Up In The K.M.

No Bike To Work for me, I had an appointment!

Today was Hat and Sunglasses Day for Spirit Week.

We must be in Oz, Toto!

Several ways this image could have been improved occurred to me, but I was at my appointment at the time.


Who parks like this, eh? I hate those people!

I found two geocaches today, one near Sharp Memorial, and one not too far from the Chili's in Grantville.


I got an appointment in October for something yucky, I'm in the queue to talk to the folks who arrange the Taking Of Samples (Internal), but THAT is gonna wait until book return is over!  I also did some labs, and I didn't faint!  That is, I think, four times in a row I haven't fainted!  Wow!

Monday

We drove up to the lake and ate some really good sandwiches from Jack In The Box, then we drove around a bit.  We were going through Mission Valley so I asked M. to stop for a couple of geocaches.  I spotted the lampbase cover one, and he found the one hanging in plain view.  He also noticed this, which is NOT the cache!

Yikes!  Looked abandoned, though.

Earlier today, or maybe it was yesterday, there was yet again sunlight streaming through the window, and through the prism, onto my...sock.

Ain't that purty?

Days Past

I have more pepper chilies, and here is a blurry picture of them.

I have one little sunflower at the moment, at least one that looks pretty good, the others a kind of falling over a bit.

The other day I came up behind this "bicycle" at  stop light.  He could move pretty fast down hill, but he seemed pretty slow up hill.

Last night I went up to UCSD to look for zombies. Or rather, to find a geocache and AVOID getting et by zombies.  I was hoping to meet up with a group of ladies who were also going to look for zombies.  Waiting for permission to post a zombiefied picture of theirs.

We used a Zombie Meter to avoid zombies.  The Zombie Meter actually tells you how far you are from each waypoint, although not the direction... And if you are hot or cold.  Also detects zombies and lets you know of they are near.  Very cool!

We ran out of time and were eaten by zombies.  It was so sad.

I went back up there tonight and managed, after a great deal of toing and froing, to make the find.  Learning the ropes last night with the ladies helped a lot!  I was able to find the third waypoint and get the final part location coordinate, then on to the final location.  Well, I actually search in THREE locations, because apparently I cannot use a GPSr properly.  One of the location invoked my fear of heights, so there was some crawling up stairs involved.  All in all a GREAT geocache!

I found four other geocaches while waiting for night to fall.  Yes, the Zombie Meter only works at night.  Oh, and DNFed one, too.

You DID remember that those images are just x-large thumbnails, you gotta click the pic to see the relativly higher quality, and larger, image.

Tuesday

I went off after work to check on the geocache that coyotes and/or dogs keep dragging.  A Did Not Find was reported a week ago, but it was just to hot for me, etc.  So today was good.  I found the cache exactly where it was supposed to be, and for a bonus I found the missing cap for the container that was reported missing a few weeks ago!  And it was only a couple of feet away. See the pic!

I got a training tomorrow, I gotta do another blood lab, the CT scan want to schedule, LOGO return is the 30th, I hear, the Last Due Date is May 30th, and someone relative is having a birthday in a next, I gotta get a card--the month is full!

And I bet there is going to a doctor appointment in there somewhere!


EDIT:  I forgot to mention my new favorite song is John Prine's Spanish Pipedream.  Heard it on KRNN last night! The linked is a little speedy, I like it played a little bit slower.

Monday Evening

I keep forgetting to mention it, but during the Big Heat last week I came home one day to find the solar bird bath bowel dry dry dry, and it turned out there was a big crack in it and the pump had pumped all the water our of the reservoir.  Not good!  So I put the old, larger, bowel back on.  The pump seems to be pumping, so I guess it isn't damaged.

Yesterday I completed the San Diego 360 Degree Challenge, wherein one had to find one cache in each of the 360, uh, radial "spokes" from a point just south of Montgomery Field.  I already had quite a number when I started (Scroll down in  Hot Stuff for picture, etc.) but it has take me three months to complete the challenge. The last radius was the hardest, I had three Did Not Finds before I found one to complete. And it was one I was avoiding, but it turned out to be really easy! 

Here I am walking between the first and second DNFs, which are at least 528 feet apart.

After I got home and logged the finds I realized I had to go find the Challenge cache, too, so in the afternoon it was off to Serra Mesa, or maybe it is Kearny Mesa South, I do not know, to make the Final find, which I did.  BUT, before that I popped over to Allied Gardens to try for a First To Find on a new cache, but missed it by twenty minutes.  If only I hadn't stopped to use the "facilities" before I left...

That's all I got, it is time for bed!

Back To Spring

It is a lot cooler today, in the mid-eighties.

I went geocaching again this morning, all morning.  I can't remember how many caches I found, I think it was thirteen.  I calculated that I need four more to complete the San Diego 360 Degree geocaching challenge.  As luck would have it, many of the possibles caches have problems, either missing, or I can't find them.  We shall see what happens tomorrow.

Somewhere in this picture there was supposed to be a geocache, if I did the calculations correctly.  Where would YOU start looking?  Don't forget to click the thumbnail to see the Big Picture!

Purty flowers on a tree.  Are they still flowers when on a tree?  Blossums?

Inside the Camp Kearny guardhouse.  My Google-foo is not working, I can find NOTHING about the building!

Selfie from the guardhouse.

