Faggotry.



That's the scene outside my window. Exactly how I wanted it to look the day I turn 30.

It's not expected to stop snowing until noon.

Vikki and I need some pancakes, and we don't want to have to go to Panama City to get them (linger longer!). Torn in half like a phone book.
I have the turtle for the long weekend.
I fed it a worm at least three times its length.
It kicked its ass this time.
It was cool. Nature's D student
Some number of weeks ago, I found a baby snapping turtle in the parking lot at work. I gave it to Brown to take care of, because that's what deadbeat dads do with their illegitimate children. It's a lot cheaper that way. Until she starts asking for child support, anyway. Then I'll play dumb.

Anyway, I went over her place last night to see how the turtle's been doing, and to get my ass kicked at some console games. Most of the videos I took sucked; I think it was camera shy. But I did upload a couple of the "better" ones for your own amusment:

* Caring for a baby snapping turtle: Baby snapping turtle gets cleaned and eats a mealworm. Yup.
* Baby turtle vs earthworm: Starts out with promise, but ends up not being as cool as it could be. :P

I wasn't aware that my old camera could take video clips, and Nicole actually has a couple nice ones where the turtle ravages another earthworm. I hope to get that online some day.

Also, I took some pics. Most of them sucked (go figure), but there were a couple ok ones:

* With the flash on
* With the flash off
* Turtle on a toy boat

That's all I got. My visitation rights are short because of the most recent court order. With our powers combined...
There was a neat little gathering of geocachers this morning in Shelburne Falls, MA. I felt like attending it. And thus I did. Go figure. It was a flash mob gathering involving ghost hunting (ha), and when that was over, I kinda hung around for a while talking with people. I saw a few familiar faces from the tournaments they had last year. I also met half of "Rocking the Goat;" they are a legend around here. They are a retired couple with nearly 7,000 finds and 250 FTF's. Those are record setting numbers. Even the most rabid NH cachers are in the 3,000 range.

Anyway, I hit a bunch of nearby caches with a couple other Massachusetts legends:

* Nomad64, who has about 2,800 finds and orchestrated the geocaching tournaments I went to last year. His license plate reads "ICACHE."

* trainlove, who has about 1,700 finds, and whose real name is "Ray Jerome." I sometimes run into other cachers that wonder if trainlove and I are related. Interestingly enough, the opposite is also true.

* WeatherednBoston, who has about 1,600 finds. I don't know much about her, but I have run into her name a few times in various log books. A recently torn medial meniscus in her knee kinda limits what caches she can go after.

It was a fun time. Caching with others makes for a much more enjoyable experience, especially when you do it with people you've heard about over the last couple years. Even cooler is that despite my "low" number of finds, I came up with a find or two first. :)

Eventually, we disbanded and went our seperate ways. I would later run into Nomad64 again, and we did a couple more caches. Rock.

Photos?

Group photo, left to right: trainlove, myself, Nomad64, and WeatherednBoston.

Glacial Potholes at the end of Deerfield Avenue.

Future alternative rock album cover. 400 feet from the land of potholes. Laptop-bound for a while.
So I finally took steps to try and resurrect my desktop PC. Buying a new battery didn't change anything, and now I get to find a motherboard online that will work and make a trip to return my ineffective "cheap fix."

It's a damn shame, too, because I don't really want to drop cash to fix it. I'm not completely sold that buying a new board will be the answer, as it is possible that it could be something else, but it is the most likely solution to my problem. Motherboards are also just a pain in the ass in general. My case doesn't have a fancy motherboard tray, so I have to unplug and remove everything before I replace the board. Bah.

I wonder what caused it to fail. We did have a few nights with crazy thunderstorms, but I don't remember if there were any the night before I noticed my PC wouldn't boot up anymore. If there were, then I am not impressed with my UPS. That thing has saved me many times from power outages, but I would have thought a simple surge would have been cake for it to handle. Boo.

I did have some fun fiddling with the inside of my PC, though. I used to do such things all the time, removing everything and cleaning them and finding ways to optimize heat dissipation, air flow, and acoustics. It's been so long since I've cracked open my case that I forgot what components I've been running the last couple years. :p I took some snazzy pictures, though:

* The inside of my case, with a lot of shit unplugged from the power supply. Check out my awesome cable management! There are two optical drives, 550GB over two hard drives (one of them SATA), an oversized (92mm or 120mm?) case fan and plenty of other goodies. Note the lack of a floppy drive. Floppy drives are for queers.

* My Zalman CPU fan is as huge as it is dusty. 92mm of aluminum and copper make up the heat sink. A very quiet and adjustable fan blow the heat out. This thing is heavy enough that it came with its own brace and screw contraption to fasten onto the board.

* My video card in the motherboard: a 6600GT with a cooler I picked up. The stock fan was too loud for my liking.

* My video card outside the case and after I cleaned it up a bit. Yeah, that fan is quite the monster. :) The stock card only took up one slot, but with this fan, I can't use the PCI slot below it. That's ok, though. PCI slots are also for queers.

* A side shot of my video card. I need to clean my monitor. That metal thing way off to the left is Frank Fella's butterfly knife, which I took as collateral when he borrowed my shirt tie like ten years ago. Yeah, I never saw the tie again. :) "C-notes by the layers, true fuckin players"
My new laptop showed up at my mother's on Thursday. I went straight there after work to check it out. It's a lot bigger than I thought it would be, though it's not heavy or particularly cumbersome to carry around. I didn't fiddle around with it much then; just running Vista updates and whatnot until I felt I had to go back to my apartment in Keene.

It wouldn't be until this afternoon that I had a second opportunity to play with it. I still haven't done a hell of a lot with it, though. This laptop came with all sort of useless programs and bloatware for me to get rid of, so that's what I'm currently in the process of doing. While it installs and uninstalls a bunch of stuff, I thought it would be a good time to take some pretty pictures.

The keyboard has a very interesting layout. I have two different keys to make the Euro symbol (€), one below the right shift key and by pressing something in combination with the "5" key. I don't think this laptop is marketed for the "look at me, I'm traveling overseas and brokering important international trade agreements" type of people, so I find it to be an unexpected inclusion. There are also a butt load of buttons off to the left and to the right, the former being used as program and internet shortcuts while the latter can control whatever media is in the DVD burner. The "e" in the top right toggles some sort of Acer performance toolbar, and the top button on the right side is supposed to start the "Acer Arcade." In reality, the button doesn't seem to do anything. It might as well be another dummy button like they have at the bottom of the left side of extra buttons.

I also have a webcam, so now I can have "cam to cam" sex sessions with young, hot third-world girls with hairy backs. Also, I suspect I can create more stable porn using this instead of my digital camera, though it might be a little suspicious if I have this on top of the toilet outside some broad's shower. My Canon is much more suitable for voyeurism. Hmm.

Also, in the background of the pic, behold my awesome TV!

I was surprised to see that in the top left area of the keyboard, there's a Dolby Home Theater logo. Upon further inspection, I discovered a subwoofer on the bottom end of the laptop! I haven't had a chance to make it play something bassy yet, but I'm curious how well it can handle some Notorious B.I.G. and whatnot. My desktop speakers are kind of a joke for that purpose.

Though I haven't done much testing yet, I get the impression that this laptop performs well. Vista is quite the resource whore -- no surprise there -- using over 900MB of RAM at startup. Good thing I have 2GB's worth and can upgrade to a total of 4GB if need be. My Win2k setup is currently using 450MB and hasn't been shut off for months. I suspect if I restarted it, it will use about 250MB.

I did find one design flaw, and only because I watched this CNET video while looking for reviews on my laptop: using the USB port on the right side means I'm not using the DVD drive. How silly. I guess that means when I buy a mouse (not a big fan of the touchpad), I'll have to plug it into one of the left side USB's and run it around the back. Not a problem, really, but it is kinda silly.

More Acer 5920 pcitures can be found here, if you care.

Time to fiddle with the default settings some more. Later. Highlander
The town of Holyoke, MA not only invented volleyball (or so their signs tell me), but they also have this fancy shmancy park called Mount Tom State Reservation. It is here that I sought out many ammo canisters containing spiral-bound notebooks and worthless plastic toys.

The hiking was more intense than my runs through Connecticut, which don't really raise the bar anyway. There were a couple instances where I had to use my hands to scale up the rocks. I followed the ridgeline for quite a while, and could see hawks circling below me. It was pretty neat.

I suspect I'll be pretty sore tomorrow. Towards the end of the day, I wasn't winded, but my legs couldn't deal with any sort of incline. Not exactly the kind of shit I wanted to deal with when I was still an hour's hike from the car.

I found most of the caches (10), and if I got there a little earlier, I bet I could have found all 14 strewn across the park.

