Jeremy’s school PTA hosted a jog-a-thon for their spring fundraiser this year. The students collected donations and received 1 raffle ticket for every $5 raised (with a minimum of 1 ticket for kids who didn’t collect any donations). There were a bunch of prizes that the students could enter to win. Luckily, Jeremy (and 49 other students) won a Kona Ice (shaved ice) party.

In the past, the spring fundraiser was a no-kids banquet at the local golf course. The banquet was incredibly successful at raising money, but relied heavily on contributions from wealthier families in the neighborhood. This year, the PTA decided to switch to the jog-a-thon to directly involve the students and to allow more families to participate. Overall, it’s probably a good change, even if the overall amount of money raised was substantially less.

Today was unusually busy for a weekend.

Jeremy and I woke up around 6am to drive to the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area near Irwindale, CA. The Southern California Rocket Association (SCRA) hosted a model rocket launch day open to the public. For Christmas, Jeremy received an Estes model rocket kit with two rockets (HiJinks and Rascal). He’s been really excited about launching them for several weeks. There were a lot of attendees, including other elementary-aged kids, middle and high schoolers trying to qualify for the American Rocketry Challenge (ARC), and older enthusiasts with powerful custom rockets. Both of Jeremy’s launches (using Estes A8-3 engines) were successful. Another youth participant sitting next to Jeremy gifted him a more powerful Estes C6-7 engine for use in his next launch, which was really nice. Unfortunately, the SCRA won’t be hosting any additional launch days at this site until August because a renaissance faire will be occupying their usual space.

After a quick lunch at Wendy’s, we hurried back to Irvine to participate in this year’s Pinewood Derby with Jeremy’s cub scout pack. Valerie ran the Derby for the past 2 years for the pack, but this year handed off the baton to Committee Chair Robert. Jeremy’s car was fast, but the competition was stiff this year. Another den member had the fastest car in the entire pack.

Sometimes I go back and read these blog entries and have no recollection of the events within them. Now that I have retired, I’m slightly inspired to start writing again, if only to create some record of what I did in the mid-2020s for my future self. I guess we’ll see if that actually happens.