Up And Down And All Around

I went geocaching this morning.

I may have posted this view before, but a long time ago.  Time for another.  Yes, I went about half way along that dirt road back there.  Which is NOT flat.

I found the cat-themed cache I was looking for and my Hello Kitty coin purse paid a visit.

I selfie using items in the cache was requested, and I complied.

After that I walked most of the way back then headed north up Spring Canyon.  There was ONE cache a mile+ up the canyon.  I was a bit nervous about all the no trespassing signs I had heard about, but the area was clearly defined with fencing and a zillion signs, so no worries there.

I ran into another geocacher and he accompanied me to the cache I was looking for, and I accompanied him to the caches he was looking for.  One was at the top of a BIG hill.  And it turned out he had signed the log before, in fact he was the last finder.  And the e-log he had written was still on his phone, he had forgotten to hit "send".  Sounds like something I would do!

We looked for another cache for him, but didn't find it.  I had found it before but couldn't remember where it was, except I had looked several times for it.  He had too go, so we walked back to the parking lot together.  We had a good time talking all the way, but I was getting pretty tired and my left shoulder had a sore spot.  Having someone to talk to helped ease the walk!

And then I drove home and fell asleep for three hours!

STATS:  approx. 6.6 miles walked, 2 caches found.

Sunday

I am overcome with A.O. (Aesthetic Overload) after visiting the San Diego Museum of Art this afternoon. By the way, don't image search "aesthetic overload" unless you like pictures of bodybuilders.  ANYWAY, thanks to A.N. at work I got a guest pass to see the show Gauguin To Warhol, plus I looked around at the other exhibits.

Being an art dunce I would have profited from the docent tour, and I tagged along a bit, but I was kinda impatient.  I looked a each picture for a while, including the ones that seemed to be a monochrome.  They did not speak to me.  Many others did.  Seeing them in person is certainly MUCH better than a print or book or computer screen.  Especially the big ones.  I recognized many of the names of the artists having inputted all the data for all them art prints we have in the library.

I looked at other parts of the museum, too.  There's a lot of interesting stuff, but you need a bit of preparation to appreciate it.  Probably should take it all in in small chunks!

The one thing I remember most of all was the Modigliani painting Young Servant Girl, and the docent explaining why the eyes are blank, which I never noticed before.

Looking out the window at the stairs I noticed there was construction going on behind the museum. Is that the zoo?   It is!  That is going to be the new zoo employee parking structure.

 There were a whole bunch of hummingbird feeders, too, but no hummingbirds.

Afterwards I should have gone up in the California Tower, but I shall leave that for another day.

OF COURSE there was geocaching involved!  A new cache was published last night, I went for it this morning, and did not find it.  Darn, I would have been first!  Then I drove to Missing Valley and found two caches I couldn't get yesterday.  And finally, I scooted over to Balboa Park.  I did a puzzle cache that involved listening to a podcast tour of Balboa Park, noting various numbers along the way, and assembling those numbers into coordinates at the end.  And then I couldn't find the cache.  Well, eventually I did, but it took twenty minutes and a change of perspective to find the little rascal.  But I felt pretty good because the last cacher, someone with over 13,000 finds,  didn't find it at all.

There was another puzzle cache I tried, but I didn't get that one.  But I did find an Angry Shark LEGO Man!

Angry Shark LEGO Man is attached to a Hello Kitty LEGO (or knockoff) car I found at work. Maybe that is why he is angry?

I did the caches before I went to the art museum as it did not open until noon.  So I spent about two hours there, then I headed to El Cajon to take another look at that new cache that Mr. Wonderful did not find this morning.  Oh, and it had been found three times after I failed.  Well, I spotted it THIS time in just a few minutes.  Maybe it helped to have the sun out.

I guess that is all, tomorrow is a work day!

Back To Work

But first, stuff from days past:

On Tuesday I notice a strap disappearing down a conduit and felt compelled to make a movie of it.  Here it is:  LINK

I took this picture of a pepper growing in one of them hanging pots.  Yesterday, it was, Wednesday.  It's starting to shrivel up.  They get all black when finished shriveling.  I'm quite afraid of them, actually.

Also, one of them little roses blooms from the bush in the pot.

And also yesterday, the tree guys came to trim the tree/bushes growing over and on to the neighbor's house and garage.  Heck, I didn't even know there WAS a palm tree back there.  And what happened to the giant pine trees that use to be back behind the neighbor's house?  Yikes!

Yesterday was the MRI.  Thanks to Valium, a warm blanket, and an eye mask I was able to survive the experience.  It really wasn't any worse than the thirty-some CT-scans I've had.  Although that may be the Valium speaking!  And certainly MUCH nicer than a CT-scan guided biopsy!  The results were negative as far as my spine, just the usual old-age stuff.  No new tumors. just the same ones as before.  I did notice the other day that I can walk on my heels now, so that seems to be improving.


