It’s been a week or two since then, but I promised myself I’d review the camping trip up here, and the result is that it was a great time. We ended up splitting into two groups for the walk, one for the faster older Scouts, and another slow one for the new guys. I ended up getting teamed with the fast Scouts along with another older leader of ours, a retired USMC colonel, and we chatted a bunch about the Troop, some of its recent history, etc. We averaged about 3 MPH according to the two GPS units being carried, and ended up going about 8 miles to camp. Not quite the planned 12 the place advertised, but not bad. And there were very few mosquitos. 
The night was clear and cold, and I did indeed impress everyone by having the best dinner.
I’ve been to every meeting since. John, the retired Marine, told me I should let the activity chair know about BTSR because the Troop is always looking for new high adventure opportunities. I’ll probably do that this next Monday; I brought up the topo map of the place from home. And I found out where the Scout shop is! So I can get my uniform together now.
I went to Gasparilla last weekend, a sort of Mardi Gras celebration for Tampa, with my sister Suzie and her husband Ralph. It’s based around the exploits of Jose Gaspar, this fellow, who went around kicking over merchant shipping, making prisoners walk the plank, and ravaging captured women on his own private island in the vicinity of Tampa Bay. You know, what all good pirates from the late 18th/early 19th century did. We didn’t see the ship come in, but we did see the parade, and had lots of beads thrown around and at us. Note to parade goers: Be alert because getting nailed in the head by these things can hurt when they’re big enough and thrown hard enough. On a more amusing note, I discovered why covers are made for the openings of tuba horns: they’re big enough and close enough during a street parade for assholes–I mean, certain parade spectators– to throw things down. I witnessed one high school tuba player get a couple volleys of beads thrown down his tuba in quick succession, and I have to imagine that effects the sound of the instrument as well as being a pain to dig out. Of course, some of those guys thought it was funny, and one actually gestured to the crowd that he wanted beads thrown in his; I guess that’s how he figured he’d get his share of the beads. Funny however you look at it I think.
We ended up discovering that next time we should leave a bit early, because the line for the shuttle was about a mile long when we got there after the parade and it took us two hours to wait through. Not fun! But the rest of it was a good enough time I suppose. Next time we’ll have to go on the day with the fireworks; the tourist rags claim it’s a huge display, ranking somewhere up there on a national scale.
The only other thing of note that’s occurred recently involves numbers, and it was really mind boggling to me. See, one of the roomies here, Jerry, has this sister Brenda who wants to marry this guy she’s known as a friend for several years, and the dude is like minded. He’s off in Colorado somewhere doing USAF things for now, and will be out in a year or two or three. But anyway, she’s 28 and she was chatting with me, Steve, and Patrick (me and a couple other roomies) about how she wants to get married, get a ring, live the married life and have all the good things associated with it. Basically, her explanation sounded like “my biological clock is ringing” although that’s not how she put it. But what got us was her explanation of she wanted and EXPECTED out of this: she had a 20k ring picked out, and talked about getting a nice house and a luxury car. Women were simple, she claimed, and that was all they wanted in a marriage to be happy: the nice ring, nice house, and spiffy car. She deserved this, or so she said.
I’ve never seen more complete willful ignorance of consequences in my entire life, and that’s saying something. It doesn’t take much to figure out what was wrong with all this, just a simple calculator. The ring she wanted was 20k, and she said something about a 5 year plan at $350 per month. Figure a “nice” house, 250k would not be untoward. Then figure the luxury car, a BMW SUV something or Porsche something were the examples tossed around, current price ~$45000 (I couldn’t believe consumer level automobiles of ANY kind could even possibly go that high unless you got exotic like with limos, Hummers, or ultra high end sports cars). The math runs as 20000 + 250000 + 45000 = 290000. 2.9 X 10^5 just for clarity here. More than a quarter million dollars. And that’s “all a girl needs to be happy.” Just for reference, I decided to divide that number by 40k, and got 7.25. As in seven and a quarter years at $40,000 salary yearly. And we haven’t gotten any tax consideration there, nor for the incidentals that happen in life, married or otherwise.
I’ve forgotten how this subject came up again today this afternoon when I got in and saw Patrick in the kitchen on the Internet with his laptop, but that was when I ran these numbers through my TI-83 because I wanted to know and understand more fully the nature of the situation. I stared at that 7.25 a good five minutes or so while Patrick went on about this sort of situation (he’s been married and divorced three times by these types of women–he knows). He told me about child support too; apparently it doesn’t simply cover the child, but the woman as well. It would seem that there’s a method to the madness; hypothetically, if a woman were to marry a man, have his child, and then divorce him when her fancy or mood changed, then the child support payment would be a meal ticket for the woman because it is intended to support the mother in addition to the child. The woman doesn’t need to work anymore, she’s got an income the government takes from the man by force, and all she has to do is put up with a kid. It’s an interesting corruption (I think of it as a hack) of a system intended for good; Patrick’s figures for his support bill were roughly 61% of his income at the time, not counting court, adminstrative, and legal costs which are always ongoing with that sort of thing. Add in ~30% for the Fed’s income tax, plus divorce proceedings and splitting costs devastating savings, and bankruptcy is suddenly much more plausible than you might think.
The reader might wonder why I mention all this, and it’s because I’d never truly appreciated it all before. Really literally AMAZING, ASTOUNDING, and SHOCKING to me. One certainly hears jokes about women “taking all my money” in the divorce, but to actually run the numbers… I’m simply surprised that marriage occurs anymore these days under these circumstances, let alone children. The legal and financial risks are outrageous! I suppose many good men out there would like to have their own kids, watch them grow up, raise them in a family with a good wife, etc… I would, someday, at the very least. But having the woman in the relationship divorce you, get the kid, and use the government to suck you dry of money while she bums around and badmouthes you to your kid is not what any man has in mind as the outcome… It’s worse than not having a family at all I think, to go through all that. And it’s a pretty consistent story from my roomies over 30 here, if not that then a childless version of it which isn’t very different in the ending.
At any rate, that’s all had a powerful impact on me, as you can see. I’m sure Brenda isn’t being malicious here, but the willful ignorance is simply overpowering in its destructivness… And the justification! “Because I deserve it.” Such destructiveness… I am overcome thinking about it. It is mind boggling. How such can be conceived, totally ignoring the costs and feasability…
“If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead — and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple.” Major Reid, Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein.
I’m considering adoption of a maxim I have created based on my readings of Gann and other similar philosophical viewpoints on life. If investing finally works and I stop the losses I’ve incurred up to this point, I may adopt it as a permanent life altering philosophy, in which case you may see it up here somewhere. I think I’ve got it better figured (again) so it will work this time, but I’ve done that before… These next couple weeks will be telling. The account is at an all time low. *chuckles* But I still have confidence in myself and my abilities. And shoot, it hasn’t even been six months yet, more like 4-5. It’d be nice if I got it all together by the time I hit 6 months. A long time it seems, but given that people spend their lives not figuring this sort of thing out, quite short actually. 
I think I’ll beat the odds that the SBA has on first year businesses.
All for now; I’ve really been quite long here. Good night to you, dear reader! Till next time.