Categories
Adventure Sports

Honey Badger Rock Climbing Fun Day

Our Honey Badger Fun Day was originally planned to be at an indoor trampoline park. I was pretty excited, it sounded very cool to try out. Sadly as the last minute we had to change plans as it looked like we wouldn’t be able to jump that much that day. The place was all booked up.

So change of plans, we went with some indoor rock climbing at Elite Climbing. I had been there before and it was super awesome, and being Dustin’s birthday too I knew it was something that he would surely enjoy as well. He was always part monkey.

So we all met up early in the day, some of us at Joe time others on Honey Badger time (aka as late). Then rode up in 2 cars. It was pretty exciting. On the way up we stopped to get some lunch before out epic climbing at Panera. It is a fine eating establishment and all seemed please with the choice. I got a Turkey Bravo with an apple instead of chips. I would save my scrumptious apple for after/during my climbing.

We got there without getting lost like my first voyage there. What was super bizarre is that I ran into a friend from high school there who doesn’t live in that area either. What are the chances that we’d both drive all the way over there to do some indoor climbing? Surely it must be immensely miniscule.

Climbing went really well. Our trainer wasn’t nearly as helpful as Gio from the first excursion, but it still went fairly smoothly. It was really great to see everyone get up there and have a good time. I was really impressed with how well everyone had done!

Dustin was climbing all over the place, and Caitlin has an amazing climb on wall number 9. It was pretty amazing to behold, she made several key recoveries and made it over an pretty impressive incline to get all the way to the top. Amazing climb!

All in all it was a very fun day and I was able to climb for a couple of hours with some great Badgers and still make it back in time for my Mom’s birthday. I just with it was a bit closer to where I live.

Categories
Sports

Dodgeball Winter 2014 Week 1

Last night was the opening night of our winter dodgeball season. So I was pretty excited as I normally am to see all the familiar faces and meet the new ones too.

However, this start was a bit different in that we had seven of our players not show up for the game! Seven missing Badgers. I wasn’t surprised that we had a few unable to play as it was literally a record cold day last night, but seven was insane! We only had 3 girls.

While we traditionally have fared well against our opponents the Banzai Executioners, the Badgers really stunk it up last night. We just plain old got beat down, and I’m really not certain exactly why. It wasn’t so much due to our lack of girls (though that was a great disadvantage), our guys just didn’t play well.

We pretty much underachieved all night and it showed. I’m hoping that it was just a fluke night and once we get our other players back we’ll start to play a bit better.

All in all it was still a great deal of fun and another exciting opening night to a season.

Categories
Books

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

The Everything StoreI’ve always enjoyed my experiences using Amazon, whether it was buying a book, gift, using their AWS services and more. So when I saw The Everything Store, deciding to read it was a pretty simple call.

While I’ve always had a great deal of respect for what Amazon has been able to grow and offer as a business, I really didn’t know too much about it’s growth and their founder other than a few interviews on 60 Minutes or 20/20 that I caught bits of.

As it turns out, while I’m still as impressed as I was by their accomplishments I’m a bit bummed to learn just how they were accomplished. While it’s natural to become sort of a “villain” once you dominant an industry, some of the examples of just how ruthless and cold Amazon’s business tactics are a bit of a turn off to read about.

Granted no successful mega corporation is all sunshine and rainbows, but I still like to think in a foolish way that they might be. Oh well, I still am very pleased with Amazon’s customer service and would continue to do business with them, specially now that they are offering coupon codes on websites like Raise.

Categories
Adventure

New Years 2014

I received a very rare phone call from the relatively silent Dustin inviting me over to a festive New Year’s celebration. While I was pretty much leaning towards simply sleeping and doing nothing, if he did make the effort to call I really felt like I should go.

Unfortunately the Shepherd didn’t intend to go, but we thought I would be able to drag him out. I decided to attempt to persuade him to come along in person. It’s always tougher to say no in person after all. So after defeating him in darts and losing by 1 lone point in a pretty intense game of Scrabble he was adamant to not join us. I had failed in my mission.

I still headed over though, and was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of Badgers there as well too. I’d have plenty to chat with after all.

We played a board game called Smart Ass that I pretty much dominated at to the humorous complaints of all in the room. It was a trivia based game, and I do tend to do well with the trivia after all. Fun stuff.

I really wasn’t paying much attention to the actual ball drop on TV, but apparently the banging of pots and pans is a tradition in Somers Point as many would partake in the excursion outdoors. It was rather funny and loud at the same time. Beautiful.

All in all a rather fun night with a rather different crew for me. Good times ringing in the new year.

Categories
Adventure Sports

2013 Honey Badger Holiday Party

The much heralded Honey Badgers franchise had their 2nd annual holiday party. Invites went out to current and past Honey Badgers greats. It’s a very exciting time.

The turn out was pretty solid, around 10 people or so. Unfortunately we did have a bunch of last minute declines, but realistically as we get older that no longer surprises me. People just seem to have more things going on.

Once again hosting veteran Fierce served as the generous host and did another fantastic job. This year we decided to hold a tournament of holiday themed games. I made a scoreboard all by myself with no help, and we would use that to keep official score of the various game’s outcomes.

Here were some of the amazing games that we played:

  • Cotton Ball Race
  • Toothpick Marshmallow Towers (the only failure)
  • Jingle in the Trunk
  • Merry Fishmas
  • Hannukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa (rock, paper, scissors)
  • Holiday Song Lyrics
  • Sudoku
  • Christmas Ball

I was very glad to see just how much fun everyone had participating. We had some very impressive and fun moments. Congrats to Caitlin and Dustin on their team victory! It was a true Christmas miracle!

The was also a gift exchange, where you could trade, open, or draw a swap from a hat. I’m not sure I can fully explain it as I’m not sure I fully understood it, but it worked and everyone walked away happy. There were high heels of lotion, a strange baby from San Diego, and countless other amazing goodness. Another Christmas miracle for all!

Another very fun and successful Honey Badger Holiday Party!

 

Categories
Books

Jim Henson: The Biography

Jim HensonWhen I saw the cover for Jim Henson, I knew right away I had to read it. Not only did I grow up idolizing the various Muppets, but more importantly the photo of Ernie on the cover of the book sold me. Ernie looks so serious I just had to read it.

I really didn’t know too much about Jim Henson the guy, besides the fact that he unfortunately passed away much too young. I think I was in the 7th grade when he did.

So reading up on his life and his amazing work was very interesting. Not only was he extremely creative but he also grew a very successful business as well. It was cool to follow.

While I pretty much saw every film he made growing up, I didn’t realize how big of a deal each one was at the time. Like the Dark Crystal, Muppet Movies and Labyrinth. I hadn’t realized their successes and failures at the time.

I found this very interesting and it really is a shame he had to leave the world so soon. You do wonder what other great ideas he had to share.

Ernie is still pretty awesome too, and the book does delve into his background as well.