Southern Sleet and Snow

As you can see, the snow isn't sticking to the ground (yet), but has found a place to land on top of cars and houses.

This week, the high temperature was predicted to be in the 30s, and due to the threat of snow, school was initially delayed -- now cancelled -- for Tuesday, and we were given Wednesday off as well. As it is, we will probably have a delayed start to school on Thursday too.

We woke up today to freezing rain and sleet, but they didn't make the call that only essential personnel needed to show up to work on Maxwell this morning until after my mom got there. They proceeded to close all bridges over the Alabama river between Montgomery and Prattville except I-65 due to ice. Sometime during this process, the sleet and rain turned into a mix of snow flurries and extremely small hail crystals. Needless to say, Alabama is not prepared for "winter weather."

Trudging Throught the Rain and Mud

The camp out I went on a little over a week ago was an amazing reminder of why I love scouting: it rained. A lot.

Almost two months ago, I turned eighteen and aged out of Boy Scouts, though I decided to devote my time to Venture Scouts as a replacement. This past weekend, both I and the only other scout in Crew 111, Katie, teamed up with a one-member crew from Selma and Troop 111 on a hiking trip at the Wehle Nature Center in Midway, Alabama. I took the two hour drive down foggy highways and back roads on my own Friday night, and had a great time with all of the other scouts who met me there.

We were scheduled to depart on our ten mile hike the next morning at 10. Mother Nature had other plans. For comparisons, I went back and took photos from identical locations to show how badly it was raining. What you see is not fog -- it is rain. Torrential rain.

Here are a few pictures of the trail:

The rain had let up about 30 minutes into the hike, but everything was still pretty damp.

In many places, there were long stretches of standing water. To get past while staying relatively dry, we had to walk along the sides, where the trail wasn't as worn down. The only downside to this was the thorns and stickier mud. I nearly lost both of my shoes multiple times, and only managed to keep my balance though use of a walking stick










 In other places, the water wasn't so much standing as running some sort of marathon. Needless to say, we did not cross it.


After we got back from the hike, we decided to do some sight-seeing in the area around our campsite.




We found both a taxidermy exhibit of several kinds of animals that inhabit the area, as well as a petrified tree that hasn't done so in the past 70 million years















Before the sun went down, we made sure to visit the covered bridge at Wehle. This bridge was made in Summer 2000, and is the second longest covered bridge in the State of Alabama. The bridge has only one problem -- vehicles pulling trailers or construction equipment cannot cross due to its apparent lack of linearity. In other words, it's not wide enough for some things to get past a couple of the sharper curves.











After a long day, we finished it with dutch oven desserts -- apple cinnamon and Black Forest cherry cobblers (minus the alcohol of course).

After getting all hyped up on sugar, however, many of the scouts had to wear themselves out during the campfire that followed, singing songs, performing skits, and telling jokes. Even I participated, leading the adults -- who rarely participated in skits -- in a skit about a mad scientist who has designed door-to-door salesmen removers (killers is now too "violent").

New Year, New Me.

Alright, I know I haven't posted in quite a while now, and I apologize. What with school -- well, AP Calculus mainly -- I've not really had much going on that's memorable enough to write about.

To start off the new year, however, I'm going to try to start chronicling my stories again with my very own camera.

This is one of the few years that I have decided to make actual New Year's resolutions, and plan to stick to them. These resolutions are:

        1. Get in shape.

I know I'm not the most out of shape person in the world -- not nearly close -- but there's nothing like being fit to help self-esteem. Or so I've heard. And I'm just not quite satisfied with what I see in the mirror. And I want to prepare for another of my goals this year. ;)

        2. Learn to cook (better)

 

This is my last school year living at home, so I want to learn to cook before I leave home. So far this year, I've already started by cooking lasagna as well as cast iron skillet brownies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      

3. Get more involved in Scouting again.

I went on a hiking campout a week ago, and loved it. Even though I've "aged out" (turned 18, so can no longer be considered a scout rather than an adult, except for venturing until 21), Benjamin will soon be moving up from Cub Scouts into Boy Scouts, so I'm going to get back into going on the campouts and hikes again, as well as getting more involved in Venture Scouts.

 

 

 

 

 

4. Complete the Fox's Pizza "Big One Challenge."

This one is more trivial than the others, mainly because it's something that my dad and I decided that we'd do once he recovers from his surgery and we both get in better shape or start exercising again (which usually is accompanied by a voracious appetite). Just to give a insight into the challenge, two people have to eat the whole (round) pizza that would fill in the box to the right. They have one hour, only one topping, no standing up, no throwing up, and no bathroom breaks. We sat and talked about what topping we were going to choose, and settled on mushroom. When the time finally comes that we attempt this challenge, win or lose, it will show up here.





This is a brand new year -- a fresh start -- and these are my New Year's Resolutions, and while I may not necessarily succeed with all of them, I plan to try my hardest. What resolutions have you all made? Feel free to share in the comments below. Happy New Year!