Pictures? They aren't that impressive:

* The Stone Crusher, pic 1
* The Stone Crusher, pic 2
* The Stone Crusher, pic 3
* The Stone Crusher, pic 4
* View of Easthampton, northwest
* View of Easthampton, west
* Basalt cliffsides

I should have taken Easthampton pics at even higher elevations (like where the basalt was), but I guess I'm dumb. Whatever. "15 minutes!"


And thus the saga came to end, when I had my car loaded up and checked out before 7 AM. It's a shame, really, as I could have easily spent another few days here before maybe not having something to do, but I know my people miss me terribly.

I stopped at the rest area on the Chesapeake Bay Tunnel and scoped out the pier for a few minutes, taking pictures and videos and logging a virtual at the same time. Though I wanted to learn more about its construction and whatnot, I did want to beat the traffic home. And it was very windy there, I couldn't hold on to my camera for more than five minutes before my hands became numb.

There's not much to say about the ride back up. I didn't have return directions, and thus pretty much followed my directions down backwards, hoping it would work out in the end. And it did for the most part, though I did botch up at three different points:

The first mistake was minutes into my trip. I was one street off to getting onto Shore Drive, which would lead me to the tunnel. Mistake corrected within a minute using someone's driveway.

Mistake #2 was working my way to the Delaware Memorial Bridge from Route 1. Instead of taking the highway route, I ended up taking a road that was shorter, but it was in the city and thus had traffic. No problem, really, though.

Mistake #3 occurred after taking the Tappan Zee Bridge, and I headed south on I-87 heading towards Yonkers instead of going north to get to I-95, which would bring me into Connecticut. The Tappan Zee was supposed to be my last toll, but when I had to cough up another dollar shortly thereafter, I knew some shit was up. I confirmed my error, asked for directions at a local gas station, then headed back up (having to cough up another dollar in tolls). That ate up about 15 or so minutes.

Though my ride down took about 11 hours, I made it back in just under 10 hours. I could have done it in 9 1/2 if I didn't fuck up, which means I could have made it to work by the time people were getting out. That would have been kinda funny.

Gas was not as cheap in New Jersey as it was on Thursday: it went up to $2.989 a gallon.

I got a little depressed when I saw some snow just north of Hartford, CT. That trace of snow turned into several inches of cover halfway up I-91 in Massachusetts. Why did I come home?

For my trip, I made a CD full of mp3's; about 140 tracks, I believe. On my ride back up, I didn't hear the same track twice. In fact, I pulled into my parking lot when the last track was playing. Can't get much more perfect than that.

Got home. Unpacked some. Made some calls. Made dinner. Compressed videos. Checked my emails. Went to bed.

Can't wait to do it again some time.

---

Pictures:
* Just a rowboat near the tunnel pier
* One of the four islands that make up the tunnel
* One of many tankers in the bay
* Another tanker
* Tanker #3
* A sign of the Palisades Parkway in Jersey, for those of you who know the Jerky Boys skit

Videos:
* The pier at the Chesapeake Bay Tunnel Beachfront property


I figure I should spend at least a few hours on the beach, and today was the day I did that. There are plenty of caches along the oceanfront -- typically placed at monuments and other points of interest -- so I knew exactly where to go without having to open a brochure.

Once I got #700 under my belt, I took off for Bayville Park; they have a disc golf course there. The place was packed. They have a special lot just for disc golf parking, and all of the spots were filled. I never really had an opportunity to play, either. It seemed like there was a group of people at every other basket. And it looked like that most of the paths from the "launch area" to the basket were short and straight; nothing much in terms of doglegs or whatever. It didn't look to be that fun of a course. Though I was hoping to get some disc throwing happening on this trip, I was content with just going out and finding more caches instead. I'll try Bayville another time.

I was back in the hotel by 2:30. I wanted to see the beach at high tide (in order to finish logging an earthcache here), which was at 3:30. I spent that hour walking up and down the boardwalk (like this morning), and I picked up some souvenirs for some of my people suffering in Keene. Then, I did my thing with the high tide, took a pic of a dead seagull that washed up onto the shore, and headed back to Lynnhaven to get some more driving range action in. Woo.

I couldn't find a third unfamiliar food chain to eat at tonight. Almost went with IHOP just because I haven't been inside one in years. Was also hoping to find a Sonic's somewhere. Instead, I went back to Hardee's for some artery-clogging fun. Yum. Then back to the hotel.

In case you're wondering what I do about lunch, well, I pretty much skip it. When I go out geocaching, I usually just bring granola bars or whatever and just have that. I've been having a few handfuls of peanuts for lunch each day, and that's been good enough to get me through for the next few hours.

I took a vid of me giving a tour of my hotel room. Then, I pretty spent the rest of my day typing stuff and doing internet shenanigans in the lobby. The signal is perfect downstairs. Unfortunately, I can't find an outlet to plug swhorfe's laptop in, so I have to retire once the battery dies. Lame.

I gotta drive back to New Hampshire tomorrow morning. I don't really want to. I'm debating on just leaving everything I know behind and just moving down here. I tried to get a Sunday paper to look at what they had available for jobs and apartments, but the machine ate my money. At least I can read the Virginia Pilot online. Yay.

My lips are seriously chapped. They have been the last couple days. I blame the wind.

---

Pictures:
* Rudee Inlet. GPS shown in order to log the earthcache.
* A drainage pipe or something at Rudee Inlet. It doesn't look like it would work well. I don't know what's going on here.
* The left half of a Tomcats mural on Sixth Street
* The right half of a Tomcasts mural on Sixth Street
* The Virginia Beach Fishing Pier, a popular destination along the beach, is closed until April. This was all I could get. :(
* A "no swearing sign" along the boardwalk area. They will actually fine you for swearing! It's like in the movie Demolition Man! Way to impose on my first amendment rights!
* What the "no swearing" sign means. It's still fucking bullshit, cocksucker. I wonder how that law got passed. It's only along part of the boardwalk. I'm not sure if it applies to only the outdoors, or inside buildings, too. Yet the souvenir shops here sell shirts with profanity and risqué material written on them? I don't get it.
* Neptune, a popular point of interest along the boardwalk
* More of Neptune
* Another Neptune shot
* Neptune's plaque
* Tidewater Veterans Memorial in the park with the same name
* Another angle of the structure
* A nearby building that uses solar power?
* Dead seagull at high tide at Rudee Inlet. Pwned!
* A dolphin thing outside Schooner Inn

Videos:
* The Virginia Legends area isn't that impressive
* 12th and Boardwalk near the Virginia Legends display and the closed fishing pier
* Walking along the coastline near the fishing pier
* Neptune's Park, 31st and Boardwalk
* High tide at Rudee Inlet, 1st and Boardwalk. Includes surfers that don't do anything.
* A tour of my hotel room, with tips on how to kill yourself! Southern Comfort


The schedule I gave myself today allowed me to sleep in a bit. I probably could have slept in a lot, but I wanted to cash in on free breakfast. :) I find it hilarious that though I'm splurging somewhat on myself on this trip, I still try and save a couple senseless bucks where I can. Force of habit, I guess. I can manage my money like a champ.

Today was southside caching day. While the north end of Virginia Beach is very urban and commercial, the south end is quite rural. I figured Saturday would be a busy day for the beach and for shopping, so I decided to take a trip south.

Also, Virginia Beach borders North Carolina, and for no reason other than to say "Hey, I've cached in North Carolina," I fiddled around most of the Back Bay area before noon time.

Afterwards, I played in Munden Point for a few hours. It's a park that has little more than 36 baskets of disc golfing and a few caches strewn about. I walked the perimeter logging finds where I could, but it took me a very long time to find everything because of a heavy muggle presence. I planned to disc golf it out after I was done, but I wasn't happy with the number of finds I've had today. It was also an extremely windy day, and Munden Point is along the shore, so I'm sure I would have gotten pissed watching my discs soar into the open sea. Luckily, I've already determined that I will come back to Virginia Beach after this trip is over -- perhaps I will make it a yearly event -- and so I'll have another go at this another time.

I did do some ball golf, though. I bought a couple tokens to use the driving range at Lynnhaven Golf Park and I hit the driving range for about half an hour. I haven't handled my clubs in a long time, and I'm not good to begin with, but I had fun perfecting my drives a little bit. Sure, I can't drive the ball more than 100 or so yards with each swing, but I'm making contact consistently, and that's a good place to start. Woo. I'll use my other token some time tomorrow.

I went to Chick-Fil-A tonight. I didn't find them to be impressive. I will give them the award for most comfortable booth seats in a fast food chain, but KFC is superior in all other ways. The waffle fries were yummy, but they aren't potato wedges, are they?

I went back to the hotel afterwards. The comforter on my bed smells like strawberry lotion or something. I don't know. I accept it, and don't question it. Lucky for me, there are two beds per room. Maybe it's coincidence, but I seem to get a more stable connection if I surf the internet on the strawberry bed instead of using the table I've used the last couple nights. Hmm. Whatever.

