wtf
It took five years to get my 100th cache.

It took five weeks after that to reach 150, including sprained ankle downtime.

I say 200 by the end of August.

Actually, I got a lot of shit coming up on the forthcoming weekends, so that might be a little too high for me to reach. We'll see. Backups are for the weak.
I still don't have my hard drive's data recovered. I know for a fact that the data is still intact. I just haven't been able to find a piece of freeware that will get it all back. :P

It's kinda weird, because in a sense, it doesn't really bother me that I don't have access to all of my crap. All I really miss is my old emails and IM logs and my music (it's really quiet without music). Everything else I can either reinstall or find again. So I haven't really put much effort in getting up and running 100% yet. I think I'm just happy knowing that everything is fine, not gone forever.

Worst case scenario, it looks like I'm gonna have to shell out $50 to be in working order again. I guess that ain't much considering how much of my life has been tied to my hard drive. But since I just bought a new hard drive and new frisbee discs (arriving Wednesday!) and other miscellaneous expenses, it may have to wait a minute.

Funny that I say that, because I do have $50 to spare right now. :P I think I'm just stubborn; believing I can do it for cheaper, if not free. Actually, I can do it for free, but I'm not a big fan of open source command line-based interfaces. Ick.

On the plus side, my left foot is in near mint condition. "The price is wrong, Bitch!"
Played another sport for the first time yesterday: golf. That's two new sports in one week!

A group of four of us went out to Peterborough, NH to test our skills at the Monadnock Country Club's 9-hole extravaganza they have going on there. Three of us have never played golf before, and the fourth has played a little bit. Needless to say, none of us parred anything, but it was still a fun time.

There's not really much for me to say about the experience. There were a lot of awesome "you had to be there" type of moments. The best moment was probably when one of us -- the one who would frequently put too much power behind his shots and just skyrocket the ball about 30 yards more than he was aiming for -- was trying to chip it onto the green of the 9th hole. He overshot the green (not surprisingly) and the golf ball hit the granite tee marker for the 6th hole, and the ball ricocheted backwards and onto the green. It was pimp.

We did ok for our first time playing. I had a few decent shots, but I seemed to get retarded on the even numbered holes, whiffing each shot about eight times in a row before getting the ball to move forward ten yards. I can't get the damn thing airborne too often, or for long. The mechanics are awkward.

This is an activity we'll probably be doing every other week. I don't think I'm gonna invest in a set of clubs any time soon, but I don't mind dropping the 10-20 bucks every now and then for a couple hours of amusement.

Later, there may be a video of all of us attempting to Happy Gilmore drive the ball into the stratosphere, but since we all failed miserably at attempting to make contact with the ball (it looks a lot easier in the movies!), it may or may not be worth sharing with the world. We'll see. Tuesday Funnies
Almost forgot!

Shopping

A woman goes into Wal-Mart to buy a rod and reel for her grandson's birthday.

She doesn't know which one to get so she just grabs one and goes over to the counter.A Wal-Mart associate is standing there wearing dark shades. She says, "Excuse me, sir. Can you tell me anything about this rod and reel?" He says, "Ma'am, I'm completely blind; but if you'll drop it on the counter, I can tell you everything you need to know about it from the sound it makes. She doesn't believe him but drops it on the counter anyway.

He says, "That's a six-foot Shakespeare graphite rod with a Zebco 404 reel and 10-pound Test line. It's a good all around combination; and it's on sale this week for only $20.00." She says, "It's amazing that you can tell all that just by the sound of it dropping on the counter. I'll take it!"

As she opens her purse, her credit card drops on the floor."Oh, that sounds like a Master Card," he says. She bends down to pick it up and accidentally farts. At first she is really embarrassed, but then quickly realizes there is no way the blind clerk could tell it was her and not someone else nearby. Being blind, he wouldn't know that she is the only person around. The man rings up the sale and says, "That'll be $34.50 please."

