Simple America

I had an excellent weekend. After a brief spasm of bad luck to woman along my periphery things have turned for the better.

Thursday I met some of the Hispanic Boy Scout leaders at their roundtable. My main purpose was to introduce myself and get an idea on what badges they wanted to earn. Also need to know where they plan on holding the fair, times, and the assets available to pursue this endeavor. It’s a bit more involved than I thought it might be. These lads have not had a lot of opportunities to earn these kinds of awards and it boils down to their leadership needs some training. All that time as Cubmaster is going to pay off here. I’ll be helping boys and training men. Look forward to the challenge this task will bring. Sounds like there will be a lot of boys in attendance. It’s possible that there will be a couple hundred Cub Scouts show up at this shindig. The more the merrier, right.

First task is going to be locating sponsors to underwrite badges and food so I can feed these little guys. Then I need to set up an opening ceremony to include the raising of the flag. I anticipate having time to work on five belt loops/activity pins. Then we can move onto a closing ceremony, where the boys will receive their awards on the spot. Maybe throw in a song and/or skit if there is time. Hopefully those little guys will leave motivated to earn more badges and their leaders will understand better how these things are done.

I also got volunteered to help with a Boy Scout Merit Badge Fair. Oh boy, my dance card is getting filled up. I am definitely going to have to attend Scout University in February. I am not trained as a merit badge counselor yet. Though it has been on my to do list for awhile.

I called the missus on the way home and she told me to call her brother. He wanted to know if I was free to go see the Houston Texans NFL game on Sunday. No problem there. I love going to football games and I have not been to a game for the Texans ever. Is this their fourth or fifth season? They have a chance to win as they are playing the Arizona Cardinals.

Friday was uneventful. We chilled out at home and watched a movie. Cannot remember the name at the moment. It was a kid flick.

Saturday I wrote the whole day. I worked on the adventure generator for Fire in the Hole. Damn this thing keeps getting bigger. I’m creating another monster. Hehe. It’s not that bad, but I am trying to make it as friendly for the Game Master (GM) as I can. Savage Worlds players should be used to this system. The d20 players are going to be in for a shock perhaps. But it will be fun. I have ordered it to be so. The main crux of my work was developing a cavern generator. This makes things a lot easier for the GM that does not have time to map things out ahead of time. I still need to work on populating these areas and I suspect that may take two or three days to complete. Or more. A monster I tell you.

Saturday evening rocked (I thought). The missus and I joined her sister and we went to see TUTS presentation of Cats. Go here to read about this production. The stage was set up really nice. Looked like a junkyard. The performers danced well, sang well, and I really enjoyed the show. Not the same for the women with me. They just could not get into the story. Culture gap made it difficult for them. I’d like to see it again. Guess next time I’ll take the kids.

Sunday arrived and my son got good news. His uncle got another ticket for the Texans gmae and the lad was invited to join us. My bro-in-law asked me to drive and I said no problem. We were leaving a little later than I liked, as I like to watch the warm ups. But we needed to meet bro-in-law’s friend to get the ticket for my son. I was impressed by the system they use for parking now. You prepay parking and all of the lots are color coded so driving to the stadium was not the logjam it was in the past with the Oilers. We waited about 30 minutes for the friend to show up and then we walked across Kirby and into the stadium.

Once we crossed the street I learned the awesome news. Not only were we going to the game, but these tickets were suite tickets. So no walking up ramps, we got to use escalators. Of course, by the time we got in they were preparing to kick off. I hate not being in my seat at kickoff, and because the dam usher sent us left instead of right we were still walking to our seats. SOB!!! We walked three quarters round the stadium because of that joker.

Our seats were in the Brazos Suite which was gorgeous. I found that location appropriate since I live within walking distance of the Brazos River. We walked inside and they gave us wrist bands that gave us access to the entire suite. They had coat check, free programs, food and soda. Alcohol had to be paid for, and I was the designated driver so I was unaffected. Food served was normal football fare. Hot dogs with all of the fixings, chips with three different kinds of hot dips, taquitos, and cheese enchiladas made up the buffet line. There were huge buckets of popcorn all over the place and bags of peanuts too. My son enjoyed himself and I did too. The bonus is the Texans won their second game of the season against 12 losses. The team has been pretty pathetic this year. This is the first game I have watched all the way through to the end as well. I think the only reason they won this particular game is the Arizona Cardinals’ QB Kurt Warner was injured early in the game. In fact the general mood of the fans in the stands was they were waiting for the Texans to find a way to lose. The Texans have a good chance to earn the first draft pick this off-season.

We dropped off my bro-in-law and ran over to Borders Bookstore. My son had money burning a hole in his pocket and he wanted to buy some Manga. Then we rushed home to pick up the woman folk.

That evening we went to Tan Tan Restaurant in the Bellaire Chinatown area. We joined my wife’s friends as is our habit most holidays. There were 10 adults and almost the same number of children, so we occupied two tables. We shared a lot of good dishes to include Peking duck, lobster, and steamed fish. Needless to say I got stuffed to the gills. As usual at these things I just kind of sit around like a three year old stuffing my face oblivious to the rest of the goings on. Cannot keep up with the Mandarin at all. And most times when people stop to explain what the joke was it loses a lot in timing or translation.

We were driving home and I kind of scared my daughter. I said I was so happy from the day that I felt drunk. She asked why was I driving. Haha. I had to explain it was not that kind of drunk. Kids.

This morning I saw that Skinwalker appendices are back from the editor. I’m still out of the loop though. But that is just the way things work at the layout stage. It’s like being a father. You’ve done your part and all you can do is sit back and wait for the baby to be delivered.

Monday is almost over. Just two more days and I’m off for the year. 15 hours of work. No confusion this time.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 19th, 2005 at 10:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.