Derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, “Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That’s because 90% of everything is crud.” Oddly, when Sturgeon’s Law is cited, the final word is almost invariably changed to ‘crap’.
Twenty four days after the first upper cabinet was installed and then taken down, we finally had more put up. Hopefully for good this time. They got two walls of uppers and part of another in today. Tomorrow’s goal is to finish the 3rd wall, do the crown molding on those three and start work on the back/refrigerator wall.
The Miata has now been regulated to strictly a weekend car. We took the cover off on Friday night for Saturday’s MMC event and put the cover back on Sunday night. We were going to leave it off and drive it to work for the early part of the week, but then the forecast changed, so we decided to let it stay snuggled up for the supposedly wet week ahead.
There were a few new caches in the area that we went out and did yesterday. A couple were mystery/puzzle caches that involved something called a Jefferson Disk that at first glance appeared to be complex just for the sake of complexity, but in the end turned out to be the most fun we’ve had geocaching in a while.
Those caches involved a bit of bushwacking and I of course was in shorts, so I came out of the woods with a few thorn stabs dripping blood. A walk off the trail here may be mildly dangerous, but compared to Texas it is literally a walk in the park. Every plant in the west Texas dessert is out to kill you. Not just the cactus either, if you take a closer look at any plant out there or make the mistake of brushing up against one, you realize quickly that heavy denim pants are the only real option for attire bloodless geocaching.
We got up early this morning and took a long walk in my sister-in-law’s neighborhood. While on the loop we found a couple of caches. Donna found both. The first one she walked right up to and made the find. On the second I looked and looked and didn’t see it. Donna stepped in right after I gave up on a spot and took one look. She immediately said, “I got it.”
As we were signing the log a older couple who were walking their dogs passed by and asked what we were up to. We told them about caching and the man said I’ve got something to tell you and he said:
A man is dining in a fancy restaurant, and there is a gorgeous redhead sitting at the next table. Suddenly she sneezes, and her glass eye comes flying out of its socket towards the man. He reflexively reaches out, grabs it out of the air, and hands it back.
“Oh my, I am sooo sorry,” the woman says as she pops her eye back in place. “Let me buy your dinner to make it up to you,” she says.
They enjoy a wonderful dinner together and afterwards the theater, followed by drinks. They talk, they laugh; she shares her deepest dreams, and he shares his. She listens.
After paying for everything, she asks him if he would like to come to her place for a nightcap… and stay for breakfast the next morning. The next morning, she cooks a gourmet meal with all the trimmings.
The guy is amazed. Everything had been incredible. “You know,” he said, “you are the perfect woman. Are you this nice to every guy you meet?”
“No, she replies, “You just happened to catch my eye.”
I sighed at the pun, but Donna had the last laugh, as she said to him, “I thought you were going to tell us that is how you meet your wife.”
We have a BCS Bowl Pool at work. All 35 bowl games were used, starting with Arizona vs.Nevada in the New Mexico Bowl on December 15th and culminating with the Discovery BCS Championship Bowl in Miami pitting Alabama against Notre Dame. We include the point spread as published before the first game and don’t adjust it. And if the spread is an even number, a half point is added to the underdog to eliminate ties. We have 36 people playing and with just tonight’s game left my wife is in the catbird seat. If the Tide rolls she wins having picked 23 of 35 correctly. If the Fighting Irish win or lose by less than 10 points she will be tied for first and can do no worse than getting 2nd place money, if the tie breaker doesn’t go her way.
We have a MMC event this weekend, so in preparation the Emperor got a sponge bath this evening. By the time we get home from work these days it is too dark and too chilly to be getting out a bucket of sudsy water and a hose, so I opted for the soft towel and Meguiar’s Quik Detailer option. He is a small enough car and not too dirty that it didn’t take too long. I also put the top up and washed the windows. Tomorrow or the next day I may go ahead and give him a waxing in the garage as well being sure that I do wheel it outside in the daylight at some point to ensure I get all the dry wax buffed off.
We have a cache over in Augusta that we didn’t find when we first looked for it, so we put it on a watch list. This means that every time someone does or doesn’t find that cache we get an email letting us know what happened. Tonight we got a couple of emails telling us that some folks from Canada had found it. Some how the mundane log of “Found with so & so. Thanks for the cache.” sounds so much more exciting in French, “Trouvé avec Pascal70 et lolo001. Merci pour la cache.”
