Eat and Eat some more

Some people might think I am referring to Thanksgiving with a title like Eat and Eat some more, but that was just the start of a weekend of food.

Thanksgiving began the medley, the veritable cornucopia, as my college RC would say. We had the standard Thanksgiving fare, turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and bread. Well that is my requirements for a successful Thanksgiving dinner. In addition, we had orange apricot jello, stuffing, candied yams, and sweet potatoes. Friday was a day of rest, at least from vast quantities of food. The big meal on Saturday was pancakes for breakfast. We recently picked up a lot of pancake mix from some family friends who moved from the St. Louis area and have been working our way through it without much of an end in sight as of yet. Then on Sunday we went back to large family meals. Both of my uncles came into town for my grandma's birthday. So we went to my grandma's favorite restaurant, Cardwell's. I branched out from my usual order of fish and tried the flank steak which was surprisingly good. Cardwell's has a bad tendency to make weird food. For desert, my mom made a burnt caramel cake, at my grandma's request, and an angel food cake, for those of us who are not as big a fan of burnt caramel cake. Then today we went to Kris's steakhouse after a little gentle prompting from me while at Cardwell's for one of my uncle's birthday. So tonight I ate a prime rib, twice baked potato, rolls, a little cheesecake, and some decadent chocolate cake while at Kris's.

This post would have been done a little sooner, but I had to stop for a nice big piece of leftover angel food cake. Can't pass that one up.

Black Friday

Fist Fights. Diving over tables. Screaming. In general, complete mayhem. Or at least that is what I was expecting from the build up about Black Friday. Unfortunately, not even one argument all day. I heard that people started the line by 2 pm on Thanksgiving (15 hours before we opened), but the line was not really that long when I arrived at 4:15 am to start working. When it came time to open, at 5 am, I was ready for a blitz of people scrambling to scoop up every last item in the store. I also expected it to last all morning. The first 15 minutes looked promising, I had people on all sides asking me to point them in the right direction for the deal that they wanted. but then the people all started to leave and move on to other stores. By 8 am, we were already sending people home who had split shifts. They had all been scheduled to help out until 10 am.

My favorite question of the day, and most popular question to ask was, "Do you still have this computer?" Pointing to the computer on the front page of the Black Friday ad, the one that people lined up outside the day before to make sure they got. We had ticketed that item and handed tickets out starting at 2:30 am. The tickets were good until 9 am at which point they were released for anyone to get. When people found this out a line started to form in order to get first shot once they were released. This line started forming at around 7:30 am. Despite the fact that they were all gone by around 10 am, people were still hoping to get the computer when I left the store at 5 pm.

In order to ensure that the Best Buy employees were able to keep a smile on their face throughout the long shifts, they offered two perks. One was free Chipotle. It was delivered every two hours and available for lunch. The other was a masseuse. She arrived at 10 and was just there in the employee break room giving out massages all day.

All in all, people were in a good mood. I met one lady who told me she was leaving for Venezuela on Wednesday and was buying a computer for her 52nd anniversary gift. I only encountered two people who were less than happy. One was upset because we advertised a computer on a two day sale but sold them all. He felt that if the computer was on a two day sale, then we should still have them in stock for both days. He did not seem to understand that we had the minimum number of the computer and we had sold them all. The other dissatisfied customer was upset that we advertised 2 GB of ram on sale, but it was a package of 2 1 GB sticks of ram instead of one stick of 2 GB ram. But other than those two incidences, it was a pretty pleasant day.

After 12 and a half hours in Best Buy you would probably not expect me to return to another Best Buy again in the same day. But alas, we went to Chesterfield Commons for dinner and some shopping at Best Buy. I bought the Olympus 1030 sw camera that I plan on using while SCUBA diving. It is waterproof to 33 feet, shock proof to a 6.6 feet fall, crush proof for 270 pounds, and freeze proof. It also has a manometer to measure the altitude or depth of your picture.

Then I went to bed at about 10 pm while watching Blue Planet: Seas of Life, the tidal seas episode.

A week of night

This past week was the first week in quite a while were I actually had hours at work. The catch, I started at 10 pm (7 pm on Sunday) and finished around 9am every day. I volunteered to work the night shift in order to redo the entire computer department. The original layout made the department feel small and there was no visibility to know what was happening throughout the department. There were high bays that were about ten feet tall holding all the product. The good thing about these was their ability to hold lots of product and overstock on top them. They also were the reason that the department felt so small.

For the whole week, we would take down a high bay and all the product on it and build smaller gondolas. We then would try to make everything fit. Not only were we changing what was holding the product, but just about every item in the department had a new home. So we moved everything sometimes everything multiple times. The printers got moved a total of 5 times. Any time something heavy needed to be moved, they would find either my self or the other volunteer from the computer department. It did not take long for the both of us to become rather sore from the lifting.

