Fact and friction

Pete is now a Cub Scout, which is why I am now a Cub Scout leader due to some mild blackmail; "We'd love to set up a Den for Pete's age but we just don't have enough leaders..."  It's been a fun few months since that conversation, the highlight being me teaching the Pledge of Allegiance to a group of American youngsters in the most English accent I could summon up.

The Cub Scouts around here aren't like back at home.  No Akela or Jungle Book, no doing your duty to the Queen, no learning about Lord Baden Powell and the glories of colonialism.  The motto isn't even "Be Prepared" but the far more egalitarian (wishy-washy) "Do Your Best".  But we camp and burn marshmallows over a fire, which is the most important bit.

Another brand new experience is the Pinewood Derby, one of the cornerstones of American scouting.  The idea is that you build a car from a little wooden kit and then race it against everyone, first within your Den (i.e. age group) and then the winner goes on to the Pack final.  And it is competitive although, of course, mostly among the parents, many of whom come from the oil industry and dig out experimental lubricants to make sure their child's wheels run smoother than all others.

Pete was less competitive.  Well, being his mother's son he wanted to win, but he was not inclined to put in a huge amount of work.  But I was...until I watched the video by a NASA engineer on how to make the fastest car possible, and saw the price of aerodynamic tungsten weights.  After that I just hammered in some nails and gave it to Pete for a coat of paint.

The day of the Derby was akin to your average Formula 1 race, with entrants needing to arrive two hours early for weigh-ins and inspections.  Racers also had to get a driver's license from a Cub-run DMV, which was much quicker and more efficient than the actual DMV.

Then it was race time!  No faffing about or judgement by eye - everything was computer run and randomised with lasers to determine who crossed the line first as the cars whizzed down the ski-jump-shaped track.

Pete didn't win.  People who put in far more effort won, so it was a good teaching moment, but the evolution of cars from us younger Cubs to the seniors is quite astonishing.  Some people HAVE watched that NASA video.  But we'll be back next year...possibly with a car bought off ebay.

A competitive field.

What we're all racing for.

OK, maybe we should have put more time into our design.

Pete completes the grueling written driving exam.

Chris, our scoutmaster, explains the rules.

Lions are a brand-new-this-year level of Cub Scouts (for 5-yr-olds) and we are the first Lions in Houston!  Woo!!

On your marks...

Race!

No trophy, but plenty of Cub Scout fun.

Moon over Houston

As everyone knows, the world revolves around the USA, but this conveniently extends to events off-planet as well!  Which is why I didn't have to get up at some awful hour to watch the total lunar eclipse this week, and instead could wander outside in my dressing gown and look up before bedtime.  As I spend most of the day in my dressing gown anyway it was doubly-convenient!

It was well worth it, as first a bite was taken out of our satellite and then it went all red.  It was a little eerie, and though I should have stayed up to make sure it went back to normal I decided to trust science and head up the apples and pears to Bedfordshire.  Now I think about it, I haven't seen the moon since, so hopefully everything's alright.

 The "supermoon", which was very super, before it all started.

Uh oh.

Revelation 6:12, King James Version "And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;"

The (other) House of Mouse

"Well, it's your sixth birthday Pete!  You can do whatever you want."

"Can I have a party at Chuck E. Cheese's?"

"No!  NO!  Anything but that...!"

"But you said!"

Ah, Chuck E. Cheese's, America's premier restaurant-arcade thing.  There's an evolution to our visits here that began with Pete just looking at the bright flashy machines, not realising that you could put money in and get tickets out.  Then he went to a party (thanks, Muckers) and discovered you could actually play on these things.  Then it became an occasional treat for very special events, like graduation or a grandparent visit.  And now we've had a birthday party here.  I hope this is the natural end of all this nonsense.

A birthday party gives you many additional benefits to walking in off the street, such as two hours of unlimited play, and pizza, and a personal visit from a giant mouse, and then the ticket blaster!  Thankfully Pete was persuaded to only invite his very best friends, because you don't need oversized vermin to gnaw through the dollars in your wallet at this place.  Remember when birthday parties were a game of musical chairs in the living room and a piece of dry sponge cake?  Not anymore.

Not that Dad's mumblings about birthdays past mattered one jot to Pete or his friends, who ran around like crazies.  It certainly didn't matter to the parents, most of whom come from the hyper-competitive oil industry and so must win as many tickets as possible!  I admit that I enjoyed demonstrating my prowess on a game where you had to get ten monkeys to swing in unison.  I was rewarded with 60 tickets.

And what of these tickets?  Well, save up enough and you can get fabulous prizes, like a plastic spinning top for 25 tickets, or a mini-sheet of stickers for 50.  Somehow we managed to accrue THREE THOUSAND tickets in our time there.  What would we get?  A car?  A boat?  A family holiday?  No, a fluffy yellow teddy bear.

Given the outpouring of happiness from all involved, I can only judge the party a massive success.  It looks like we might be back next year!  Joy.

Birthday boy.

 A little competitiveness with school friend Elena.

And then the rodent arrived!

Sebas takes to the slopes.

Emilia with her ultra-competitive Dad.

But not as competitive as a certain Mum.

Friends together.

Wack-a-frog.

The pest problem is really bad here.

Ticket blaster.  Or death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts as I call it.

Hannah does the accounting work.

Here's what you could have won...

Diamond geezer

Ever since Pete could walk he's been filling his pockets with stones.  Probably because we refuse to buy him toys, but also because he seems to have a genuine interest in the geological.  I keep telling him, theology is the family business, but he won't be deterred, so we have lots of rocks everywhere, and Auntie Emily bought him some geodes for Christmas.  Cue Daddy smacking a hammer against a stone for several hours to try to break it apart.

So when I heard that Houston Gem & Mineral Society were having a free expo and trade show, I thought it was only fair to take the little boy along.  Hannah prefers her rocks porous and full of hydrocarbons, but even she was impressed by the pretty minerals that ran the gamut from abelsonite to zirconium.  Stibiopalladinite is a girl's best friend, as they say.

I was shocked by how much money a chunk of rock can go for.  It might be time to transition into prospecting, and if I don't hit gold - black or otherwise - it seems like I can sell whatever I dig up for a tidy sum.

Pete came away with an ammonite fossil and a polished quartz sphere, which is very beautiful but looks like an evil force might start trying to communicate from it at any moment.  I imagine it would tell him to fill Daddy's house with even more *$&#%* rocks.

Checking out the merchandise.

$250 for a bit of stone?  I'm in the wrong business.

These are a bit more impressive, admittedly, but I don't think they were dug up like that.

Rock star.

Shiny shiny.

My precious!

Twelfth night

Just like the tinsel and baubles, we had to pack Ellen and Megan away for another year.  They left for England just before New Year, but not before a lot of present opening, some cowboy action, and (of course) ice cream.

Part-time siblings.  "I didn't come to NASA to watch you two fight!" I found myself saying at one point, then remembered why I only had one child.

 The chaos of Christmas morning.

 Who thought it would be a good idea to buy Pete a confetti gun?  Me, unfortunately.

Quick trip to a tropical butterfly house.  

We also found a bit of the science museum we'd never seen before: chemistry in the basement.

Then we went to the moon.

NASA.  Busy.

Quick stop for nitro ice cream.

The weather took a turn for the chilly, so these were the most dangerous animals out in the open today.

 Come for Christmas, stay for the cowboys.

Yee-haw until next time!