The woman is totally confused by this and asks, "Didn't you tell me it was on sale for $20.00? How did you get $34.50?" He replies, "Yes, Ma'am. The rod and reel is $20.00, the Duck Call is $11.00 and the Catfish Bait is $3.50."

"I just got that. A poop joke? That's real creative, Lois." Hole #10 can go to hell.
The PC is still not in order, but that's because I've been gone all day. Maybe tomorrow I'll have my shit together.

After work today, I went out to play frisbee golf on the free course at Tully Lake in Royalston, MA. That was an interesting time. My coworker friend and I have never done it before. We play frisbee all the time during our lunch break. At some point, I must have mentioned disc golf to him, and that piqued his interest and he purchased a 7-disc bundle online. Today, we finally got to put those discs to work.

The rules are pretty much the same as golf: get the disc into the basket. The less throws it takes you, the better. The biggest differences between the two sports wasn't the rules or the equipment. It was the course itself. Each frisbee hole ranged from 200 feet to nearly 500 feet, and they were all par 3's and 4's. Also, you have to throw around trees; there are no fairways. A lot of the holes were essentially winding hiking trails with trees all over the place and a basket you can't see from the tee. We lost count as to how many trees we've hit that set us back a stroke.

The discs also have cool names. None of this 9-iron or 7-wood bullshit. We were whipping around "the archangel," "the valkyrie," "the wraith," and "the rhyno," just to name a few.

The golf frisbees are weird, too. The "drivers" are thin and weighted away from the center, and (for the right-hander) always started going right and then hooking left. Way left. We haven't really figured out how the hell you're supposed to throw them so they go perfectly straight. Or keep going right, for that matter. We'll have to work on that.

Being our first time out on the course, we were way over par on every hole. There was a par 3 that took nine throws for me to complete, ten for my buddy. But on average, we were one or two throws over par. Not that bad I don't think. At least we didn't get any water hazards! :)

I think I'll pick up my own set of discs at some point. I'm gonna run out of local caches eventually, so this would be a fun fallback activity if I don't feel like driving way out to some geocaching hotspot. Not a good day.
I'm not sure if it's the fact that my drive is over 127 GB or the SATA interface, but the PCI adapter I bought today will only recognize the first 127 GB as one giant partition. All it contains is some system files. (The test computer has WinXP SP2.)

I can't see the remaining disk space. I guess I'm gonna have to return this adapter, but for a legitimate reason.

Once I head back to Keene, I'm gonna have to hit the (rival) retail computer store and pick up a 250 GB drive they currently have on sale. I'll install Win2k on that, do some research about data recovery programs, then see if I can copy everything on my 300 GB drive onto the new 250 GB drive. Then I can do a fresh install on my 300 GB drive, transfer everything over again, erase the 250 GB drive clean, and maybe find someone who wants to buy a 250 GB drive. (The specs of the 250 GB drive leave much to be desired.)

I really hope I haven't lost everything. I got shit on there that dates back to 1997-1998. :( There are some good emails I wanna keep forever and ever. I have a ton of music. There's a lot of vintage web projects I'd like to share with the world once more as well.

To make matters worse, I had a tick feeding on me. I went to play in the woods today. Came back with a souvenir apparently. This one was my first feeder. Another American dog tick. No Lyme disease. Yay?

Friends of mine: I suggest emailing me your contact information (email, IM, etc) just in case all of my shit is gone forever. Oh no!
On a whim, I thought it would be a good idea to nuke my computer and start from scratch again. It's been a while.

I have a serial ATA 300 GB hard drive divided into a 50 GB partition (for the OS) and a 250 GB partition (everything else).

The Windows 2000 install setup program detected both partitions. I chose the 50 GB partition to get formatted. I restart my computer when it's done. At this point, I'm pretty sure I can take out the install CD, but my computer would complain if it wasn't in the drive. Hmm... ok, whatever.

So it goes through booting up the setup program again. But on the partition screen, I have a choice between four places: two "unpartitioned spaces," a C: drive that is supposedly 80 GB large (or was it 800?), and a fourth "unknown" section.