One night we got to move the speaker displays. They are all on shelves with a sub shelf designed to hold all of the wiring and a circuit board to allow them to be tested. The best hand hold on the shelves were holes in the side that you could fit three fingers in. It was not a comfortable grip and the shelves weighed quite a bit. The Bose display was set up on a 4 foot by 1.5 foot particle board base with another particle board 4 foot by 1 foot back. This one was by far the heaviest and when we were setting it up, we got one side of the shelf in place and I was not able to get my side in place. The person helping me came to help and we moved it just a little and the whole shelf came out and the Bose display fell leaving a rather large dent in the base of the gondola. But nothing on the display broke because it was all bolted to particle board.

It was surprisingly easy to adjust to a night schedule. I found that when I got home I was not even all that tired, until I stopped moving, then I fell asleep fairly easily and then wake up in time for dinner, or breakfast as the case may be.

Rescue Diving

Who would of thought that becoming a rescue diver would require so little diving.  The course took three days.  Day one was classroom time.  It was not too terribly exciting.  We went back over all of the questions that we had to answer prior to class.  There were 5 chapters and 10 questions for each chapter.  In case anyone is mathematically challenged, that is 50 questions, each one with a short video segment from the Rescue Diver DVD to reiterate the answer.  Once we went through all the answers, we had a test, also 50 questions.  It was a standard multiple choice, true/false test.  The whole class combined only got three wrong.  We each could have gotten 12 wrong.  Obviously it was not a hard test.  The whole thing took about three hours.  

Day two was in the pool.  We practiced the skills we would need to use in the open water session.  The skills you learn during Rescue Diver include how to tow people who need help making it back to safety, how to bring an unconscious diver to the surface, how to stop a panicked diver from making an unsafe ascent, how to escape from a panicked diver, and my personal favorite how to ride a panicked divers tank so that they cannot get to you.  The pool water was nice and warm and clear.  That would not be the case for day three.

Day three was in Goose Creek.  It was a clear, windy, cold October day, I even wore a sweatshirt.  We started by going over our emergency contact numbers and the emergency action plan and how to perform an expanding square search pattern.  Then it was time to get in the water.  We had four scenarios that we had to go through.  Scenario one was an out of air simulation.  The hardest part of the scenario was finding the person who was going to be out of air.  As soon as you dropped below the surface, visibility dropped to less than a foot.  The only way to find them was swinging your arms around until you found an object, and hope it was the person you were looking for.  Scenario two was approaching a tired diver who turned panicky why you got there.  This one was on the surface so it was much easier to complete.  Scenario three turned out to be a mess.  We were supposed to locate a missing diver, who looked oddly like a bucket.  We were supposed to perform the expanding square to find the bucket.  It did not really work to well.  I could not see the compass to use a heading to make a 90 degree turn and could not see far enough to have any sort of orientation for turning.  After several failed attempts at an expanding square we tried a different approach.  We created a line by holding onto the octopus of the person next to us and swam forward.  Then spun, and headed back in the opposite direction.  We completed this pattern somewhat successfully, but swam right over the bucket without ever seeing it.  The last scenario was an unconscious diver at the surface.  

After completing all four scenarios, we went to the assistant instructors house to dry off and warm up.  The water temperature was a balmy 53 degrees.  One instructor was wearing a dry suit and I was wearing a 7 mm wetsuit with hood and gloves.  Overall, I spent less than half an hour underwater.  However, each scenario counts as a separate dive, so four dives in less than 1000 psi of air, talk about efficiency.  

What is the Date Again?

And I thought I just had a bad dream about Aliens.

Since my last post a few things have changed (other than now being an intergalactic traveller). I am soon to be an employee of Best Buy. This process required three separate interviews, a drug test and a background test. This is more hoops to jump through than Brittany getting a job with Watson Wyatt. That is not it either. I now have three weeks of training ahead of me starting on Sunday where Brittany only needed two. Moral of the story, it is harder to work at Best Buy than be an actuary.

I also postponed my Rescue Diver class by about a month. It will now take place on October 20, 22, and 25 so you will need to wait a little longer to read about being a Rescue Diver, sorry about that.

Finally, I submitted my registration form to Divearth to begin the final arrangements of my internship in Honduras. So if all goes according to plan I will plan on flying down on January 10th to begin my training to become a dive instructor.

Fall Begins

Although it may not feel like it everywhere, fall is beginning in Missouri. With the rain from Gustav, the temperature has dropped and this weekend my family did two things that help close out summer and begin fall.

