Last Post Of 2015 (I Hope!)

I went geocaching with S. at Sweetwater Reservoir  Park today.  We found it OK, so now I get my virtual souvenir for the last day of the year.

We went to D.Z. Akins for lunch afterwards.  I had an omelet. With toast. And coffee.

I dumped baking soda and vinegar down the bathroom sink this morning, but I forgot to put any coloring in.  Oh well!

I finally got fed up with this painting laying around in the garage so I went to Michaels and bought an inexpensive frame.  I had a coupon so it was REALLY inexpensive, exactly in my price range.  I was also able to find a piece of felt with adhesive on it, for a project at work where I'm making a book weight out of a big piece of angle iron I found.

This was painted (water color) by an art teacher at work.  I got it out of the trash can a few years ago, I am depressed to say.  It is much cheerier than the Wyeth Evening At Kuerners that has been up on that wall for decades.

Have a good New Year!

It's Only Wednesday

I thought I would combine three trips today:  Fix two geocaches, buy groceries, and cash in my stamp booklet for the grocery store game.  Thing.

Well, the plan was to park at the grocery store and walk down a few blocks-worth and check on the first cache, which had been reported missing.  Well, street construction was going on, the sidewalk was blocked, and so there was no access.  Plus, I forgot the stamp booklet for the grocery store game. Thing.  So I went to look at the other cache, with the wet log report.  I found the cache OK, but someone had tighten the top so hard that I couldn't open it.  So I took it home to try the Channelock persuaders on it.  Which worked fine.  I made a new log sheet with a tiny dowel glued on so it could be rolled tight to fit into the Bison-type container.  I figured the construction guys would close up shop around sunset, so I headed back to the grocery and parked.  I walked down to the missing cache's spot, but it did indeed seem to be gone.  So I put a new container there. 

I walked back to the vehicle and got the stamp booklet and my grocery list and went inside.  Got my groceries, and picked out my prize.  When I got back to the vehicle I couldn't see it!  Dude, where's my truck!?!?

You may remember I took a similar picture in this parking lot in March 2011

 

Next I drove over to the second cache and placed it back in its spot.  Then I went home

Here is what I picked out when I turned in my stamp booklet, a knife organizer.  So now the knives are all neat and organized.  Not sharp, mind you, but organized!

Why yes, I DID edit the grout lines

 

Oh, I forgot, I mailed the paid bills in on that first trip.  Also balanced the checkbook, but it was November's statement, I was almost a month behind!

Thanks for reading!

On The Rocks

Matt and I went geocaching today.  This was one he found, then he made me find it.  "Thigh level", indeed.  More like eye level to me!  He spotted it after about thirty minutes of rock hopping these boulders.  It was getting pretty desperate!

If you are using Firefox you can install Thumbnail Zoom Plus add-on and just mouseover the image to view it.

Here is a panorama I took from the very spot!  You can see the 52 way way out there on the horizon.

Click on the images to see the BIG PICTURES!

OK, I did some reading of instructions and was able to generate this image with GSAK without have to cut and paste sections into Paint to join them back together.  Shows more of the geocaches found in San Diego County, although it obviously doesn't display the whole county.  Yesterday's image shows more detail, though, you can zoom in closer.

We found eight geocaches today, and saw some very interesting things along way.   We only each stepped in poo once, so that was good.

Thanks for reading!

Monday, Such As It Was...

I did pretty much nothing today.

I got up really late in the morning.  I should say, I got out of bed really late in the morning.  I actually woke up early enough, made oatmeal, and ate it in bed while reading The School For Good And Evil by Soman Chainani.  A really long book, in the four-hundred page area, AND, I found it is a trilogy.  Yikes!  I am a hundred pages in and it is not working for me.  I hear it's gonna be a movie, too.

Anyway, I read till eleven, alternating with periods of sleep.  I finally got out of bed for good and washed the dishes, cleaned the counter, and washed the clothes.  Then I got on the computer for the rest of the day.  Which happening WAY too often.  I'm afraid I am going to develop bedsores.

It rained this evening, which was very pleasant.  The temperature outside is 46 degrees.  I've had the heat on all day.  I was FREEZING for the longest while until I realized the thermostat was set to 65 instead of 70.

