Adventures in Cub Scouting

Here's the end of the year Cub Scout video I put together a few weeks ago...

Do a good turn daily

Here's one of the reasons I hope my kids stay active in Boy Scouts...

Derby Day

Another Pinewood Derby has come and gone.

I'm super proud of Nolan's performance this year. For starters, this was his most detailed design so far. Also, each year he does more and more of the work himself. He did a lot of the cutting and sanding on his own this year -- and I think it came out great.

The maximum weight for a Pinewood Derby car is 5 oz. With some tinkering -- and bit of luck -- we were abble to get it to be exactly 5 oz. That, combined with some other design tricks we had up our sleeve, had us hoping for a strong finish.

He won three of the six heats his car raced in. But in the end he placed eighth overall (out of 25 cars). He was hoping to be closer to the top, but still I was very impressed he made it into the top 10.

The scouts also get to vote on which cars they like in various categories. He had his heart set on winning the "Most Scout-Like" award. Unfortunately, he placed a close second in the voting.

So he was pretty disappointed in not coming home with a big trophy for speed or design. But Kris and I were still very proud. He seems to be over it today and is already talking about next year's race!

Buy some popcorn, help a Cub Scout!

Nolan is selling gourmet Trail's End popcorn to help fund our Cub Scout activities for the year -- and you can help!

Just check out OrderPopcorn.com to see all of the delicious choices. There's something for everyone.

But just in case popcorn isn't your thing, you can also make a donation of $25 and the popcorn will be sent to the men and women of the U.S. military.

When you place your order, be sure to enter the following code: TEQN3R6. That way Nolan will get credit for the sale and he will be one step closer to his $300 goal.

Your support will help fund camping trips, our annual Pinewood Derby, a trip to the USS Massachusetts and lots of other great Cub Scout activities. All you have to do is visit OrderPopcorn.com and enter TEQN3R6.

Thanks again for your help!

What a week

I had a crazy-busy week last week, but it was all well worth it.

It started with attending a pizza party to mark the end of Nolan’s basketball clinic. The coach called each kid up one-by-one and presented them with a T-shirt. Nolan really enjoyed it the clinic and looked pretty pleased to shake the coach’s hand and accept his shirt.

I didn’t mention before that he won a foul shot contest a few weeks ago when he sank seven out of 15 shots – more than any other second grader. He’s got another trophy on his shelf now to show for his efforts.

I was up late most nights last week editing Cub Scout videos. The first was for a report on the Cub Scouts that Nolan had to give in class (see below). I think he recruited some new members in the process. The second was the end-of-the-year video for the Pack that was shown at Sunday’s Blue & Gold Dinner (Nolan was awarded his Wolf badge and officially became a Bear).

You can read more about basketball and the Blue & Gold and see some photos on the Rooney Train.

The Blue & Gold was on Sunday. But on Saturday, I attended a dinner in Albany for alumni of the communication department at SUNY Plattsburgh (see photo above). It was great to see old friends and some old professors – although I was the sole representative of the Class of 1994. We had a good time and I hope this becomes an annual event. I've uploaded more photos from the dinner to Facebook.

Christmasification

The halls are decked, the stockings are hung and the tree is trimmed in our house. We're all ready for Christmas!

We set a new family record yesterday for picking out a tree. We returned to Bob's Trees, where went for the first time last year. After hopping out of the car we all pretty much zeroed in on the same white spruce and agreed it was the one. Within a matter of minutes it was cut down and in the van.

We didn't decorate it until today. Yesterday we just put it up in the stand in the afternoon and strung the lights up after the kids went to bed.

In between we spent some time ringing the bell for the Salvation Army out in front of Price Chopper. This was a Cub Scout activity. We signed up for a four-hour block and got families to commit to spending just one hour standing by the kettle.

It's a really easy thing to do that makes you feel good about helping others. I rang the bell a couple of times a few years ago and have been wanting to do it again ever since. Now we're thinking about making it a family tradition.

'Tis the season for holiday traditions. Hope you and your family enjoy all of yours.

Holiday kickoff

Another crazy weekend has come to a close.

On Saturday, the Cub Scouts held a pancake breakfast in the morning. Nolan had basketball in the afternoon. Then we bundled up and went the Schenectady Christmas Parade (excuse me, Holiday Parade) with our friends, the Kirsteins, in the evening.