The official close of summer for my family is the closing of Barney's Bar-B-Q. It is a restaurant that only opens on the weekend during summer. It closes this weekend and we went there twice to bring the summer to a close. The second night the owner's whole family was at dinner the same time we were. This is the family that hired me to firebreath last summer and it ended poorly. We had a good time reliving the experience and hearing about how the whole incident made me a hero. If you do not know what happened you can see the experience here.

The second event of the weekend was apple picking. This is another family tradition. We went up to Principia College to pick up my brother just to find out that he could not make it because of a survey. So my sister, dad, mom, and I went to Yate's Apple Orchard to pick apples. Last year they did not have very many apples at all and told us that whatever we could find we could take. This year the apple crop was much better. We picked a bushel and a half of apples and then went back to the college to get Michael for dinner. On the way back the Garmin led us in a new way that we had not driven before. On the way, I saw the place where I asked Brittany to go on a date with me, just one date that is all, and she denied me, shot me down right where I stood. We drove up to Pere Marquette for dinner where we had a family style dinner of fried chicken although it was the sides that made everyone happy. They brought out rolls at the beginning of dinner that they could not keep filled. They also had cole slaw, mashed potatoes and gravy, and green beans. And yes Brittany, I ate some green beans for you.

So now it is officially fall and I can smell the apples being baked already, apple pie and apple sauce.

Repulican National Convention

I watched the Republican National Convention this evening. I came in during Rudy Giuliani's speech. and stayed through voting for the Republican nomination. Governor Sarah Palin made a very strong speech. She had a good time making fun of Obama and promoting McCain. It was a speech that was very entertaining.

When they got to the point where they started the voting I was excited to hear Alaska give five votes to Ron Paul. If you don't know, one of my friends and roommates in college was a strong supporter of Ron Paul and was very vocal supporter whenever a political conversation came up, or really whenever he brought up politics. Since I got to hear all about Ron Paul all the time I became interested in his campaign. Hearing him get votes made me happy. Anyway, Alaska gave five votes to Ron Paul. Then voting continued for a long time. It made it to Montana and McCain was only 21 votes from clenching the nomination. Every single state and territory was called and passed so that Arizona had the right to cast the final votes to make McCain the nominee. As the rest of the states continued in their voting, a few states voted for other candidates. The lady responsible for repeating the vote counts must have been falling asleep. She regularly messed up in repeating the vote count. When all the votes were counted McCain obviously won, but I was disappointed when the final count did not match what was said by the delegates. They only awarded the 5 votes from Alaska to Ron Paul and 2 to Mitt Romney. I know for a fact that Ron Paul received 12 votes, Romney 2 and I missed where 4 votes went. If they felt it was important enough to cycle through all the states before going back to Arizona and wasting a lot of time, why do they not feel it is important to at least get the vote count correct. I know it is a minor detail but it is disturbing the poor math skills demonstrated with this vote. It is ok very shortly afterward there was a movement to make the vote unanimous. It was an oral vote, most people voted yes. When they asked if anyone opposed there was a very distinct no in the background. Followed by, "Then the vote is unanimous." I just think that it is funny since there was a loud no right before saying the vote was unanimous.

Anyway that is how the Republican National Convention voting process went this year.

I Visit Brittany

This weekend the tables were turned. Instead of Brittany flying in to visit me, I flew to Dallas to visit her. The plan was for her sister to pick her up at Dallas International then for her to pick me up later that day at Love Field. That was the plan until her flight was rerouted to Oklahoma City due to storms. So I ended up landing first and driving with her sister to Dallas International to pick up Brittany.

Saturday was spent relaxing. We went to Costco to eat lunch and free samples. After that we went to Dick's Sporting Goods so that Brittany could buy a tennis racket. Then we went home and spent more time relaxing. We ate dinner and played pitch. Phil and I beat Brittany and Courtney. We started out down two games to none and then came back and won three straight to take the series.

Sunday was the beginning of the much more active part of the weekend. We left at 7:30 in the morning to drive down to New Braunfels, Texas to go to Schlitterbahn, the largest water park in the United States. We made it there right around noon and started at Schlitterbahn West. This portion of the waterpark used only water from the local river. Fittingly, all the rides modeled fast flowing rivers with drops in them. We then went to the other side of the water park to Blastenhoff. This was a more convential water park. It had the most popular waterpark in America called the Master Blaster. It was not all that impressive, especially with over an hour in waiting. The best part of this side of the waterpark was the lazy river wave pool combination. It had a very strong current and big waves to play in. After the waterpark we went back to the Westin where we were staying for free dinner. Actually it was free hors'devours but it worked for dinner for us. After dinner we played pitch again. This time Brittany and I played against Courtney and Phil. Brittany and I were on our way to make a comeback when Brittany made a daring 4 bid that did not work out quite as well as she hoped. So we ended up losing game 5.