Hanging With the Texas Qs

Okay, I realize that I haven't updated daily as I hoped I would, so I decided to combine all of my posts from this week down here in and around Austin into one big mega-post. Here's how the week went:

Tuesday, July 9

Bats, Donuts, and the Capitol

There's nothing quite like going to a bridge in downtown Austin at sunset to see around three million bats swarm into the sky. What made it even better was that I was there with Rachel and Andy, and we all thought that it was pretty awesome.

Afterward, we went to try out a local trailer park-themed "gourmet donut" restaurant for dessert. After getting the extremely rich "Black Out" donut, made with brownie batter, fudge icing, and chocolate covered brownie bites, I felt somewhat ill from chocolate overdose...

We closed out our day with a quick drive past the Capitol building on the way back home.











Wednesday, July 10

Bowling With the Q's

On Wednesday, we decided to  go bowling while it was just the cousins and I (and Aunt Leslie of course). It was Scarlett's first time ever bowling, and she actually handled the turn-taking pretty well -- up until the end when she got impatient and wanted to keep the shoes as we left. As you can see, she needed a bit of help with the actual bowling part...













Thursday, July 11

Six Flags Fiesta Texas

During her time as a first-grader, Rachel had won a free ticket to Six Flags over the summer. We decided to take advantage of this prize (and my season pass) to spend an awesome day with just me, Rachel, Andy, and my Uncle David. Between burgers, the Scooby Doo ride, swing rides, and slushies, I believe it was a day well spent.

Back Home

On the way back to Austin from Six Flags, we passed through a small town just outside of San Antonio called Schertz. It's hard to believe that nine years have passed since I sat in the back seat of our van and watched as we drove away from 241 Victoria Point for what seemed to me to be the last time. Now I can't help but look back at that house with fond memories and hope that whoever lives there now is having just as great a time in that house on the corner as I did.





























Friday, July 12

Tie Dying With the Qs

Nothing quite says 'Summer' like sitting out on  a hot driveway, having fun with white t-shirts and multicolored dyes. Naturally, we had to embrace the summer tradition, and broke out white shirts and canvas bags, and went crazy with the colors. I for the most part, was in charge of collecting and handing out colors as they were needed (or not). The perfect way to spend my last full day with my cousins here in Texas -- for a while at least...

Solo Flight

It feels like time is just flying by way too quickly this summer. Already I've been through a week of sunny camping with my Boy Scout troop, and had a great time during my stay at AGS. Now, I'm in Texas, visiting my aunt, uncle, and three small cousins for a planned college visit at Texas A&M. What I didn't expect was that on the way here, I'd have to take two flights, with a three-and-a-half hour layover between the two. Of course, there are worse places to be stuck (wi-fi limitations have their drawbacks though...) and I managed to survive my time there.

Due to a delay, however, my second flight was forty minutes late, which made for a very late night, and I didn't actually get to bed until a bit after midnight. So, I've managed to use today as a day to rest and recuperate, with good amounts of watermelon and my aunt's cookies mixed in as well (gotta have a ton of energy to keep up with all three of my cousins), and I even got to eat at one of my favorite restaurants in Texas: Rudy's.

 

 

Video Lab - Countdown: 36 Hours

In an earlier post, I related a tale about the semi-glamorous world of Lights, Camera, Action. As we begin to approach our deadline, however, things have decided to get quite crazy around here, just to mess with us. To begin with, our video-editing software is so advanced that I could almost swear it came from sometime twenty years from now.

To keep up with both our software and our deadlines, we have had to stay late at the office some nights -- which, when combined with how early most mornings during these two weeks have been, lead to quite the sleep deprivation experience, as you can probably tell...
   

And to make things even more interesting, the only elevator in the building -- the same elevator that I was trapped in -- decided to stop working again, with seven of the ten people in our crew trapped inside. Unlike my experience, however, they had to climb out to the floor above where the elevator stopped.

So, after a long two weeks, the end is in sight -- just one final push, and everything will fall into place just before my time here at AGS is up. Can't wait to get this video together (finally) so I can publish a copy here for you all to see.

Insights Dinner

When the staff members of AGS announced this morning that we needed to be at a certain building on campus today at six, looking our best for what they called the "Insights Dinner," nobody knew quite what to expect. Regardless, we all dressed our best (or at least made a feeble attempt) and had an interesting dinner where those who had attended cotillion sometime in the past felt right at home. The rest of us, however, felt even more out of place when the traditional seven course meal table setting was combined with a buffet style food line.

Our guest speaker for the night was Robert Record from southern Louisiana, and the main thing that he emphasized when he got up to the podium was about failure:

"We all have dreams, hopes, and lofty goals. I hope you fail. Because when you fail, you find out whether that something is truly what you want to pursue. If it is what you deeply and truly care about, you will get back up, let your failure roll right off of you, and keep trying. If it is not, then you will find yourself free to pursue whatever project or cause you wish until you find that something that means something to you."