I made this image of my geocache finds in the San Diego area by pasting together eleven screenshots from a map generated from a macro in GSAK.

This is a pretty big file, over a MEG!!

Well, that is it for Monday.  Tomorrow is garbage day!

Sunday In University City

I went geocaching in the University City area today.  This was my favorite cache of all the ones I found today.  I have a penchant for pine trees, I guess.

Near one cache I spotted this dead bird. In a basket. I don't know what kind of bird, I didn't look to closely.  Some sort of hawk, I guess. 

I found twelve caches, and didn't find two.  My "career" finds-to-date total is 3,920.  I could probably, maybe, reach my goal of 4,000 this year, but I'm sure something will come up.  Like life, or something.

I am four cache finds short of my total from last year, and my average daily find rate is 2.3674 as of today.  As with the 4,000 goal, it is within the realm of possibility that I might reach 900 finds for the  year.

Ain't this all very fascinating?  Thanks for reading!

Several Days In December

I forget where this is.  It was on December 23rd, which was Wednesday.  Where was I?  Oh, I remember, I was at Damon Lane Park in Rancho San Diego!  Yet again!  This was that pic I posted on FB that should have had Mt. Miguel in the background, but, too much sun!

I decided I needed holiday picture for the FB, so I took these.

I didn't make a thumbnail for this one, so I'm using the thumbnail for the next one.  

If you click on the image/thumbnail above you WILL see a different picture. Sorry for my laziness!

This one is better because you can see the musical tie.  Yes, it plays Christmas songs!

Christmas Day we went to M.'s house to eat and see all the relatives and eat some more!  She is taking care of a bunch of birdhouses until the person they belong to claims them, but it's been several years.  They certainly are prettily arranged!  She has a talent for little scenes like this.

Today, the 26th, I went to the flume trail, or at least a part of it, to find a couple more caches.  It turnes that neither of them have been found since 2013, so I added to my list of  "Lonely" caches that I have found.  This selfie is looking down the flume trail, which is not much of a trail at this point!

Did I mention there were no ticks?  Last time, on this trail, there were ticks.  THOUSANDS of ticks!

Later on I drove to another trail and ended up on a hillside overlooking Lake Jennings.

As I was walking back to the vehicle I got to thinking about stuff, that since I have no one at home waiting on me I don't have to be back at a particular time.  On the other hand, when I DO get home there is no one waiting for me but a cold and quiet place.

By the way, I finished Dead Wake by Erik Larson this morning.  Good book!

Monday On The E.T.

Instead of manning-up and doing my Xmas cards I, well, I, went geocaching.  Out in that place I was at yesterday, except down in the river valley.

First I stopped by the Water Conservation Garden at Cuyamaca College. 'cause it turns out there is a geocache there that I've never noticed.

Down on El Tae Road I came across this little Kitty in a cache.  I am not sure what exactly it is, as the bottom was tape on. But she is a cutie.

Looking for a way to cross the river it struck me that they seem pretty determined to keep people off of this bridge.  Not sure why the intermediary gates are not locked closed too.

Crossing on the old Highway 94 bridge I seem to have acquired a light saber!

I walked about 5.14 miles today, and found ten caches.

Thanks for visiting!

Sunday On Some Hill With No Apparant Name, Mostly

I don't think I posted this picture before.  It is something my mother made, possibly a cell phone case. She made some other things, which I did not take pictures of, all of which are for other people.  Ain't it cute?

The other day on the way to work I almost didn't see a bicycle in the oncoming left-turn lane.  See him there?  He actually DOES have a headlight, but I couldn't see it until he was mostly of the way through the turn.  What struck me, and why I took the photo, was that he is barely even in his lane, like he is inviting a car to come up next to him.  I think that is a very bad idea.

I've taken pictures of these before, I just think they are the cutest boxes.  One wonders how many injuries have resulted from inferior office supplies.

So this is how many books I've read each year since 2011, for those who are interested.

And here are the 2015 stats. I like that Pirate book that is the least popular on  GoodReads, only has nineteen reviews!

So to today, I parked the vehicle and head off to the trail head, where I was greeted by this confusing sign.  "Unauthorized Entry Prohibited", but "Dogs Must Be Leashed".