Monday morning Brittany got to use her new tennis racket. After tennis we went to the Comal River, rented tubes, and floated down the river. Very shortly after starting our float we found the best ride of the weekend. Whenever the river had little drops or waterfalls, they would build a chute to bypass the sudden drop. The water still had to fall the same distance, it just was spread out a little more. If we had more time, we would all have liked to ride that portion of the river a few more times. We continued down the river and had two more drops, not as good as the first but still exciting. We got off the river and started our drive home. We thought we could do it in under 4 hours, but it took almost 5 due to traffic and congestion most of the way home.

Unfortunately, I had to leave on Tuesday and Brittany had to go back to work so we did not have any time for more exciting adventures this weekend. So until next time.

New SCUBA Gear

Last night I went to Y-kiki Divers to buy all of my dive gear. I started looking at new dive gear while at home the week before going back to camp. I looked at ScubaPro, Oceanic, Mares, and Aqualung. There is a whole lot of different gear out there and it is expensive. I looked at three different dive shops in the St. Louis area. I decided on Y-kiki because it is the one that my parents have had the best experience with and they also were willing to throw in the next course in my quest to become a Dive Instructor so I will be taking O2 Provider and Rescue Diver with them.

The equipment that I bought was all Oceanic.

BC - Cruz


This BC has two features that are pretty common but I am really grateful to get to use. One of them is the alternate air source built into the inflator pump. This will allow me to leave the octopus at home when on fun dives. Whenever you go SCUBA diving you always have a primary air source and a backup one in case your buddy needs to breathe off of your tank for some reason. By having it attached to your inflator hose instead of independent, it eliminates the need of a hose coming from your tank and is one less thing to accidentally drag along the reef.

The other feature is an integrated weight system. After putting on all the gear needed for diving, you end up being positively buoyant which is not a good thing if you want to go to the bottom of the ocean. To remedy this problem, you add lead weight. If you do not have an integrated weight system, you put on a very stylish belt with lead weights positioned either on the hips or a little in front of them whichever is most comfortable. However, the weigths often slide to the position that they want. The integrated weight system means that there are pockets designed to hold weight eliminating the need to wear a belt. The weight stays in the same spot the whole dive and some of it can be placed near the tank to help trim you while under water.

Regulator - Delta 4
Octopus - Octo Swiv Mag

This regulator is the only regulator that NOAA allows their divers to use in water under 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Although I do not plan on doing much cold water diving, it goes to show the overall quality of the regulator. The first stage (the thing with all of the hoses attached to it) is environmentally sealed which is why it is able to be used in cold water. The second stage (what you breath from) has a swivel connected to it so that you can move your head without needing to pull and twist the whole hose making the regulator less tiring to use. I also have control over the ease of breathing so I can set it wherever I want based on the conditions.

The Octopus is the secondary regulator that I would need while teaching a class to PADI standards. It is bright yellow so it is easily found. It swivels and twists to allow for the most freedom in the event that it is necessary. Another cool feature of this octo is the mag part of the name. It comes with a magnet on a clip to connect to the BC. This is much easier to use then any other connection device on the market.

Computer - Atom 2.0

This watch is a dive computer that connects wirelessly to a transmitter on the tank. This system eliminates the need for another tube coming from the tank. It can gauge my air consumption rate and can calculate how much time I have left on my dive. It will display the time remaining based on air time left or non-decompression limits. The advantage for having a dive computer is that it can adjust for changes in depth where a dive table is set hard and fast. The person helping me at the dive shop said that he was able to go on a dive where he hit 130 feet and be done for one hour and ten minutes. He was not at 130 feet the whole time but on a dive chart he would only be allowed to be there for 10 minutes and then he would need to go to 15 feet for a safety stop. With the computer calculating in real time he had an extra hour.

Altogether I spent 4 weeks of working at Cedars to buy all the gear making this be far the largest purchase I have ever made. And now I have to wait almost one month before I get to try it all out during the rescue diver course.

Easist Job Search Ever

It was time for me to start looking for a way to earn some money while in St. Louis for the next few months. I decided that working for either Best Buy or Circuit City could be a good option since I like technology. So I got ready to go look for a job. I put on a collared shirt and some nicer shorts. I drove out to a shopping center that had both a Best Buy and a Circuit City. I saw Best Buy first and as I pulled into the parking lot, I saw a sign that said, "Now Hiring." I walked into the store and went to the customer service desk. I asked the lady working there for an application. She told me that I had to fill it out online. She then asked what my availability was and when I told her that I was flexible, she responded by informing me that she would have no problem fitting me into the schedule. I went home and filled out the application and based on what I was told, I have to imagine that getting hired will not be difficult. So I should have a job when I get back in town from my trip over Labor Day.

