MSP: Tenderfoot Requirements 8, 10b, and 12a

Yes, I have been working on my project, but I’ve been very busy with school starting.  Here’s what progress I’ve made recently:

8.  Know your patrol name, give the patrol yell, and describe your patrol flag.

Since my patrol is my family, I figured our patrol name would be “The Huston Family.”  Silly me.  When I discussed this with everyone, we had just watched an old episode of a certain great 80’s show that we’d borrowed from the library, so everybody quickly decided that we would call ourselves “The H-Team.”  Our yell is based on an old inside joke we share–when people ask for comments or feedback from us, we respond with the most random, inane thing we can imagine: “I like pie.”  This is our yell.  “I like pie!”  Inspiring, no?  Surely it will strike fear into the hearts of any opponents that we might meet in some game. 

We brainstormed a list of things that should be on our flag, and I slapped some related clip art together from the list.  We made our list last Monday, but I just made the “flag” today (in Microsoft Paint).  A copy is printed up and “flying” on the wall of our kitchen.  Here it is:

  

10b.  Show improvement in the activities listed in requirement 10a after practicing for 30 days.

It took me a little over 30 days to measure this stuff again, but I have been exercising regularly.  Here are the current stats:

¼-mile run: 1 min. 46 sec.

Pull-ups: 12, barely one more than before. 

Push-ups: 21.  I squeezed out one more than I thought I could, because I thought I’d done 20 before, and really wanted to beat it.  I forgot that it was only 15 before. 

Sit-ups: 60

Standing long jump: 7 ft. 6 in.  I forgot about this one altogether, until I reviewed this blog, so I did this one a few days later. 

 

12a.  Demonstrate the Heimlich maneuver and tell when it is used.

The book says not to use a real person to do this, but to use a dummy.  So I demonstrated on myself.  I think the information sank in well for all of us, though.  Surprising how even in a young family everyone seems to have a story of seeing this used in real life.

 

I’ve also worked on #11, about local poisonous plants, but I actually can’t find a decent Web site that gives this information clearly, and a book I checked out of the library only had native recipes for local plants, and wasn’t really helpful for this at all.  I’ll get it soon.  My schedule has me finishing Tenderfoot by the end of the month, and I still have a few to go…

And I want to keep practicing those knots to be sure I won’t forget.  I still run the Scout Law through my head every now and then, just to keep it fresh.