You're probably asking, "Isn't it a little early for a Christmas parade?" That's what we thought too. But once we were there sipping hot cocoa and watching all of the floats and marching bands go by we got into the spirit of it.

Traditionally the parade is on the Friday night after Thanksgiving. But they moved it this year because of a conflict with Proctor's. They've got a big show playing this week and no one wanted a traffic nightmare on what will hopefully be a busy night for the theater.

This was the first time for the kids to see the parade. Since it was on a Saturday this year, they started it a couple of hours earlier than usual. We were still home in time for everyone's usual bedtime.

Speaking of Cub Scouts, I never got around to blogging about the camp out we want on a couple of weeks ago. We stayed overnight at Rotary Scout Reservation out in Poestenkill. This was the first time Nolan and I stayed overnight on this trip. Last year we just went for the day.

Once again, launching model rockets was the big activity. The night before, the kids occupied themselves by poking the fire with sticks and running around like crazy people in the cabin. You know, boys will be boys and all that. Actually, the highlight for me was watching Nolan sit down by the fire and read aloud to some of his friends from a book of scary stories he had. That was very cool.

Here are some photos from the excursion...

Autumn activities

I’ve been very negligent in keeping up with the latest Rooney news here on the blog. Lately life has just been too busy to do all the blogging I’d like to do.

Anyway, here are some highlights I’ve been meaning to post for a week now of our pumpkin picking excursion at the Pick a Pumpkin Pumpkin Patch in Schoharie. This place is great, with all sorts of fun activities besides just pumpkin picking. We spent more than two hours hanging out there enjoying the beautiful weather. It was sunny and in the 80s that day.



Meanwhile, Cub Scouts is now in full swing. Today we attended the annual Cub Scout Fall Family Fun Day at Camp Boyhaven. Nolan took his first crack at archery, which was pretty cool. But I think his favorite part was the kickball game with all of the other scouts.



I’ll try to do a better job of keeping up with things.

Scout Night at the Joe

Last night Nolan and I went to the Tri-City ValleyCats game at Joe Bruno Stadium for "Scout Night."

All of the scouts who came to the game got a patch. But the really cool part was that after the game we got to go down on the field, pitch our tent and spend the night sleeping in the outfield.

It was a late night. We wound up joining an impromptu whiffle ball game in left field. There was also a flag football game going on in right field, and the movie "Garfield" was playing on the jumbo screen. The whiffle ball game broke up a little before midnight, at which point we got in our tent and watched the end of "Garfield."

We had a great time, despite the fact we were the sole representatives of our Pack. We didn't know anyone else there, but fortunately for Nolan he's always been good at making new friends. As long as there is a bunch of kids, that's good enough for him. You could drop him in a foreign country where they don't speak English and he'd do fine as long as there were some other kids willing to share their ball or Frisbee or whatever their playing with. I really admire that about him.

The only other downer on the night was the outcome of the ValleyCats game. The Cats are in last place in the New York-Penn League. They got clobbered by the first place Oneonta Tigers, 14-1.

Back to the great outdoors

Our first camping trip of the summer is behind us. We spent the night last night at Cherry Plain State Park.

What was great about this trip was that we went with most of the other families from our Cub Scout den. There were four families there. Counting siblings, there were 10 kids altogether. Everyone had someone else the same age to play with. As a result, they all had a blast.

It was a little too chilly to swim, but there were plenty of other things to do. It was 24 hours of fishing, hiking, skipping rocks, playing ball and just plain running around.

Last night after the kids went to sleep the moms and dads stayed up late chit chatting around the campfire. Wow! Socializing with other adults without kids around! How often does that happen?

It was a quick trip – just one night. But everyone had a great time, and the little campground we discovered is a hidden gem. We all agreed that this might have to become an annual event.

Anchors Aweigh

In honor of Memorial Day weekend, we took a tour of the USS Slater this morning in Albany.

This was originally supposed to be a Cub Scout trip, but most of the families dropped out of the trip for one reason or another. So it wound being just us and one other family.

The Slater is a Destroyer Escort that hunted German U-boats in the North Atlantic during World War II.

In fact, it's the last WWII-era Destroyer Escort still afloat in the United States.

