The PG Triathlon

Today was the Triathlon at Pacific Grove which the scouts volunteer at every year. I was working the station with Matthew, his brother Michael, and Oliver. This year we came on Saturday instead of Sunday, which proved to be a lot easier than the latter. Like always, we handed out cups to athletes, but since Saturday is the elite day, most of them were in too much of a hurry to want water. The last of them came through around noon.

Around the aid station there seemed to be way more squirrels than normal. Everywhere you looked, there were at least two or three, which I managed to get some photos of. I also got some nice macros of the bees which were swarming over the lavender. After we were done working, the triathlon provided a free lunch buffet to the volunteers and athletes, with pasta, salad, and assorted fruits. The t-shirts this year were blue, which was a nice change from the mint green that they traditionally give out. I probably have four or five mint colored triathlon shirts now.

Some of the local "wildlife"...

Cobra Patrol Flag

At the last scout meeting we discussed making patrol flags. My patrol, the cobra patrol, decided to get one printed and I offered to make a vector cobra emblem. Today I started work on it in Macromedia Freehand MXa, a program very similar to Adobe Illustrator.

This is a screenshot of what I've done so far. Keep in mind that this is just a rough draft and the final will have shading, be smoother, and the cobra will have a full body wrapping around the fleur de lis.

Finally Some Nicer Weather

These last few days have been the first that haven't been really hot in quite a while. We keep having these freak Pagrovian* heat waves (75 to 85 degrees) that have been very unpleasant, especially when running up Huckleberry Hill in cross country. Yesterday, the all-day high was a nice 66° with fog all day. Perfect temperature...

Further more, I looked on the Yahoo! extended forecast and, for the first time in what seems like years, there is actually rain!



*pa•gro•vi•an - adj. of or related to Pacific Grove, CA (local slang)

Church NERF II

After the success of the first church NERF game, Michael's family and I organized a second one for today. Unfortunately, Michael ended up being sick today, so it turned out that it was just Katie and I, and Robert Sholl, a 6^th grader from church who also happens to be a scout in Monterey's Troop 43 – I saw him at Chawanakee . We forgot to make posters and didn't promote this one much, so it was no surprise that he was the only one that showed up. He decided to come at the last minute when we told him at the St. Mary's homecoming barbecue (an hour of fun with a jumphouse, cotton candy, and a buffet line with really good bruchetta) right after the service.

Since we didn't have enough people to do a normal Capture the Flag game, we had to resort to a regular "death match" where there were no teams and the object was to be the last one standing. We played this about 5 or 6 times, with breaks in between where we talked and ate popcorn, and then went home.

Hopefully next time more people will show up…

Garden Updates

As of this morning, our first two tomatoes have turned red, and there are probably 30 to 40 still green ones on the vines. Within the next couple of weeks, the yearly flood of ripe tomatoes should start coming in. ¡Me gusta tomates!

Reference.com is bought by Ask

Yesterday Reference.com (makers of Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com) was bought by Ask. I use all three of these sites regularly for schoolwork, especially the dictionary portion. It's really handy because it combines results from Webster's, American Heritage, and a bunch of other dictionary sites. They also got a translation tool that displays all the results for a word on one page, as well as a redesigned look.

The original design:

The new design:

Monterey Pine Sunset

I took this photo last night out of my window as the sun was going down.

Mac

This morning I went on a cross-country run with Michael on the Huckleberry Hill course, which took about an hour, and then went over to Matthew's house. It turns out that he found a kitten on Friday in their yard. They couldn't find an owner and no one has responded to the ad yet, so the kitten, named Mac, is staying in their house now (much to the jealousy of Pounce and King). He is an energetic little kitten who seemed to like to attack my camera:



After playing around with Mac for a while, we jumped on the trampoline and played Star Fox: Assault on the GameCube.

Grant's Eagle Court of Honor

Coming back from the church swim party, I had to quickly get into my Class A scout uniform and head over to the PG Community Center for Grant Randall's Eagle Court of Honor. Many non-scouting people who knew Grant showed up, including my former private clarinet lesson instructor, Mr. Stotz, and Sean Bell, the captain of the cross country team.

It began with a prayer and then a slide show of Grant's scouting career. After this, the normal Eagle Scout ceremonies began, with speeches from family members and mentors, followed by an open remarks section. Quite a few people stood up for speeches, including Cliff Andrews, Katherine Barretto, and Kyle Lundquist.

After the end of the ceremony, there was a pizza dinner from Papa John's and a lot of free time. Around 8:00, I went over to Michael's for a movie night where we watched Terminator II.

