Update At And as I contemplate the usual "things we'll do differently next year" sort of garbage, I stumble across this horrid little bit of work. While the low-carbite and meat eater in me screams "yahoo! Hallelujah! Oh Joy!" a lot, my doctor just passed out in anticipation of the angioplasty I'm going to need once I consume one of those monsters. Oh well. One can't have it all. Where would one put it? Now, back with me to work. The Mother-In-Law departure is in a little over a half-hour, so that portion of the holiday excitement goes away. This weekend we were planning on heading to St. Cloud, but it looks more-and-more like that won't be possible. Oh, and one last bit of bad news for the year. Looks like Sarah Palin protected us from invading Reds again...
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Update At My wife is the Party Animal. I'm quite content to sit at home and watch other people do stupid stuff. I was absolutely thrilled to watch Dick Clark's "Rockin' New Year's Eve" for many years, and go to bed about 12:02, as I'd turned into a pumpkin at about 11 (Actually, he's more pumpkin-shaped now than in past years - ed). But my wife is the extrovert in the family. I once heard it explained thusly from another introvert we knew: "Dealing with people gives you (my wife) energy. It drains it from me." Yup. Even people I know well tend to take energy from me. I'm not speaking the mumbo-jumbo metaphysical claptrap. I'm talking about having to worry about what to talk about, making sure I'm circulating, not monopolizing all of the time with an interesting party-goer, or the best chair, or the best food, or ... well, if you've got introvertish tendencies, then you know what I mean. In other news, I'm working to finish up my paperwork for Wood Badge. Twenty questions, plus an interest survey, plus a "what do I do for Scouts" worksheet - plus I need to print out a Class III medical form for next week's doctor appointment, plus other fun bits - boy, how I get myself into these messes confuses the hell out of me. Anyway, back to the grind, such as it is.
[Link] Now, my comments here are not intended to take anything away from Shawn Goldsmith, the young man who earned all 121 merit badges in the article. It is, however, to make a bit of a point. First of all, you can certainly earn all of the Merit Badges out there. It doesn't require much - other than a lot of work, people willing to work with you as Merit Badge counselors, and very, very little to do outside of Scouts. Some of the Merit Badges aren't difficult. Some are very difficult. Some require record-keeping - and not much more. Some require skill. All require one thing - interest. But to equate earning all 121 merit badges with the Eagle Scout rank (as in "He far surpassed the 21 badges required to achieve the elite rank of Eagle.") is a bit much. Earning your Eagle Scout is about learning and developing leadership and skills necessary in team-building and a wide variety of skills needed to function in a leadership role in the world today. Before you scoff at that, tell me how you would go about organizing a project to do something in your community. Would you just go ahead and start? Or would you call someone who would help you do it? Or would you think a bit and call someone TO help you do it? If you answered yes to the first question, the odds are that you neither understand the problem nor have a plan on how to do it. If you answered yes to the second question, odds are you're an excellent vice chair, assistant manager, or are simply the type that works well when given distinct parameters. If you're still here and not utterly pissed off at me yet, the odds are that you either answered yes to number three above, or didn't bother to answer. I don't mean to say that Boy Scouts is the only way that one can develop leadership. Many activities offer the opportunity. Sports is an excellent example. However, I'd like to suggest something from the real-world perspective for a moment. This year my son participated in his first year of organized football. There were 9 teams in the league. Each team had roughly 18-20 boys. So, let's make it simple - 9 teams, 20 boys - that's 180 kids. That was for the ages of 10-12. There's another league, slightly smaller, for the kids 13-14. Say 7 teams. Roughly the same sized teams, so there's another 140 kids. Let's see what happens when they get into High School. There's the Varsity team, and the Junior Varsity Team. We'll pretend that they have 100 jerseys, from 00 through 99. For each. That means that you have room for 200 players. There were 320 playing football this year. But we're talking leadership, right? So we want to look at Captains. When I was a kid, we had three captains - Offense, Defense, and Special Teams. Let's be generous, and add three more for good measure - you now have room for six leaders. Double that if you want to have JV captains as well - so 12 kids. One of every 17 kids (roughly, I know it's one in every 16.6666), leading the pack. And it's his first opportunity to do so. I don't know about you, but the first time I led anything, I made a right mess of it. The second time, I screwed up, but not as much. By the fourth or fifth time I did it, I'd heard of the Comstock's Law - no, not the ones that outlawed lewd and questionable behavior - "In every organization, there is only one person who knows what is