I'm scared now. I don't have an 80 (or 800) GB partition. I backed up all of my relevant junk onto my 250 GB partition prior to nuking my 50 GB partition. Now how do I know where to install Windows without accidentally overwriting data in my bigger partition?

I brought my hard drive home with me. I can pick up a Serial ATA adapter at work (and return it next weekend ;)). Then I can check to see if everything is ok using one of my mother's computers. Maybe even install an OS onto the drive without ruining everything. That would be great. The cache is out there
Look at me! I'm so clever!

Found my 100th cache for this year this morning. Yipee.

I had plans to head over state borders into Western Mass and loop through a bunch of hides. That plan never reached fruition. It's raining right now.

Rain in the summer is weird for my type of outdoor fun. In the spring and fall, when it rains, it just rains. I can go about my frolicking through the woods with impunity. But rain in the summer time could also mean thunderstorms, and I don't really want to find out if I'm like Darren Peter Oswald of The X-Files. (Wow, that's obscure. And I didn't even look the guy's name up.) So yeah. Here I sit, same as ever, trying to determine my best course of action.

I may go home early and see if I can find some caches in Hopkinton. I know the area relatively well, so should a freak lightning storm rolls through, I should be able to escape.

Nine new ones have been placed in Hopkinton last weekend. All in roughly the same area. A bit excessive, don't you think? All by the same person. It actually annoys me. I remember when I started doing this that the two nearest caches to me involved driving 25 miles away in opposite directions. Now, it feels like I can't walk down the street without tripping over a .30-caliber ammo box or a piece of tupperware. This cacher (who apparently was on a mission to have 100 caches hidden in her first year of geocaching -- and reached it) is the reason why there are so many damn caches in or around Concord, making me feel like it was way too easy for me to double my finds (to 76) this year. It doesn't feel like a challenge anymore. Newbies in Concord could find their first 20 or so caches in under a week of play. Some have found about 30 in one day by strolling through Concord. That's lame as hell. There should be rules in place that dictate how close caches have to be from one another, especially if they're from the same hider. Unofficial guidelines state they should be at least 1/10th of a mile apart from one another, but even that feels too close.

Oh, I attempted to find the quarry yesterday. When I got to the beginning of the trail, I found that it was chained off and it has a "No Trespassing; Private Property" sign. Hmm. I don't know where to hide the cache then. Southwestern New Hampshire doesn't really have any sites that encapsulate all that is New Hampshire. Damnit. Maybe I can do something involving Franklin Pierce in my hometown and call it a day. Assuming Hider Extraordinaire doesn't beat me to the punch.

Anyone want to come up with a design so I can make my own wooden coins? Those look neat! It should have been tomorrow yesterday.
Is this week over yet? If felt like it should have been Friday by the time Wednesday rolled around. Sigh.

I'm starting to get restless with my amount of downtime I have after work each day, yet at the same time, I don't really have the desire to do anything with anyone. Or anything involving me leaving the apartment, anyway. I've been trying to pique my own interest in doing some localized caches that I still have yet to have found, but even that doesn't seem to be doing it for me, either. Yet another strange phenomenon, because I do spend a lot of time planning routes to optimize my weekend geocaching finds. Hmm.

I was asked to create a cache (my first!) that would be part of a greater quest. 50 caches would be hidden, one per state, and digits would be written in each of those caches that would lead to finding the final cache somewhere in Washington DC. The cache should be representative of the state it is hidden in. That kinda limits my options if I also have to maintain the cache should it be necessary. I don't live near the White Mountains and the Old Man of the Mountain is gone. Hmm. I'm thinking of going with the granite theme, as there is (supposedly) a big quarry in the next town over that I have yet to explore. I also need to get the supplies needed to make a cache, as well as getting a proper receptacle to hold everything in. Should be fun.

But I'm still bored right now. Tuesday Funnies

The marriage of an 80 year old man and a 20 year old woman was the talk of the town. After being married a year, the couple went to the hospital for the birth of their first child.