Brittany Visits

If you have been reading Brittany's blog, you would know that she has spent a week in DC for training and still has one more to go. When she was talking to her company setting up travel plans they were going to fly her out to DC and then home and then back to DC and then back home. When I found out this plan, I suggested that instead of flying to her home, she fly to my home. This worked out well and so I got to see her this past weekend. She was able to fly in 4 hours early since training ended early. So I picked her up from the airport and took her to my house. We started the weekend by making fudge. It was in such great demand that we were supposed to make a double batch. Things went pretty smoothly. We were afraid the mixing bowl was going to be too small so we decided to pour the chocolate into the hot mixture. In order to do this, we pulled out one cup of the marshmallow fluff so that we could add the rest into the hot mixture. After finishing with putting the marshmallow fluff into the hot mixture I set the plastic container down and poured in the chocolate. Oops. I put the plastic on the still hot burner and melted the bottom off. That was unfortunate but we were able to clean it all up. The longer lasting problem was that we had one cup of marshmallow fluff without a home. Half a cup was still in the measuring cup and the other half was on a piece of chocolate wrapping. We decided that we could eat ice cream sundaes with marshmallow fluff on them later. We made dinner, spaghetti, and played some Wii, but Brittany was too cold for ice cream. The marshmallow fluff sat on the counter.

We went to bed and the next morning enjoyed a relaxing morning. For lunch we relaxed a little less and went on a bike ride to Qdoba. We got back and got ready to go to the college for dinner with my parents and to hang out with some friends up there. We brought some fudge up with us and gave it to Christy, Brittany's RC while in Howard, my brother, and Karen. We were surprised to find out that another friend was flying in that night and was coming up to the college as well for the night. So we went to the pub to wait until Marcia arrived. All in all, it was a good reunion. We drove home and went to bed. By the way, the marshmallow fluff was still on the counter.

I took Brittany to the airport and it timed out so that I could meet my grandma for breakfast immediately after dropping Brittany off. We had a good breakfast and I drove her home. That pretty much concluded the excitement of my weekend. And the marshmallow fluff is still sitting on the counter.

My Olympic Sport

I have had lots of opportunity to watch the Olympics for the past week. One of my favorite things about the Olympics is finding new sports. The most memorable was curling two winter Olympics ago. This year I saw handball for the first time. After watching this much Olympics I went to the website to see how many different sports there are. While there I decided that when I go to the Olympics I will go as a slalom kayaker. Essentially there is a fake river with gates set up. Green gates mean you go through them going downstream and red you go upstream. There is a two second penalty if you bump a gate and a 50 second penalty if you push it past a 45 degree angle, go the wrong way through it, or miss it altogether. Here is a video of Campbell Walsh slalom kayaking to give a feel of the sport.



Unfortunately I missed this event because I was still at camp when it happened. This would be a fun event to train for, just go to rivers and start paddling down them until you are really good at controlling your boat. Then find a course and start applying your control. Now I just need a spare 2 grand to get all the equipment. Keep an eye out at the next Olympics, I might be there for some kayaking.

Family Camp Basketball

It was time for the annual Parents/Staff basketball game on Thursday. This game provides bragging rights for a whole year. For the last six or seven years, the staff has been able to keep the title. This year things were looking not as promising. We usually had at least two or three college basketball players on the staff team. This year only one. The parents had a sheer mass on their side. They had several players who were able to just push their way through our defense.

I was able to put up a three pointer and a couple of two pointers during game. I was also given the privilege of guarding the largest parent to try to keep him from pushing his way through our defense. I am not sure how incredibly successful I was. We ended up losing the game rather thoroughly. It was too bad that we lost.

However, things got worse in the follow up game. We were all playing and just having a good time when I came around a player and a player from the other team came around at the same time. His face collided with my elbow. As soon as we hit I knew it was bad. He lost a tooth and I felt horrible. He ended up going to the dentist the next morning to have it taken care of. The collision made my elbow bleed pretty badly. I went to the nurse's station and got it cleaned up by the practitioner and put a band aid on it. That whole night it did not hurt at all. That changed in the middle of the night. My elbow started hurting. I had to work all day at camp and any pressure on my elbow would cause the pain to be worse. I was able to complete the majority of my tasks one handed, but had a few times that I had no choice but to push through.

To end this post, a church sign I saw on the way to dinner tonight:
Exposure to the son might prevent burning.

