January 2007 Archives

or Fundraising vs. Extortion

This week Cameron and I participated in his Cub Scout pack's Dad/Lad Cake Bake and Auction. Here's how it works: A theme is selected, and everybody bakes cakes that reflect that theme. (The cakes are supposed to be made by the father and son with No Female Assistance - we did pretty well on that count but I did gratefully accept some help from Katy with the crumb coat and some of the fine frosting details.) Anyway, you bring the cakes, they do a little light-duty judging and prize awarding, and then the cakes are auctioned off. Generally people seem to buy back their own cakes.

Cameron designed a circus-tent shaped cake on paper and we figured out how to realize it in cake form:

We used two sheet cakes, a three-pound bag of M&Ms (sorted by color), a box of fruit rollups, and four cans of frosting. Note the M&M tent stripes, the fruit rollup flags and tent flaps, and the frosting clown/juggler juggling M&Ms inside the entry.

The auction started after our regular pack meeting. Most of the cakes seemed to be going in the $70 range, with rare forays into the $100 range. We bid on a couple cakes to help keep things moving but I had my eye on getting our cake back - I kind of thought that was the point.

Our cake was the next-to-last one auctioned. I waited to enter the bidding until it got to $70. Soon I was bidding $80. Then $90.

We broke the $100 barrier and bids started going up in $10 increments. I bid $110. The other guy went to $120.

In an attempt to shut the other guy down I overbid: $150.

It didn't work. He went to $160. At this point Katy was completely flabbergasted. Cameron was starting to get upset that we weren't going to get our cake back.

What could I do? I can't disappoint the boy. $170.

Quickly the $180 comes back.

I go to $190.

There was a long pause while the Cubmaster tried to get the other guy to answer the bid. Finally (!) I was the proud owner of my own cake, to the tune of $190. Ack!

I have to admit I was a little angry at this point, and I'm sure it showed. Cameron took one look at me and said "I'm sorry daddy." Oh man, now I'm out $190 and I feel like a total crumb. I gave him a hug and told him not to worry about it. "Look at it this way," I said. "You just helped raise $190 for your pack!"

I wrote the check quickly, before the shock wore off.

In the end, I'm not really angry - the pack only does two fundraisers a year, so it's not like we're getting hit up all the time - but I was definitely surprised. We ended up having the second-highest priced cake, behind only the Cubmaster's, which was about the size of a card table and went for $200.

There are a lot of rude drivers out there. Here's the story of one of them.

This weekend we were driving around town in Katy's minivan, on our way down to her folks for the weekend. We needed to swing by a friend's house on the way to the freeway and I was sitting in a left turn lane waiting for the
arrow.

The green arrow came up and about a half a second later I hear it.

Beep

Anemic sounding, yes - but you've undoubtedly heard what passes for a car horn these days. I glance in my rear view mirror and see a car behind me. I said something like "in a hurry?" and waved to the driver behind us. (Kill them with kindness, I say.) As I cleared the intersection I beeped my horn a couple times just to be obnoxious.

We pulled up to a stop sign and proceeded through. The following car was turning right, and as she did, we heard it again.

Beep

Now what the Sam Hill is going on here? Why is this lady honking at me? I shook my head and muttered something unkind under my breath (the kids were in the back seat).

It wasn't until later that we realized the beeping had not been coming from another car, but from something in the back of our own car - This.

Oh man. I'm the rude driver.

Every December the kids and I go to our "secret spot" and harvest mistletoe to decorate our house. We usually end up with a couple garbage bags full of the stuff. If you're going to traipse all the way up there it doesn't make sense to just cut a few sprigs.

We normally give a bunch of it away to neighbors and friends, but this year the kids decided to bag some of it up and sell it on the street corner. In the spirit of the season, we decided that the proceeds would go to purchase something from Heifer International.

They sold 40 bags in a little more than an hour. We all took a look at the online catalog and decided to send somebody a trio of rabbits.

What can I say? They're great kids.

Like Tom Landry said - when you get to the end zone, act like you've been there before.

(We now return to our previously scheduled blog silence.)

Here is an excerpt of some meeting notes I found while looking for something else in my notebook:

1. My head hurts
2. My stomach hurts
3. I need coffee
4. It will get worse before it gets better
5. I don't have a #5

Modern life is fun!

Last year at CES I saw this. And wanted it. Badly.

Of course when they hit the street three months later - at $400 a pop - my ardor had cooled somewhat.

However, this year XM was running a "show special" on the very same device. $180! With 3 months service included! In a moment of weakness/clarity (you choose) I bought it.

I've been using it for a week or so now and I really like it. The built-in antenna is pretty good, even inside buildings, although that probably has more to do with living in a major metro area with lots of terrestrial repeaters. The programming is great - music, news, talk, and sports - and the Tivo-like functions of the Helix make it easy to have what I want to listen to waiting for me when I'm on the train.

I haven't loaded up the bundled XM+Napster software so I can't comment on the "buy/transfer music" functionality yet, but so far I'm very happy with what this device can do.