Going... Going...

Today is the day before the day I leave for Scout camp for a whole week. A whole week in the mountains with 7 squirrely young men between the ages of 12 and 16.

They'll be sleeping in tents, cooking their own food, cleaning up after themselves including our campsite latrine. They'll have to walk to get anywhere, go to merit badge classes, and hopfully not get too bored with having to entertain themselves with out a tv, video games, ipod, cell phones, computers, etc.

They've been encouraged to bring their Duty to God booklets, scriptures, Boy Scout handbook, merit badge pamphlets, writing supplies, and the like, to fill what ever "extra" time they have.

I'm looking forward to finding out what things they forgot to pack (sarcasm), and helping them to look at the "bright side", namely- "The good news is, next time you probably won't forget."

I'm realy hoping to avoid any wild animal enounters.

I'm really not looking forward to finding out what I forgot to pack.

I'm hoping this week is spent helping the boys grow as young men and as a unit, and less time spent "babysitting".

It may not sound like it, but I'm looing forward to this experience. I do want to be an effective scoutmaster, and that means spending the time with the young men, and learning what I can do to help them acheive their goals, and in some cases, helping them figure out what their goals should be.

I should get back to getting ready to go. I'm sure I'll have some stories when I get back (at least I hope they'll be stories of good things and not bad things).

... Gone.

Spend $100 in gas, get a $1 worth of tacos FREE!

This Thursday, June 26th, take your gas receipt to a Jack in the Box, and they'll give you 2 tacos for FREE!

Wow Mr. Box, thanks for easing the gas pump pain.

It's tough...

Blogging is tough when you don't have a whole lot of time.

That's all I have time for right now, I hope to have some time soon.

Carry on...

Can't wait to try one...

Carl's Jr. has done it again! They've created a burger that I MUST eat! It's called a "Prime Rib Burger". It's their $6 burger pattie topped with thin sliced prime rib, grilled onions, and swiss cheese, served on a chiabatta bread bun.

Their new campaign for this burger involves a fake restaurant where regular people are brought in (set up), and they catch their reactions to eatting these burgers that they believe are worth $16!

You can see it all at fakerestaurant.com Shelby and Chris were my favorite.

I don't know when I'll get a chance to try one, but I hope it's soon! Here's where you can get a coupon for $1 off.

Scorching...

In our van there's a digital reading for the direction you're traveling and the outside temperature.

While driving Anna to the eye doctor in Ontario, the temp reading was 111 the whole time.

That's hot.

I heart AC!

My new calling (sort of)...

I'm still the first counselor in the young men's presidency, but instead of being the Varsity Coach, I'm now the Scoutmaster. It was made official a couple sundays ago. (now that I think about it, I need to make sure it gets changed at the scout office too.)

I never thought I'd be a scoutmaster. I only made it to second class as a youth (that's basically nothing). But working with the young men, and helping the previous scoutmaster so closely, it seems a little more do-able.

I was able to go to some "Leader Specific" training last saturday. Training was from 8am to 5pm. There was some really good stuff I learned during the training, and will hopefully be able to put it to some good use in my unit. This Friday night and Saturday, there is some more training. It's called "Outdoor Leader Skills". I'm not sure what we'll be doing, but I'm sure we'll be in the blazing hot sun for a lot of it. (Not really looking forward to that part.)

After that, all I'll need is some training called "New Leader Essentials" and I will be considered "trained" and will get to add a "trained" patch to my uniform. The next "NLE" will hopefully be in August.

Why my sudden interest in going through BSA training? (I was planning to do the training already as a Varsity Coach, but now I'm doing it as a Scoutmaster instead.) I'm doing the training because our YM program isn't going anywhere. The boys aren't really progressing too well, and we've lost a couple of them to inactivity. So as much as I think I know how to run a program, it's not working. Therefore, if the BSA has nearly 100 years of experience of working with boys, and if the church has such a strong tie with the BSA, there must be something there that I'm missing as an adult leader. And let me just say, that even with just my one day of BSA training, I feel like I have a whole new set of "tools" to work with and use. It was quite motivational.

Scout camp is coming up in less than two weeks. I kind of feel like things are mostly in order for that. There are still some things to figure out as a whole, but for the most part, I think we're on the right track. We're going to Camp Tahquitz for scout camp. I'll be incorporating some of my new training before and during camp, and then trying to incorporate as much of it as I can afterward. Then by the first of the next year, hopefully be a fully functioning boy-run program.

Anyway, just thought I'd give a little update on how that was all going.

UFC 85 report card...

Among the many other things that were going on last weekend, there was also a UFC PPV. It was UFC 85 Bedlam, at the O2 arena in London England. Because of it's location, the live airing of the fights was 12:00pm (noon) that Saturday. I needed to watch and record it on DVD so I could take it to Kevin's house on Sunday so he could watch it, and then he would send it to Kristi and Jason in Bullhead.

The fight card was stacked with great match ups. I'll get to that in a minute. Here's my report card...