And that brings us to today, Thursday, in which nothing much happened at all, except I finished reading The Girl Who Played With Fire, which I enjoyed very much!

Back In Tierrasanta

FRIDAY

But first:  The inside of one of the electrical cabinets outside the library door. Later an electrical workman got inside the cabinet with an air hose.  I guess he was blowing through a plastic line to pull through a rope to pull the wires through the pipe later? 

SUNDAY

And now today.  Yes, I went BACK to Tierrasanta to try to get the caches in and around South Rueda Canyon.  After several wrongs turns and some backtracking I ended up at this spot under a spreading oak tree, feeling quite at peace in my semi-secret spot.

The next cache, due to poor planning on my part, required a climb six hundred feet up a trail (distance, not elevation). I COULD have driven to a trailhead a short distance away from it. Oh well, I needed the exercise!  The red arrow shows where my vehicle was parked, across the canyon.

The cache here was extremely difficult to get to, and there were bees nearby, but I made the find.  One wonders how this car ended up here, though.

I think I may have misunderstood this cache, I thought this was a hat I had to put on. I guess it's REALLY Hermione's beaded (beaded?) bag.

First panorama from the heights of "Hermione's Hill".

Second panorama from the tippy-top of "Hermione's Hill". My personal favorite!

The last cache was beyond an "environmental" No Trespassing sign, so I drove around to the other end of the trail to see if that end was closed off.  It was not.  There is some suspicion on my part that the forbidding sign is fake, I read some mention of a crabby resident who blocks the trail with barbed wire and signs because, well, who knows why.

This seems, on first thought, an inappropriate container to use in a Tierrasanta canyon, but if you don't think about dead kids it's pretty hilarious.  And dry, that is one waterproof container!

I've seen ammo boxes painted in various obviously un-military colors and still be cammoed, maybe this one could have been painted tree color. 

The last cache was extremely hard to get to. After driving to a park I had to go to a canyon bottom and back out again, bushwhacking all the way. Practically.  And a short distance was through pampas grass, which might be better named sawgrass, except there is already something name sawgrass.  I found a LOT of softballs (Farb Middle is nearby), some new, some old, and a soccer ball.  Left them all there.  Found a flying disk.  Brought it out and left it at the park.  And I found this piggy bank!

STATISTICS

I found nine caches today.  I walked a hair over four miles.  As far as elevations, the pedometer program says the following.

Segment One:  Four hundred feet down, and four hundred feet up (oddly enough). Felt like a lot more to me!

Segment Two:  One hundred and fifty feet down and one hundred fifty feet up.  Sounds correct.

Segment Three:  Sixty feet down and sixty feet up.  Oh, come on, I demand a recount!

I seem to be up to 3,129 caches found, wth 65 of those finds this year.  My average for this year is 3.4 caches per day, but THAT wont' last long!

Thanks for reading!

Saturday Morning Around The Towne

I got up at 5:30 to eat breakfast, etc., and got on the road by 7:30, because, I was READING, man!  I was reading Honey Baby Sweetheart by Deb Caletti, a pretty good book, a pretty EXCELLENT book for teens, but maybe a tad too many curse words for middle school, not that they haven't heard them before, I am sure.

I gassed up the vehicle and headed over to Tierrasanta.  I had solved three puzzle caches and one of them was in the island "holy land".

The third cache I found today had a LEGO theme, and we were requested to pose the LEGO folk in the cache, which I did.  I'm not sure who that is on the podium with me, but she looks a lot like Brooke Shields, don't you think?

After finding twelve caches in Tierrasanta I headed across two freeways to Kearny Mesa north.  This is about as north as one can to, at this point, due to a fence on the left marked "Government Property".  Not sure what these "rails" are for.  Looking east to the 163 freeway.

Now looking west, which would have been amusing if I had shot the back of my head, the rails seem to lead directly to that building. Hmmmmm.

After finding THAT cache I drove to another nearby spot and headed for ANOTHER cache, each being a puzzle that I had solved.  Which means they were EASY puzzles!  I am quite near the 52 here.  Someone mentioned that this is probably old dump land, and I suspect they are correct, unless normal land had vents coming out of it.

Walking away from that cache I found what can only be an art installation, which I dubbed Three Big Combs With Toothbrush (Travel)

I also saw this ham radio antenna on a nearby roof.  EDIT: It's the Al Bahr Shrine ham radio club station.

On the way home I stopped by the San Diego River and found a cache that eluded me last time even though I spent an hour looking.  This time I found it in thirty seconds.  I found THREE caches today that I had DNFed (Did Not Find) before, and found them all quickly.

So here we see some San Diego River water, a rare sight.