The guardhouse, with its bronze plaque.

The last cache I went for today was at La Jolla Shores.  There is NO parking AT ALL, and the cars are practically gridlocked, if there was a grid, coming "over the hill".  I shall have to try to get there EARLY tomorrow.  Possibly in the dark.

Well, that is about it for today!

Thursday

I read somewhere, that other places have snow days, we have fire days.

Everyone that I know is being allowed back to their  homes today.  The weather person on Fox said the dew point is much higher than yesterday, and that is a BIG DEAL.  But don't quote me.

Anyway, I got the day off because large portions of San Diego are on fire. Again.  I'm just glad the wind is blowing out to sea!

It's 2:29 PM and mister thermometer says it is 101.7 F outside.  I have to bike down to the car repair shop this afternoon to pick up the vehicle, and load up the credit card with debt.  At least, it is EXPECTED to be finished today, we shall see.

Tomorrow I have to go back to work, unless they cancel another day.  Why not, says I?  Why start up the whole district for one day?  Of course, that would make Bike To Work Day a bit tricky.

It is 85 F in the living room, and that is with the gas pilot still lit.  I live in hope that the May Grey and June Gloom will return.

A State Of Newness. Or Something.

Or maybe it was a new state.  We drove out to Yuma so I could get a new geocaching state, that is, Arizona.  That makes three!

Lots of wind, lots of dust on the way over there.  I made a little movie of the wind while at a rest stop, but it doesn't quite do it justice, so you don't get to see it!

Did you know El Centro is below sea level?

The caches I picked out were all in or around Gateway Park.  It was a little crowded there today, but most of the people were in the river.

The first cache was at a steam engine.  I found that one pretty quickly.  The second one was a lamp post skirt hide. I decided not to do that one, there were too many people around.  I could actually see the container through a crack, though!  But it don't count unless you sign the log!

Cache three was within sight of this old machine, which is a Blaisdell Slow Sand Filter Washing Machine.

Cache Number Four was a multi-cache across the tracks near the Yuma Territorial Prison  Museum (As seen on California's Gold!!)  We got to the starting location by walking the long way under the bridges.  Then I read the directions and we had to backtrack four hundred feet.  We did some calculations and headed off to the next waypoint. Conveniently forgetting that Cache Number Five was about fifty feet away from our calculation spot.  At the next waypoint we headed off in a certain direction and for a certain number of steps, and viola, there was, uh, a red herring.  But I was only fooled for a minute (or two) and then spotted the real cache.

Here are people who paid to go into the museum.

Cache Number Five.  We forgot about that one, remember?

Cache Number Six.  This was a virtual cache, I had to find out some answers at the location and email the cache owner for permission to post a find.  

While we were standing there admiring the bridges a train came along.

And parked right next to us!

Cache Number Seven was at the other end of the park so we drove to it.  Extremely nicely done, I awarded it a favorite point, as had 85 other cachers over the past couple of years.

Driving home there was more sand blowing across the road.

We took the scenic route home on the S2 where we had a long conversation with a Border Patrol agent who was either interested in geocaching or wondering just how legitimate I was, scruffy person that I am.

That is about it for today!






But yesterday!  Did I tell you about the rainbow?  Well, here it is!

Of Howling Dogs and Repairs With Japanese Paper

Because I KNOW someone wants to hear it, a short audio clip (WAV format, 1.9mb size) of the
neighbor's dogs howling.

More on my attempts to repair books with Japanese paper.  I had several books with corners and edges torn off the pages.  One book had seventy-five torn places.  I felt I ought to try to repair them, even though it really wasn't cost effective.

NOTE: The last image is of a book written by Meg Whalen Turner, from that series that seems to have no name, about the Thief of Eddis.  Which I enjoyed VERY much. The other two images are either from the same series, or one of Rick Riordan's. Or both. Or something.

First I tried using corners cut from an old discarded book. It is pretty strong, but bulky.  I don't like the color, either.  The white paper behind the corner is Japanese paper sticking out from another corner.  You can see my alignment and trimming isn't fabulous.

This shows Japanese paper cut with the water brush technique, nicely blending into the page.

I did mix some wheat paste, but I can't remember which ones I used it on. You can see the difference between the water brush "cuts" and a scissors cut (bottom edge). This is a paperback.

Perhaps if I had been really handy I could have trimmed the page to a straighter edge, or maybe I could even have cut the Japanese paper to follow the irregular edge!

Well, that's all I got for today.

Missing Out?

Hey, if you are not reading my bicycle blog, you are missing out on today's stuff.

Yes, I actually rode the bike today!

Friday

I went geocaching on the way to work this morning.  I was first to find. There were a lot of roses.

I'm using Japanese papers to repair some books.  I'm using a technique I read about instead of using scissors.  A water brush is used to moisten the line of separation, then you just gently tear it.  You get an very feathery edge that blends in very well to the paper.  Compare the scissors cuts with the water brush tears.

That's handmade Japanese paper. Fourteen bucks a sheet (a big sheet, 30 inches by 20 inches or something like that).  But a little goes a very long way.

I'm still using Demco Norbond book repair glue to fasten the paper, I'm too lazy to mix up the wheat starch paste just yet. I'm not doing archival repairing here!

It is still very hot here, especially for the season.  Where is our May Gray?