The attending nurse came out of the delivery room to congratulate the old gentleman and said, "This is amazing. How do you do it at your age?"

The old man grinned and said, "You got to keep the old motor running."

The following year, the couple returned to the hospital for the birth of their second child. The same nurse was attending this delivery and again went out to congratulate the old gentleman. She said, "Sir, you are something else. How do you do it?"

The old man grinned and said, "You gotta keep the old motor running."

A year later, the couple returned to the hospital for the birth of their third child. The same nurse was there for this birth and after the delivery she approached the old gentleman, smiling, and said, "Well, you surely are something else. How do you do it?"

The old man replied, "It's like I've told you before, you gotta keep the old motor running."

The nurse, still smiling, said to the old gentleman, "Well, I guess it's time to change the oil. This one's black."

Why do most jokes have three repetitions before the punch line? Like, seriously. Not a good day today.
It's Nascar week in New Hampshire, and the speedway is located in Loudon, which borders Concord. Concord is where I make my mystic journey each Sunday morning. This particular Sunday morning, I had to share the typically empty roadways with Nascar-loving assholes.

Normally, the drive in during Nascar week isn't too bad. But today, I encountered something that has never happened to me. You see, there's a stretch of road where the speed limit is 50. I was going 65. I know the Nascar crowd was in a rush, so I opted to go a little faster than I typically do. I don't like being the slow car. But anyway, eventually there was a point where cars could pass me, and two cars zipped by me as if I was standing still. I guess 15 over the speed limit wasn't good enough. Whatever. But I wasn't bothered by that. I was extremely bothered by the second car that passed me at that instance, for once he passed me, he was driving at about 60 MPH! What was the fucking point of passing me if you can't even maintain the speed I was driving at? Why did you blow by me at about 80 mph? There was no rhyme or reason for him passing me, but judging by his Massachusetts plates, he didn't know how to drive anyway. I was pretty ripshit, and once we merged onto the highway, I sped past him at a mere 10 over the speed limit and he got to stare at my bumper until I got into Concord. Ass.

On the way back to my apartment from my house was equally ridiculous. There are very few opportunities to pass. The road does open up a bit for one-way two-lane traffic at a couple spots. I was at the tail end on a Congo line of cars, the "leader" driving under the speed limit. It really sucked. And when we reached a point where you get two lanes of traffic, whichever car led the left lane wouldn't drive fast enough to overcome the first vehicle. So what the hell was the point of going into the left lane? To piss me off! It was also funny at one point because the one truck everyone wanted to pass stayed in the right lane while everyone else shifted to the left, but the pole sitter of the left lane was losing speed going up a hill or some crap and the truck in the right lane totally like... owned him and stuff and got a huge lead to the rest of the cars once it was back to one-lane driving. lol!

Didn't have any luck caching today. Goose-egged on three caches. Well, I did find one, but what I found wasn't the cache. It was parts of the cache. Someone stole the cache and its contents and left behind a ziploc bag with the piece of paper stating "congratulations on finding this geocache" and other "you're a noob to geocaching" information. I fucking hate you game ruiners. /emo.

Sorry for the 1337 sneaking in in there. I learned of a site called Pure Pwnage and I'm like watching some of the episodes while writing this and stuff. It's not that funny but you know... some of the crap they say a lot is starting to show up in my writing. And stuff.

Better podcast sites: Ask A Ninja and Hope Is Emo. You gotta check these sites out. Funny! Overcoming adversity
Found the one I sprained my ankle looking for.

Found It! July 15 by Max Jerome (134 found)
Second to find! I seem to be very good with STF's. :p Can't FTF if my life depended on it, but STF's are really easy. :p

I was able to limp to this one finally, 10 days after my awesome incident (yeah, I sprained it good). Took a little work to find. I was there at around 6:30 or 7:00 AM, and it was really foggy, and with the sound of the babbling brook, it was hard to tell when people were in the area with me. I just hung around for a long time admiring the sounds until I was able to snag it.

[...]