Float Trip

Trip day. This means fish trip during main camp and Big Surf at family camp. Except this year. I went on the float trip for the first time in 5 years. It started out that I was going to be with a father and son in a three seater canoe. However, I ended up canoeing with another counselor. She had not been canoeing in 12 years. She insisted that she be in the back. It was not too pretty. We started out be being the first canoe so we could stop and take pictures of all the canoes as they passed us. I stole the underwater camera from Charlie so I could use it on the float trip. Then I had to paddle consistently to try to keep up with the last canoe. We were the tail canoe and my partner in back thought that dragging the paddle in the water made a pretty swirl. So she dragged her paddle almost the whole way. Even when we needed no turning. We stopped at lunch and did the jumping rocks and the regular routine. When we got back in the canoe. I started to move towards the back when my partner asks to be the back again followed by the comment I am getting better. I was not too excited about spending the rest of the trip dragging her paddle and having issues. So I pushed the canoe out backwards making the front the back. I stood up and started paddling. We started talking about how I looked like a gondolier. So I started singing, camp songs, Disney, and Smashmouth. The last half of the canoe trip was much smoother than the first leg. I was able to successfully navigate the river pretty much by myself and my partner enjoyed the ride and entertainment.

Lebanon Dive Shop

If only one of those existed. The only place to fill up a tank in Lebanon is at the local fire station. Tom and I went into eat dinner with a group of people and then stopped at the fire station. The local fire chief visited Cedars a while ago and got the grand tour. His question was, "How old do you have to be to be a camper here?" So, Bill called him and asked if there was any place that Tom could fill his tank in Lebanon and he responded by saying the only place was the fire station and then very quickly volunteered to fill the tank. That is why we ended up at a fire station instead of a dive shop.

We pulled up to the fire station and went to the front door and rang the door bell. No one answered. We rang it again. No one answered. We walked around into the garage and called out. No one answered. We decided to make one last attempt at the front door. This time Tom made me ring the door bell. And guess what, someone finally answered. We went to the air compressor and got it set up. Now all we needed to do was put the adapter on the tank. It did not fit. The adapter was about 20 years old and the tank was new. Apparently the new tanks are wider at top than an old tank. So the only place within an hour of camp to fill up air tanks does not have an adapter to fit the one tank we have. So we leave and go back to camp.

Once back to camp, we collected all of Tom's gear and the pool light bulbs, the reason for our diving excursion. We set up the gear and found out that he only had 500 psi of air left. You usually start with around 3000 psi. So we decided that we would only use the air when we needed to return the light to the bottom of the pool once we changed the light bulb. We attempt to fix 4 different light bulbs and only succeed in fixing 2 of them. One fixed itself just by taking it out of the wall. So it was not too successful in fixing the pool lights, but we did make the pool dirty just in time for the parents.

5th Session

This session started out hot. So hot that even the pools were not refreshing anymore. So on Monday, I tried to convince my campers that it would be more fun and more refreshing to have a water fight in the basement of our cabin than go swimming in the hot pools. They all wanted to go swimming, so as they were getting ready, I started the water fight. I filled a trash can with cold water and 4 splash bombs. As they were getting ready, I started tossing water bombs. It did not take long for the water fight to kick into full gear. It lasted for about 10 minutes before they remembered that they wanted to go to free swim. The water fight was far more refreshing then the pool. Oh well.

The next day was trip day. I led the fish trip as usual when I am at camp. Not enough staff wanted to go crawdad hunting so I got to go. This is pretty unusual. So Mark and I went crawdad hunting with the campers. On the way down, Mark and I witnessed something that neither of us had ever seen before, we watched a spider poop. It was big news for us. Once we got to the creek, the kids started hunting with nets. I found a stick with a 'y' in it and broke it down to a crawdad hunting stick. I caught four crawdads this way and taught Mark how to use a stick to catch crawdads. I also did biology theater for the kids. I took two crawdads, one in each hand, and had them talk to each other. They like to talk about what they ate, how they got caught, what eats them, and one even got a postcard from his cousin, Lolly the lobster. It was exciting times. The rest of the day was spent resting, swimming, and sliding. Then it was time for dinner and me to become PD for the night. I worked on evening notes, copied schedules, and kicked little boys out of the bathroom. It was an eventful night. Then I got to spend an hour in the office to answer any phone calls. When I made it back to the PDs office to finish up the work, a storm rolls in and kills the power. So I ended up leaving the PDs office without turning off any of the lights because I did not know where they were. Oh well. I walked back in the rain and lightning. All the way back I could not help but think about how perfect of a setting it would have been for a horror movie. The lightning was so bright that it seemed like day and then it would be pitch black again. About half way home, the electricity came back on. I did not go back to the office to turn off the lights.

