Blogrilla

I’ve made some headway on dumping all my entries to a file so I can reimport them to WordPress. I’m not there yet, but soon!

This weekend - nothing lined up. It should be quiet. I think I had talked about taking the kids kayaking with LL Bean. They have a special deal where, for $15, they bus you to a lake, teach you how to kayak and then loan you a kayak, paddle and an oar. Then they let you toodle around for 2 and a half hours. I thought that was a remarkably good deal. I think they’re doing it so you’ll buy a kayak, but I don’t mind. They couldn’t possibly be making any money off the deal.

I’ve decided to get more involved with my son’s boy scout troop. I’ve volunteered to be an assistant scoutmaster. I need to do some training and everything, but I’m actually kind of looking forward to it.

That’s all for now. I’ll write more later - after the export is complete.

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The system is still hosed. I’m still trying to export all of my old entries from MovableType so I can re-import them to Wordpress.

In fact, this is another test.

Its tempting to give up on this whole endeavor and spend my time elsewhere.

But then it would win, wouldn’t it?

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I’m still trying to fix this installation. I’ve decided that there is something basically wrong with the installation and I can’t fix it. I don’t mind re-installing but I need all my old blog-entries so I don’t lose four years of blog postings.

But I’m having trouble exporting the entries. Once I finish exporting the entries I think I may switch platforms to WordPress - it looks simpler. It also looks less flexible and less scalable… but who are we kidding? This is a personal blog with (at most) a handful of readers.

So I think I may switch over to WordPress.

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I’ll write more if I can get this stupid thing to publish correctly.

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I guess no news is good news, right? I hope he’s sleeping ok. I’m sure he wakes up grouchy and it probably takes him a little while before he can start having fun. Right now its, 8:15am and I bet he’s sitting down to a hot breakfast of French toast sticks, sausage and those little cereal boxes the kids like. I would think that by now he’s having some fun and enjoying his breakfast.

I wish I could ask him what’s he’s doing today.

When Chloe and I came home from dropping him off we picked up supper for the family from McDonald’s and I accidentally got four kids-meals instead of three. Then last night Liz accidentally set a fourth place for dinner.

Otherwise things are fine. I read some of a wood-carving book my father left behind. He also left some special wood carving knives and I would like to see if I can finish a project he started.

I’m also starting to plan for my family’s camping trip to Maine in a couple of weeks. I wrote out all the food I wanted to bring and it was a stupidly long list. I was thinking of all the great stuff we could make and all the easy food that would mean we wouldn’t have to cook and at the end I had a list of food fit for an army of children and adults. It would have taken three coolers to carry it all. Ridiculous.

So my next plan is to simplify. We’re only going to be up there for two nights. So I know exactly how many meals I have to account for. Contrary to my initial inclination I will just plan out menus for:
2 dinners
2 lunches
2 breakfasts
6 snacks
Six snacks may be overdoing it, but I expect that there may be a fair amount of nibbling going on. And we may not need two lunches. So that’s not so bad, right?

I still need to fix Grace’s bicycle tire. I should do that tonight. And I should get to the gym and start trying to get back in to that habit. It would be nice if I could take the dogs & kids up to the Middlesex Fells for a walk around the reservoir.

That would make for a pretty busy evening. I’ll see if I can make it work.

Want to see my first cut at our menu? Its for 11-ish people.

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So me and Chloe dropped Ben off at Boy Scout camp yesterday. He seems well prepared, eager and optimistic. It took about an hour and a half to drive up there and it was kind of cool seeing Ben get more and more excited the closer we got.
The camp is “rustic” in nature. That is, there ain’t much to it. Chloe asked what a boy scout camp looked like.

Me and Ben said unison, “Woods”. And it does. It’s a large camp with many many camp sites. Our troop’s camp site is called Cheyenne and is centrally located to the dining hall, the lake and the athletic fields. Each site has a series of wooden platforms to lift the residents off the ground – maybe four inches off the ground. There are two cots in each tent. Ben has sheets and a blanket instead of a sleeping bag. He took all his stuff in a Rubbermaid tote/tub. He has mosquito netting that will hang over his bed and he has gallons of insect repellant.