Yes sir. A week in review
My ankle isn't really doing anything cool worth taking pictures of anymore. It still looks the same. Some of my toes are more purple. There are some new random purple spots as well. I have some yellow bruising starting to show up; but strangely, said bruises are located above my ankle, as high as halfway up my shin. Hmm. But at least I can walk almost like a normal person! Almost.

Went geocaching yesterday. Yay. My coworker pal and geocaching sidekick got his canoe and we headed out on the lake near his house and found the hidden loot. It was a good 20-minute commute in, and we made the most of it by talking like pirates and raping and plundering other boats. We sank seven of them, but had to head back before the eighth boat got us because of all of our hull damage. Yeah. That's it.

The hike was very short, and I was a little weirded out when going downhill given my ankle. But it didn't feel bad. So that's progress.

Sunday, I picked up Ultimate Quake, which is a collection of the first three Quake video games. 20 bucks retail. Great deal. I forgot how fun that shit is. Me and another coworker have been playing most nights after work, rocket jumping and railgunning each other to oblivion. Fun times, especially since we both have about the same skill level. It's also neat that because these games are older, the system requirements aren't insane, so we could theoretically get more coworkers to join us. Then we all can kill one another in some sort of digital blood-induced orgy of mayhem. Rock.

I used to play way too much Quake 1 back in the day. Way too much. Easily in my top 5 of games logging the most hours with. In case you're curious, the other four would probably be (not in order) Asheron's Call, Starsiege: Tribes, Civilization II, and Neverwinter Nights (more with the editor than the game itself. You can literally do anything with the editor!). I give an honorable mention to Final Fantasy 3 (6 in Japan) for the SNES. I don't know how many times I have played that game from beginning to end. Too many.

So yeah. Get a hold of me if you have Q3A and we'll gladly whoop your ass online. :) Maybe 200 caches is unrealistic.
Though I'd shit myself if I managed to get 250 just out of spite.

People actually want to see pictures of my feet. I find that amusing. And who am I disappoint?

My injury has gotten a lot more colorful over the last few days. I even have sort of a "before and after" type of thing going on to show you my lack of progress:

The right side of my foot, July 9
The right side of my foot, July 11

The top of my foot, July 9
The top of my foot, July 11

The left side of my foot, July 9
The left side of my foot, July 11

July 6 pictures

Bruising is starting to disperse across the foot, as evident by my toes and the right side of my foot. It looks a lot worse than it feels.

The bruising doesn't really bother me. Yeah, the ankle area is still sore, but I'm more bothered by the swelling on the top of foot. It makes it hard for me to move when I first wake up in the morning, and flexibility is limited (but not painful). Icing it doesn't seem to do anything, though I may not be icing it enough for it to make a difference. Hmm. Tuesday Funnies

Doctor Visit

A woman went to the doctor's office, where she was seen by a young, new doctor. After about 4 minutes in the examination room, the doctor told her she was pregnant. She burst out, screaming as she ran down the hall.

An older doctor stopped her and asked what the problem was, and she told him her story. After listening, he had her sit down and relax in another room.

The doctor marched down the hallway to the back where the first doctor was and demanded, "What's the matter with you? Mrs. Terry is 59 years old, she has four grown children and seven grandchildren, and you told her she was pregnant?"

The new doctor continued to write on his clipboard and without looking up said, "Does she still have the hiccups?"

Not the best, but there were significantly worse ones that I'd refuse to post. Frozen corn makes a dandy ice pack.
I'm kinda upset that this beautiful week and weekend has gone by and I didn't do anything worthwhile. I would have, but you know... the ankle thing... it kinda limits my options.

I worked at my part-time gig today, and I spent most of my time on a rolling swiveling stool. Wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. There was also a new guy training in my department, and seeing how I was gimped, he got to learn some of the ropes via Yours Truly. So I got to split my workload with him. I'm not sure I could have finished in time flying solo like I usually am.