Wednesday was a swim-line day. I had swimming all day long. This summer we created a new course called the CedarS Safety Course. It involves life jacket skills and throwing assists. The whole course was supposed to take two days so that specialty camps would have something to pass during swim lessons. Oops. It only takes about 20 minutes. Darn what should I do with the rest of that time, hmm, free swim. So I played lots of sharks and minnows and hunt for red october.

Vote

I have added a poll to determine what happens when I win the bet over whose blog is better. If Brittany wins, however unlikely that may be, I will enroll in swing dance lessons with her, as of yet I do not have a wager. The two options are shark feed dive or overcoming her fear of snakes. Make sure you vote to determine what happens when I win. If you have a better idea feel free to write it as a comment.

On a more positive note

My last post was just slightly less than positive so on this post, I am going to focus on the things that I am grateful for this session. I realized that I had a lot to be grateful for on Sunday night when I started talking to one of my campers and ended up talking about sharks and Discovery Channel for about 45 minutes during shower time. It always amazes me how smart my campers can be. Flash back to 1st session. A Trailblazer at the age of 6 was an incredible artist. He drew all sorts of animals from memory. I started to talk to him about the animals that he was drawing and he proceeded to inform all about each of them. In the past, he was even able to tell some zookeepers information that they did not know. He has visited many zoos and ranks the St. Louis Zoo as one of his favorites with the San Diego Zoo. But the St. Louis Zoo is free. Anyway that talk made me realize that I should start being grateful. So here it goes.

My whole cabin gets along with each other.
I got to talk with a camper about sharks.
I got to play sharks and minnows with 7 staff and 4 cabins in the lap pool.
I swam a 50 underwater in my first attempt (my goal is a 75 by the end of the session).
I have a fan that points at my bed and makes me actually feel cool by about 4 in the morning.
I swam my first lifeguard swim in 5 years.
I don't have to run lifeguard swims anymore.
Ashley came and sat at my table so that I could get another pb and j while my hostess was in the office.

I am sure that there are a lot more but that is just a start. So everything is going well at camp. Tomorrow is trip day, the second full day of camp and we are already on trips. Then one more day of scheduled activities, one and a half days of choice, Green and White Swim Meet, and a play, then on to Family Camp.

The top 3

Here is a top three list. This is the top three comments I did not want to hear when I got to camp.

1. I wish you were in ski camp
2. You are not in Trailblazers
3. You are the new PD

Only one of these was not said. I am not the new PD of boy's camp. Steve Henn is coming in on Monday to take over the position. Instead I am in the Pioneer cabin. For those of you who do not know, the Pioneer cabin is 4th grade age and is a two story cabin with a fire pole. This sounds like a lot of fun at first until you realize that you get to walk those stairs in between every activity. Besides, the second floor is always about 5 degrees hotter then the basement. This is not a plus when you are talking about days that are 90 degrees plus. Looking on the bright side, this is only a one week session.

My first night at camp I stayed back with the campers staying over between sessions. I received a piece of good news when I found out that JL was in charge of entertaining the campers after dinner. They had filled water balloons for about 45 minutes that afternoon. After dinner, we went to get set up in our cabins for the night then came back. The campers had the option of finishing the movie they started earlier or playing with water balloons. Most of the staff very quickly volunteered to watch the movie in the air conditioned lodge. I went outside to play with water balloons. It was a lot of fun -- for about five minutes, then the water balloons ran out. We played in the hose for a while and then went in and ate ice cream. We went to check on the movie watchers to find out that they did not find the movie they had started earlier so they started a new movie. So they saw the first five minutes of the movie and then joined us for ice cream. At about 7:30 we went back to the cabins to shower and get ready for bed. To kill time we played Go Fish, Blackjack, and Crazy Eights. I played one game of Crazy Eights and won keeping my streak alive. Once Mark told a story about three friends, killer robots, Pringles, and world domination, the kids went to bed. At that point I was able to head to the lodge and watch The Bourne Ultimatum with Stephanie, Mel, Megan, Charlie, and Eric. I think that is all for now.

"Big hitter the Lama"

I went golfing today with my parents. I got a score of 82. Not bad for my fourth outing in golf, until you find out that was only 9 holes. Maybe I am not quite on par with the Dalai Lama yet but I am getting there. Other than a couple of holes where everything fell apart -- or I hit every tree between me and the hole -- I had a pretty solid outing. I was able to hit pretty consistently with my dad's 3 wood. I did better hitting it out of the rough which is good for me since I slice just about every tee shot in between fairways. Occasionally I get lucky and land it on the fairway, just the fairway to the right of the hole I am aiming at. All-in-all, I had a net loss of two balls, did not hit anyone and did not damage any property.