The camp is so large and spread-out that the scouts are encouraged to bring their bicycles to get from one place to another. A brilliant idea! The previous residents of the site had even built a bike rack by lashing branches and small trees together.

The food is reportedly quite good. And I can confirm that when we were there last fall it was really pretty decent.

I know all the people in the troop and feel good about all the adult supervision. I think there are probably six adults there for about 20 boys. A 3:1 ratio is pretty great.

So Ben has all the necessary equipment. He’s got friends and responsible adult supervision. He’s optimistic and independent. There’s no reason he shouldn’t do great.

But I worry. For no good reason. I worry that he will injure his foot or break a bone. I worry that he will be home sick. I worry that other kids will be mean to him and hurt his feelings. I think those are my big concerns. I just wish there was a way I could check in on him to make sure he’s doing ok. But I guess that’s part of the learning and growing process – learning to be independent and confident in himself.

The other kids are off at various kinds of YMCA day camp this week. This is the first time that Liz will have all the kids out of the house all day – EVER.

Amazing, eh? Ben is eleven years old and since then we’ve always had kids in our hair. That is, in her hair. She’s got five days of kids and husbands being out of the house until at least 4pm. I wonder what she will do with herself.

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I always hate getting back to work after a vacation. There’s nothing special going on there, but its been busy. Ben is going to boy scout camp for a week starting tomorrow. Me and Chloe will drive him up - its maybe 90 minutes up and 90 back. I’m sure he’ll be fine and will have a good time but its the first camp type thing he’s ever done. He seems confident and optimistic so that’s good.

Today, Gabriel and I finished making a stool for one of his scouting requirements. Then we went canoeing and that completed a second requirement. We’ve got a few more that we’d like to get done this summer and I think we can mostly get them wrapped up next week and the week after.

Chloe came canoeing with us. We had a good time on Spot pond. The weather was HOT but otherwise it was perfect. When we got home the rest of the kids wanted to go swimming at the city pool, so the whole family went. Grace show off her exceptional swimming skills and impressed her mommy.

After Ben gets back from Summer camp next Saturday we have the company picnic on Sunday. The following weekend we go camping with our friends from Maine. The family will spend two nights on the beach near Freeport, ME. Yes, that means LL Bean’s 24 hour store. Liz is thinking that will be the highlight of the trip but I think there will be a lot of good things. She’s not a big fan of camping, so I think she’s a real trooper for going along with it.

After that… er… I think school is back in session.

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Smugglers’ Notch Waterparks

Well we got back from Smuggler’s Notch about a week ago. The vacation turned out well. Ben returned from his overnight safely. On Wednesday we went up to Rumrunner’s Hideaway - a manmade lake that is a short hike from one of the ski lodges. The trouble is, the lake is at the top of a nearly-vertical slope. It was some significant effort for us all to climb up there. It was hot but beautiful. I took some pictures you can see here.

The lake was a lot of fun for about an hour. They had a large trampaline that had these cool inflatable legs sticking out from it. A kid would sit on the end while a big dad, such as myself, would jump on it. This caused the little kid to be launched 10′ or 20′ in the air! Ben was doing this when he hurt his foot. We think that he was sitting on his foot and when he got launched it hyper-extended his foot.

In any case, it hurt him so bad that the life guards had to call security to drive up and fetch him. He was in a lot of pain and it was really very sad. Liz stayed with him while the rest of us hiked back down the mountain.

In another hour or so we were able to take him 10 miles away to the nearest clinic in Cambridge, VT. They were very nice there and took x-rays and examined him. The doctor predicted that in five days he should be right as rain.

Although this meant he should be able to go to boy scout camp the rest of his time at Smugg’s was shot. The next day we decided not to send any of the kids to their day camp. Instead we took all of them canoeing on the Lamoille river with us. Afterall, Ben just had to be able to sit down for two hours.

In my canoe was Liz, Chloe, Grace and myself. After about 2 minutes the canoe kind of turned around and lazily bumped in to a rock while spinning and it tossed us out. The rest of the trip was kind of uneventful.

We came home on Friday and had a good drive home. All in all, it was a good trip and my folks got to spend some quality time with us and the kids. I hope they had as good a time as we did.

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