going on." My addendum to Comstock's law was "this person must be found, and stopped." My Scoutmaster thought it was hilarious. Getting back to the sports example, however, who really does the leadership? The captain? Or the coach? Who's the one standing there yelling, calling plays, organizing the team around a specific function? The captain? Or the Coach? Now, let's say they do well, and want to continue. After high school, they go to College. About 10% of the lucky ones go to a Division I school, with the big program, and all the works. About 15% go to a lesser Division IA or II school. Probably a quarter go to a Division III school. The other half? Schools that don't have football programs - community colleges, trade schools, etc. Or they're just too busy to keep up with football. So you have let's say 100 of the boys still playing football at different schools, in different places. Perhaps one in twenty-five will rise to any leadership level (the competition is far tougher). So we're down to 4 of 100 leaders. Then we get into where there's real money, and real benefit - the Pro Draft, or a pro contract. 32 pro football teams in the US, ten rounds of drafting, gives you 320 players selected to try out for the NFL. Let's say there's a good year, and perhaps 500 get contract offers of some sort. For 32 teams. In any given year, there's maybe 8-10 jobs open in a pro football team. So that's good, right? 320 people coming in, 320 people retiring? Well, it's not quite like that. There's another 200 or more people around the NFL - not as in active, but wanting to return for whatever reason, that are much more known quantities than you are. They may get a better look than you. But let's say you get lucky, and are one of maybe 90 rookies or so that make it into the NFL's opening day your first year. The number of people behind you that wanted to and did not numbers in the THOUSANDS. If you have that sort of God-given talent and good fortune, good for you. If, on the other hand, you're like the vast majority, good luck. Take Scouting. We form the boys into teams. Eight to twelve boys each. All the same age, roughly - within a year of one another, just like school. Each team has a leader, and an assistant. They lead for six months, then someone else is elected. Each one of those teams sticks together. Together, the teams jointly elect two of their membership - one becomes the leader of all of the boys, while the other is his assistant. Once a month, these leaders get together. There are adults in the room, but in the good troops (like my son's), they sit in the back and keep their mouths shut until the boys make some error or ask for some assistance. The boy leaders make sure that the plans for this month's meetings are in order. They make sure that the plans for next month's meetings are coming along. They find out how things are going for the month after that, and for the camping trips that are coming up. They ask the adults if we have enough supervision to accomplish what they want to do - and if not, they ask for help. That's about it. Then, on a weekly basis, those boys get together and carry out the plans they've made. Sometimes they work well. Sometimes they suck rocks. But the boys did them, and carried them out. And they're not the only ones. Within this bunch of boys, there are other boys who are working on projects. One's working on a sign for the local community, to highlight the historic nature of a particular piece of property. Another is working on a pamphlet to help immigrants to his community to know their surroundings and find important services like doctors, pharmacies, hospitals, and libraries. Another just finished a project to build storage facilities for a local school. Another is improving a local park. Another just finished upgrading some trails in another park so that handicapped people can navigate down the trails with their wheelchairs. And one just finished remodeling a local clinic - he started out simply looking to paint the clinic and make it look nicer, but got in between a couple of competing organizations that wanted to out-donate one another, and he ended up getting new exam tables, chairs, diagnostic equipment, and phones for the clinic because he called one outfit to ask if they'd donate lunch one day, and another outfit to donate lunch another day. None of these projects were one-person deals. Every one of them required over a hundred hours of work - and required skills that the young man leading the project didn't have. And so they needed to ask for help, coordinate the resources and services available, match skill to need, ability to job, and get it done in such a way that it looked good, was on time, and was well done - THEN the kid had to document the heck out of the project and submit it, then sit in a room where he was the youngest person there, and explain (and justify) his decisions. After THAT, he would again sit in another room, again the youngest present, and explain how he managed to reach the point where he should be considered one of the best of the best. By the time a boy reaches the end of his high school years, he could be one of 33 players, and be a leader - or he could be one of 40 or more, and have had a number of leadership experiences at all levels in Boy Scouts, and know that if the job came to him, he could do it, because he'd had ample opportunity to do it for years now.
