June 7 2016

Girl Scout Leaders and Snoring

Experiences as a Leader    7 Comments    , , , ,

Note:  This post is meant to be tongue-in-cheek and certainly shouldn’t be taken seriously. See the meme on the About Me page for more insight. 

If you read the post from April about our service unit’s Encampment this past year, you’ll know that our troop was assigned the Treehouse units at Camp Pisgah during a cold snap.  A very cold snap.  It dropped down to 32° Friday night and forecasted to drop to 26º Saturday.  I made the executive decision to move us to the Lodge where there was heat.  Unfortunately, there were also snorers.  LOUD ones.  Continue reading

June 5 2016

R.I.P. Athena

Random Things That Don't Fit Anywhere Else Kinda Like Me    2 Comments   

athena 4x4
Athena

Back in September, I wrote about the passing of my big white cat named Orion, aka “Big Boy.”  This past Friday, we said goodbye to our other cat Athena.  She was 16.  Since I wrote a post about Big Boy, I think it’s only fair that I write one about Athena as well.

Athena came along before Big Boy as a stray and just a few months after my husband and I had gotten married.  I had stopped at the front of our neighborhood in the parking lot of a gas station trying to woo a kitten.  Turns out the cat was feral, but while I was out there, the attendant came out for a smoke and noticed what I was doing.  She asked if I wanted a kitten, and I said yes.  Her boyfriend had found one in the parking lot of an auto parts store, and she already had six cats of her own and couldn’t afford another one.  I met her at 11pm after she finished her shift, and she handed her over to me. Continue reading

June 1 2016

And the Final Tally Is…

Experiences as a Leader    No Comments    , , , , , , ,

Preface:  I just read through this and I am such a nerd.  Good Lord. 

I’ve mentioned it before, but last year at the end of May, our council asked us to fill out a survey and estimate the number of hours we put toward Girl Scouting.  I guessed 300.  My husband thought it would be more, so out of curiosity, I used an online app called My Hours to count them.  I started at the beginning of October (well, really mid-October and estimated the first half) and measured them through the end of May.  Continue reading

May 27 2016

Pet Peeve About Badges That’s Been Beaten to Death

Experiences as a Leader, National Operations    4 Comments    , , , , ,

beaten-horseI’ve already covered a pet peeve about the Girls Guide notebooks and how the three additional Skill Building Activity Sets packets barely fit in it.  This next pet peeve concerning how the badges are set up in general has been discussed ad nauseam on various GS Facebook groups and town halls and service unit meetings I’m sure, but let’s beat the dead horse some more for posterity’s sake, shall we?  I have to share this experience in order to demonstrate to everyone how absurd the current badge system is (in case you’re not already aware of it).  Well, that’s not really the reason.  I just wanted to vent and get it out of my system.  It’s been a long year. Continue reading

May 25 2016

It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

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I read this in ninth grade. Didn't do much for me.
I read this in ninth grade. Didn’t do much for me.

Other than turning in the paperwork for our financial report and troop forecasting form, this year is wrapped up.  We had our end of year ceremony Sunday afternoon and bridged six Daisies and six Brownies.  We are waiting to bridge our Juniors until the start of school due to us merging Juniors/soon to be Cadettes from another troop.  They are still working on their Bronze Award, plus it makes sense to kick off the new year by bridging together as a new unit of Cadettes.  We did go on and have our Bronze Award ceremony though.  Thank you Lord and council for expediting our Bronze Award paperwork because I was starting to sweat about it.  I was gone all last week on the 5th Grade DC Trip from Hell, so a friend of mine picked up the pins for me after I forwarded the approval paperwork to her.  Thank you Hannah!  Continue reading

May 11 2016

Black Holes and Random Patches

Random Things That Don't Fit Anywhere Else Kinda Like Me    1 Comment    , , , , , ,

the black hole
I’ve never seen this movie and really have no interest in seeing it.

There was going to be such a huge gap between the last post and the next one that I thought I’d throw in a quick one just so everybody didn’t think that the Girl Scout Mafia (wearing official scarves, of course) finally caught up to me.

In case you’re not familiar with them, black holes really aren’t holes.  Because I don’t feel like coming up with something in my own words, here’s a description from NASA Science:

Don’t let the name fool you: a black hole is anything but empty space. Rather, it is a great amount of matter packed into a very small area – think of a star ten times more massive than the Sun squeezed into a sphere approximately the diameter of New York City. The result is a gravitational field so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.

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April 10 2016

The 2016 Service Unit 639 Encampment is in the Books!

Experiences as a Leader    2 Comments    , , , , , ,

We just wrapped up our service unit’s Encampment Weekend.  It was a great one – albeit a little cold!  I always get a little depressed after a big event has passed whether it’s a Girl Scout weekend or a church retreat.  This song runs through my head for the next day or so until the melancholy passes.  Really, it does:

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