Saturday Afterrain

It rained yesterday, but not today.  Yet again I have not been outside all day.  It's in the 70s in the abode and yet I'm freezing.  I have accomplished very little today, managing to feed myself, barely.  I also washed the sink out with scouring powder, and someone will be glad to know I heated some beans and ate them!

Some of these pictures have been posted on Facebook, so they may look familiar. Possibly in a different format.  For example, the panorama below has been reduced in size.

This panorama was taken last Sunday, the 6th of March, at Mt. Laguna.  This was a fairly glorious hike, what with all the wind and such!

M. has some great pics of the hike on his picture pages!

I don't know why I have water shoes next to the bed, but I guess you never know.

It did hail at work last week, and I did promise not to post the boring picture, but here it is, anyway.

So many irritating posts on Facebook.  I hesitate to cast the first stone, but this is just ridiculous!  I'm sure the errors and irritating style are part of a marketing plan to gather clicks and views.

Naturally I succumbed and posted a version with my corrections!


Do not disturb me while I am gluing!!  I may growl or even bite!

I even posted a sign to that effect!

I put up a little display of the story teller.  Several people have actually noticed it and read the informative card!

Well, that is about it for this week.  Stay warm!

New Shoes

I got a pair of new shoes at Target yesterday.  They cost $39.95.  Let us see how long they last!

I also went to Sports Authority to get another pair of hiking books, but they did not have any in my size.  Since they have massive sales going on the place is a bit of a mess, and stocks are severely diminished.

I ordered a new pair of hiking boots today from REI Outlet Store, at a SUBSTANTIAL discount.  As soon as I hit "send" I realized I ordered the wrong size.  And of course my size is not available for that shoe, either.

I guess  that when they eventually arrive I'll have to see if I can return them to the store and just something in my size, at a SUBSTANTIALLY increased price.

I FINALLY got the weather app working on the phone.  I FINALLY followed  the directions in the company's "problems" forum, in which a customer complained he had to restart the app many many times before it would stop crashing.  I did the same, and after twenty or so tries it stopped crashing, and now runs OK.

Thanks for reading!

Cloudy Skies

The forecast was for intermittent depressions, so I went geocaching after work.  I looked for and found eight, count  'em, eight, caches today.

So this was the view at the half-way point, just about starting to head back down. Probably Cowles Mt. area to the right on the horizon, and the rusty cloudy water tower (I kid!) on the center horizon.

By the way, these are mostly all full-size images linked to the thumbnails.  Click the thumbnails to see the full-size image.

They like to paint their rocks on this hill.  The other ridge that I came up first has been called "Skittles Hill" for all the coloured rocks.

The sun is almost setting, I need to be down THERE before it does, I have no flashlight with me!

I made it down, but I looked for the last cache, near my parking spot, with the flashlight on the phone.  I didn't FIND the cache until after I turned the light off (it wasn't QUITE dark yet).  I discovered today that the key to finding geocaches is to look in the right spot.


Driving home on Prospect, the sun is making a glorious sunset.

That is all for today, what about..yesterday?

 I was going to email this picture of dusty shelves (Do your shelves scream wash me please? (Firesign Theatre reference) but it just never came out very good.

My version of a silly joke on Facebook that I didn't "get", even though I've seen it before.

For the German version of the show:

Another version I made. What if they got a new actress?.

And yet another, although I noted that "If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do".

And now that is TRULY all I've got.

Thanks for reading!

Name This Weed!

A big weed at work.  Lacking a banana, my foot for scale.

View of El Cajon and especially El Cajon Mountain.from 2/3s of the way up Mt. Helix.

I am learning how to utilize various websites to draw circles of various sites around various plotted points, i.e., geocache, on maps.  I need  a drink.

No Stress Wednesday

Well, less stress, anyway.


Mrs. Kim left her hat in the library yesterday, I couldn't just let it SIT there!

Looked for and found this happy couple yesterday after work.

My response yesterday to someone who asked that I stay on another year so they could pass the test for my job.  I am such a wit sometimes!

That is all for today!

Sunday

I felt kinda cruddy in the early morning, and a bit scared to drive anywhere "iffy", but in the late morning I made up my mind to hit those mystery caches I had solved east-north of Alpine.  And my tummy did still feel a bit unsettled, but I nothing untoward happened.

I found fourteen caches today, and only one DNF (Did Not Find).

One cache, an 80on80 cache, was at Viejas Outlets mall.  Which is a rather pleasant place to spend some time, surprisingly, even  if you are not shopping.  The nice lady working in the California Welcome Center gave me a hint, "It's outside..."   I find there are sixteen of these 80on80 caches, and I seem to  have found eight of them now. They are located along olde Highway 80, all in San Diego County, I think.

At one cache I found all this electronic oddness on the ground, fastened to this rotting board.  I have no idea... Not the cache, though.

On the phone camera view I THOUGHT I could see a cache in there, but it turned out to be somewhere else.  Do they make a phone with a twelve-inch screen?

Coming back down the Anderson Truck Trail.  Somewhat steeper than it looks, and probably at the limit of what my vehicle can handle.

The view must be great for the very few houses out here.

The road is marked quite unequivocally "Private Road", but the big red gate is locked open, it's a "truck trail" on the maps, and there were tons of people driving around and recreating.  I don't know what to think.

My only DNF.  I think, in Streetview, I can see where the cache was...

On East Victoria Drive in Alpine. Yup, it's up there.  Only not QUITE as far up as I climbed.  And it looks a bit scarier from up there, than down here, let me tell you.  And decomposing granite can be slippery!

I took a couple of shots of me in the yard with Giant Selfie Stick!

