As any of you who have Windows Live Messenger, have me on your contact list, and actually signed in (that's you, Paul!), you know that I am technically NOT AVAILABLE THIS MONTH, as my little Messenger notice says. I'm not shouting, don't worry. The first week of July I spent at a Scout Camp in southern Ohio, hence the title of this blog. I had a great time there and finished practically all of my merit badge requirements for Eagle (all that is left is a thirteen-week track of my budget for Personal Management). This requirement and my Eagle Project and included paperwork are the only barriers between myself and the Eagle Rank, Scouting's greatest honor and one that opens an innumerable amount of doors in future career options. But I digress. At WTSR (they should get a radio station of the same call sign), I learned to spar-pole, which is basically shimmying up tall straight trees stripped of branches using a loop of rope and spikes on your inside lower legs. Quite fun. I also learned that aerosol spray cans explode tremendously in fire, daddy-long-leg spider torsos take forever to burn while the legs shrivel immediately, a certain cat survived a train, drowning, a balloon ride, and a global nuclear holocaust (Live Search "the cat came back"), that America has a historical flag that looks like a blue version of China's, a wrong pull on a climbing/rappelling harness can have you partially or wholly neutered for life, even non-aerosol bug spray is great for fire, and other things along those lines. Not to mention the merit badges, which were also great. For instance, first-year scouts (those we call noobs) can be deathly afraid of something just because the species has never been seen before. In other words, we found a spider about half the size of my fist on a web and the two youngest scouts freaked out at camp about how it could come and kill us all in our sleep. And shoot acid out of its eyes. It took an hour, but we finally got them to shut up. Our main weapon for this cause was my stunning logic, followed closely by our counselors BCL (Big Censored Log). Needless to say, they slept deeply that night and woke with a pretty egg on their heads. It was a great week. In my next blog I will talk about either Mackinac as part of the Governor's Honor Guard or Eagle stats, whichever I post first.

Alex Payne, myrrlyn@msn.com, signing out.