she’s no fun: an update

 

word.

after yesterday’s debacle, i wasn’t really looking forward to trudging back to camp.  trudge i did, though, and some interesting things happened…

• dad, Skip, and i were discussing some points of the weekend and i brought up what had happened yesterday during my presentation. come to find out, i wasn’t the only one who had experienced her idiocy, so Skip made a major point before the day started to clear the air on the issue. i really appreciated and i’m sure the other trainers who had a problem did too.
• as i was setting the MBP up for dad’s presentation, one of the adult leaders came up and asked how i was able to make such a good looking presentation in PowerPoint. inside, i giggled… a whole lot… but i explained (without the giggling) that actually, i didn’t make it in PowerPoint. rather, it was done with Apple’s Keynote software. cue dropped jaw and shock. he had never heard of Keynote before and was super excited to learn more. my Apple zealotry checklist is complete for the day.

speaking of PowerPoint, i’ve agreed to take all of dad’s presentations and update them. and by update, i mean start over from scratch. God love (and many other PowerPoint users), they need some help. i know that PowerPoint can cough up a good looking presentation these days. the 2007 version has some great stuff going for it. but it seems that most folks are still stuck in the Windows 95 era of PowerPoint and it makes one’s eyeballs begin to bleed after awhile.

i have a year to get this done. cross your fingers, folks; this is some open-heart surgery rocket science i’ll be working on.

she’s no fun

poor froggy

as you may have read, i spent the day out at Camp Tukabatchee, helping to teach a course in Leave No Trace. it was well worth it, no doubt; i was able to spend time with my dad & Thomas, and it was a chance to get out of the house for the day.

i eventually had to teach my portion about Respecting Wildlife, and as it so happens, i was the last presenter of the day. i’ve been working on this presentation for quite awhile now, and was about 99% ready to go.

i start, and about 3 minutes in, a woman raises her hand and blathers on something along the lines of…

“with this whole renewed interest in the outdoors among the younger generation, along with camping and hiking and such, this seems almost like you’re taking all the fun out of it.”

thankfully, i had some backup with me (Thomas & Robert Harris) and we explained it wasn’t about taking the fun out of outdoor exploration and adventure. rather, its about respecting what is already out there, what’s been there long before us, and understanding the proper delineations between outdoor enjoyment and outright disregard for things not-human (plants and animals and all that).

i don’t know what it was, but it really shook me for some reason. i mean, completely threw me for a loop.

a couple of things…

• i think i would’ve handled it better if one of the kids asked it
• i think i would’ve handled it better if it felt like an exploratory question, and not an accusatory one, because it honestly felt like that

i stumbled through the remainder of the presentation, and she seemed to glare at me the whole time, as if she couldn’t believe i was crapping all over the potential fun she had in mind for outdoor fun-times.

ugh. i had so much confidence going into the thing, and i dunno what it was about that question, but it really got in my head.

———

on the way home, i visited the new Mac N More location in P’ville. its pretty snazzy, and very much modeled after the actual Apple retail stores. i’m a bit confused by their business logic, though, as they intend to keep their original store open. kudos to them for having the cahones in these times to do it.

———

and now i’m home, waiting for the missus to clock out for the day. after the fairly massive spread last night (that included my first attempt at cous cous [ok, it was boxed cous cous, but that can still be screwed up]), i think tonight will be a Tomatino’s & beer night. Publix had some Atlanta Brewing Company beer for sale yesterday, and i’m aching to get into it.

VDay

i hate Valentine’s Day. Jackie hates Valentine’s Day. i have the feeling many of you out there hate Valentine’s Day.

so let’s make a pact, right here, right now.

those of us with children, with child, with significant others, let’s make our generation “the one” to kill this “holiday.”

that is all i have on that.

———

tomorrow i’ll be traveling to Camp Tukabatchee to help with Leave No Trace training. i’ll be teaching the “Respecting Wildlife” portion of the course. all very exciting.

i had originally intended to spend the night, out in the woods, but…

———

somehow, jackie and i have found ourselves stretched quite thin. we’ve been traveling a whole lot and have wound up with more “stuff” to do than we thought possible. we’ve had little to no time to just be “us.”

i made the post earlier this week about how much TV we have to catch up, and it brought that truth to light, and it sucks. and it looks as if it won’t stop for awhile. she leaves for Orlando for the company’s Manager’s Meeting and then will have some post-Meeting travel to follow immediately. she’ll be gone from Feb. 27 until March 10th.

i’m not sure if stretched is the right word.

so, suffice it to say, i’ll be coming home to spend time with Jackie. that’s my VDay present.

that, and i finished about 90% of the laundry today.

———

g’night.