I have no idea why things seem so busy lately.

I had a four day weekend, as RocketBoy was off school and apparently we’re not legally allowed to abandon him alone yet.

Saturday/Sunday was his first cub scout camping trip to the luxurious (seriously) Scout Reservation up near Blairsville. I’ve been to two of these reservations now, and they’re simply spectacular, like a super well-tended national park.

We headed up directly after Uncle Grampa’s on Saturday, about a two hour drive. RocketBoy and I split the time graciously between my Spanish-language rock and his Lion King Soundtrack.

They have these platforms at the site with metal structures so you can set your tent up off the ground, and throw a tarp over it in case of heavy rain. Modern tents are fantastically easy to set up versus the nightmare of the ones from my youth. Rocketboy and his cohorts spent the rest of the time running around with sticks and dirtclods, alternately searching for animals or shooting each other with their laser vision or flame hands or whatever.

We inexperienced dads barely figured out the motley collection of camping stoves (almost universally wedding gifts that had never been taken out of their original packaging) and got the hotdogs and beans cooked up before the 6pm packwide meeting.

The pack meeting was at a fantastic outdoor amphitheater that overlooked the main lake. Basically, each den performed skits, probably the same skits that have been performed for decades. But they still slayed. Ask RocketBoy, he’ll give you a rendition of each, if you can understand what he’s saying through his cracking up. RocketBoy’s troupe did a song they learned on the first day that involves fast food restaurants and Star Wars characters.

To finish off the evening, the Pack Leader told a joke about Weebles. And we’re all like, dude, these kids have no idea what a Weeble is. So the adults laughed politely.

The rest of the evening was more running around the campsite with sticks, s’mores, ghost stories… everything standard.

We crashed sometime around 10ish, and there began the Worst Night of Sleep in my Life. Some critical supplies we forgot: pillows, sleeping mats. Because I tell you, a wooden platform for a tent sounds like a great idea until you try to sleep on it.

In the morning, we had some breakfast bars, more running with sticks, and then packing up. RocketBoy and I were in no particular hurry, so after we loaded up the car, we drove around the reservation a little bit and stopped off by the lake to wander around.

It was a blast. We totally have to do it again.

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RocketBoy was fairly successful in his Scout Popcorn sales, but not enough to get the Marshmallow Blaster prize. Next time… next time.

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As part of the fallout of the robbery of several weeks ago, I’m replacing the stolen DVD player (and one of the stolen computers) with a Media Machine, otherwise known as a computer with a TV tuner card, S-VIDEO out, and Linux with MythTV. Essentially, an open-source TiVO.

It’s a labor of pain and love.

Cut for Boring Technical Details