Dutchman Trunk Or Treat and Hayride, New Skills

Dutchman’s Trunk or Treat and Hayride

One of our favorite events at Dutchman’s. Everyone puts together a good event. There are lots of people giving out candy. The boys were allowed to ride the hayride unsupervised which they enjoyed. We ate at Chipotle before and Ted had his first burrito, which he praised heartily. I am curious in the future how we can make this event better. I talked to some fellow members about a haunted hayride in the future just to mix up a little bit and keep it interesting. They asked my ideas on the events in general and I gave them my insights. I am really good at designing family events after my work with Cub Scouts. I find you need two components to attract families. One you need fun things the kids can do so they are not bored. Second it needs to feel safe. You cannot have one without the other. If we are to improve the latter we need to make sure we make certain adjustments in behavior and save some of the revelry until after 10:00 PM.

New Skills

I’ve taken on a daily challenge of setting aside a few minutes to work on some non-work related skills. They are purposefully chosen to not be of any use whatsoever other than to give me a chance to reset my brain and find distraction. They are not career related or really chosen to improve my life, I just need an outlet. So far I’ve chosen several skills to develop. The first is improving my chess game. I have a few books on chess, a magnetic chess board to map out solutions, and a LiChess account. I am also learning how to play the harmonica. I want to learn a musical instrument but I don’t want to get bogged down into the maintenance of the musical instrument itself. When I played guitar I deeply disliked tuning the guitar. I wanted an instrument I could just pick up and go with and a harmonica made sense. It is already tuned and ready to go, it is also really easy to find the right note. Finally, I am working with a yo-yo. I purchased a few and I play with them here at the house. I am working on learning how to use a non-responsive yo-yo and work a bind to get it to retrieve properly.