Good Cold Work

It's been a good week, with a couple of unusual projects. First, I helped a local Venturing crew (co-ed Boy Scouts) provide first aid at a New Year's skating party. It was freakishly cold. This ice skating thing is out in the mountains, and it was pretty cold here in town. I think it was like nine degrees here before you even factor in the windchill. A few of the other adult volunteers were also EMT's, although we operate on a first responder lever in the crew. I think this looks like an okay networking opportunity. We had a few injuries, but nothing too serious. The worst was a cut above someone's eye, the lightest was either one of the band-aids we had to pass out, or the lady who fell and hurt her wrist(not bad enough to even swell at all, but after she came back a second time they wrapped it up to make her happy). It was kind of fun though, being one of the adults in a scouting event which is not church run.

It's not that I have anything against church or scouts separately, it's just that they don't always mix so well. My biggest problem is that troops must be kept separate by ward, and patrols by quorum. This means that I am the scoutmaster of a troop of five boys, but only really in charge of a patrol of three of them. Two of these come regularly. One of those seems to give a crap about it. The one who doesn't come regularly is prone to some pretty immature outbursts should he decide to show, and not find everything to his liking. It's not to say that the two who are less helpful are bad or anything, just green, and it's difficult to get them interested in a program that's not really up to what it should be. And, who's idea was it to make the deacon's quorum president the senior patrol leader? How does senior go along with first year scout?

But that's not the point. The thing is, it was nice to see a group where the members are interested in being there, and participate willingly. Also, it was good that my youngest sister (a member of the crew) was able to keep warm enough out there with the help of my wife's borrowed snow gear. She's out yesterday and today on another trip with the crew. They're providing first aid services for another event. I'm glad that they were able to come by here briefly and pick up the snow gear again, there was some reluctance, so thanks Dad. He was thinking they might have to find something at home, or stop by the store or something, but I doubt they'd get anything quite as good (My wife as a good cold weather coat she used in Maine), or save any time (we really aren't that far away). By the way Mom and Dad, I'm sure she still needs to get some gear of her own if she wants to keep this up, maybe some time when you're not already running late, and maybe at a real store like REI, not Kohls.

That brings me to my other project this week. I wasn't at this winter camp because I was going to spend the day hauling Christmas trees away as a fund raiser for my troop, but that's a bust as no one seems to either have real trees in the town we put up the flyers, or want to pay five bucks to have it taken away. Instead, I helped my father-in-law empty out a huge trailer full of stored crap, sort it, and put it in a big shed. It's amazing how much stuff fits in a trailer, and more amazing that we got it all (aside from a large garbage pile, and a smallish goodwill pile) into the shed. It was nice though, that the sun was out, the wind wasn't too disruptive, and it stayed warmish almost long enough.

There's still more stuff to move around here. The trailer is done, but I've got to find somewhere to put all the crap that's in my brother-in-law's old room. Most of the stuff is his, but some is just general family crap. A pretty good amount belongs to either me or my wife, and that much can go with the rest of our stuff, it's just the family stuff and his stuff that poses a problem. I'm concerned with where all of this will go only because his old room will be my son's new room. My wife is due to pop in about three more weeks if she holds that long. By the way, congratulations to the oldest of my baby sisters who just had her first child, and my first niece. I've got a couple places in mind for the stuff. I just need the official okay from someone so I can't be blamed for anything. I think I'll see about getting that once I move the rest of our stuff out. But, that's a project for next week.