The whole family went with Abby's Girl Scout troop to French Creek for an overnight camping trip. I've always suspected that Girl Scouts, at least at Abby's level if not through the whole thing, was "camping light", since every time that Abby and Berta had gone before, they had stayed in hotel-like cabins.

I remember some "luxurious" camping accommodations in my scouting days, like a cement-floor cabin with metal spring bunks (no, no mattress, just the springs) and a fireplace. But nothing with real furniture. Unlike the reports I'd gotten from Berta upon their return from Abby's scout trips.

So the tent camping was a new thing for Abby's troop. But even there, I've discovered levels of camping.

The very last time I was camping prior to this was a very long time ago. I hiked the Appalachian Trail for four days with all my equipment on my back, sleeping in a tent, and cooking my food over fires. I was 12. So my most recent camping conditioning was for a pretty high level of "rough". About the only thing we didn't do on that trip was hunt for our own food.

But there's still a few strata of tent camping in addition to totally roughing it. I'll give Abby's troop credit in that they were able to sleep through a pouring rain storm and suffer through a wet tent floor -- and the resulting soaked sleeping bags. Still, there were too many weird amenities.

The apple cobbler was good, but it was cooked in a dutch oven. There's no way I'm going to pack in a dutch oven. They're insanely heavy. There was also charcoal and a charcoal chimney. These are nice amenities when camping. And I'll give you that if you're using a camp as accommodations to something else, they're nice to have. I mean, if you are able to back your car up to the camp site, these things are great. But they don't really simulate a rustic camping experience.

Sure, it's no pop-up camper, but it's not picking berries in the woods for sustenance, either. Not that I expect a troop of 9-year-old girls to do that, but I'm noticing that I would like Abby to at least experience what the world might be like without all of the modern conveniences, rather than experiencing camping as something you do out of the back of a car that powers a TV so you can watch the first game of the Stanley Cup. (Yeah.)

Hopefully we'll have time to plan a short trip this summer or next, and I'll be able to take both kids out with some packs and live off our backs for a day or two. Berta too, for that matter. I think that would be fun for me and educational for them. Or we could all die of exposure. Which would also be an unusual experience.

Last Saturday evening, after we got home from the concert trip, I took Abby to the Bowling Palace for the Girl Scout Father-Daughter bowling event. There were so many scouts there. Most of them were Daisies. Abby is still a Brownie, but if I remember correctly she might bridge into being a Girl Scout proper this year.

As is typical, Abby forgot to wear her vest with all the patches on it. It's strange when I think about it. My scout uniform had lots of badges that I felt proud of earning. Brownie badges are called "Try-Its" and there doesn't seem to be much to earning them. Maybe the actual scouts have more requirements. Nonetheless, I think this low barrier to entry may be what generates a lack of pride in Abby's presentation of her vest. Anyway...

We signed in, got shoes, and found some bowling balls to use. Abby got a 7 pound ball to roll and we headed to our assigned lane.

We met with a couple of her scoutmates. Why they put so many of us in a single lane, I can't say. Cailin and her dad, Eric, were there with her sister. Also, Roshni and her dad, Dharmesh, bowled in our lane. All told, there were seven of us bowling.

Even though we didn't get to bowl two rounds, we still got a decent amount of bowling in. There was also some technical trouble with our lane, where it wouldn't return balls. Once while Abby was bowling, the pin machine went completely haywire, and they had to go fix it. Pretty crazy.

Abby did pretty well. All the girls used bumpers and the dads didn't, which made for a more-or-less more fair game. I did break 100, which is pretty good for me, and Abby bowled a 99 or something. I don't even remember, we were having too much fun.

There was pizza and soda provided by the Girl Scouts for each lane. And there was a door prize - three baskets that were given away to winners who put their bowling entry tickets into boxes. We didn't win anything, but it was still a fun drawing.

After the bowling, we went to the movie theater and saw Clash of the Titans in 3D. (Yes, yes, I know about the 3D, and I knew before we went, but it was a special treat.) Abby has been reading The Lightning Thief, which she says is nothing at all like the movie, and so I thought I'd take her to see another movie based (presumably) on mythology. She enjoyed it, I think, as I explained how the story she's reading relates to the movie we watched and the actual mythology.

In all, it was a good time. I like doing events like these with Abby when I get the chance. Even if she runs all over the place and is generally pretty flighty, even for a 9-year-old. Hopefully she's having fun and eventually grows into settling down and concentrating on what she's doing.

I found a list of events that Abby's going to participate in with her Girl Scout's Brownie troop over the next couple of months. Apparently, Berta gets emails from their scout leader every so often with a list of updated events and notices. I think this is an effective way to keep in touch with the troupe, but I think there's room for improvement technologically.

It might be nice to have a published calendar of events, along with a feed that parents could consume in Outlook, Google Calendar, or in my case, Lightning. I've discovered that meetup.com provides iCal feeds that make it easy to subscribe to events. Of course, there are my usual misgivings with meetup.com, particularly that it's a paid service and that they retain control of the data so that you can't move it elsewhere when you decide you can't pay them anymore. So I think there should be a better, open solution.

That's where I think Habari can step in. This isn't meant to sound like an advertisement, because I really think there's something here. First off, having a blog gives you a centralized location to publish event information (and results!), which is the important part. There is apparently already a plugin (yes, the Habari scene is now moving so fast that I can't keep track of everything going on anymore) that will track events as a separate content type within Habari. So it should be easy to segregate a scheduled event from a news posting or a page of contact data. There are still a couple of important pieces missing.

The plugin, as far as I know, does not produce iCal feeds. That's a dealbraker for me because one of the major problems I'm trying to solve is to be notified of when new scout events (and other kinds of meetup events) take place. But producing iCal output shouldn't be too difficult if you've got a set of data with dates, right?

Another thing is that the site should be protected from unvalidated visits. We don't want just anyone knowing when these events take place or having access to contact information, so it's important that we lock that down. This might not be as important for other groups, but for the brownie troop, I think it's warranted. Thankfully, Habari's on the verge of having a complete (if not entirely finalized) ACL system that should allow exactly that.

I've been considering Drupal as an option for such sites. But the thing I've come to understand from working with it is that Drupal, while extraordinarily functional, is not something that a brownie troop leader can grab off the shelf and make go. Particularly for events and calendars, I think Habari - for something more than a blog, but less than a CMS that you'd pay someone to configure for you - is a better fit for people looking for a light, efficient, uncomplicated CMS.

Some might also suggest WordPress for such a purpose, and perhaps that would work, but what I've been noticing from how we've assembled the template system, and how plugins work, is that Habari has a way of integrating the extra features provided by plugins that makes it feel more intrinsic. In comparison, many plugins that offer these extra features in WordPress, while they might work well, seem like extra things that are hung off the main system when you're using them and not things that are integral to the system on UI. I'm not sure how to quantify this exactly, but I think as we start to see Habari move toward the light CMS role, the differences in how well add-ons integrate into the system will become more apparent. Then again, I'm obviously a bit biased toward Habari.

I really don't have a lot of hope for getting Abby's brownie troop on Habari, or Meetup, or any web platform for that matter. But it's these real-world ideas that help extend the offerings of software so that when websites for brownie troops becomes the norm, we're positioned well. Until then, maybe Berta will produce an iCal feed for me somewhere.