Scattered Thoughts

My NCS extravaganza was excellent! As always, I met and had the opportunity to teach some amazing people; people I hope to stay in contact with over the next few years. Time will tell if that goal becomes realized, but for now, it's going pretty well (thanks Facebook).

My experience as a participant was great, but my experience as an instructor in Missouri was much better than I expected. I'm jealous of Bartle's facilities when it comes to climbing. Their tower is very much like ours but in addition to the tower, there are three caves on site (two of which we explored) and a natural site with an 80′ rappel (40 with feet, 40 under a roof) and some climbing. All in all, spending 10 hours in a car each way was worth it.

But now, I'm back in the "real world" and have been since Monday. I have to admit, spending time at NCS and then again out with the directors last Saturday make me question my current line of work. I feel like my time is better spent teaching actual physical skills to people than it is sitting in a cube, writing workshops. If nothing else, it's made me seriously consider going back to graduate school for either Outdoor Recreation or for Education. I know that I would enjoy those fields more than the one I'm currently stuck in. There are some other paths I'm considering, but I'm not sure they're going to be worth pursuing.

Anyway, I can't think of anything else to write about, so here are the photo albums on Facebook from the last two weeks:

COPE NCS at Ransburg
Climbing NCS in Missouri

That's all for now.
tm

I am strong if you are strong

Woo! The new design is up! There are still a few things that I want to tweak, but for the most part, it's done. I also upgraded to the newest version of Wordpress (2.5.1) which gives me dynamic control over my sidebar. The sidebar is really where my issues are right now, but I don't have enough desire to sit around and hack on it today.

Tomorrow starts my two week marathon of NCS. I'm becoming recertified in Project C.O.P.E. and in Climbing this summer. My Aquatics Instructor certification expired on December 31, 2007, and my COPE would expire this year.

I start Project C.O.P.E. school tomorrow morning. I'm pretty excited about it, although I'm not excited about dealing with the NCS doucheba… er… instructors from certain areas *cough*climbing*cough* at Ransburg. I am looking forward to learning some new things, teaching people how we roll at the 'Burg and general awesomeness. I'm done with C.O.P.E. school Tuesday at lunchtime, just in time to go back to work for the afternoon, work all day Wednesday, teach Access: The Basics Thursday morning, and then hop in my car to drive to…

…Missouri.

What am I doing in Missouri?

I'm on Climbing faculty out there, i.e. I'm teaching the climbing section of NCS at H. Rowe Bartle Scout Reservation. If there's one C.O.P.E. & Climbing program that has influenced ours the most, it would be the program they run in Heart of America Council. I always learn something new from them and end up finding a way to incorporate it into the program at Ransburg.

So I'm in the middle of nowhere Missouri until next Friday morning when I get to drive back, crash, teach Photoshop: The Basics on Saturday morning, then run the Ransburg Area Directors through the C.O.P.E. course in the afternoon.

I'm going to be pretty busy the next couple/few weeks, but I'm strangely comfortable with it. My co-workers thought I was going on vacation until I told them what I was doing… They were a little shocked that I would spend my time off work working even harder as a volunteer.

Such is life.

Hopefully I'll have some photos/stories to share when the whole flurry of activity is over, but that's all I have for now.

peace
tm

Friday, i know where I'm gonna be: faraway from the same old everyday, ordinary.

There's a new design for ST sitting in the wing, waiting on me to upgrade the engine and make it go.

Check it out here: ScatteredThoughts\dev

Let me know what you think about it.

EDIT: Switching this site to the default layout while I update the back-end.
EDIT: Back-end update = Done. Template change = done. Time to get everything configured the way I want to.
EDIT:

DONE!

tm

Testing out a new thing called Jott while I am waiting on my parents to pick me up for lunch. The cool application allows me to make a phone call and post here. So, if this works you will see this post and if it doesn't, well it did not work. That's all. listen

Powered by Jott

Ok, so I know I said I'd keep track of what I spent on the blog. I know the $5 a day month was supposed to be March… well… it ended up being April. I gave up on the March $5 program because I knew I would be forced to live in $5 a day the whole month of April. This is because my truck insurance was due and I hadn't saved up any cash month by month to pay for it.

So here I am after surviving the month of April on only $148, $2 under the $5 a day maximum. I'm pretty pleased with that. It took quite a bit of self-discipline and sacrifice, but it is possible. I'm going to try to keep as closely to that limit each month as I can; it will help me get myself sitting on a good nest-egg and will help me get my credit cards, car loan, and student loan paid off in a timely manner.

This past weekend, Shotwell and I took a trip to the Red River Gorge to do some climbing. I didn't bring a camera with me (because it would've been destroyed) so I don't have any photos from the weekend, sadly. He and I left Thursday night, climbed Fortress Wall (Northern Gorge region) all day Friday. It was my first trad climbing experience and I have to say that I'm hooked. There's something about the "climbing on sketchy protection" dynamic that makes the climbs more invigorating. We didn't climb anything super technical or super difficult maxing out on some 5.6 trad.

Saturday, we were going to return to Fortress Wall or head out to Pistol Ridge, but the rain the night before pretty much told us no. So instead of climbing, we hiked almost everywhere in the Natural Bridge State Park. It was a good time, saw some absolutely beautiful land, rocks, and vistas. All in all, it was an amazing weekend.

In site news, I'm trying to get a new design put together, but I would rather do other things than spend hours sitting in front of my computer, creating a new blog design, especially now that it's getting warmer and warmer outside.

Anyway, that's all I want to write for now. Hopefully more soon.

peace
tm

We walked upon the railroad 'cause the train no longer ran. We caught a glimpse of all we missed from the stars that filled our eyes.