Adventures of a Seattle Dad

The last Scout meeting of every month is the Pack Meeting. We usually have each of the dens perform a skit and a song. Since I am the Den Leader for Alexander's den, I get to pick out the skit and the song and practice it with the kids. There is a great Web site called Scout O Rama that has hundreds of songs and skits, so that is a huge help. Funny songs and skits seem to work out best, especially since Scouting is supposed to be fun. I also follow the comedy rules - good comedy happens in threes, and is short. If you have a long skit or song then the audience gets bored, the kids can't remember it, etc. This weeds out a lot of contenders, and sometimes I have to edit them to make them more simple. I needed a song for this month and I decided to try the old favorite, " Little Bunny Foo Foo ." Alexander's den is made up of 2 nd graders. They are very energetic and I thought that they would enjoy the hand gestures. We changed "The Good Fairy" to &quo

Halloween season is always fun. Of course we went to the pumpkin patch and picked out pumpkins. This last weekend we carved them. Since Alex earned his "whittling chip" at Cub Scout camp I let him carve his own pumpkin. He insisted on a 32 pounder and it took him for ever to scoop it out. On the plus side we got a lot of seeds which I roasted. We also picked up a variety of candy. We usually have a lot of trick-or- treaters . On Saturday we went to a friend's Halloween party. Alex dressed as a pirate. I think that he would wear that costume every day if he could. One party goer came as a zombie and loaned Alex the zombie mask for a little while so he could be a zombie pirate. There were several young couples there that don't have any kids of their own. Alex is very social, and after hanging out with him all evening one of the women came up to me and said that she and her husband needed to get to work having kids. I didn't mention diapers, midnight feeding, etc

I found this old story about Alex and I in the Seattle Times. I forgot that it was still up there. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2001959417_singledads20.html The Times found me through the group "Parents Without Partners" of which I used to be a member. The name of the group was kind of an oxymoron. Most of the female "parents without partners" really already had paired off with someone in the group quite quickly. There was one older member who was a prison guard . There is nothing wrong with that, but he fancied himself quite the ladies man and hit on all of the attractive women the instant that they set foot in a meeting, and would not leave them alone until they paired off or quit. He was very aggressive, did not catch a hint, and liked to tell the women that he wrestled naked prisoners in the shower for a living. Kind of like that scene in Airplane where the pilot asks the kid if he has seen a grown man naked - but more pathetic. Needless to s

Last weekend we took the fire truck down to the pumpkin patch to pick out a couple of pumpkins. It always cracks me up to see people driving really expensive SUV's so daintily. BMW X5's tip-toeing through the mud so they don't get dirty. Does it matter if the '74 Chevy gets dirty? Not really, no. Anyway, we walked the corn maze and bought 2 big pumpkins. In the past we have always gone clear out to a farm in Carnation. It turns into kind of an expensive, whole day "thing." This year I found a pumpkin patch that is basically right at the bottom of the hill where I live. Sheesh . Much easier. We still had fun, but were in and out of there and had time to go to Costco and run other errands. On Sunday I got an email from Alexander's great-grandma. She was having a computer issue. Sounds like a computer emergency to me! We hopped in the fire truck and raced over. When we got there I flipped on the lights and sirens - because it was a computer emergency, of c

Alex has gotten into playing Halo with me, so when Halo 3 came out he really, really wanted me to get a copy. I know it is rated "M", but Halo isn't really that bad. There are lots of World War II games where you shoot people and they are only rated "T". In Halo, you just blow up monsters, so I am not sure why it has the "M" rating. Anyway, we like to play cooperatively so we can work together to save the world. The new one is very good for cooperative play and has lots of funny weapons that crack Alex up. There is a gravity hammer that he thinks is pretty funny. After he caught on as to which trigger was for grenades and stopped accidentally blowing me up, we worked well as a team and managed to finish the game on the "Normal" level. I think that Bungie did a great job on Halo 3. Alex still needs practice on his Warthog skills, but he's got the sword and hammer down, and is improving with the plasma cannon. Always good skills for a kid

As we settle into Fall we have begun the annual fund raiser for Cub Scouts: the popcorn sales. The kids all try to sell popcorn to all of their friends and relatives, and they also set up tables outside grocery stores and banks and try to sell to all of the people who go in and out. We volunteered to let the pack use our guest room as a popcorn warehouse, and we helped to pick up all of the popcorn from the real warehouse. We took the fire truck, of course, and they had the idea to use a forklift to set a whole pallet of popcorn into the back of the truck. As they lowered the popcorn the back of the truck just kept getting lower and lower. I wasn't sure that it was going to stop, but it did. No broken springs or axles. Then I wondered if all of the transmission seals would just blow right out when I tried to drive up the hill to my house, but our little fire truck did just fine. What a good truck. Anyway, we have been playing host to the popcorn and various scouts and their famili