Time Changes Everything

We re-watched the second X-Files movie (I Want To Believe) the other day. We went to see it in the theaters last July when it came out and in spite of a few flaws thought it was pretty good. With our poor showing in finishing recent Netflix selections I bumped this to the top of the queue. Well, on second watching, the few flaws seemed to have multiplied.

In preparation for the third season of TDTV2 this coming Sunday, this past Sunday we started to re-watch season 2 of Mad Men. after about 4 episodes we agreed that it seemed to be moving too slow. It wasn’t bad by any means, but we didn’t feel compelled to watch the rest of the season’s episodes. Hopefully the new season will rekindle the love.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 332

I Need A Push

A man and his wife were awakened at 3:00 am by a loud pounding on the door. The man gets up and goes to the door where a drunken stranger, standing in the pouring rain, is asking for a push.

“Not a chance,” says the husband, “it is 3:00 in the morning!” He slams the door and returns to bed.

“Who was that?” asked his wife.

“Just some drunk guy asking for a push,” he answers.

“Did you help him?” she asks.

“No, I did not, it is 3:00 in the morning and it is pouring rain out there!”

“Well, you have a short memory,” says his wife. “Can”t you remember about three months ago when we broke down, and those two guys helped us? I think you should help him, and you should be ashamed of yourself!”

The man does as he is told, gets dressed, and goes out into the pounding rain.

He calls out into the dark, “Hello, are you still there?”

“Yes,” comes back the answer.

“Do you still need a push?” calls out the husband.

“Yes, please!” comes the reply from the dark.

“Where are you?” asks the husband.

“Over here on the swing,” replied the drunk.

I Thought It Was OK

I received a couple of emails this evening that they are disabling a couple of my geocaches in Hitchcock Woods. I’m not the only one either, there were two other caches that got the same treatment.

The email cited a Hitchcock Woods Foundation rule that there only be three caches in the Woods. At the Aiken Horse Show this past spring I spoke to the Woods Superintendent and he knew of the rule. When I told him that there were already six or seven in place, he shrugged and said he didn’t mind and felt that there could even be more. He wants the woods to be used and geocaching was a good use. His only concern was that when they do controlled burns some caches could get ruined in the process. With out a direct denial that I couldn’t place any more caches in the Woods, I took that as permission to go ahead and do it, but don’t blame him if they got torched.

Cool I thought, as Captain Barbossa said, “The code is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.”

Well, as it turns out in this case, the rules were just that, rules.

I’m saddened by this development because there are 2,000 acres of forest with plenty of room for more than just 3 caches, but the Woods are the property of the Hitchcock Foundation and they have the right to set rules and limits on the use of their land.

By my count there are currently eleven caches in the woods (my four, plus seven more.) So far there have only been 4 disabled (2 of mine), I hope this is done fairly, so four more are disabled, leaving only three. And the three that stay should be the 3 oldest, even though this means all 4 of the caches I’ve placed have to come out.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 328

Eleven For Eleven

Donna has had her eye on a caching series called Color Code for awhile that is in North Augusta. It is a group of nine micro sized containers, each having a cute title that includes a color name. On the first page of the log of each of them is a word you need to write down. When you find all of the caches those words are used to help you locate a large mystery cache somewhere else in the city.

What started this morning as a simple trip to Georgia to buy a Mega Millions lottery ticket turned into a 4 hour, 100 mile cache-a-thon. It might have been shorter in both time and distance had we planned to do the whole thing, because we would have mapped them out, but it all started as, “Let’s try one or two of these and see how we do.” Then went to, “Hey, that was fun, let’s do another.” To, “Keep going.” To, “Let’s just finish these nine and do the final one another day.” All the way to, “It is only a two mile walk.”

The micro series and the bonus cache gave us ten for the day and it was time past time to go get some lunch, so we started back towards the car. Part way there I serendipitously looked down at the GPSr. Yikes! There’s a little treasure chest looking thing right on the screen near here. Fired up the PDA, read the description, peeked at the clue and proceeded to look about. Found it.

In a totally unrelated note, Big Papi clears the air (in his head) by holding press conference today in New York to explain about his testing positive for steroids in 2003. His answer stuns the world, “I don’t know how it happened.” Mr. Clean swears he didn’t take any steroids, but he might not have been too careful about the supplements he was taking. His teammates, in a stunning show of support, go out and are nearly no-hit against the Yankees. They end up with a whopping total of 4 singles and lose the game 5-0, dropping 5-1/2 games behind the MFY in the AL East.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 327

Wonder Where My Wonder Bread Went?

Now that Hats Off To Caching in SC is in the field, and found, it is time to think about hiding another. My new favorite caching inspiration, Renzo Tobias, has second puzzle for a mystery cache on his site that I think I might imitate called Grocery List. He used it on a cache called Food Glorious Food and it has a way of checking if your coordinates are correct, so this way we would know if the answers we come up with are right and then we can build our own version.

As usual when we went through the questions, I got some right off, Donna got some quickly and we struggled over a couple. Tonight we did our weekly grocery shopping and as well as picking up the stuff we needed, we shopped for the items we solved for on Renzo’s grocery list to find out what number the given ingredient was, so we could solve the puzzle.

Kroger didn’t carry our answer to clue ‘C’: Not a cracker nor will it help change a tire. But a visit to the Cracker Jack’s web site told me that soy lecithin was ingredient number 9.

Clue ‘H’ reads: Curiously the red, blue, and yellow spots make us hand over extra dough? Kroger also doesn’t stock Wonder Bread, so if you are out shopping and your local store carries WB leave the ingredient number niacin is in the comments.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 326