The report card indicates my picks. The red I got wrong, the green I got right. There's an awful lot of red on there. Out of 11 fights, I got 6 of the winning fighters right. That's not too horrible.

Here are the official results...

My rants on the fights:

Matt Hughes vs. Thiago Alves : First of all, Thiago didn't make weight for the fight. He came in at 174 instead of 170. He has to cut a lot of weight to fight at 170, which makes him a big 170-er to begin with. Then add that he didn't look at all dehydrated, which is a common weight cutting technique, which to me says he didn't try that hard to lose that last 4 pounds. If you're not dehydrated, you retain a lot of your energy. There's a trend in fighting that an opponent will purposefully not make weight, so he retains his energy or size, and the guy he's fighting, who cut the weight, takes the fight anyway because he's spent the time training and cutting, and the guy with the extra weight now has an unfair advantage. Sure the guy that didn't cut the weight gets a percentage of his winnings taken away and/or fined, but he still gets the win. I don't like that. In addition to the fighter giving up a part of his winnings, I think the guy that can't make weight "forfeits" the fight, meaning he has the loss, and if his opponent takes the fight and loses, he still gets the "W" because he made weight when the other guy didn't. I think that would force guys to have to make weight. I hope that makes sense. There's a part of me that thinks Thiago knew that Matt would take the fight even if he didn't make the weight, and used that as an advantage in the fight.

Thiago had good punching, good take down defence, and just out fought Matt. The reality might be that Matt hasn't been able to keep up with the level of skill needed to be successful in the UFC anymore. He says he wants to fight Matt Serra before he retires, so I'm sure we'll see that this year sometime.

Brandon Vera vs. Fabricio Werdum: This fight was shaping up to be a war. There was going to be a lot of action and so on. I guess no one told the ref that these guys were going all out and that they can take the abuse. Shortly after the first round began, Fabricio found himself in a mount on Brandon and was unloading. Brandon looked to be defending well enough, though he wasn't able to do anything offensively, and before you know it, the ref stops the fight! What?! Right away you see Brandon upset at the stoppage, yelling at the ref, and complaining. Yes, the refs are there to protect the fighters from taking unnecessary damage when they aren't able to defend themselves anymore, but Brandon was defending, just not returning any punches. Man, that sucked. I'm sure we'll see Brandon again soon, he didn't get injured, and I'm sure he'll want to fight again to now get redemption for two fights (losses). Oh yeah, that was the first fight of the night, so it wasn't a great start for the PPV.

Michael Bisping came out guns blazin' and put Jason Day away rather quickly.

Marcus Davis and Mike Swick had a war! Swick had fast hands, and Davis' face was proof of that. Davis got beat up, or at least that's the story his face told. He hung in there though, and showed a lot of heart. Swick looked good, though he wasn't able to put Davis away. It was a good fight.

Nate Marquardt wasn't able to put Thales Leites away either. Thales' face told the same story Davis' did in his fight. He got beat up! Thales did land a few pretty devastating punches. One put Nate on his back for a moment, but I thought Nate, over all, dominated the fight. Unfortunately, Nate had not one, but TWO point taken away during the fight. One was for an illegal strike to the back of the head, though the replay clearly shows that it was not, and I missed the other one somehow (I must have had to help Anna at that time for something). With those 2 points gone, and the fight going to decision, Thales took the win. Man, that was lame too.

Martin Kapmann took care of Jorge Rivera pretty quickly with a choke in the first round. Kapmann has a kickboxing back round, but has terrific submission skills. He'll be contending for the belt soon, I'm sure.

Matt Wiman and Thiago Tavares had a very technical jiu jitsu style fight going for most of the first round. I like seeing two guys so well versed in MMA jiu jitsu trade positions and submission attempts. But in the first minute of the second round, it was a punch that ended the fight. A huge KO win for Matt.

We saw UFC newcomer Luiz Cane put Jason Lambert away in the first round with a TKO win.

We got to see a clip of UFC newcomer Kevin Burns triangle choke brazillian ju jitsu black belt Roan Carneiro. I believe it was the "submission of the night", meaning he got a bonus from the UFC.

We also got to see some clips of the Eddie Sanchez - Antoni Hardonk fight. I guess Eddie was getting the better of Hardonk, but Hardonk landed a huge punch that marked the beginning of the end for Sanchez, and gave Hardonk the TKO win.

We didn't see any of the Paul Taylor, Jess Liaudin fight. But I'm glad Paul Taylor won.

All in all, not a bad night of fights. There were definitely some unfortunate outcomes though, and that's never fun for the viewer or the fighters. I know my score card would look a whole lot greener if Nate and Brandon didn't have the referee mistakes interfere with the outcome. But that's how it goes.

The next UFC event is the season finals for the Ultimate fighter. That takes place Saturday, June 21st. We'll know the finalized fight card after Wednesday, the 18th, when we find out who the two finalists are. Should be good stuff.