The Navy decommissioned the Slater in 1947. About four years later she was transferred to the Greek navy. Forty years after that the Greeks donated her to the Destroyer Escort Historical Museum. Over the next several years, volunteers -- mostly former sailors -- raised money and faithfully restored the Slater to her former glory. She's been on display in Albany for about 10 years now.

This was our first visit to the Slater. It's an amazing piece of history to have right in our neck of the woods.

Burning the candle at both ends

Wow. Life has been crazy lately.

It all started a few weeks ago when I took on the task of editing the end-of-the-year Cub Scout slide show for the annual Blue & Gold dinner. I guess in past years the slide show has been a relatively simple presentation. But I wanted to do something really cool.

However, that meant about four or five late nights, working on the computer until about 2 a.m. But it was all worth it. The seven-minute video turned out really nice and people seemed to enjoy it.

I finished the slide show just in time to spend another week of late nights working on getting the new WNYT.com ready. It launched this past Monday. But with less than a week to go to launch day there was still SO MUCH to do. Actually, there is still a lot left to do, but I got enough ready that we were comfortable launching it.

It will never feel completely finished, but that’s just me. It’s been almost three years since our last redesign and I never really stopped feeling like that site was a work in progress.

Anyway, after those two weeks I was just worn out. Then I got sick. I had a nasty cold for the past week.

Oh, and did I mention we’re also knee-deep in the baseball season? We usually have at least one practice a week and two games. And for the first couple of weeks (yes, those same two weeks I was putting in the late nights) our games were all on weeknights. That meant leaving work early despite how busy I was there. And so that meant even more working at home on those nights.

So now you know what I’ve been up to lately and why the blog sort of fell by the wayside.

I’ve fallen WAAAYYY behind on my RSS feeds too. The time was when I was practically addicted to Google Reader, checking my feeds almost constantly from the time I woke up until I went to bed at the end of the day. But these last few weeks I’d be lucky if I’d glance at the reader once. And then I’d usually feel so overwhelmed by the list of unread items that I wouldn’t know where to begin—so I wouldn’t.

Anyway, I hope that in the weeks to come things will settle down some and return to normal a little.

Picture time!

It's been a while since I've thrown up any photos. So here's a couple--a recent one of Thomas and the boys at the Pinewood Derby...

1,000th POST!

It’s a landmark day for the blog. This is Off the Top of My Head’s 1,000th post!

Since July 26, 2004 there have been 999 previous posts about things that probably few people care about besides me. Thanks to all of you for putting up with 1,000 posts about geeky subjects like “Doctor Who,” “The Simpsons” and “24,” and for enduring all the family photos.

If I get around to it, I’ll try to put some thought into what were blog’s “most memorable moments” of the first 1,000 posts.

Thanks also go out to my lovely wife for putting up with my indulgence in the blogosphere and for contributing a few posts herself as “ADKmom.”

In other news, we had a busy weekend. Kris attended a Cub Scout Leader Pow-Wow to get all sorts of tips and ideas about how we can be better den leaders.

Meanwhile, keeping with the Cub Scout theme, Nolan and I built his first Pinewood Derby car over the weekend. The race is coming up soon. I’m sure we’ll have some pictures or video. I have an extra kit. So this weekend I’ll probably build another car for Thomas.

Finally, I was immersed in the world of “Beauty and the Beast” for three straight nights. For the third year in a row, I helped my former boss videotape the Niskayuna High School spring musical.

Usually we watch the show on Thursday and tape on Friday. But there were some problems with the set on Friday night. They had a massively huge set rented from a professional theater. It didn’t do all the things it was supposed to do Friday, so we were asked to come back for the Saturday performance.

The show was incredibly impressive. If you didn’t get to see it, then you really missed out. It’s amazing what they manage to get out of high school kids.

A Night at the Museum

Nolan and I spent Friday night camping in at the New York State Museum with his Cub Scout Pack.

The evening started around 6:45 with pizza for dinner. Then the museum staff had activities and guided tours for the kids all night long. We capped the night with a snack and a late night ride on the carousel.

The museum is closed to the public during all this time. We had the run of the place. After the night's activities were done, we were left to find our own corner of the museum and roll out our sleeping bags on the floor.

