Tag: GeoCaching

Geocaching Wednesday

Well, Wednesday used to be date night for Laurie and I, but with the new semester starting, we’ve moved it to Friday night now.
And so Monday and Wednesday night’s I’m pretty much on my own from 6:30 to 9:30.
I went out and bought a kickstand and water cage for my bike after dinner and installed them both fairly easily.
Afterwards I found a new geocaching trick I’ll share in the next post.
I grabbed some new coordinates and headed out for an evening hunt and ride.
As far as workouts go – it was good.
As far as geocaching goes – I’d give it an C.
My first cache was located at the Oncor (TXU) facility down the road from us. I rode by the first time to scope it out and then pulled into the parking lot to check my coordinates. Luckily I had my bike and water container with me because shortly after stopping a security guard came around the corner to find out what was going on.
I just played everything off and said I was taking a break from my bike ride and checking my route distance on my GPS unit. So much for that cache.
The next cache was located at SAGU. I made a trip around the dorm it was located by and students kept coming in and out and in and out. I figured I’d better wait till next time when the campus is less busy – would have had a lot more luck three weeks ago before class started.
My third and final cache was at a nearby alternative school. Being almost 9 p.m. it was getting dark and as I rode around the campus I figured my chances of finding the cache in the dark were probably a lot less than being stopped by a local police officer or school security.
So I wrapped my hunt up and headed back home.
Now it’s time to get a shower and head to bed.

Wait! I almost forgot – our latest cache is now published, so search, hunt and find. Enjoy!

Tonight

a. My Life is gone to class – starting Micro-Biology tonight
b. After dinner I’ve had the house to myself and The Dog
c. Uploaded the encounter podcasts
d. Repaired and returned our geocache to it’s original location – what once was lost is now found
e. Hid another geocache in the Waxahachie area (it’s not posted yet but you can look for it at: N 32°23.228 W 096°51.176)
f. Took The Dog to play in the park
g. Came home and updated the geocache website while The Dog fell sound asleep under our bed

Re: Keeping it weird

Just to add to the weirdness of this weekend, our Internet went down last Sunday and since that time we haven’t been able to connect Laurie’s OS X laptop to the Wi-Fi network. I’ve been battling it all week long.
Finally she said, “Let’s just go buy another router.”
So we did along with a plunger for our upstairs toilet that hasn’t been working right since the city crews started working on the nearby waterline.
After our stop at Target we ran by the Waxahachie Chamber of Commerce building to check on the cache we hid there a month or so ago. And as luck would have it – it was muggled. Stolen or moved.
We had a cache we’ve been waiting to hide for a while and thought about replacing the first one with the new container but with the luck we’ve been having we figured we’d better wait. No since in getting something else stolen.
After we arrived home – a little frustrated we were able to get the water flowing in our tub and toilet again and I started working on the new wi-fi router. The software that came with the package kept giving me errors left and right.
It was not the news I wanted to see/hear.
I started to do a manual install and then come more rains and power outages. Wonderful.
Luckily though our luck changed and I was able to get the wi-fi router setup correctly before I had to leave for a small group meeting.
Just another day at Casa de Blundell.

Lazy weekend at Casa de Blundell

Well Laurie and I enjoyed a great fairly lazy weekend the past few days.
Jen and Jed came down from Dallas Friday night and joined us for some fajitas and margaritas at Campuzanos. Doesn’t get much better than that.
We came back to our place for a while and enjoyed some hot apple pie and vanilla ice cream while they looked at our wedding and honeymoon pics.
We crashed around 10 or so, shortly after they left.

I don’t think either of us were out of bed till after 11 a.m. the next morning. I woke up a couple times after 8 a.m. but said there’s no way I’m getting out of bed today unless I have to.
Finally around 1 p.m. or so we spent a couple hours geocaching around Waxahachie.

The batteries on our GPS unit were going bad so we struggled to keep it alive long enough to get two caches in.
On our hunt we were the first to find one cache and also spent some time looking at homes in two of the neighborhoods near the caches we found.
We grabbed some Chick-Fil-A on the way home and then jumped in the pool for an hour or so.

After swimming, our friends Amy and Josh came down from Dallas and joined us for some more Mexican food at Don Jose’s Mexicant Restaran (yes – that’s really how it’s spelled on their sign :-)).
Josh was actually one of the few people this weekend to notice my “psuedo-beard” (or at least make mention of it).

After breaking out with poison ivy in a few places on my face this week I thought it would be best to not shave those areas directly, so rather than keeping my gottee and pretty scraggly face, I just decided to trim it all on Saturday afternoon and make it a lot closer to the same length.
The jury’s still out. I’m not a fan and Laurie said she’s still trying to make up her mind about it as well.

Either way, after dinner we headed over to the Texas Theater to watch Shari and Smiley and their improv group, After Hours Improv.
They had a great show with over 130 people in attendance. If you think about it, do say a prayer for them. They got some bad news after the show regarding their plans for the next year or so.

Amy and Josh came back to Casa de Blundell after the show and looked at our wedding pics, as well as a photo album Laurie put together for them of pics we took at their wedding in June.
Sleep came soon after they left as well.

We wrapped the weekend up with church on Sunday morning, where Brian talked on the context of Christianity and how so often we view Christianity out of it’s intended context – but inside it’s proper context it can be a beautiful thing.
We came home, enjoyed some homemade pizzas and then Laurie spent the rest of the day studying for a skills test she has to take for work today.

While she studied I uploaded the podcast for the week, did a couple loads of laundry and took a nice nap.
Around 9 p.m. or so I started getting a little stir crazy and after our Internet went down (for some unknown, frustrating reason) I spent the rest of my evening wasting time playing with our camera and coming up with new Myspace angle photos.

I also did a goofy animation with our camera.
stairs.gif
Now I just need to extend it by five minutes or so and add music from The White Stripes “The Hardest Button to Button”

So there you have it – a photographic recap (somewhat) of a lazy weekend at Casa de Blundell.
For more entertaining stories, be sure and drop by and read Brandi’s recaps of Summer Camp.

Get a hobby

Looking to find more energy in your day, Lifehacker suggests getting a hobby.

All work and no play do indeed make Jack and Jill a wee bit dull – and it also has quite an effect on your energy level. If you carve some time out of your life for something you look forward to, whether that be swimming, quilting, volunteering, etc., you’ll find that you have something to look forward to when the drudgery gets you down.

Lifehacker points to a post by Life is a Journal, which highlights five reasons why hobbies help give you more energy.
I know for a fact that the day seems to go by faster and I don’t get down as much when I know I’m planning to go geocaching or work on a new video for church.

Change your Google route

Now this is just too cool…
From Lifehacker:

Don’t like the driving route Google Maps doled out to you? Now you can change the driving directions by grabbing the blue route line and dragging it to create a new destination point, which will in turn create a new route.
As you drag your new destination point, the route changes on the fly to give you an idea of how your new point will change your route. It’s always been a little annoying—especially when you want to send a map to another person—when you know the default directions don’t highlight the best route, so this excellent and easy-to-use feature will certainly come in useful. To undo your changes, just right-click the new destination point and select “Remove this destination.”

Now if I could just get the map to import into my handheld GPS unit I’d be in absolute heaven.

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