I went caching today. I didn't visit any new ones, though. I had a travel bug (trackable item) in my possession for a little too long, so I offloaded it in a Concord cache that has a very short hike (it was like 80 feet in) and very level ground. Risk of injury or further aggravation was kept to a minimum. Whee.

Finally went grocery shopping. Today. Pretty happy about that. Now I can eat and stuff. Super.

My ankle does seem to be doing better. It's still swollen and as colorful as ever, but I can walk short distances barefooted without feeling excruciating pain. Of course, if I walk too long barefooted, I screw myself over pretty well. :) But at least there's progress. Yay progress.

Jinx: watch the weather turn crappy the second I'm fully healed and want to play outside. :P So many shades of purple
My last pics didn't really do my ankle justice.

This one is way more colorful.

I wanna know why those scratch marks exist. Seems really out of place for a sprain.

It doesn't really throb much anymore. But it still hurts like hell. :( 21 hours later...
For you foot fetishists out there, I have update pics of my feet:

* Top view of both feet. Notice how you can't really see the veins on the left foot.
* Side view of my left foot. I don't know exactly where to put the ice...

Yeah, getting ready for work was a lot of fun. From the shower to the socks to the fact that I couldn't make my bed, I was living the American dream.

I left for work pretty early so I could get curb side parking. I wanted to hobble as little as possible.

I had my fellow analysts fetch and distribute my printouts.

I somehow managed to play frisbee despite being immobile. I can't throw as far, but I still have the accuracy. A third person joined in to catch for me, since I clearly could not.

I'm also relieved that someone else FTF'ed the cache I sought out yesterday. I had all of my gear ready to go for once I left work, but there's no glory in being the "second to find." The guy who FTF'ed it was the guy I was secretly racing against, but I already surpassed his lifetime total so there really isn't any sort of a race anymore. Unless he goes crazy all of a sudden and I can't do anything about it because of my gimpiness.

My apartment is kinda dirty and I really would like to get some groceries. I think I can hold out another day, though. Kinda scraping by at the moment... Ow ow it hurts.
A message I left on a cache's page on the geocaching.com site. FTF = First To Find:

Posted A Note July 5 by Max Jerome (131 found)
Tried to get this one at around 6:30 PM. I've never FTF'ed before, and hopefully if I made it to the destination, I would have been the first to have found it.

Unfortunately, I thought it would be cooler if I twist my ankle instead. :( I'm not sure how I did it exactly... heck, I don't know if it's officially "twisted" (I've never been hospitalized for anything ever), but I managed to hobble my way back to my car (.6 miles). I can put some weight on the ankle, but I'd rather not. :P

People wanting to do this cache probably shouldn't bother getting onto Route 32 to Talbot Hill Road. Unless you have an ATV. Or want to randomly injure yourself. I'm thinking you'll have better luck getting to it via Route 10 instead.

Gotta get groceries tonight. That should be interesting. Somehow I don't think that's gonna happen. :/

An email I got from the owner of the cache:

Hello there
sorry to hear you hurt yourself trying to get the FTF on [the cache]. I have added a note to say the easy way in is off Route 10.
Hope your ankle gets better, and that you can find the cache!
[cacher's name]

The reply I sent:

Thanks. Makes me want reconsider enrolling for health benefits at work. ;)

The trail I took wasn't bad at all. It was a typical ATV trail. I've been on significantly worse trails. So I'm not sure what made this one so special to my foot. Oh well. Luck of the draw, I guess.

Though I'm pretty hurtin' at the moment (swollen, but no bruising... yet?), I'm still tempted to go out and FTF the cache. Definitely a stupid move, but I figure the hike in (if there is even a hike in) is on level ground and shorter than .6 miles. So you might see a log tomorrow afternoon if no one else has found it by then. Maybe I can get my occasional coworker sidekick to come out with me and piggy-back me to the location. ;)

See ya later,

Jerome

Wanna see my ankle? It's freakin' sexy!

* My right foot. This foot is ok.
* My left foot. Check out the left side of the ankle.
* A closeup of my right foot. What an ankle should look like.
* A closeup of my left foot. It's not a tumor!