Sleeping on the floor actually wasn't as bad as you might expect. When we woke up in the morning the museum served us breakfast. Then we had free run of the place to ourselves again until it opened to the public (although we had left by then).

It's a great museum and we've been there many, many times before (the mastodont is Nolan's favorite). But there is something very cool about being there all night long and waking up there in the morning.

Something new I learned: the artificial mastodont and her calf are mostly made out of styrofoam. Their fur is from the Vermont Teddy Bear Facotry.

They're grrreat!

I’m proud of our Tiger Cubs who earned their Bobcat Badge last night.

The scouts got their faces painted as part of the ceremony. Their parents put the markings on their faces, with each color symbolizing something different.

Then came the fun part for the kids—they got to put a white mark on their parent’s nose as the final part of the ceremony.

Kris and I are co-den leaders. She does all the behind-the-scenes organization work and then I show in the uniform and take all the credit.

Actually, that's not quite true--she has a more visible role than that. Kris helps run den meetings at our house and today she went with the kids on a Cub Scout outing while I was still at work.

It's a team effort.

Rocketeer

Nolan and his friend Chris attended a Cub Scout campout today. We weren't able to spend the night since the boys also had their last soccer game of the year this morning. So we just went for the day.

The big activity for the scouts was launching some Estes Rockets.

We were very fortunate--only one rocket got stuck in a tree. All the rest were recovered intact. That inludes Nolan's rocket, which shot high in the sky and then sailed down into the woods. But the "recovery team" went charging into the woods and quickly found it on the ground.

Tiger Cub Fun Day

We had a fantastic time at the Tiger Cub Fun Day yesterday at Camp Boyhaven. There were all sorts of great activities for the boys to take part in.

I haven’t been to Boyhaven in close to 25 years.

While we were there I bumped into longtime scout leader Jim Burgess and Marc’s dad, Don Colosimo. Mr. Burgess told me that a long time ago, probably during my brother’s era, my dad got some parachutes from the Air National Guard and gave them to the scouts to be used for games and activities. Mr. Burgess said those parachutes are still being used a Boyhaven today.

Anyway, here’s some quick video I youtubed of the relay race yesterday. Each cub had to put on a hat and vest, run around a tree and then pass the hat and vest off the next cub…

Rooney wrap-up

Sorry, everyone. It’s been a while since I’ve neglected the blog for this long.

It certainly hasn’t been for lack of material. Maybe that’s just the problem. There has been too much going on. This has been a crazy-busy week.

Last weekend was filled with good news and bad news. The good news was that we had a very nice visit with Kris’ parents—and the scenery on the drive up and back through the Adirondacks was some of the most beautiful I’ve scene on that route. The bad news is I forgot to bring the camera. But the good news is that Aaron was in Lake Placid over the same weekend and he did bring his camera. So check out his blog to see what the peak foliage looked like.

Oh yeah, and there was another small piece of bad news—the Yankees loss to Detroit Saturday. As bummed as I was about that, it’s hard to complain about it being one of the low points of the week when just a few days later Cory Lidle was dead after his plane crashed into a high-rise on the Upper East Side. So while I have other thoughts about Joe Torre and A-Rod, maybe I’ll save them for another time.

Work and school and, it seems, life in general have been keeping us busy lately. Looking ahead to the weekend, we’ve got another soccer game tomorrow (I’ll have to tease his coach, who also coaches the girl’s varsity team, about the incident at the girls’ game this week) and our first Cub Scout outing on Sunday—the Tiger Cub Fun Day at Camp Boyhaven.

I’ll leave you now with a couple photos Kris took of the boys playing basketball in the driveway…

Cub Scout kickoff

This is a big night tonight: Nolan’s first Cub Scout meeting!

They start the Cub Scouts younger than they did in my day. I started in the third grade, but now they begin in first grade.

We went out and bought him his uniform last week, which prompted me to go up in the attic and bring down the box with what’s left of my old Cub Scout memorabilia. I still have the kerchiefs, medals and handbooks from all three years of Cub Scouts.

The Pinewood Derby cars we’re pulled out for the kids to play with as toys long ago.

Now it’s Nolan’s turn. Hopefully there will be plenty of Pinewood Derbies, Blue & Gold Banquets and trips to Camp Boyhaven for years to come.