[Parrot Head]

Mike, I've been wanting to throw this out a while... does your company/institution/whatever have employee service project benefits? When I was at Safeco, they would match me hour-for-hour or something like that for community-related service activities. Can you use that to only use half your vacation days as needed for campouts?

Also, it seems like the Church has gotten away from fundraisers for scouts lately, which irritates me. It creates a greater haves/have-nots situation or it forces the ward to subsidize scouts more heavily. Make the boys work a little!

The YW have been notorous for ward-subsidized fundraisers in my last few wards. THey have "spaghetti bizarres" (on St. Patty's Day for crying out loud) or some crap like that where they make a luxurious meal of noodles and sauce, get others in the ward to donate service such as cakes or cookies and then expect those same people to bid in auction on others' donated crap. It's basically a roundabout way of just getting the people in the ward that don't have kids or have fewer to pay for the YW to go to camp. And then it's the leaders that do most of the work. I boycott those by staying at home and watching TV.