I wish I had this at Yosemite, at Glacier Point!  That would have shown those tourists a thing or two!

To bad I didn't get the bird bath in either of the shots, it being oddly clean for a change.

Well, that's enough for now, have a great week!

Yet Again

This is the collapsible pole I made out of PVC pipe for retrieving geocaches in high places, but I added the phone holder I got for the bicycle handlebars and it works much better here.  Now it's a giantly-long selfie stick!

I went geocaching in the Big Bay area this morning. I titled this image "Tuna Feet", possibly poor pun on "tuna fleet".

I saw a sea lion (I guess) over by the commercial fishing boat docks. I guess he found something good to eat because the birds were giving him quite a hassle!

Here comes the birds!

They were diving and squawking it up, it was quite a show!

This house has been called the Piano House (among other things...), it sort of looks like one, and may have been originally built for a pianist. Or maybe not.

More information 1      More information 2       More information 3

I parked at old NTC to find one cache, but the vehicle wouldn't start afterwards.  So I went for a walk around the area, a geocaching walk, so the engine could "dry out", as I figured I flooded it.  There seemed to be fewer geocaches in the phone app than I thought there were, it was odd.  I walked to five or so, found two of them.  Stopped by Downwind Marine and bought me a little inexpensive folding rigging knife.  It has a small marlinspike that should be handy for fooling with knots. It developed that the knife is manufactured by Davis Instruments, the same company that make the weather station I have!  They have a bunch of interesting products!

After I got back to the vehicle it STILL wouldn't start, so I called Matthew in sort of a panicked-frump.  While making arrangements for him to rescue me I gave the accursed Ford Fuel Pump Shut Off Switch another determined poke, and THIS time the vehicle started right up.  So I drove home, and I've been here ever since.

While checking in with Matt upon my return I discovered while looking up a geocache mentioned on the San Diego Geocachers group on Facebook that my Premium membership at Geocaching.com had lapsed and THAT was why I was not seeing as many caches as I thought I were there.  So there were actually a number that I just walked right past today!  Another time, I guess!

Remind me to tell you those two cute little stories about my sainted mother and geocaching.

Thanks for reading!

Less Than Lots Of Stuff

Tomorrow is Friday, a whole week has gone by!

Last long weekend we went for a trip!  Here are my pics! Some of them are big files. Some are not.

We stopped by the Desert Giants near Blythe.  I had read about them in a Hardy Boys book in elementary school.  Now I've seen two of them!

Walking around just after dawn one morning I noticed this motel offers Color TV!

We took a break in a park in Bullhead City. You can see a hotel or casino across the river in Nevada.  And a bird sitting on the handrail.  There were lots of birds.  And lots of bird poop!

Here are a bunch of pictures of the incredibly cute Charlie, who is also very brave and very very energetic!

I forget what that stuffed animal was, but Charlie will jump for it!

I also forget what this is, except for the Charlie part.

My mother taking pictures of her rats.

And petting Charlie.

Rats again...

Said rats.

Early in the morn I talked my driver into a little dirt road adventure so I could avenge my Did Not Find at a geocache.  He noticed this sign on the way back out.  If you see anyone stealing their dirt be sure to call.  You could get a reward!

We drove down to Havasu City and London Bridge.  With the guide not working all we could do was walk across London Bridge.

There's part of the bridge.  A geocache is either on the ground below, where I am, or up there on the bridge.  Did I mention the tremendous wind blowing up there?

On the way back home on Monday we saw this signpost.  Actually, I didn't see it, I was spaced out, Matt saw it and turned around so we could get a picture. Is that mailbox up there for airmail? Eh? EH?

Today being February 18th I went to Singing Hills for a few minutes.

Tonight I had an idea for taking selfies with the Geocaching Reacher.  I need to buy an PVC pipe elbow, but the concept clearly is possible.  The only picture I got so far was of the ceiling, though, and I shan't share it!

Well, that is all I can remember, and it is WAY past time for bed!  Ta ta!

Two TOTTs Tuesday

I seem to have run across several geocaches in the last year that required either a VERY long TOTT (Tool Of The Trade) or some tree-climbing skills  I don't have the skills, so I found me a YouTube video that showed how to make a VERY long tool.  It is made out of PVC and it collapses into the five foot piece as shown in the, uh, inset image.  A variety of ends can be attached, none of which I have constructed yet.

I read about these and picked one up at the craft store in Lemon Grove.  It is a slotted quilling tool, used for quilling, oddly enough.

Now this is what I can use it for, rolling up tiny logging strips that fit into tiny nano-sized geocaches.

I may drill the end to take a keyring type-of-thing so I don't lose it.

Thanks for reading!

Monday the 08th of February

I forgot to mention yesterday that I as I was entering a canyon there was a couple coming out, and I asked how it was down there. They replied that it is Spring Time in San Diego (rather warm it was). I said something about what is up with that, and the man replied "Do you think it's going to be a late winter this year?"

I giggled  maybe a little too much, and headed on down into the festering swamp-canyon.


I read on the 'net about using a slotted quilling tool to roll up nano-size log strips.  So I bought one at a craft store in Lemon Grove.  Now I can roll up those logs nice and tight, AND I can take up quilling in my non-geocaching spare time.

I got the report from the nurse of one of my doctors that nothing has changed significantly in the past year or six months or however long it has been.  So that is that.

I discovered yesterday that the turntable I thought was central to an exciting life-event was not actually there at that point in time, and that there were TWO other ones nearby, and said life-event probably certainly took place at one of them.  And since I have publicly told the whole story I shall have to publicly recant the whole story, or at least the location part of it.

That is truly all I have for today, I must go eat some salad!