And that was about it for today.  Not a lot of walking, but a bit, and sixteen caches found, Three of them puzzles and one multi-cache, that LEGO one.

What will tomorrow bring?

Moving Day At The Library

But not for us!

The crane came this morning to move the stuff on to the pad in front of the library.

I had to get out of the library while the crane was over it, just in case...

I wore my yellow hard hat during the whole operation, but no pics of THAT!

Closer and closer it gets.

The guys said it weighed six thousand pounds.

This is the second of three items.

I think the one above was zoomed in a bit.

It's getting there!

And they are guiding it into place.

This is the last of the three cabinets, it is somewhat smaller.

And here is the movie of that last piece coming in, all 400 MB worth!

The Library: Moving Day -- The Movie!


And that is all for today!

The View This Monday

The View this morning:

The View this afternoon:

That is all.

Big Bump Saturday

I got a big bump on my lip.  What's up with that?  Is it related to the chocolate I ate yesterday?  I know not...

Anyway, yesterday I took a picture of the progress on the slap in front of the Library-In-Exile.  They just poured some sidewalk over there by that building, and the mini-slab on top of the big slab.  The big black fence posts are in place, and after I took the picture, in the later afternoon, they put asphalt sidewalk all around the big slab.  It was quite smelly.  I was quite sneezy all day, was it because of dust or am I coming down with something.  Again, I know not.''

Oh, the pic... Here!

Now that was yesterday, Friday, and today is Saturday.  I went geocaching in Tierrasanta a bit, then over to HRO to buy a 2 Meter SWR/Watt meter.  A CHEAP meter, mind you, not one of them expensive Bird ones!  You will note that the prices in the chart (in the link) are for the elements that you plug in to determine the range of the meter. Only.  The price of the meter itself is on the upper-left of the page.

These three pictures are of an area in Clairemont Mesa.  I was on the wrong side of this chasm but managed to find a safe place to cross.

These three pictures are quite large, file size-wise, but they look better bigger, so if you have the bandwidth be sure to click on them!

It's like a mini Grand Canyon!

That is some healthy-looking water there!

The last cache I found today was at Walmart, then I went to Fry's to get some battery holders but they only had AAA size, can you  believe it?  I got one of those, but I really wanted another AA holder.

I looked around at other stuff there (they have real records!) but nothing really grabbed me, so I paid for my 99¢ item and left for home.  A few drops of rain spatter the windshield on the drive, but otherwise it was fine.

I found eleven caches today, and did not DNF (Did Not Find) any.

And that is it for Saturday, I guess!

Pants & Lamps. And Socks!

Yesterday (Tuesday) I may have forgotten to mention I wore my new BLUE (not BLACK!) Dickies to work.   Putting them on I noticed there were extra seams on the legs, turns out they have reinforced knees.  So they look kinda odd.



Today I wore the last of the Christmas socks.  Here posed with the lights in the window, which are still on every night!

And here just, uh, there. On the couch.  Choose your favorite, but keep it to yourself.

Today, Thursday, I went to Home Depot after work to get a couple of LED light bulbs, one to replace a flickering CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamp) and one for a spare.  I hope I get 9 bucks worth of use out of each one, I was quite disappointed in the life of the CFL.


That is about all I got for today. Thanks for reading!

Garbage Day (Tuesday)

A spectacular morning sunrise, among other things, lent an auspicious air to...where am I going with this?

Socks, it is day two of Christmas Socks!

Well!

I bought an Icom IC-V80 Sport HT a number of months ago.  Today I FINALLY managed to program it properly. A period of clarity, of serendipity, ensued, and I understood all.  Or at least enough to program in six repeater frequencies INCLUDING the accursed PL (Private Line) tone everyone seems to have started using since I was last on the air a couple of decades ago.  I kerchunked every repeater and they all worked. If only I had the nerve to actually talk to someone!

We had a fire alarm at work today.  I mean, that is what I heard later, because I did not hear the alarm.  In fact I walked nearly all the way across campus to use the "facilities" and back again to find out everyone had evacuated.  Before I even started my trek.  No wonder it was so quiet!  So much for the SAR (Search And Rescue) team I am on!  And even later I found that I was not the only one not to hear an alarm.  In the late afternoon the alarm guys  did a test.  I heard that one!

I shredded a bunch of stuff last night.

I took out the garbage last night.

I postponed my jury duty till summer, did I mention that?

I ordered a bunch of books (five), one of which is a preorder. To save shipping they will all come together, in a month or so.

I been taking care of business!

And that IS all I got for now!

Not Too Much

New socks for Christmas, the first of three pair to adorn my tootsies!  And in the background, Chrissy Russo returns to do the weather on Fox 5!

The slab was poured over the holiday, but it looks like a little more might be poured towards the left. This is right outside the Library-In-Exile door, of course.

Seems an odd place to install a satellite dish.