(This is me golfing... notice the facial hair and the stylish hat)

After golfing, we went to Red Robin. You should wish me Happy Birthday because they all did. We used my brother's birthday card to get a free burger and sundae. Now before you feel like my brother was cheated, you have to realize that in April he got my burger, so in reality all we did was trade birthdays. The waitress forgot to bring out my sundae at first and then asked if I wanted to be embarrassed. I left the decision up to her. She told me that was cold, but after all, it is my birthday. She decided to bring everyone out and sing to me. I even got two balloons.

"So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."

Shop til you drop

This does not take long for me.

But...

Who would have thought that I would spend over four hours shopping. I got gift certificates to a dive shop in St. Charles for graduation. I went to the dive shop to figure out what I should get. Originally I thought this would be quick trip to one dive shop. I wanted to get a dry bag for the dive boat or for any other time that I wanted to keep things dry while in Honduras. We get to the dive shop where I have gift certificates and start looking around the store. The guy asked if he could help us and I wanted to look around the store first so I had some idea of what I wanted. By the time I was ready to talk to the guy working the store, other people had shown up and started signing up for the Open Water class. We waited for close to half an hour to talk to this guy when he asks, "Do you need help? Let me go get Chris from the back room." Why he did not tell us that someone was there earlier I am not sure.

So the new guy comes over and shows me the prices on all the buoyancy compensator (BCs). I never knew how expensive BCs could be. The low end range is around $500, the high end up to $720. Beyond buying a BC, I still need regulator, gauges and dive computer. Altogether, this shop had a set up of around $1500 with Scubapro gear.

Then we went to another dive shop. This is the dive shop that my parents have the strongest connection with. Why? I am not sure. They just always say that they leave the shop thinking that the people really know what they are talking about. We went in and started piecing together a set up. This dive shop pushed Oceanic gear. The prices and equipment were similar however, this company was willing to throw in a $235 course if I bought all my gear from them. Not a bad deal.

The whole process took 4 and a half hours. The end result of the whole process was that I have to make a lot of choices and making decisions is not my strong suit. The internship that I am attending does provide a full set of gear but from what the two dive shops told me about Mares, I think I would rather get a different brand. I am just waiting to find out how much the internship price will drop to see if it is worth bringing my own gear or if I should just use the gear supplied and then use that as a base to help me make decisions on what gear I want in the future or if I am happy with the gear that I already have.

The dropping, not me, but my mom and sister. What are the odds of me out lasting them in a shop-a-thon. Inconceivable.

Wii Fitness?

As was mentioned in my last post, my family is the proud owner of a Wii and the Wii Fitness game. They have enjoyed using the system to supplement their other daily activities. But how effective is the Wii at providing a complete workout? According to Brittany and the Dallas news, it seems to lack in any real benefit. However, in my experience it makes people more excited to work out and how can that be a bad thing. Obviously there are harder workouts, but if people are willing to do Wii fitness and not other workouts than this is a good workout for them and it is better than playing any other video game.

Cars, Birthdays, and Wii Fitness

So the name of this blog is To win a bet. The name comes from a competition between myself and Brittany. It is a way to encourage us to stay in contact during our time apart. She is working as an actuary and I am living at home until I go to Honduras to train to become a SCUBA instructor. I spent two weeks helping pack her up and move her from her house to her sister's house and now we will not see each other that often. To keep up with what is happening we each have a blog to maintain. Whoever has the better blog wins the bet. If she wins, we take swing dance lessons together. I still need to create my wager. The rules are: two posts per week are scored. If it is a really good post it can earn a bonus point making four points possible per week. Now that everyone is on the same page lets start the blogging.

On my way back to Memphis with Brittany's parent's, I had the opportunity to snuggle with her two pugs while her dad drove. I did wake up long enough to witness the rear tires of an 18 wheeler rolling down the opposite lane of traffic. The interesting part of this story is that it was no longer connected to the trailer like you would expect. Fortunately, no other cars where around so no one was at risk.

The next day I got in my car and drove home. I got home on my mom's birthday and was at home on her birthday for the first time in over 10 years. Normally I spend all summer at camp as a counselor. We went to Hacienda and had cake a little after her birthday after my sister got in from visiting a friend in California.

By far the highlight of being home so far is the Wii that my dad won in a raffle at work. My parent's love the Wii Fitness game and they have some pretty funny games designed to help people work out. I preferred playing Wii sports. I played Tennis, Golf, and Baseball. But then my shoulder got tired from swinging the Wiimote. That is the excitement of my first days. Please come back, visit Brittany's Blog, and provide feedback. Thank you for reading.