Work should be interesting tomorrow. Getting ready for work should be fun as hell, too. Can't wait.

I still need groceries. And dinner tonight. Sigh.

I wonder if this is what I get for blasting nothing but Rage Against the Machine in my car all day yesterday. Happy 4th!
Having Independence Day on a Tuesday is pretty useless. I expected to get out of work early yesterday because I was done by noon, but I was told to "look busy" until 4 PM. Not very exciting, but somehow the day didn't drag forever. Hmm.

Didn't play in the woods after work. It was hot and humid and I didn't sleep well the night before.

Today, however, I was up at 5:30 AM and I ran a loop through Athol, MA and back up to Keene, hitting all of the easy caches I could get. Holidays are the best days for inner city micros, and Athol has a ton of them. Surprisingly, I found every micro I sought out with the exception of two. And the two I missed were because people were in the area and they weren't going away. Hard to be sly when all eyes are on you.

There are a lot of caches between Keene and Athol for me to find. Some of them were a little too easy, I thought. If I go to a park or wooded trail, the cache shouldn't be 100 feet into the forest. That's not a hike. You might as well have hidden the cache next to the trailhead or in the parking lot. It's a lazy person's cache. Surely there must be some views further down the trail that would be worth seeing with the added bonus of having a cache to hunt down. But no. I don't like the idea of being able to see my car while at the cache's hiding spot. Takes the charm of the whole thing right out of me.

Also, I don't like caches with the word "mountain" as part of their name, only to find out that there is no mountain. It's all level terrain. Where the hell is the mountain? And why can I see my car from this cache's hiding spot, too? I was actually bummed out when I found this one. It was at the first place I looked: under a cast-iron lid (wtf?) about 60 feet from my car. That's really lazy.

Hopefully, next time I head down that way, the caches I skipped will turn out to be harder, or at least involve a little skill to find. I wanted to find as many as I could without overdoing myself. I found 11 (tried for 14) and I was back home by noon or so.

I did run into a couple other cachers. I was playing in the garden on the property of a town library, but I couldn't find the cache for the life of me. I heard a car pull up, and headed back to my car assuming worst-case scenario: these guys don't geocache. Turns out the three people that got out of the SUV were all cachers, so having four sets of eyes trying to find what was a pretty devious hide didn't take any time at all. They looked to be in their mid 30's, I'd say. Two men, one woman. Equal opportunity sport. :) Tuesday Funnies

Dear Diary

HER DIARY:

Saturday night I though he was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a bar to have a drink. I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment.

Conversation wasn't flowing, so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed but he kept quiet and absent. I asked him what was wrong - he said, "Nothing." I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said it had nothing to do with me and not to worry.

On the way home I told him that I loved him. He simply smiled and kept driving. I can't explain his behavior; I don't know why he didn't say, "I love you, too." When we got home I felt as if I had lost him, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there and watched TV'; he seemed distant and absent.

Finally, I decided to go to bed. About 10 minutes later he came to bed and to my surprise he responded to my caress and we made love, but I still felt that he was distracted and his thoughts were somewhere else. I decided that I could not take it any more so I decided to confront him with the situation but he had fallen asleep. I started crying and cried until I too fell asleep. I don't know what to do. I'm almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else. My life is a disaster.

HIS JOURNAL:

Tennessee lost today, but at least I got laid.

Don't be mad at me because your father doesn't love you.
I never deal with customers at my part-time job. I haven't helped a customer in months. Usually, I'm just about out the door by the time the store is open.

Today, I decided to hang out by the front door and greet people as they come in.

First guy I interacted with had a return. It is our policy to tag the returned item in some way so that people know that he actually entered the building with the product and isn't trying to shoplift or whatever.

me: Hi, is that an exchange or return?
him: Yeah.
me: Ok, I just need to sticker that really quickly...

