A Matter of Scale

I'm going camping this upcoming weekend, so I stopped by my father's house to collect some of my camping gear from out of the basement. (I borrowed some of his stuff too.) I wondered aloud what had happened to the old "camp kitchen" that my father had made many years ago; I figured it had been discarded during some change of vehicles, as we'd owned a station wagon when it was made, and perhaps it didn't fit into a minvan.

Backing up a little, a "camp kitchen" is a box. The front folds down flat to provide a working surface, the top folds up to provide access, and the inside of the box is filled with shelves for plates, silverware, drinkware, cookware, utensils, paper towels, etc. The bigger the box, the more stuff can be put inside.

My father was surprised that I thought the old camp kitchen was gone, as it was right in front of me on the shelf as we were talking. Perhaps I'd overlooked it?

No, that wasn't it. I'd seen that box perfectly well, but it was obviously too small to be the old camp kitchen. The one I remembered was so big I couldn't get my arms around it! The box my father was pointing out was only a few cubic feet, I could carry it under one arm.

Reading this, perhaps you are chuckling in the same way my father was. I guess my memories of the box's size were formed when I was six years old or so, and never updated.

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Professional Standards

This is a story told to me just yesterday. I cannot vouch for its truthfulness, except to say that the setup at least seems to be keeping in the character of the gentleman who told me the story.

One of my friends was living with his two brothers, all three being in various stages of college or grad school. As is common for young bachelors, the house was a disaster. Months worth of empty pizza boxes everywhere, soap scum in the shower, beer cans covering the tables, and so forth. And perhaps because they were brothers, they were having no luck working out a cleaning system – it always broke down into argument.

They decided they would hire a cleaning service to solve their problem. However, the hourly rate quoted by the maid service in the yellow pages was more that a trio of impecunious scholar/drunkards wished to spend. Then one of them had a genius idea.

In a different section of the yellow pages, there was an ad for a "stripper maid" service. This service was that a pair of young ladies would come to your abode and clean it while wearing abbreviated French maid costumes. The stroke of insight that launches this story, was that the stripper maids actually charged less per hour than the normal cleaners!

So they called up the stripper maids, and scheduled them to come by. They all felt it would be a bit creepy to leer at females while ones' siblings were right there, so they scheduled the ladies to arrive while the three brothers were all out at their respective classes. They left the front door unlocked, and a note taped to the door with instructions and the check for payment.

When they got home, they were displeased to discover that no work whatsoever had been done. Moreover, the check was still there, and attached to it was a new note: "This house is disgusting. You need a Roto-rooter for your living room. Don't call us again until it at least looks like people live here."

And thus ends their story. The moral, if one feels that every story needs a moral, is that even stripper maids have standards.

Or maybe the moral is that one should hire the correct people for the job. Either way.

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Decade

One of my buddies reminded me that today is the ten-year anniversary of my arrival at Parris Island. It somehow seems both more recent and more distant. Memories are strange like that.

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On Camping

After this morning's workout (intervals – I hate intervals), the FBIL and I were sitting on his front porch, drinking water and shooting the breeze. We started talking camping.

There are two kinds of camping that I like, and they are almost polar opposites.

I love lightweight camping, either backpacking or touring bicycle or long-range canoeing or whatever. Carry everything with you, under your own power. Pare your needs to a minimum, cooking with a canteen cup and a spork. Bring two pairs of socks and alternate. It's a wonderful challenge, and it really gets you back to the more primitive state of nature. You can get so far away from civilization, it's unbelievable.

I love heavyweight camping. This is the kind of camping that requires you to park your car no more than 100 yards from where you'll be camping. If it's any further away from the parking lot, you need either a heavily-laden canoe or a pack mule. You've got an air mattress, a camp chair, and a screened pavilion in addition to your tent that's bigger than a medieval peasant's home. You've got an iron skillet, an iron dutch oven, and a coleman stove in case the weather gets unpleasant. You get the fun of being outside and seeing nature, while also brewing some perfectly good coffee every morning before cooking the bacon and eggs and buscuits after a night sleeping in such a way that you didn't get acquainted with the tree roots under the tent.

