I know that just about everybody has given up on my blog. I've primarily moved to Facebook. I hate Facebook more than Blogger, but that's a post for another day. Perhaps I will still use Blogger for the intellectual thoughts and Facebook for the Facebook-ish stuff. (Yes, that does imply that most everything on Facebook in non-intelligent.)
Anyway....
To give a little background, I have been asked to do a training at a local high school as to how GPS/Geocaching/Waymarking/etc. can be used in the classroom. (I was specifically asked to teach on Geocaching - which really doesn't hold a lot of value for the general classroom - so I expanded it a little.) Well, the problem is that there are no Geocaches within a mile of the school. So, I went on Sunday to scout out a few locations. I had a couple of containers with me, so I placed some, but I wanted to give some options for my training sessions and so I scouted out a few additional locations where containers could be hidden as well.
When I posted the coordinates where I had hid the containers to the Geocaching web site, it was suggested to me that one of my containers was a little too close to the playground equipment - that people looking for the container might look suspicious. They were right - the container was actually on the playground equipment and I didn't really think about how that might look.
Also, over the weekend, I was informed that one of my geocaches had been raided. Interestingly enough, all that I think was stolen was the log-book. The person that found it put it back together and actually placed it back exactly where it was supposed to go. (I guess the coordinates must be pretty spot-on.)
So, I went out today with a friend to do some caching and also finish placing some caches, do some maintenance and of course move the container from off the playground equipment. Well, adding the log book to the raided cache went well enough - just frustrating that somebody would do something so stupid.
But when we got to the park near the school, things went from bad to worse. When I went to pull the original container off of the playground equipment, it was gone. So, since it was a brand new container, my friend and I did some digging around. As the folks from the Geocaching web site suggested, this got some attention from other people who were watching their kids at the playground. After not too long, we gave up assuming that it was gone. We went to place another cache in a location that I had already scouted out while thinking about where else in the park I could place another container to replace the one from the playground.
Well, we ended up back near the playground at some picnic benches. While we visually scanned the area for a place to hide a container. We noticed that there was a lady that was looking at us kind of funny, but we had done a few odd things since we got to the park - digging around under some playground equipment and then walking to a rock in the middle of a field and walked back, but nothing that I would consider to catch anybody's attention.
So, I finally found a place to hide the container, but we needed to get the GPS coordinates for the location and also place it without this lady really seeing what we were doing, so we sat there a while longer. Finally we were successful. We got in my car, the lady seemed to have moved on - was now talking to somebody on her cell phone, so we looked up a place to go look for a cache and headed off.
About 1/4 mile from the park we passed by a police car. He immediately turns on his lights and flips a U behind us. I roll down my window and wait and the officer asks me to please step out of the car and keep my hands where he can see them. So, after explaining the sport of Geocaching to him, giving him my information, etc. he realizes that it was innocent fun - and also seems a little interested in learning more. We finally head on our way, the officer heads to the park presumably to calm down a lady who had seemingly worked herself into a fairly tight spin.
So, then at home, I'm still sort of processing my day, and I decide to go attempt a quick fix on our bathroom drain, which of course completely busts through - not the tub, just the drain, so we aren't looking at completely replacing the bathtub, thankfully.
Well, thanks to my introvert tendencies added to a flustering day that I am trying to get my head around - my wife is getting increasingly frustrated trying to ask about my dinner preferences - which at that point, I really don't care, but she is convinced will somehow improve my outlook on the world. Of course the only restaurant that I can think of that might do anything near the magic that my sweet wife is hoping for is Benihana's.
So, after spending a lot of money on a very fun and very long dinner, I think I can get my head started working again to get through a new day.