big weekend

Okily dokily, we're here!

Against my better judgment, I decided to come this weekend. My antibiotic treatment is over, although I'm not over what I needed it for, which sucks. But I've gotten used to my body not healing from things that normal people wouldn't have issues with. So I just go on and do what I can. And this weekend, that means doing as much as I can over here on the Wetside!

We had a long hard day getting out, but it finally happened. All in all, everything worked out fine.

Leaving home, in the winter afternoon light:




We're spending the weekend with my brother, in Seattle. I'm laying on the fold out futon with my family scattered about in the living room, listening to the peaceful sounds of sleep. Aaaah. I'm happy to finally be resting, and I hope it will be enough to be bright eyed and bushy tailed at REI at 10am for the Event. I'm excited! The will attend is up to 100, now. Wow. And it sounds like my brother is going to go. He likes REI, and he's interested in the new Garmin Colorado.

We went to the Spaghetti Factory tonight, which was great because I've been meaning to Waymark it for the Noodle category. It hadn't occured to me, but when we were discussing it with Koko last month (who owns the category), she thought it sounded perfect. We also went to one in Tacoma on the way back from the Vancouver CM weekend, and I'll waymark that one as well. Just need to wrap them up!



We ate in the trolley, and even had the employees come and sing happy birthday to the kids (Water Lily turns 14 on February 1, and Kboy turns 11 on February 26).



I'd love to show more of my Spaghetti Factory pictures, especially my bathroom ones. :-D But I'm sleepy tired so I'm calling it a night. I did really like the pictures I took of the inside restaurant details, I was happy with how they came out. I've been to a lot of Spaghetti Factories around the country (and some of the related restaurants in Canada), but I've always loved Seattle's the best. Perhaps I'm biased.

I'll end with my favorite detail photo from this evening:



On the way to my brother's tonight, we were close and so All41 wanted to stop for a minute at my cache, "Still Sleepless in Seattle", to see the houseboats at night. Very peaceful and quiet, although with not a lot of house lights so I wasn't getting the pictures that I would have liked.



While we were there, Water Lily started freaking out because she was hearing some stranges sounds that we didn't hear. She described it like the signals you can use for dogs that are so high pitched you don't really hear them, but just a little. Finally, I heard it too, and realized that it was the sound of the electricity on the high powered lines above us. It would be perfectly quiet, and then, zing! We had a good laugh. I checked to make sure my cache was where it should be and that the logbook was fine, and then I had to go because the family was already in the car waiting.

My family at "Still Sleepless in Seattle":



I'll take lots of pictures tomorrow, and someday I'll be able to get them ready for posting to the blog and cache page. :-p

events

Well, I still haven't given the update for the CM weekend, mainly because I haven't gone through all my pics yet, which is overwhelming me. I'd like to have them to post some to the blog as I'm writing. I'm afraid this is the main reason why I've never really suceeded in blogging. The pictures mess me up every time.

So in the meantime, I'm posting about some upcoming Events. Both happen on the same weekend, which I suppose is a good thing, although after how I've reacted so badly to Vancouver (I've gotten so sick that I'm on antibiotics at the moment, which doesn't seem to be helping yet), I'm a bit afraid of this next big weekend. Frankly, I know I shouldn't go and I don't want to when I think of the fear of being so sick, but then I think of what I'd be missing and I inanely plug ahead.

The first Event is Meet & Greet Groundspeak & Garmin in Seattle, on Saturday 1/26/08. I was so disapointed to miss the unveling in NV, but was happily surpised when they posted this similar Event in Seattle for less than I month later. All41 and I witnessed the first sneak peek wherigo unveiling at Groundspeak in April of 2006, and when we went to Groundspeak last December we got to play with wherigo outside for a bit. So I really want to be there for this official wherigo unveiling. I don't believe that I'll be into wherigo hugely, although I can see it's potential uses, while All41 thinks it's tremendous. But I love anything Groundspeak, so I want to be a part of it all. There are already 70 signed up for it, and if you times that by two, you've got 140 attending, potentially.

I'm just wondering if this guy's going to be there:



The second Event is Floating the Skagit, on Sunday 1/27/08. Here is the GC.com forum thread discussing the Event. My husband is hosting this, which means he took care of the whole boating end, and I've done all the rest of the work. It consumed a good portion of several days to work on the cache page, the forum thread, who had already signed up and who was signing up. I stayed up late, I kept falling asleep on myself while typing no matter what time of day it was. It's sort of a fuzzy memory. The most important thing to me was that I didn't mess something up because I couldn't see through my sleep blurred eyes, or because my brain was smooshy. I'd told 'Tudles that I was done with Events for a while after hosting 3 in a row this fall. So how did I get suckered into this one? Lol. This is our third GeoRafting Event (besides all the other rafting groups we've taken out over the years), so I guess we're old pros. Hopefully it will be a great trip.

It looks like we're planning on staying at my brother Zephyr's for the weekend in Seattle. I'll see what I can drag him to, hopefully at least the Garmin/Groundspeak Event. If I crash after that Event, I can stay at his place on Sunday and rest while everyone goes up to the Skagit for the float, although I really hope that I can go.