And for me, there's no fun in the middle ground. I either want to be comfortable, or I want to be so uncomfortable that the suffering is part of the experience.

As Hil is not an experienced camper, I think we'll be starting out with the comfy option for her. But that might not stop the FBIL and I from doing something more hard-core. We're competitive enough that we were talking about having a backpack weigh-off at the trailhead.

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My Mouth Has Been Writing Checks That My Legs Have To Cash

So, about two months ago, my future brother-in-law decided to get serious about getting back into shape. Since then we've been working out together: three days a week jogging, two days weightlifting, one day calisthenics, and one day of rest. I haven't lost any weight yet, but it's certainly getting my strength up.

Last night I was at a group birthday party, and an acquaintance who lives nearby bemoaned his lack of a cycling buddy. Long story short, now I'm not just on the hook for that daily workout in the morning, I'll be going on long bike rides several times a week in the late afternoon. I'm either going to be in shape or die trying.

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The FBIL and I are getting in shape partly for health, but as it helps to have a tangible goal, we've signed up with an event put on by Run For Your Lives in August. It's a 5k run (an easy distance for me) with obstacles and zombies. Yes, zombies. Runners wear flag-football style flags, and if you get to the finish line with at least one of your flags remaining, you get a "Survivor" medallion. If you finish without any flags, you get a smaller and less glorious "Victim" medallion. Costumes are encouraged, so we're still in discussion over that. Our military uniforms are an obvious choice, but a little uncreative. "Hillybilly survivalists" has also been tendered as an option.

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Avuncular Duties

I have occasionally joked that as an uncle, it is my duty to get my nieces and nephew into trouble.

So a bit over a week ago, I met my Uncle Frank and Aunt Pat at a bicycle swap meet. My fiancée couldn't come, as she had a prior obligation. At the meet, I admired the bikes, but only bought a pair of winter gloves.

As we ate lunch together after the meet, my uncle convinced me to text my fiancée that I had bought three new bikes at a great price. She was not pleased to learn this.

I guess it just goes to show that an uncle's job never ends.

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Soccer

Things must be different now for the young kids playing soccer. When I was doing it in elementary school, I never saw the game at the professional or international level. Perhaps Wide World of Sports ran twenty minutes of highlights every fourth year for the World Cup, but that was it.

Now, of course, even basic cable's ESPN shows several MLS games per week during the season. NBC shows games over the air, if your local affiliate doesn't preempt them with infomercials. If you want to spend the money to go premium, there's an entire network dedicated to soccer alone.

Now get those kids off my lawn!

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Meow

I've said it before– while I love cats, you have to realize that all cats are monsters. If you took a domesticated dog an enlarged to to be 150 pounds, you'd get something that was loving and great with kids. (And we have in fact done just this.) If you took a domesticated cat and enlarged it to be 150 pounds, it would probably eat your kids and kill you in your sleep.

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Prince Rupert's Drops

Anyone that's been to the Corning Museum of Glass has seen a Prince Rupert's Drop, but this is a cool short video featuring high-speed cameras. The fracture front moves very very fast! And while my father would know more, their science explanation agrees with my memory of how they work.

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Thalia's Specialty

The future father-in-law treated the family to a comedy show last night, starring J. B. Smoove, whom everyone else has apparently seen as an actor on the TV series Curb Your Enthusiasm. I must confess to not being a fan of that show.

I haven't been to a comedy show in many years, but this one was pretty good. Although, I must confess I liked one of the warm-up comedians more, as my tastes run less to impersonations and sound effects, and more on observation and self-deprecation.

The club was downtown right near the city's major sports arena, and it took forever to find a place to park the car. It turns out that there was a professional lacrosse game going on. I had no idea that pro lacrosse was that popular. Unfortunately for us, the game ended just a few minutes before our show did, so we got stuck in the giant traffic jam leaving, too. I'm just kvetching now, really it was a fun evening.

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