The bank called this afternoon, the home equity loan is ready, so we meet one last time with the contractor tomorrow and then on Wednesday it is back to Lowe’s to talk with the cabinet guy to iron out the final details. Looks like this thing is gonna happen.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1189
We have pretty much cleaned out everything in our local area where we can go to a park, state or local, and get in a nice walk while having the opportunity to find several caches while we are at it. Last night I expanded the search area just a bit, we didn’t want to drive more than an hour one way and I found a place west of Columbia and near Lake Murray called Saluda Shoals Park that fit the bill.
We found 9 of the 10 we searched for. The only one we didn’t was a micro in the woods, but it was one of those decoy caches. The owner hides a cache and then hides 6 to 10 decoys that look like actual caches, but when you open them up instead of a log to sign there is some that says “This is not the cache.” We don’t really like this kind of hide, one reason is because this is third one we’ve attempted and are 0 for 3. The other, is more philosophical, if you’ve got this big ol’ place where no one will stumble on your cache why do you have to hide that sucker so well?
Walking 5.6 miles around in the woods can make a person hungry. For lunch Donna mentioned that she’d like a hamburger and the first place I thought of was Pawley’s Front Porch in the Five Points area of Columbia it’s only 12 miles away. Trouble is, it probably would be a suicide mission because the University of South Carolina was playing football today only a couple miles away from there. I thought it would be smart to avoid going to Five Points, but Donna talked me into it saying, that if it got crowded as we got close we could turn around and find another place to eat.
Well, as it turns out, arriving at Pawley’s was a piece of cake at 1:30 and had I come in the right way I could have parked right next to the side door. Probably because 80,000 Gamecock fans had been in their seats at Williams-Brice Stadium for at least a half an hour as kickoff time was at 1:00PM.
Oh, and that giant inflatable turkey we saw on the drive home turned out to be Cocky. Honest mistake for the non fan considering the season and all.
We took a little trip to Florence to visit Cousin Laurie and current beau Harold. With one cup of coffee each for Laurie and I, plus a refill or two, between us, we used 8 little creamer containers and about 26,000 granules of real sugar. The little bowl for the creamer cups was empty and the sweetener packet holder was left only holding those blue, yellow or pink packets of synthetic stuff.
Maybe because it is past the summer I-95 Florida tourist time and not late enough for the I-95 Snowbirds, the Cracker Barrel was not really busy. As a consequence of this we ended up with an overly attentive waiter which became a source of both amusement and irritation.
But somehow attentive didn’t translate into efficient. We didn’t get our food to us in a very timely manner, it seemed to take longer than usual and when it arrived nothing was outright cold, but nothing was really hot, just warm. Plus Harold’s breakfast meal came without any bread (everything at Cracker comes with biscuits), when he asked for some toast, it came very quickly, so much so that it almost didn’t look toasted. No butter or jelly came along with it though. Now, suddenly, the guy that was asking how everything was, seemingly between bites, was nowhere to be found.
After we parted ways, Donna and I did a little geocaching (9 for 9) on one of the sections of Florence’s wooded trails that is near the Mall. On the drive home the Purple Whale passed by the 26,000 mile mark.
When we got to Cloudland Canyon State Park it was living up to the cloud part of its name, you couldn’t see anything from the rim. By the time we got done monkeying around down in the canyon geocaching and climbed back out, while still not totally clear, you could see most of the canyon.
In two days we have found caches in 3 state parks, on 5 DeLorme map pages and in 11 counties. We’ve left enough glaring holes unfilled on the maps so that we guaranteed ourselves a return trip sometime in the future. Right now we are debating just driving straight home or trying to pick up a few counties near Atlanta on a Sunday morning.
There are five geocaches on Monhegan and we found all of them. Yesterday after lunch we did a south island 2.4 mile loop (green) and found the two there. One was a virtual that just required a picture, but the other, which was not too far away was a small tupperware.
This morning after breakfast we did a north island loop and found 2 more. The one at the top of the island was a 50cal ammo can and the other was a small lock-n-lock. We then had some lunch and finished number 5 which was back uphill at the lighthouse in an old popup hand-wipe canister. Today’s mileage was an even 6 miles.
Monhegan Island is 3/4 of a mile wide and 1–3/4 long and has 17 miles of trails for exploring. The trails range from hard pack “roads” to well worn trails through woods to scrambling along rocks to dodging streams. We have trampled on about half of the trails in finding the geocaches, our next visit we’ll probably explore the rest.