I spent my night writing out most of these entries while watching The Matrix and Die Hard on the TV, two of my favorite movies. Oh, and securing more heroin, whores, and beer that I didn't get the night before. And searching out for a helpless homeless dude to strangle. No dice. Better luck tomorrow night.

---

Pictures:
* The harbor seal tank at the Virginia Aquarium. GPS shown in order to log the geocache.
* One of many harbor seals in the tank
* Harbor seal facts that you can't really read because I shrunk the pic too much. Eat me.
* Hugh Mongus stands outside the Ocean Breeze Waterpark
* Part of the waterpark
* Another Hugh Mongus shot
* Another part of the waterpark

Videos:
* The harbor seals in action
* The Back Bay area of North Carolina. More specifically, the Charles Kuralt Trail vista. Far from home
Thank goodness. Home sucks.


I was up early today. I wanted to catch the sunrise (shown above). Wow. It's a nice one from my vantage point. All I can see from my balcony are hotels and oceanfront. I look forward to exploring it later.

The hotel I'm staying at has wireless networking, but it doesn't really work in my room. They put me on the highest (6th) floor, almost into the far corner. Though I was able to send a couple emails, I really couldn't do anything else. The service kept cutting out. Good thing I have pretty much everything I need printed out already.

I'm not sure why they put me on the 6th floor, because judging by the parking lot, they probably could have fit everyone on the first floor. I'm almost positive that I was the only one on the 6th floor last night. Hmm.

Today was urban caching day. I spent very little time on the oceanfront boardwalk. Just enough time to log my first cache, before I drove down Route 58, hitting just about every single plaza and commercial hotspot that had a cache on the premises. I was able to find the first few I sought pretty quickly, but as it got to be noontime, the muggles were out in full force. So I abandoned that plan and took a trip to Mount Trashmore and cleaned out what's around that area.

That was it. Doesn't sound like much, but just doing those things took me all day. I wanted to head up to Bayville and do some of the disc golfing, but by the time I was done caching, there wouldn't be any daylight by the time I was halfway done the course. Maybe Sunday, then.

I went to Hardee's for dinner, because this fast food chain is more prominent than McDonald's and Burger King in this part of the country. I figured it be a good idea just to hit up popular restaurant franchises that we don't see up North and see if there's a reason for it. Anyhoo, everything on the Hardee's menu is designed to kill you as quickly as possible. Bacon and cheese and half a pound of beef on pretty much everything. They had this fancy Hawaiian chicken burger thing that I bought and found to be quite yummy, albeit a fucking mess to eat. Also, I now consider Hardee's french fries to be the most superior of all fast food french fries out there. I'd like to see a couple of these places make it into New Hampshire. Did I mention that the cashiers bring the food to your seat? You don't have to stand there awkwardly! I'd like to see how well they can pull that off during their rush hours.

I then spent my night procuring heroin, hookers, and beer. It's Friday night, after all. I gotta do my thing! Alright, so I had to settle for one of these three things, but I'll work on the other two in the upcoming nights. ;) Bonus points if I manage to find a homeless bum that I can choke to death. That's something I want to do before I die. True story.

Here's an interesting note: I get an extra hour of daylight being in Virginia than in New Hampshire. Because it's closer to the equator, the sun rises about 30 minutes sooner and sets about 20 minutes later. That rocks.

---

Pictures:
* The sunrise from my hotel
* Norwegian Lady statue along the boardwalk. GPS shown in order to log the geocache.
* A duck crossing sign? I forgot ducks existed!
* A weird species of tree found everywhere in Virginia
* A close-up of the tree that I thought looked cool
* Seagulls along the side of the river at a park I visited
* Ducks near a flagpole along the same river area
* Black ducks in Mount Trashmore Park
* Seagulls on the pier in Mount Trashmore Park
* One of many groups of gulls in Mount Trashmore Park

Videos:
* Waking up in Virginia Beach was a little better than in Keene, NH
* The area around the Norwegian Lady has lots of statues The drive down


That was my view outside of my apartment this morning. Very fascinating. I fucking hate this snow.

Anyway...

I went to work today for a couple hours, just long enough to get my morning stuff done and for swhorfe to lend me his laptop for my trip, and I was out the door by 10 AM.

There's not much for me to say about the drive down to Virginia. It took about 11 hours, including breaks, in which I only really took one. I'm surprised that I didn't break more often just to stretch my legs. I think that my prior "longest road trip alone" record was like five hours, when I went from Hillsboro, NH to New Rochelle, NY to see homeboy Jonny and U2 at Madison Square Garden. And that was many years ago. So I'm very impressed that I stopped long enough to gas up my car twice, one quick bathroom break, and one 15-minute dinner break (which wasn't until I got to the McDonald's in Princess Anne, MD at 6:30 PM). Yay me.

What I do want to make note is that:

* Once in New Jersey, there was no snow.
* Gas in Jersey is "cheap" at $2.939 a gallon. About 45 minutes away in Connecticut, they were charging $3.399 a gallon. wtf?
* I was dreading New Jersey because of all of the toll booths we had to go through during our spring break adventure years ago. It's a lot quicker now with EZ Pass transponders on most of the local vehicles.
* The toll for the Delaware Memorial Bridge, however, did take like 15-20 minutes for me to go through. Uncool.
* I only saw a couple WalMarts on my way down. I saw construction stores like Lowe's and Home Depot a lot more frequently.
* The only Waffle House I saw was around Dover, Delaware. I didn't pass it when it was dark, though, so I don't know if any part of the sign doesn't light up. I assume it must not.
* The first eight hours of the trip flew by. Then, it dragged ass.
* I have nothing to say about the modern marvel that is the Chesapeake Bay Tunnel or Virginia Beach because it was was dark by the time I got there. Better luck next time.
* I got here on only 1 1/2 tanks of gas. That's impressive.

I found the hotel easily enough. I checked in and went to bed almost immediately. Big day tomorrow.

---

Pictures:
* What it looks like at work
* More snow-filled trees from the recent storm
* The view from my living room window sickens me
* The view stepping out of my building into the parking area
* My salt-filled car by the time I stopped in Jersey
* The only Waffle House I found, and it was in Delaware

Videos:
* Smoke break at work. Again. The sequel to Smoke Break at Work from a year ago. Same players. Different time. Random pics
There's quite a bit of snow at mom's house. If you're looking out the front porch:

* the left side
* the middle
* the right side
* the screen door

Diamond Acres burned down. The area's been taped off, so I could only get pictures while driving:

* shot 1
* shot 2
* shot 3

I had the first Ford Focus in my apartment area. Now there are three of them. wtf? Hillsboro, NH


In case there was any question to my statement of Hillsboro being the midpoint of Concord and Keene.

Stupid snow. "This sucks..."
A new hire in our department turned 21 this past week. Clearly, that meant if was our duty to get him completely fucking shitfaced last night. You only turn 21 once, after all, right?

Myself, Brownie, and a few others took him out to the bar and let him make his rookie mistakes. The guy doesn't weigh much more than me, but he was pounding down rum and cokes like they were shots of water. He claims to have had seven hard drinks in an hour and a half. I usually have half as much over twice the amount of time before I call it a night each Friday. That's when I realized that not only was he going to throw up some time soon, we were probably going to get kicked out of the bar, and I stopped drinking in case I had to finish some of his drinks. Fun times. That's alright, though. I got plenty of incriminating photos and videos I may be able to use to my advantage later down the road. ;)

We went to a second bar, but didn't stay long. A bartender there wanted us to get him out of there because he was passing out on the table.

We walked him out and brought him to his friend's apartment where he spent the night throwing up and looking like this:


Ha!

Dear Nicole ended up being a casualty that night, too, as she tried to do him a favor by drinking some of the drinks he kept ordering (I think he claimed his final drink tally was 12, which I find very hard to believe over a 2 1/2-hour span). Good enough to make it home, but not good enough to avoid the porcelain god.

Me? I was good. Mostly sober. Little bummed out that the night ended much more quickly that I anticipated, but you'll have that with rookie drunks. :) Ice and Snow Festival 2008
Brownie wanted to go see it. I wasn't doing anything better. Not surprising that it worked out the way it did.

Keene does an Ice and Snow Festival each year. I never went to one, and we assumed everything was within the circle in the middle of town. We were very disappointed to only see four sculptures in the center circle, along with six sculptures dedicated to corporate sponsorship. Weak. Bot on our way back to my place, we noticed there were a few different displays up and down Main Street.