[I whip out my mad stickering skillz. It's done in record time.]

him (very asshole-like): Gee, why don't you bring it to customer service while you're at it? Since you're being so helpful...
me: ...
him: (some sort of snickering noise)

I'm not helping people anymore. Fuck you all.

I thought about replying something along the lines of "Who pissed in your Cherrios?," but I didn't want to escalate the situation.

I have intentionally pissed off customers that were copping me attitudes at work. I don't get paid to be verbally abused. So I fight fire with fire, and I'm a very dark and spiteful son of a bitch. That's a really fun time. What are they gonna do, fire me? Hahaha! Long time listeners, first time callers:
Spam bots have found their way around Movable Type's latest junk filters, and I've been getting hammered by nonsensical spam the last few days. So I'm shutting down the "forums" until I think of what to do next.

I don't really want to introduce a registration process to leave a comment. The commenting system isn't used enough (or at all) for me waste time on such a feat. Though really it's no work at all.

Most people seem to prefer emailing me or IM'ing me instead of using the comments. So whatever.

Comment? Save a horse.
Found a bunch more caches. Go figure. Despite working six days a week, I've still found 40 caches in the last three weeks. 61 in the last five weeks. That's nutty.

Saturday went as planned, and I found every cache I set out for. I was hoping to find some more, but I was driven out of Northwood Meadows State Park by horseflies. Sure, black flies, mosquitoes, and ticks can cause trouble for the hiker, but horseflies? I wasn't even in the water! And I've found that those motherfuckers are way worse than black flies, mosquitoes, and ticks combined. Wow. They are horrible.

Black flies are annoying, but they only pose a problem for a month or two. They come early in the spring, and you can easily avoid them by wearing a hoodie. Plus they're way small and pretty easy to kill.

Mosquitoes are assholes. They don't go away for months. However, they tend to be repulsed by deet, so one only has to be annoyed by their buzzing noise instead of their blood sucking if one chooses.

Ticks -- or at least with my limited experience with them -- just kinda hang out and do nothing. Of all the bugs mentioned here, this is the one you don't want biting you. Once they burrow, you're fucked unless you have some tweezers handy.

Horseflies? They have successfully driven me insane. I'm not sure if they're repulsed by deet. But it doesn't really matter anyway, because they like to attack the hair and where the forehead meets the scalp. While mosquitoes pierce the skin with their sucky thing, a horse fly's mouth is like a blade that's slashing into the skin (Wiki). It hurts more. And they buzz much more loudly, making them way more annoying. They're hard to slap out of the air. And they are relentless sons of bitches.

I couldn't come up with a way to lose them Saturday, and it was driving me insane. I don't know why the fuck they were all over me, because I thought they loved the water. I spent most of my hike there on dirt roads wide enough to take vehicular traffic. And with the exception of cock size (heh), I have no similarities with horses. Try as I might, I couldn't rid myself of them and I was freaking out pretty badly. Screw you guys; I'm going home.

I went 11 for 11 on Saturday during my trip through several towns east of Concord.

After work on Sunday, I didn't bother with any Concord caches and I went back to Northwood Meadows State Park to finish what I've started. There are seven caches there. I found three yesterday. I found two of the remaining four today. The ones I missed were a micro (seriously, who hides a micro in the forest?) and the other involved me finding a large dream catcher way up in a tree near a dam on the premises. Unfortunately, I never heard or saw of found any evidence of a dam in the park. And the other six caches brought me all around a couple lakes. Hmmph. I really wanted to get a picture of said dream catcher. It was the only reason I brought a camera with me this weekend. Oh, and to take a couple shots of the nano cache I found last week (so small! Top view. Side view.).

The horseflies were in full force today, but I deeted up pretty damn good. They were still harassing me, but the first time I was sufficiently pissed and put my shit down to introduce them to my hands of justice^TM, they left me alone. Further test results indicated that they stopped pissing me off whenever I stood still. Once I started walking again, I wouldn't make it 100 feet before the first horsefly wanted to fuck with me. I figure they must rely heavily on movement (Wiki verifies that) or sound to hunt for mammals to pester. Now I know.