Also, no vehicles allowed.

Can you see the geocache here?

A panoramic view with the sun blazing over Mt. Miguel.  I was right here when M. called on the phone.

There are some peculiar people who log these surveying monuments (and other stuff) at www.waymarking.com .  I can't even read this one so I am not even going to try.

Looking west with various points of interest marked for your amusement.

I zoomed in a bit for this one, shows the islands a little better.  Still not sure if they are in Mexico, or one is San Clemente island and the other is in Mexico, or maybe it's all just an illusion.

How about this one?  Can you see the cache here?  Took me about 45 minutes to spot.  Well, it took me five minutes to spot it once I had the corrected coordinates in the GPSr!!

I walked about 3.8, oh, let us call it 4 miles.


I found 13 caches today, including one without the GPSr because I had DNFed there in August 2013. The missing cache was replaced, and I spotted the lil' cutie this time!

Thanks for reading!

Out To Viejas

On Friday I had nothing to do, so what I did was clean the book stands.  Four cleans ones here, and one FILTHY one!

Also, it rained a bit on Friday, but thankfully not during the fire alarm (real, but not serious).  Here I have left tracks as I get into the vehicle at the end of the day. Office Holiday Party, here I come!

Saturday I did NOTHING at all, did not even go outside. (Well, I did make pancakes) I was rather chilled, though.  I guess I didn't have the heater up enough.  Sixty-sixty five degrees is freezing for me! I put on a bathrobe, it helped a lot.

Sunday I went out to the Viejas area for some geocaching.  I reconnoitered the Viejas trail head area for a future foray.  Here's a pic from the parking turnout. Looking west towards San Diego, I guess.

Next I headed over to the Viejas Reservation.  I found twenty caches, mostly along Viejas Grade, driving over the hill to Descanso.  At one of them I stumbled down a hill and managed to pierce four of five fingers, one of them being a thumb.  Said thumb bled like a pig, and is STILL sore.  I inferred from previous logbook posts that the offending plant is a Spanish Bayonet, a yucca.

I need 130 more finds to reach my goal of 4,000 "career" caches found, but I doubt very much if I'll get it done before the New Year.

And that was it for geocaching today!

The Weather Underground says it will go down to 36 degrees here tonight.  Yikes!  It's gonna be a chilly week!  I wonder if they got any snow in the Lagunas?


I took this picture of the Xmas Tree this morning, or yesterday, or something.  Who says I don't have any spirit?

That is about it for today.  Thanks for reading!

Not Yet Friday

I keep thinking tomorrow is Friday, which it is, but it is not THE Friday, so...

I went to the geocaching event in Santee, last night, where one could walk around a street-loop and view Christmas decorations.  I signed the log at the event then walked the loop.  The decorations were quite charming, and there were many people out for the evening.

Sadly, I seem to have forgotten to rotate the picture, so just bend your neck a bit.  It is blurry probably because it was pretty low light, and it's ONLY a phone, my goodness!

Before I got to the event I was walking along, crossing the street (in the crosswalk with the walk light on) and had a bit of a shouting match with a driver that didn't think he needed to stop completely when making a right.  Well, that seems to be my experience with drivers in this area while on foot.  When I'm driving they seem to be OK.

I was fooling with the stats on Good Reads and found this interesting.  It seems most of the books I've read since 2011 were published in the last ten years, but there are a few pre-1900 ones, aren't there.  Nice!

That's about it for today!

Saturday

This song seems stuck in my ear the last week...

Cosmo Sheldrake -- Rich

When I was a teen I was quite enthralled with the somewhat risqué (in the British manner) series of movies about St. Trinian's School For Young Ladies.

Battle Song of St. Trianians

I was going to post the lyrics but then I realized they are in video, complete with bouncing ball so you can sing along!

Someone made a new St. Trinian's movie in 2007.  It got a 32% on the Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes. The parent guide is illuminating, i.e. "Alcohol use implied in most scenes."  Well!   Well, really, it is PG-13.


I was thinking that maybe I should pop the ol' kitchen sponge in the microwave to sterilize it, so I looked it up to get the details.  Seems one should nuke the sponge every other week.  Huh.