* Pegasus
* Dancer, or something like that.
* Pineapple
* Rhino
* Gnome on a mushroom, which won first place.
* Jack-in-the-box, which won second place.
* Broken Jack-in-the-box, after a block of ice hit it. Owned!
* Seahorse
* Groundhog
* Hearts
* Marlin
* Swordfish from the back.
* Swordfish from the front.
* Dragonfly on a flower
* Vince Lombardi trophy, says "19-0" at the base.
* Vince Lombardi trophy from the other side; says "Patriots" at the base.
* "We Love Keene" heart thing.
* Darfur snow sculpture mess. Queer.
* Kitty in a teacup
* Newspaper ad in The Keene Sentinel.

Between the jack-in-the-box and the gnome on a mushroom, there were a couple guys making a new ice sculpture. While preparing a couple ice blocks, one of the blocks slipped and hit the wood pallet the jack-in-the-box was on. It then slowly wobbled, and ultimately took a dive onto the back of one of the ice sculpture guys. In the midsts of the sculpture falling, Dane Cook's comedy came to life. Instead of saying, "Look out!" or "The Jack-in-the-box is falling," people watching were just making that "Aaah!" sound and it took a dive onto the dude's back. Super.

After seeing everything, Brown and I went to the bar, drank and played pool. Didn't have the chance to do that last night courtesy of the shitty weather we had. Whee. Christmas in Keene
The tree in the center circle:


On Main Street looking towards the center:


Not sure what the "Adventure Taxi" is. Sounds epic, though. Sight for sore eyes
Something is going on with my left eye. Last week, I had a stye on my lower eyelid for a couple days that went away. But over the last two days, my upper eyelid has gotten swollen and puffy and red and fucking irritating. It hurts to blink. You know how much that sucks? You know how many thousands of times that is per day? Not cool.

It's unclear what's going on. I don't think I have something under my eyelid causing an infection. One person hypothesizes that maybe I have an ingrown eyelash. It's not fucking with my vision (yet?), and now that I have health insurance, maybe I should exercise it and get some professional medical advice. Doing a Google search makes me wonder if I have a chalazion. Maybe my stye decided to relocate and have a crazier name.

Pictures? My eye open and my eye closed. The flash doesn't do it justice, but turning it off produces an even crappier picture.

I'm gonna start putting on warm compresses to see if that will alleviate the situation.

Any advice as to what I have or what to do would be most appreciated. Email me if you have an idea, please. Deck the halls

This is about the extent of decorating I can do in my puny apartment. At least I'm in the season.

Mommy made the tree before I was born! Matt Damon?
I was just trolling around being bored when I magically came across this site that determines what celebrities you most resemble. So, I took the pic I use on my account page over at geocaching.com and ran it through "the battery" and this is what it came up with:



Wish I knew who the hell half of these people were. On the plus side, the person that looks most like me is married to Sarah Michelle Gellar. So with my looks, I suspect I could totally bang a Buffy look-alike, if not Buffy herself. Whee! Who do you look like?

Also, it's been determined...

It would take 16 Rum and Cokes to kill me

...if drunk over a three hour period. Disc golf incompetence at Tully Dam



I'm having fun with this camera. :D

Haven't done the whole frolf thing with the Mitchell in a while, and it kinda shows with our subpar performance at Tully early this morning. 'Ween.
There was a Halloween party at a few of the bars in town last night, and Nicole and myself headed out to see all of the costumes. The one place we spent the night at was giving out prizes for best duo/group costume, best... uh... something else, and another prize for the sexiest costume. Apparently, a lot of girls were gunning for the sexiest costume prize last night, as the place was inundated with skankiness and revealing clothing.

Lukily, I recently bought a Canon SD1000 to replace my still perfectly functional Nikon Coolpix 2100. It's a lot more compact -- the size of a deck of cards -- and is capable of making video clips, which is the wave of the future. I brought it with us to take pics of the better costumes, but I quickly realized that I was better off just giving Nicole the camera and letting her get pictures of all the hot chicks. It's less creepy when another girl goes around asking girls if their picture can be taken. ;)

But there were so many good costumes and whore-like outfits that we killed the battery to my new Canon and we had to make a quick trip back to my apartment to get the Nikon so we could get more photos.

Some of the better costumes include a hottie dressed as Fergie, Rainbow Brite, a cheerleader with "M.I.L.F." across her shirt, a girl dressed up as candy corn, Stewie Griffin, a giant penis, Bamm-Bamm and Pebbles, and a Super Trooper with a bottle of pancake syrup. Several of "the usuals" existed as well: doctors and nurses, devils, etc.

I don't know what pictures I can get away with posting online, but I think I'll be safe posting the ones where you can't see the people's actual faces. That being said, check out Lila and Bender, the DJ dressed up as a chicken, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Knights of Natty Ice or something.

We had a party at work on Friday, too, but I didn't take any pictures. Most of the women in my department were dressed as if they were in the 80's. Nothing says "so hot" like sweatshirts with the collars cut off of them. Hopefully, I can get someone else's pics sent to me and perhaps share them with the world at a later date. Weiner.


Jealous? Clearly, you are.

For some unknown reason, the folks of Oscar Mayer showed up at my place of work today to give free weinermobile rides and pawn off their excess supply of weiner whistles and postcards. Knowing that we may never see the weinermobile again, Sean (swhorfe), Nicole (lolBrown), and myself had to take full advantage.

Though I didn't ride the weinermobile, supposedly it is equipped with six deep bucket seats, a sun roof that they call "the bun roof," a hot dog-shaped dashboard, and the shifter is off to the left (instead of the right) of the driver. Plus some other stuff. Hmm. I wish it had some hydraulics. Then, it would be a complete pussy magnet.

Anyhoo, I managed to successfully hug and pose with the legendary beast, and lolBrown got to ride it, lick it (almost), and pose with it as well. swhorfe did nothing cool, but instead decided to take a bunch of pictures and some video clips.

Knowing that it'll be months before he uploads the videos, I took the liberty to do it myself. There is one when we first see the vehicle and another one when lolBrown disembarks from it.

lolBrown and I posed at the back end of the Weinermobile and its fancy Wisconsin vanity plate. And you can see the custom dashboard from the front end of the Weinermobile.

Wicked hard. Good thing for gas cards
Not much to report on this long weekend. My contingent plans went according to... well... plan.

I managed to find a combination of 34 ammo cans and pieces of tupperware out in the wooded areas Petersham, MA and points north of Quabbin Valley. Everything I found involved a hike. None of this "park and grab" bullshit. So, these were 34 well deserved finds. Most of them were leftover tournament caches. Today's caches were more of a cleaning out of Royalston before going disc golfing later in the afternoon.

Some time yesterday, my GPS clocked my max speed at 495 MPH. That totally pimp slaps the 180 MPH record. I'll post a pic eventually.

I didn't spend much time doing the disc golfing, as I was pretty tired of hiking for three days straight. It was also in the high 80's temperature-wise. I did the front 9 and then basket #18 and called it a day. I got 1 1/2 birdies! One birdie was the same one I birdied last time, basket #5. At basket #7, I had a long putt for birdie. I threw four discs from that birdie attempt spot. Two bounced off the top of the basket and one hit the chains but didn't sink in. So, I'm calling it a 1/2. :)

Pictures?

* Long Pond and Tully River from Jacobs Hill
* Another Angle
* Close up

* Tully Lake from the Tully Dam parking area.
* Basket 1 of the disc golf course, which you can see to the far right on the picture above.
* Silly geese! Bluebrries!

Found It! July 29 by Max Jerome (500 found)
#500! Time to throw a party!

I tried to do this one yesterday morning, but I didn't get there soon enough to avoid getting drenched by the rain. I tried again today, and came up victorious!

It only took me 30 minutes to get to the top, but then I had to sit there and wait 25 minutes for some blueberry (which from now on will be spelled "bluebrry")-picking muggles to leave the area where the cache was hidden. Once they left (finally), it took me about ten minutes to locate the cache, do my happy dance, swap TB's, sign the log, and head back down to my car.

On the way up, a cacher on their way down saw my GPS and asked if I was geocaching. A muggle hiking behind me asked me about geocaching. And I could hear the bluebrry pickers make a comment about how there was a geocache somewhere nearby. The word's getting out. :)

Anyhoo, thanks for the cache!

Pictures!

Mount Monadnock from Gap Mountain.
Mount Monadnock, up close.
My log entry.
The cache container, a mortar tube.
Bluebrries are plentiful on the summit! As fast as fast can be...
... You'll never catch me!



I don't remember when the last time I reset my GPS's trip computer, but I'd love to know when it clocked me at 180 MPH. I might have hit half of that speed for a couple seconds on the highway, but hitting 180 in a Focus is something for the record books! Pride in Hopkinton, NH
I found an interesting monument when I went playing in the woods this past Saturday: a monument to Abraham Kimball. Does such an "achievement" really warrant making a plaque for?

To be fair, you do have to do some off-roading to find this sign. Surprising that they didn't move it to the center of town. So small...
Did a little hiking today. What a shock, huh?