Church Swim Party

This past afternoon was the annual church youth group swim party at Rev. Marcia Lockwood's pool in Carmel Valley. While we were waiting for everyone to arrive, I played billiards with Colin Daunt. At 2:00 everyone arrived and we started by eating some assorted potluck dishes including garlic bread that we brought, sushi, and a really good 7-layer Mexican dip. After a planning meeting about the different events for the next year, Michael and I went swimming in the pool, which was a perfect temperature: not cold and not warm. At four we had to leave for the Court of Honor starting in an hour.

Orange Julius

This is one of the simplest and most refreshing drinks for a hot day. We got the idea from a taste testing stand at Trader Joe's a couple of months ago. They called it an Orange Julius and it consists of about one third orange juice and two thirds vanilla soy milk. More complicated variations include crushed ice, cream, and sugar, but the soy milk is a healthier substitute for the sugar and cream. According to Wikipedia, these are sold at fairs and at special Orange Julius outlets. Yummy.

Summer COH

After church today was this year's annual post-summer Court of Honor at the Indian Village picnic grounds in Pebble Beach. Everyone in our troop received their badges and ranks earned over the summer at Chawanakee and Emerald Bay, as well as other awards completed individually.

This is always the biggest of the three over the course of the year because everyone comes back from the camps with a ton of awards. Over 100 merit badges alone were given out this afternoon, and the event included a potluck lunch/dinner and lasted for almost three hours.

We arrived around 1:30 and spent the first hour-or-so playing around the area with a random baseball bat that appeared in the area. Finally, the awards ceremony began. I earned the Environmental Science, Nature, Cooking, Soil and Water Conservation, Rifle Shooting, and Swimming merit badges, the BSA aquarist and snorkeling awards, the Sea Lion Swim and War Canoe rocker patches from Emerald Bay, and the rank of Star.

After the ceremonial part was over, Mr. Ryan put on a slideshow of the summer camp photos and we had a potluck meal. I had some tabouli that my mom brought, as well as some really good pesto pasta salad.

A Red-Tailed Hawk

Today on the way to the Court of Honor (see next post) we saw a red-tailed hawk sitting on a boulder by Point Joe in Pebble Beach. Other scouts on the way to the event saw it too, apparently.

Right before we were about to leave after taking some photos of it sitting, it took off and flew away. I managed to get a good photo of it in the air soon after taking off:

Morgan

For the next couple of days, we will be taking care of the tortoiseshell cat next door, Morgan. Her owners moved in a few months ago and Checkers immediately discovered her out the window. For a while, they've been staring at each other through the windows of each house and later warily greeting each other outside.

Beijing 2008

American gymnast Shawn Johnson and swimmer Michael Phelps. (source: Flickr)

For the past two weeks, I've been enjoying watching the Beijing Olympics in the evenings. Every day during school everyone would be talking about last night's coverage, and some teachers were making Olympics lesson plans, including a few instances in Spanish that involved translating sentences like Michael Phelps is a good swimmer.

The opening ceremony was really cool, with the giant roll-out LCD screen and the 2008 drummers in unison. Usually the first thing that came on every night was beach volleyball, which is interesting but gets kind of annoying that every night that was all they'd show during prime time. The best volleyball match was the final which, of course, was on much later. Gymnastics and swimming were two of my favorites to watch, especially with Michael Phelps' 8-gold-medal record.

Last Saturday night we went over to my mom's friend Whit's house in Carmel to watch the women's marathon and the final swimming race in which Phelps won his 8^th gold. Tomorrow night we are going to go back over there to watch the men's marathon.

Historic Automobile Races

For the first scout community service project of this year, we worked the admissions booth at the Laguna Seca racecourse. The event this weekend is the Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races, which has a fair featuring historic cars in the middle of the loop, with a race going on on the outside.

We had the 6:30 shift so I had to get up before 6:00 to make it there on time. We shared the shift with Sam Pontarolo, Matt Helms, and their families. At 9:00 the Ryans (Michael and Mackenzie) and Liam Cunningham came, and at 10:00 Jason Gnibus and his family arrived. Our job was to direct traffic and check for and sell tickets (for $55 apiece) to the customers as they drove through.




At 10:30 when our shift ended, we got free tickets for volunteering and went to the show. They had a display on a recreational airplane (the ICON A5) that ran on car fuel and got over 20 mpg. Very cool. I also got some photos of the cars going around on the racetrack. I had to set the ISO really high on my camera for them to come out clear. We also got a really good cheese quesadilla and looked at the old cars.