I went geocaching today in Santee.  Found ten caches, didn't find three.  Found two that I had not been able to find before.  Didn't find one that I had not been able to find before.  Does that all make sense?

I walked about 4.2 miles.  I thought it was farther, 'cause I was kinda tired, but maybe it was all the hills.  There was a bit of up-and-down.  Not as much as Spooky Canyon, though!

I was amazed to see this quarry.  Why?  Because I've been clomping around this area since the late 60s and never noticed it before!  You will no doubt be amazed that I needed to get from where I took the picture to that flat area.  It took a big of figuring how to do it, safely, but I did.

(EDIT: McKoon Quarry)

After getting safely over to the flat area I went down the trail a bit, and took the panorama looking towards eastern Santee, and El Cajon off in the distance.

There was a LOT of graffeti and tagging in the area, mostly of the inane kind, but this was pretty cool.

This panorama of West Sycamore Canyon shows the very last part of the water processing facilities at
Santee Lakes.  Or maybe it's the beginning part?

I guess that is the end of the geocaching part of the program today!


Marker's Mark sends something every Christmas (Unlike Guinness and their towel...), this year they send ear warmers and what I am interpeting as a nose warmer...

And that is truly all!

Even though It is Monday...

...I'm pretty much talking about Sunday.  I got up very early on Sunday morning, luckily, and drove south, yes, south, again, to those two caches I didn't find on Thanksgiving.  I had a hint one from the cache owner, but declined a hint on the second

I found the cache as hinted by the cache owner, right where I had look before. Of course.  I just had to look a deeper, or farther, or something.

The second cache, well, even though the cache owner said they could see it from their vehicle, "chuckling", I didn't spot it.  I had saved the cache info for offline use, to save battery life, a few days before.  This is key.  The hint was "low".  Look at the picture. Does that look low?  In outrage I looked at the hint online.  It said "high"...

Actually, I wasn't even looking at THAT tree all that much, the phone app was a bit flakely here.

After this excitement I found a few more caches in the general area, and gave away the balance of Cam's cigarettes to a homeless-looking guy who asked for a smoke and paid absolutely no attention to me as I looked for a cache near him. Really, I'm staring up into a tree for twenty minutes and it is of no interest to him.  Amazing.

Another cache I found down here was just a camouflaged little plastic pill baggie.  The previous four cachers had logged Did Not Finds.  Possibly because the clue said "magnetic".  Probably the previously missing container WAS magnetic, but this one (a replacement) ain't. So it was fun finding an unsigned log sheet!


The last cache was in Balboa Park.  I've looked for this one before, it's where S. found the ten dollar bill.  I spent at least and hour looking for it, and handled that "log" three times before noticing the container there.  Twice I remember remarking to myself that the stick looked like a likely place for the cache to be affixed, but didn't see it...

Well, that is pretty much all the geo-adventure for the holiday week.  Thanks for reading!

Feels Like Sunday

But it is not.

I did absolutely nothing on Friday, except to finish Winter, by Marissa Meyer, and talk to B. and H. for approximately two hours each. I tried calling B. but the message box was full.

Today I got up early-ish and went geocaching.  It was pleasantly un-hot, but I did get a little sweaty under my jacket on some of the hilly parts.  I found eighteen caches today, and did not find two.

BUT before today, or even yesterday, on Thursday, I, like an obsessed idiot, drove all the way down to whatever that place is called south of Chula Vista to look for two caches that I couldn't find the day before.  Well, I didn't find them again.

I DID find the corner of a one dollar bill, so I guess that is SOMETHING!

M. came by later on in the morning and we went to M.'s (a different M.) house for the family get-together.  It was great seeing everyone again, and there was lots of delicious food.  I made a vow not to overeat and not to over carbohydrate (well, maybe a little...), so I only took a picture of the cranberry sauce.

And the leftovers I got to take home were just as good the next day, too!


Back to today, Saturday. I see many different kinds of birds in my geocaching travels, but I've never seen one of these outside of the San Diego Zoo.

Posed myself in front of this old wagon.  Why so serious?

This "barbecue" stone thing converted to a planter was another cool thing I saw today.

Well, that's it for today.  Thanks for reading!

dgfdg