I went to a place just south of Keene called Rhododendron State Park. There's a trail there that leads to Little Monadnock Mountain and to a view of Mount Monadnock. Of course, there was a geocache hiding on the summit, which is the only real reason I came in the first place. :)

I didn't really know what a rhododendron looks like, but judging by the number of plants I saw on my way to the beginning of the summit trail, this area is gonna be off-the-hook gorgeous once they bloom in mid-July. I'll probably come back around then. You know, to illegally pick some flowers for all the ladies out there.

Anyhoo, it was a decent hike. Quick geocache find. Nice view at the vista. Can't really complain.

Picture time?

* The summit sign, accessorized with a lovely eTrex Legend GPS and water-filled backpack at its base. Perfect for all of your hiking needs!
* The view south of the summit is really nonexistent.
* The summit's benchmark with a sexy silhouette of Yours Truly.
* The vista sign. Very exciting.
* Mount Monadnock. I was there not too long ago.
* Mount Monadnock again, but closer up. Behold the face of evil


That's a big horse. You don't want any piece of that. It guards the center of Winchendon, MA, with its life. I tried to wrestle it down to no avail. I think I pulled something.

I kinda had this epic plan to drink a bunch of corn liquor and burn down Winchendon, but I had to settle for finding the small collection of caches located in Otter River State Forest and calling it a day. Though I plotted a course for 11 caches, I only bothered to find five. A lot of the access roads are still gated off, so I was really limited as to where I could go and where I could park.

But I'm actually happy with finding a mere five. Once I take it away from being a numbers game and just make it part of my hiking shenanigans, I enjoy it a lot more. Besides, my initial drive for getting into geocaching was to (give me a reason to) hike and discover new places to do so. It also makes an excellent time sink, as I have plenty of it to spare. I must have hiked at least six or seven miles this morning just to find these five caches because of all of the closed roads. I'm not remotely sore: Massachusetts has no hills. It was all level hiking. Some of it was even paved. :p

I may do some more later today, too. I got back to my apartment pretty early.

Interesting fact: I've found four of those five caches in the first place I looked. The errant fifth one was found in the second or third place I looked. I'm gettin' good at this. :) It's starting to look a little more like Christmas.
My place this morning when I walked out the door:



That's my rig; the one closest to the camera shot. Ain't it sexy? Or what you can see of it, anyway?

Now I can consider Christmas shopping.

I haven't really done any sort of shopping thus far. Funny, because each year I make an effort to get most -- if not all -- of my holiday shopping binge taken care of before Thanksgiving comes around. But without a visual cue like snow, it never really dawned on me how much time there was left until Christmas. Today was the first day in which I saw snowfall.

I hate getting people gift cards. Though they are very practical, they aren't particularly thoughtful. It's an easy cop-out. I like getting people actual gifts. However, I need an idea of what they would like or sometimes I make my own mental notes through conversations had earlier in the year with said recipients. I try to give people a broad list of shit I could use each Christmas. Sometimes, I refrain from buying something today if I can wait 'til after Christmas so those shopping for me have something they can get me and I'd be happy with. I had a list this year. However, none of the people I typically shop for gave me anything to work with this year. What the hell? I can get the nephews (my sister's 9-year-old and my brother-in-law's 11-year-old) anything and they'll be happy, but it looks like everyone else is getting various gift cards and that's it. Not original, but they're not really helping me, either. Fuckers.

I don't think I have anything to report on this week. Same shit as always. Hmm...

Phantasy Star Universe is fun. They pimped it out today with new Christmas conent, among other leetness.

We're hoping to do some more epic bowling next Friday.

My cell phone has become much like a land line phone for the past week. The battery won't charge anymore. Hopefully, I can get a new battery at my part-time job. It's not really a big deal, though it can be a pain in the ass on the weekends. If people need me during the week, most of them have my work number. I have no cell reception in the building anyway.

Completely unrelated, but I like being surprised by guests when working at my part-time job. I've been visited by three different people from Keene. That's a good 60- to 75-minute ride. I'm sure they had other stuff to do in Concord, but it's still really cool that they would stop by and say hello. Now how come I can't get any of my Concord area people to visit me in Keene? :/ Hmmph. I see how it is. Or hell, how about visiting me in Concord, for starters?

The NFL season is coming to a close in a few weeks, which means it's fantasy football playoffs season. I'm seeded #2 in my $500 purse league, but the #7 seed has great matchups (my team is on the left). So I'm a little scared. It's gonna come down to the quarterbacks, of which all four starters (we get two per team) are failures in their own right. It's gonna be interesting. I need to win this game for a 75% chance of walking away with money. Otherwise, I get nothing. I've always won in the first round of the playoffs, though. And Willie Parker got me over 20 points last night.

We played frisbee twice this week, including today in the snow. That was a complete disaster, as it was 18 degrees out and incredibly windy. I didn't have a hat, and the other fellow was hatless and gloveless. Wicked.

I think that's it. I gotta go kill stuff now. Pumpkin Festival 2006
Gettin' 'er ready:

* Keene Center. It's not really leaning. I don't think, anyway...
* A close up of the main display.
* From further away, people are setting up tents and whatnot.
* More main display goodness
* The curbs of Main Street, and most other streets. Blurry, but you get the idea.
* Another display, but on Railroad Street
* Pumpkins on Railroad Street
* Put the two together

I'll write more later, but right now, I just want to get the hell out of this town before "the horde" shows up. Seriously. It's gonna be a mess. I'm peeping.
Played in the woods some more. Big surprise there. Some pictures?

Black Mountain, Dummerston, VT:
I don't know if I was actually on Black Mountain, but there was a trail that lead to a vista anyway.

Black Mountain, southern view. Not sure what I'm looking at.
Black Mountain, southwestern view. Ditto.
Cairn Village #1. One of many up here.
Cairn Village #2
Cairn Village #3
Cairn Village #4
Cairn Village #5. Halfway up the trail. The others are at the vista.

Madame Sherri State Forest, Chesterfield, NH:
Same place that me and swhorfe decided to almost end our lives.

Indian Pond. The pond before the elevation starts rising.
Indian Pond, 700 feet later
Indian Pond, 700 feet later close-up
Mine Mountain, eastern view. That might be Monadnock.
Mine Mountain, southeastern view
Mine Mountain, southern view #1
Mine Mountain, southern view #2. A little more river.
Mine Mountain, Connecticut River #1. Some business?
Mine Mountain, Connecticut River #2
Mount Wantastiquet. Well, not so much from there, but from the satellite tower nearby. I couldn't really take shots from that vista because 20+ people were up there doing who knows what.

Monadnock from Keene #1. Near Route 101 and 10.
Monadnock from Keene #2. Near Route 12 and 9. My view home from work each day.

The Pumpkin Festival is next weekend. Should have plenty more picture-taking to do then. (I'm trying to put my camera to use for once.) Wedding pictures, 9/23
Check it out: it's Chris Mitchell and Elzabeth Hamshaw's wedding photos! I'm in a few of them, and for those of you who were in high school with me, you may recognize Josh Rockwell in some of them as well. He was another usher.

There were two photographers, one following the bride and one following the groom. I assume that the order of the pictures are chronological. We did start off at Burger King, played some frisbee, got ready, and got the show on the road. A more in-depth write-up can be found here. It'd be way funny if all of these pictures are in fact in order, because as we play frisbee and dick around, the ladies are getting ready. And by the time we're good to go, the ladies are still getting ready. I wouldn't be surprised if that was truly the case.

Some pictures I liked:

* Crouching "Ninja" Grondin doing a multi-skip throw of some sort
* A frisbee throw to the cameraman
* Me and Josh Rockwell
* I'm bored
* Rockwell with the Al Bundy routine
* Me in a tux
* Me and Mitchell in charge
* A random cutie. Don't remember her name, but she was hot. ;)

Yes sir. 3165 feet of awesomeness.

Found It! October 7 by Max Jerome (250 found)
#250!

This one took me a while to find, and I was actually getting worried that I wouldn't find it. The hint lead me to the spot, but it still took me about 15-20 minutes to locate the cache!

I was stressing out all week trying to get to 250 on Monadnock. I was at 244 on Monday. And I cleaned out most of my hometown already. It took a little creativity to make it happen. And once I was at 249 courtesy of the other Monadnock cache, I almost freaked that I might have to consider DNF'ing this one and not hitting #250! :P

Anyhoo, I left a Maine GC (trackable at geocachingmaine.org), and I threw in a new notepad. The older one is filled. I took nothing.

Thanks for the milestone!

I woke up at 6 AM. I didn't get out of bed until about 6:24 AM. Yay snooze button.

I showered, I ate, I was out the door. I had all of my crap together last night, so it was all just get up and go.