Must be a slow news day, that is all I got!

Oh, I postponed my jury duty till the summer.

Sunday PM

I've mentioned some of this stuff to several people in several places today...

I was awakened early this morning by the need to use the facilities.  I check my email and found a new geocache had popped into being nearby.  So I made some oatmeal and went for the cache.  Got to the parking spot at around 5:20 AM, ate the oatmeal, then headed across the street to a small field, where I found the quite easily, and so was First To Find. w00t!

When I got home I found, after crossing the carpet, that my shoes were wet and muddy.  Although not as muddy as they were before I crossed the carpet.

I also found one of my new pens, with the orange tape, was missing.  Later I checked the cache log and found the the Second To Find had also found my pen.  I email him to say he could keep it, as a sort of consolatory prize for being second.  And he emailed by his thanks.

I made a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, then I fell into some sort of grease-induced coma for a couple of hours.  Or maybe I was just sleepy after being up so early!

Later I scrubbed the kitchen sink with cleanser.  Didn't help as much as I would have liked, though.  I emptied the trash, then I played around with Desktop Tower Defense for a while.

I went through all the piles of paper here and there, sorting them a little.  There is a big pile to be shredded, and the trash is full.  I found four Christmas cards from 2013 that I had never opened.

I did not find the Albertson's free kitchenware stamp booklet that MUST be around here somewhere, and there are but three more days to redeem them.  I have a bad feeling I'm gonna miss this one, must like I did the one last year at this time.  It's a conspiracy, I am sure!

It's Saturday Part Deaux

We went out to Oakoasis Preserve this afternoon.  M. and M. to look at plants, mostly, and me to goecache, mostly.  We saw a bunch of interesting stuff, like an old well and a rusted bed springs, and later a rusted bed frame. Oh, and an old barbecue grill!

Here we are at the last cache, nearly, clambering over big boulders.

We hiked three miles today, and found five caches.  I have an average of 5.5 caches found per day for 2015.  I'm sure THAT won't last long!

It's Saturday!

I still haven't done my statistics, but I did do some other stuff this morning.  I washed some clothes.  I folded socks and undies and pants that have been sitting out for weeks, being reused and rewashed.  I spent a LOT of time looking for one missing sock, a quite expensive hiking sock, one of a pair.  Could not find it ANYWHERE.  So I had to wash the clothes to get a clean pair of hiking socks.  I finally got dressed and found the sock in the sleeve of the shirt I was planning to wear today.  A shirt I had checked for errant socks.  But not in the sleeve!

I washed all the dishes, not that there were piles.  And I cleaned the dried mud out of my hiking shoes.

And that is about it for this morning.

P.S.  Preliminary accounting shows 83 books read this year (2014), down from 92 last year (2013).

The Second Day Of The New Year

I did not do anything today that I thought I would do, but I did some other stuff.

I went to the Walmart to look for some Dickies as they are the closest store with Dickies.  I looked and looked and looked and found only ONE pair in my size that was in my color, which is black.  I saw one pair in blue and, as much as I hate blue pants, bought them.

I also bought some cargo shorts.  My previous second pair just wore out in the butt, and I was embarrassing, or maybe embareassing, my son when we went out.

I walked through the whole store looking at stuff.  They had orange match containers for a buck, those make good geocaches.  I bought three.

After that I went to a local DIY store to look around for a wooden ball or SOMETHING I could use for a walking stick handle, but found nothing.  I bought two electrical outlets to replace a couple at home.

When I got home I worked on the outlets.  First I turned off the breaker. Then I tested the outlets to make sure they are REALLY off.

I removed the cover from the first receptacle, removed the two screws holding it to the box and pulled it out a little, exposing the screws on the side.  I loosened the screw for the neutral and the hot, noting the the neutral wire was wrapped the wrong way around the screw.  Who does that?  I took a picture but it was extremely ugly so I deleted it. 

It was rather dark so I put on my headlamp, which helped a lot, but my bifocals made it hard to focus, and the darn wires just wouldn't go back  around the screws, so there was much cursing involved before the would go back.  Finally I got the whole mess back in the wall.

On to outlet two!

Took out the screw holding the outlet cover on.  Then I went out to the garage to get my LARGE BLADE KNIFE (like a Stanley utility knife except a different brand) to slit the paint holding the cover to the wall.  Grrrr!

Then I pulled the outlet cover, and part of the outlet came with it!  Not good!

Lookie there, the whole front of the outlet came off!

Well, I took the outlet out, barely, has this one had about an inch of slack.  Not Code, people!

There was much cursing here, too, the wires being even more obstinate!  This outlet had four wires, so there were two more wires to curse.  And again one of the so-called neutrals was wrapped the wrong way around its screw.

Finally I got everything buttoned up, switched the breaker back on, and plugged in the tester. Looks good!

THE END