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Update At Wednesday, I split my time between working and cooking. About 4:45, when I hadn't heard from my boss about my question about quitting at 4 went unanswered, I finally broke off for good and went to work upstairs. Rhiannon had spent most of her day spooning little bits of ground beef or ground lamb (pre-cooked) into tiny fillo shells, and adding cheese - feta, gorgonzola, bleu, or cheddar, as appropriate. She had also rolled up some cheese sticks in fillo sheets, and did some other things to prepare for the party we were helping to host. We got everything ready, and were heading over to our friend's at about 7:45 when I noticed I was down to a single headlight. On Amateur night. How lovely. We got into their driveway and unloaded, and I promptly forgot about the headlight. I took some of the shells we hadn't yet made up, and added a pinch of shredded cheddar cheese, a pinch of pre-cooked bacon bits, and some pour-a-quiche mixture and got those done - mini-quiches! So, after a long evening of me mostly behaving myself (I had a half-shot of vodka in punch about 8:45 pm, and a small taste of home-made wine about 10), we packed up and headed home, after delivering Rhiannon's friend to her home. On the way to the young lady's house, I passed a police officer, and remembered that stupid single headlight. He didn't turn on me, so I figured I was probably OK. If I'd been smart, I would have taken the back way, but because it had been warm enough earlier, I figured I'd stick to the busier roads as they'd be clearer. And more heavily patrolled. Less than a block from my house, the officer pulled me over. He came up to the side of the car.
"Good evening sir. Taking the family home?" Back he came. I steeled myself for another one of those "oh, great, I didn't know that" moments - the last speeding ticket I'd received was more than three years ago, paid promptly, and just as promptly forgotten about until the insurance rates "adjusted".
"Well, Thanks, John. Just get that fixed?" Back into gear, and less than five seconds later (doing legal speeds all the way), we were in the driveway. THAT close to home. Yesterday was almost the relaxing day I'd hoped for. We were watching "America's Test Kitchen" yesterday when they did some barbecued Pork. My wife looked at me, and in a moment of weakness (the key weakness being I didn't want to clean the kitchen just yet), I consented to Famous Dave's. We went there, came back - and discovered they'd forgotten the pulled pork, the point of the entire exercise. Before we could get back there and get it, Jack got an invitation to a sleepover, and Rhiannon discovered that we were nearly out of dry Daisy Dog food, Lily was out of dry food, and we were down to one can of wet food. Um, well, yeah, I suppose I could have figured that out for myself had I looked, but one of the goals of having the kids feed the pets is a sense of responsibility... So out we went again - to deliver Jack to his sleepover, to the Pet Store to stock up (ouch), and to Famous Dave's, to get the missing barbecued pork. Then home to relax away the remainder of the first day of the year. Today, I'm back to work for a short day/week (Monday from 7-9:30, Tuesday from 9:30 - 11, Wednesday from 11 to 12:30, lunch, Thursday from 1 to 3, and Friday from 3 to 5 pm), then I have to figure out what's happening this weekend. I need to get to the pharmacy and re-drug (I'm due on almost all of my prescriptions), get YIG clothes for Rhiannon, get a new insinkerator (and I'm going to go up-scale this time with a better than basic unit) and install that), and possibly stop at Barnes and Nobles to get the kids some Christmas Reading Material... Then prepare for next week with Grocery shopping and the like. Ain't no rest for the wicked...
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