On the way up Dublin Road, the road in which Mount Monadnock's visitor center is off of, there is a great view of the mountain with nothing in front of it. It looked like what I remembered of Skeletor's Castle in the mountains (Snake Mountain to be exact), or that of any evil villan's lair: it looked like a dark creepy mountain with dark clouds swirling around it, and the summit just peeked over the fog. It looked pretty intimidating. But I ain't scared of jack shit!

I got to the visitor's center area by about 7:30. It was about 35 degrees out. Made me wonder how cold it was at the top. I had the first parking spot in. There were a couple other cars already, but somehow I scored the first spot.

I set off up the White Dot Trail. It's the most popular trail. Since I was hiking alone, I figure this would be the best trail for me to do in case I did something stupid and someone would have to rescue me, I wouldn't have to wait too long to see someone. Assuming I wasn't going hiking at 7:30 in the morning, anyway. :p The White Dot Trail is also the shortest (1.9 miles) and the most direct to the summit, which also makes it the steepest. The parking area is approximately 1400 feet from sea level. The summit is 3165 feet. Have some incline, why don't ya?

The hike up was a bit rough. Sweat was burning my eyes. I was hiking faster than the hiker in front of me, and I passed him twice, but ultimately, I would have to rest and he would pass me again. In the end, he made it to the top before I did. I found the area below the tree line to be the hardest. Once you start going over rocks instead of roots, it was still steep, but it didn't bother me as much. Maybe I was getting used to it or the strong winds were keeping me cool, but it was still a rough time.

Cache #249 turned out to be pretty easy. It is near where the White Dot and the White Cross Trails meet. Then I was off to the summit, another 1/4 of a mile up.

I got up there around 9:00. That's 90 minutes with a cache find. So I probably could have done it in about 70-80 minutes. I guess that's not bad. Three other people were up there by the time I showed up. I then spent the next 20+ minutes trying to find cache #250 which, as you can tell from my log above, almost didn't happen. It was very well hidden! I then went back to the summit. At the is point, I had it all to myself! Me! Alone! On the world's most hiked mountain! Is that even possible? It didn't take long for others to show up. By the time I left at 9:45ish, about ten others were at the top. And one guy was playing a Japanese flute, serrantating the valleys below. Weather-wise, it was very windy and very cold. I made a phone call after reaching #250, and my hands were all pink and numb by the time the call was over. Had to use the hood part of my hoodie for once.

On the way down, I met some good looking female hikers that told me they totally wanted me. I mean, they said the ranger was expecting over a thousand people to hike up here today. And no exaggeration, I must have come across 500-600 people hiking up the White Dot Trail. Wow! There were a lot of Asians, too. New Hampshire really doesn't have any minority representation anywhere in the state, but I'd say about 33% of the hikers I saw on my way down were Asian. Hmm.

By the time I got to the parking lot, it was completely filled. There is also an upper parking lot that was vacant this morning, but that was filled as well. As I turned back onto Dublin Road to leave, there was a guy directing traffic further up the road. I assume he was pointing incoming cars to another parking area up the road near Gilson Pond, which also has a trail that leads to Mount Monadnock. It was pretty ridiculous.

So yeah. 250. Not sure I could have done it later in the day with "the horde." But alas, I am victorious. Wicked.

Picture time?

The warning sign at the beginning of the trail. I guess I didn't get the memo about hiking alone. Fuck it. I ain't scared!

On a clear day, supposedly you can see all six New England states from Mount Monadnock's summit. I'm not sure what I was looking at when I was up there, but if you see your house, let me know:

Northern view from Mount Monadnock's summit
Northwestern view from Mount Monadnock's summit
Western view from Mount Monadnock's summit
Southwestern view from Mount Monadnock's summit
Southern view from Mount Monadnock's summit
Southeastern view from Mount Monadnock's summit. Starting to get scary as you look eastward.
Eastern view from Mount Monadnock's summit
Northeastern view from Mount Monadnock's summit
A survey disk on the Mount Monadnock's summit. This is where I stood to take the pictures.
The Japanese flute player at the summit. Yes, that's a flute, you sick fuck.

And... I'm spent. Mine Mountain
For the last few days, swhorfe and I have had vaporware-like plans to do some caching on Thursday. Leaving my apartment that morning, I wasn't entirely sure it was gonna happen, since we didn't come up with a destination and his dedication to the task at hand was lackluster at best. I brought a GPS and a spare set of clothes with me just in case, but I wasn't holding my breath.

To my glee, swhorfe wanted to play in the woods. Though I though he might want to do something locally or perhaps play in the canoe, he wanted to do the somewhat nearby cache that involved dropping down into a 25-foot cavern located on some fairly rugged terrain. Interesting! This cache requires rope!

This week ends our fiscal year at work, so there was no hope of getting out early and maximize the amount of daylight we would have. It also didn't help that I had to head back to my apartment to get my hiking shoes; I neglected them when I got my shit together that morning. I wasn't at swhorfe's place until about 5:20 or so. I also didn't have the cache description printed out, as I didn't think I would have the opportunity to do this cache for quite a while. Though the forest the cache was in was close to his place, the complete lack of any sort of pre-planning kept us out of its parking lot until about 6:00. The sun set at approximately 6:45.

The hike was 1.1 miles in, assuming you went in a straight line. So it was probably more like 1.5 miles. Upon entering Madame Sherri State Forest, we found some ruins of a stone house, supposedly taken down by a fire a long time ago. Not much remains aside from some foundation, a staircase, and a fireplace. It was a great photo op, but I think we may have spent a little too much time here for our own good.

Once we hiked halfway in, the terrain really kicked it up a notch. We were hiking up a mountain from that point on. It took us some time to reach the top; the incline was pretty rough in spots and the trail would randomly disappear and come back several feet later. By the time we got to the "summit vista," it was sunset. We had under 30 minutes to find the cache and get the hell out of here. There was a great view of Brattleboro and the Connecticut River up here, but time was of the essence. No photos.

I was expecting us to walk straight to the cavern, do our thing, and get out of there in no time. Little did we expect the cave to be at the base of some very steep cliffs and ledges. It was very scary to try and haul ass to the caves. We had to slide on our ass or our stomachs in a few spots. I lost my footing at one point and both my water and GPS went flying from my hands as I yelled "Fuck!" down my 20- or 30-foot decent. Luckily, my GPS didn't go anywhere and Sean (yeah, "swhorfe" has a real name) found my water. Later, I would slide down again, but not lose anything in the process. Surprisingly, despite my slides, my jeans were marginally dirty and I walked away pretty much unscathed with the exception of a 6" long, 2" wide scratch. Sean's pants ended up tearing, though that wasn't noticed until he got home.

Sean found the cave, and we had about 20 minutes of light left. It was incredibly dark in the cave. Though we brought rope with us, it appears the last visitor to the cache left some rope behind. There was also a second rope -- the original rope -- which looked kinda shady, but it worked well. We both didn't feel comfortable about dropping down into a dark cave, and we almost turned around. But we made it this far. Fuck it. I manned up and went down, though it took me a long time to make the mere 25' decline because it was impossible to see my footing. I also didn't want a bear or something to eat me. But I figure if there was a cache down here, there wouldn't be a bear. Conversely, if there was a bear down here, there wouldn't be a cache.

Once I got down there, Sean came down after me. We only had one flashlight between us, and when Sean had it, he found the cache quickly. It wasn't covered up at all. That's a really good thing, because after what kind of hike we had, the damn thing better glow in the dark or play music or some shit. We signed it and put it back. No time to explore the contents. We were running out of light.

We had less than 10 minutes of light by this point. Our goal was to make it to the "summit" before it got dark. It took some time to scale the cliffs back up. We each had things in both of our hands. It also didn't help that Sean nearly lost his digital camera attempting to scale the cliffside. It escaped his grip and rolled by me into the thicket. It was a quick find, however.

Once we reached the top again, darkness set in. There's a sign in the parking lot stating no visitors from dusk until dawn. Ha. We didn't really have a choice, now did we?

Anyhoo, at this point, all we had was a GPS and one flashlight. Luckily, the flashlight is one of those ones you shake and not a battery-powered one, so we didn't have to worry about that dying on us. But the problem we faced is that... well, first of all, it was fucking pitch black and we were on a damn mountain top 1.1 miles from the pickup truck. The trail comes and goes, so who knew if we were heading in the right direction. Also, who knew what sort of marsupials and other furry creatures live in these woods wanting to eat us. It also would have sucked that because of the complete lack of lighting, one of us twisted an ankle or something. It's amazing how much you miss the sun when it ain't around anymore. I also lost my water somewhere up here. And Sean didn't bring any with him because he lacks sweat glands or something.