Speaking of Events.....here's an interesting factoid: in the past 4 months, (not including the caches I did on the CM), I've been to 7 Events and to 7 caches. Even adding the CM caches (I really don't know how many) at perhaps 25 or 30, that's still a strong leaning over on the Events side, more than usual for me.

phew!

It's taken me until now to post an update. This weekend was so much harder on me than I thought it would be! I've been having a very hard time getting over it.

I'll try to post some info in here very soon.

we're here

Whew! That's one of the hardest trip days that we have had. But we're finally here, and hopefully can get enough sleep to make it in the morning. Bleh!

We've been having a lot of problems setting up my laptop after those evil people ripped it's guts out and replaced them with who-knows-what. As of today, we couldn't download our CM query into our GPS'rs, and since we were getting in late, I was having bad images of the start of the CM without any coords. I couldn't do it through GSAK, or through Mapsource. I knew it was probably a simple thing, but that didn't help me any.

I called Allanon while he was in the middle of the pre-event dinner and the WSGA board meeting, but got his voice mail. Hoping that AndrewRJ had come with him, I called his phone too and also got a voice mail. Fortunately, Andrew called back right away. He had decided to stay home because he has a brand new baby and didn't feel like leaving her yet. We had a nice chat about babies and caching and GPS (new stuff!), and what he thought the problem was with Mapsource. Problem was I was driving over Cascade Mountain passes and didn't have internet for that fix. Then, I got a call back from Allanon. He was busy with meetings, so he passed his phone to Landrover. Even though Landrover was super patient and nice to me, I felt very unintelligent, because even the basic things he was trying to ask me and talk to me about, sounded like Chinese to me. But after a few tries, we got to the point where I understood what I should try to do.

So......finally after all that, I can use Mapsource with GSAK now, and I can download caches into our GPS'rs from either GSAK or Mapsource! What a big load off! The GSAK was a simple checkbox that I had been afraid to check while I was wandering around GSAK on my own earlier. Viola. The Mapsource just needed to be updated to the newest version online. Now I have everything set up.

Thanks, AndrewRJ, Landrover, and Allanon! I don't know what I'd do without my geocaching friends. Thanks for putting up with my fumblings. :-D

Looking forward to tomorrow!

Vancouver CM

It's official. We're going to the Vancouver (WA) Cache Machine. YAY! I've been wanting to go on one for soooooo long. I've gotten down after the past few have come and gone and I haven't been able to go because I wasn't feeling well enough. But somehow it's all worked out for this one. I just hope that I wake up tomorrow morning and can get up and get going.

Our group is going to be All41, me, Water Lily, Kboy and Patudles (All41's mom). We're having some work done on our Subaru right now, so it looks like with a little help from the insurance company, we'll be going in a spiffy Chevy Uplander. Much more room! But it's not allwheel drive, and as I'm looking out the window at all the snow falling out of the sky, I'm a bit nervous. The snow's pretty deep out there. Hopefully the roads down to Vancouver will be ok.

I have this crazy notion that I'll have moments in my CM day where I'll be able to find the internet and post some of my blog in real time. Um, yeah, whatever! Although I will be trying to take it easy as much as possible. That's one of the great things about CM's, even if I only do the super easy ones right next to the car, I'll still get a bunch of caches. In my caching draught, that sounds pretty good! I'm really looking forward to meeting some new people, and seeing some of my friends as well! Hugs!

Anyways, it doesn't matter if I'm blogging live, because I don't have an audience yet. But that would be really cool if I did, and could.

Well, we're leaving really soon, so I should get of the blog. We're picking up the kids from school and heading down to the pre event dinner tonight. It should take about 5 hours to drive there.










Not exactly caching weather!

last half year's stats

I just went over some really quick stats for the past half year (that probably doesn't mean anything to anyone but me). It made me sad to see how little I've been doing, when I used to average a cache every other day. And a whole lot of the caching this past half year seemed to revolve around being out for Dr. visits.

I want to cache all the time, but I've just not been well enough. I feel like I'm not a Geocacher anymore!

I want to resolve to have a better year this year, somehow, with God's help.

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1 Event in December.

3 caches in November (on one trip) - driving home from Thanksgiving, 'Tudles kidnapped me for a couple quickies.

1 Cache and 1 Event in October - (the Cache was) driving home from the Dr. in Yakima.

3 Caches and 2 Events in September (on one trip (except 1 of the events) - after the event for ODragon and co., we did a few Caches.

4 Caches in July (on three trips) - did one while placing my own Cache, 2 while driving to Leavenworth (for family time), 1 coming home from the Dr. in Connell.

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That's 12 Caches in 6 months, an average of 2 a month instead of my usual 15 (?) a month average.

Happy New Year

I'm starting a blog about Geocaching and Waymarking. I have other blogs, and I keep thinking that I should just have this one huge blog and not spread myself out so thin that I don't post to any of them (which will probably happen). But each one is a bit different, and I want to cater to what my audience may want to read about. Some people might love seeing my adventures with Groundspeak, but be utterly bored hearing about me planting bulbs in my yard. Lol.

I'm looking forward to the new year of caching. I will do my best to keep up with my posts. In the meantime, I'll start filling in my past posts as best as I can, probably starting from the beginning.

I'm trying out the little slideshow there on the right of the blog. All the pictures are from my flickr account, from our caching and waymarking over the years.