been surprised at how much I've liked it so far. It doesn't hurt either that it takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, which is one of my favorite periods of history to read about (Go Hornblower!). The writing style (or at least this particular translation) is easy to read. Had I known all of this before, I would have read it a long time ago.

However, I imagine it is going to take me a very long time to get through this as I normally only take time to read while I'm waiting for the bus or I am on the bus going to work.

A Sizzle, Fizzle, Fourth

It was hot. There was a pool. There was a grill. There was an extremely dense chocolate cake. There were some less than impressive fireworks.

So no rabble-rousing for me this time around. We were invited (at 10:00 PM the night before, I might add) over to another family's house for the Fourth of July. At the end of the day, we were all pretty wiped out. It was alright for what it was, but it just seemed like any other weekend. I didn't get all crazy-patriotic (a little, but nothing "extremist" inducing). And then, today, I went back to work. ::shrug::

We actually have a lot going on this month. This Wednesday, is Cub Scout day camp (I got the day off work so I get to go). Mid-month, we're headed out on a family vacation to the zoo and aquarium across the state. At the end of the month is a local gaming convention that might be mildly amusing. We'll see.

The basement in the house has been almost finished for quite some time now. Leslie's been doing a lot more work on it than I have; that's because I'm a slacker - I've accepted this about myself. We just have a small bit of mudding and taping to finish up, then it's on to texturing and painting. After that, we can spend a fortune to carpet everything. The downstairs bathroom won't be finished yet, but the toilet flushes and that is good enough for me.