I don't know how the hell Sean did it, but he lead the expedition down the mountain. There were a couple points where we inadvertently lost the trail, but we found it again fairly quickly. What's funny is that I was the one holding the flashlight, and I aimed it at the back of his knees most of the way down, so he was finding the trail without much (ok, any) lighted assistance. He claims to have 20/15 vision. I think he might be part of a government project and had his eyes augmented with nightvision. Either that or he's an X-Men member.

From the summit to the midpoint, you travel in one direction. From the midpoint to the parking lot, you travel in another. There's a geocache near the midpoint. Though we didn't seek it out, I did have the coordinates to it, in case we had time to look for it. This greatly minimized the amount of bushwhacking we had to do. I don't think we did any bushwhacking, actually. We had to back up at a couple points, but it wasn't too bad. Once at the midpoint, I changed our course and we ended up taking a different trail back to the lot than the one we used to get to the midpoint initially.

Had I had to do this hike alone, I would probably have freaked out significantly more so than I did last night. Actually, I would have been smart enough to save this series of caches (there's four in the area) for a weekend. :) Clearly, the trek back down took a long time, but it wasn't too bad. The only animals we spotted was a beaver in the pond on the way up, and there was a frog on a ledge in the cavern I noticed as I slowly repelled down. But otherwise, no bears. No wolves. No marsupials.

Though this story is fairly descriptive, I still think it pales to what we actually did. What we did was pretty fucking scary, and mere words written on this farce of a website cannot do it justice. We knew we were in trouble when sunset hit on the summit. We could have easily turned away before that happened. In fact, we probably should have. It's an amazing feat that neither of us got seriously hurt sliding down the cliffs, or twisted something on the descent. It defies all odds that Sean was able to see the trail as well as he did in the dark with a flashlight aimed at his back. I surely couldn't have done it.

This cache was hard. Wicked fucking hard. Let's see you do it in the dark.

Pussy. Coinage.
I like finding geocoins. They come in so many different shapes and styles. Way cooler than your typical hitchhiking travel bug. The only problem with geocoins, however, is that you can never find them. They are a rare species, as your typical coin will run you $10-$15 and everyone likes to find them. Sometimes, though, people will find them and keep them, even though it's not theirs to keep. We have at least one such asshole in Keene. Every time a new coin is introduced to the area, it's gone within the next day or two and he or she doesn't log their visit. Then someone like me goes out in the woods in hopes of finding this unique coin only to get slapped across the face because some douchebag stole it already. Makes everyone angry. I really hope my Canadian geocoin I have traveling the world doesn't fall to the same fate. It probably will. It's a $10 coin, after all. Though you can't really cash it in for anything. Except on eBay.

I did find a new unique coin Thursday. A BikeDog coin: Front. Back. Pretty spiffy.

I'd like to get some caching done today, but severe thundershowers threaten the area. But weather.com has lied to me so many times before, I'm not sure if I should trust their prediction. I initially wanted to trek into Vermont, but I may settle for finding the outlier caches on my way to my mother's. Then I'll mooch off the washer and drier, hopefully watch intriguing football, and maybe do some Henniker geocaching before it gets dark. We shall see. I'd really like to get to 250 by climbing Mount Monadnock two weekends from now. I got a lot of work cut out for me between now and then. It's getting harder now that it's getting darker sooner.

Remember when I was wondering if 200 would be possible? And 250 would be a stretch? Ha. I'm a superstar. Behold the power of high-def
So I broke down and got my television of epic leetness^TM this past Sunday. I've been planning such a purchase for a while. With winter soon arriving, it became necessary for me to get a television. Though I was aiming more closer to a Christmas launch, changes being made to my employee discount at my place of part-time work have forced me to get it before they take effect.

Because of the size of my living room (aka "wicked small"), getting a tube TV would have consumed most of my living room. While this might have been cool if I was getting a huge projection television, those things are too cumbersome and there was no way I was gonna be able to get one into my apartment. I also figure that I won't be living in my apartment forever -- perhaps upgrading to something bigger once I make more money -- so something I could move on my own in my car would be better. So I decided to go with an LCD. I found myself staring at them a lot as I work on Sundays.

If I was willing to drop a ton of money on an LCD, I wanted to future-proof it as much as possible. That's why the one I got is both an HDTV, 1080p, and has an HDMI connection. I decided to go with a 32" model because anything smaller and I might as well just get a tube TV. It's about as high as LCD's go, too. Anything bigger is typically a plasma TV, and I don't want an obscene electric bill or excessive heat emitting from the TV (LCD's vs plasmas chart). I was also quite partial to the silver look, as it would blend better in my apartment. Most LCD's we carry at that size are black. They are typically widescreen by default; perfect for movie-watching.

I eventually settled on a Magnavox 32MF231D. It has everything I was looking for and a decent number of inputs in the back without annihilating my checking account. I also got a Phillips DVP5960 DVD player, which matches the TV. It has high-def upconversion capabilities, an HDMI connection, and a USB port on the front. This thing can play DivX-compressed movies, too. So I could theoretically download video content online, throw it on a flash drive, and watch it on the big screen! That's fucking sweet. I can also throw a bunch of pictures on a disc or whatever and do a little slideshow action.

I also got a surge protector to plug everything into and an HDMI cable to run between the TV and the DVD player. I then picked up a cheap stand at a local general merchandise retailer. Not WalMart. WalMart can hum on my nuts.

The speakers are pretty decent on the TV, and are more than ample from the distance I'll be watching it from. I may pick up some floor speakers later down the road, but that requires a receiver and they don't make a cheap receiver with an HDMI connection on it. There's probably a cheaper alternative or another way to hook everything up, but I'm no home theater expert. I'll figure it out later.

Anyhoo, I got the TV to play movies primarily and give me a reason to use my living room. It's been a barren wasteland for months. Now, it's worth visiting. And my setup plays movies beautifully. I may consider getting basic cable now, just to see what this high-def television hoopla is all about. People will be flocking to watch the football playoffs at my shanty.

That's right. I can officially entertain people now. If they like cinematic adventure, that is. Or cable, should I decide to go that route eventually.

I bet next-gen console systems like the Playstation 3 and XBox 360 would look sweet on this TV. My TV.

How about some photos?

My living room in February.

Eventually, I scored a free love seat and a $10 coffee table. You can see them in live action video! They blend well with their surroundings.

Since that video, I took out the air conditioner, set everything up, and this is what it looks like right now. I still got some wire management to do and a big box to do something with. The TV isn't centered, but neither is the couch. I need to be able to get into the bedroom, after all. I think it looks better this way than if I had the love seat where the TV is and vice-versa. It kinda separates the living room from the rest of the apartment. Plus, I can watch TV as I cook.

From the sit-down position. It looks golden because it's heavenly. Really.

It's so thin! Has a weight of about 30 pounds, so I can move it from room to room if I'm so inclined.

My DVD player's USB port. Oh, the fun I can have with this!

On with the movie! You can see my feet in the darkness. The reflection off of the coffee table doesn't deter from movie-watching. Frisbee Pics Redux
My buddy Sean is having a picture-taking and video-recording fetish as of late. He decided to whip out the camera today and take a bunch of pics at lunch and during frisbee time and whatnot. I figure I'd share a few frisbee pics since I seem to have been getting more comfortable with my (for lack of a better word) "appearance." Normally, I can't stand looking at pics of myself. Not sure why exactly. But I've been more tolerant with them lately. But anyhoo...

The redhead is Chris "Man Candy" Mitchell, who has his own site as well. He's also my unofficial second geocaching sidekick, Sean being my primary sidekick.

* Mitchell is good with the between-the-legs catches.
* I rock out the behind-the-back catches, though it's unclear if I caught this one or thought I was Captain America.
* Grondin with the grab.
* Mitchell gets some height.
* Mitchell looking gay.
* About a foot off from a gem of a catch.
* This one is totally going into my hand.

Frisbee pics from 5+ years ago can be found on this site as well. Goose Pond Fun!
Courtesy of Sean Whorfe's camera and YouTube's bandwidth. Check out the post below for a little backstory.

Goose Pond Island Cache 1: the conundrum and the swearing.
Goose Pond Island Cache 2: we built a bridge with a few heavy logs.
Goose Pond Island Cache 3: a pointless video of us on the bigger island.
Goose Pond Island Cache 4: a little overgrowth action. "And my shoes fell off!"
So there we were, me and my main geocaching sidekick, at Goose Pond (panoramic) immediately following work. There was a cache located on the bigger of two islands in the pond. We made our quick trip around the pond to where the islands were. And then we freaked out because the water was deeper than it looked, it smelled like ass, and it was murky as hell. Were we going to give up on this hike? Almost. Turns out we didn't. We stared at the very short expanse we had to cross for an eternity. Then, we took our socks and shoes off and tried to come up with a way across.

Our first idea was to cross using the already submerged logs leading to the smaller island. That wasn't happening.

Our next idea was to find a shallow spot and just run through the water. Water levels were deceptive, and we were too much like pansies to just friggin' do it. It smelled really bad, too.

So then we built our own bridge by using large logs and sticks laying around near the trail. We carried those barefoot over several tree roots and other trail obstacles and threw them into the river. We got them into position near the sunken slimy logs, made a walking stick, and crossed it.

Unfortunately, it feels like I really paraphrased what happened, because a lot of time passed between when we got to the crossing point and when we actually made it across. We were like the Army Corps of Engineers out there, foraging what we could to make a solid crossing over 20-25 feet of water.

Truth is, we probably could have just ran across, but decided to make things much more difficult for ourselves. On the plus side, we were pretty dry.

Of course, this all only brought us to the small island. The cache was on the other (bigger) island. We were worried about crossing onto the bigger island, still barefooted of course, since the logs between those islands were even slimier and the distance to travel was even greater. Then it turned out that it was shallow and clear enough in spots that you didn't need anything to cross. It was like rocky beach sand in spots.

Once on the bigger island, we followed the highly overgrown trail to the clearing and went straight for the cache. It appears no one has been on this island in eons. Found the cache pretty quickly, surprisingly.

Getting back from the small island to the main land was humorous, as my buddy fell in the water when the walking stick broke on him.

We dried off, put our socks and shoes back on, then hiked around for a while before heading back home. There's a second cache in the area that we'll have to save for another day.

Picture time!
* The small crossing point we were afraid to cross
* Overgrowth on the big island was above our waists
* Goose Pond from the big island
* Near the cache. A distant ass shot for the ladies. Does this count as a find? An FTF?
I don't feel like being very descriptive, but I hid my cache in the woods after I got out of work today. I've had this area picked out in Concord for a while. I recently bought some canisters online, I got my crappy loot together, and I was off!

My goal was to place a cache near a granite quarry, since granite is like the only thing people know New Hampshire for. That and the Old Man in the Mountain. Which is broken. Oh, and the whole "no sales tax" thing.

This is the cache container. Army-issued 30-caliber ammo canister. Water tight. Bring it.

This is its contents. Lots of good stuff in there. Need a crossover cable? Go hike for it! I dumped a lot of my trade bait in there. Included was this travel bug that I liked very much. It's a coin. The front. The back. Rock.

I bought a geocoin that I'm hoping will make its rounds hopping from cache to cache across the world and dumped it off, too. This is the front and this is the back. My current goal for it reads, "I would like to go through Canada, Louisiana, New England, and wherever French is spoken! I'd also like to visit hockey arenas and maple syrup-making places. Might sound stereotypical, but hey, that's the Canuck blood in me, eh! ;)"

I have a second Canadian geocoin, but I'm gonna hold on to it. Cachers I come across in the woods can log it for meeting me (swhorfe? :)).

It didn't really take any time for me to find and locate a parking area for my hike. I'm not sure where I parked was legit, but whatever. It worked out for me in the end. :)

Near the trailhead, I found this sign. I probably would have been scared off if I didn't read about this story on Friday. I heard the beast only comes out at night...

The hike itself wasn't too bad. Very rocky. Supposedly, the trail I was on doubles as a mountain bike trail, but you'd be hard pressed to see me blazing down it.

About a third of a mile up, I came across a small quarry.

Near the cache (approximately a mile later) is a bigger quarry. There's a ton of rocks, too. Go figure.

It took me a while to locate a spot where I don't think non-geocachers would find my cache and steal it. Then I was off. I debated making my own graffiti on the rocks but I stopped myself. First of all, I'm most curious about how people managed to spraypaint the middle of the cliff. Were they lowered down? Can they walk on stilts? Do they possess the strongest butterfly stroke ever? Secondly, I didn't have a spray can, so that really killed the dream.

Oh well. Here's the cache link. It's not active at the moment, but I assume it will be in 24-72 hours. 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. 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. Geocaching Pics
I've got a few. Mostly in reference to this earlier post:

Older:
* The front of a typical USA geocoin
* The back of a typical USA geocoin

Cache #1 (Stumpy's) revisted:

* My car. I took this pic because I wanted to compare it to five years ago, but I think I parked in a different spot.
* The cache itself.
* The "You found me!" letter. (five years ago)
* Our log entry five years ago.
* My log entry this past week.
* The Compass Rose 2005 geocoin. It doesn't actually say "CoinsAndPins.com" across it. I couldn't get a good pic of it because it's too shiny, so I snagged it straight from their site. :P I'm thinking of getting myself a milestone coin from them.

Cache #100 (Bear Caves):

* The enterance sign.
* The cache itself. Behold the power of beans!
* My log entry.
* Cliffside. I started off somewhere in the trees.
* Another cliff. I ended up scaling that. Not straight up scaling, but I had to get up it somehow.

I found my first "nano cache" this morning. I'll get a pic of it next week, but to give you an idea, it's about the diameter of my pinky and 1/4th of an inch long. Ridiculously small. You can only initialize the log! I hope this trend doesn't catch on. It's still wet out.
So there's still this flood watch in effect. Actually, it's not a "watch." It's a "warning." But anyway, it's still raining a lot and it's giving a lot of people flashbacks of last October. Thus far, Keene has been spared of any roads closing and there aren't any nearby bridges that are out, but there are roads in my hometown of Hillsboro that have been shut off. Unfortunately, I don't have the details on this flooding (no TV), but it appears some towns further east are screwed over much like the Southwestern part of the state was done for last Fall. There's still a chance that something might happen in my neck of the woods. Henniker, the next town east of Hillsboro (and the only Henniker on Earth), got pretty messed up. My boy Ray sent me some pics of Rush Road in Henniker (kinda weird seeing how he's in Tennessee), which isn't a popular road; but I know someone who lives up there so I guess he's not gonna be able to go to work for a while:

Rush Road pics: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Unfortunately, I don't have the time or energy to start collecting pics of the damage like I did in October, but you can find a bunch of pictures over at the websites of WMUR, the Union Leader, and the Concord Monitor.

Maybe if it gets bad here in Keene, I can go out and scope the damage and take my own pics! But that's an opportunity I'm willing to let pass me by. Wasn't a good weekend for caching.
I was up at the break of dawn Saturday in order to FTF (first-to-find) a new micro cache I could walk to in under five minutes from my apartment. There was no way I was gonna let some other punk ass beat me to it. But anyway, I woke up way early to find it, and though I was left to my lonesome for nearly an hour(!), I was unable to find the damn thing. I lost precious sleep for jack squat. I was pretty pissed off about that, and I think that, in part, was the reason I didn't bother heading to Mass that morning. I really hate micros.

I made up some sleep and chose to hit a few local caches instead. I came up empty handed again for my second cache attempt of the day. Grr.

At least I was able to find the third attempted cache. I've been goose-egged twice in a row a couple times I think, but I don't think I've ever gone 0-for-3. If I did, I might have thrown myself off of the nearby cliff. I'd be a sorry excuse of a geocacher.

The nearby cliff -- Sunset Rock -- gives a great view of Keene. I made a feeble attempt of creating a panoramic view of the cliff side, but it didn't work out too well. I also don't really know what part of Keene I was looking at, so let's simply label the pictures below as "left side," "center," and "right side:"



Paul Imm took some better pictures.

I didn't particularly enjoy my fourth cache, partly because a) it was a micro and b) the lady living in the house at the intersection spoiled the cache hunt for me. I've read logs that she typically does that, but I parked a ways away and hoped that I could walk to the intersection undetected. I don't know if she has a dog or whatever that could tell I was nearby or if she stares out the window all day, but no sooner was I there for five seconds, she yelled to me the location of the film canister. Son of a bitch. I guess I wasn't stealthy enough. But I've found another local micro that had a similar hiding spot once before, so I don't think it would have taken me long to find even if she didn't spoil it for me. Bitch.

I initially planned to do a couple in Concord today after work, but I found myself sticking around a long time after my shift was over. I shot the shit with people I don't typically see on Sunday. However, once I was back in Keene, I went back to attempted cache #2 and found it in less than ten seconds. Hmm. I wonder what the hell went wrong yesterday. Must have typed in the coords wrong or something.

So all in all, I found three more. That brings me to 59 for those of you keeping track. A happy ending
I went 3 for 3 today, hitting the 2 in Concord I set out for and the one in Keene that I couldn't access yesterday because there was a damn parade on the bike trail.

I found the first one before work this morning, and it almost made me late. :)

The second one was very easy to find, but it was in one of those "Park and Ride" places. I brought the container back to my car so I could sign the log, but then a few cars parked near me, and one right next to me. I had to wait for them to leave before I could return the cache. That took 30 minutes. What a horrible waiting game that was.

The third one was really easy this time around. I guess "muggles" (non-geocachers) melt in the rain or something, because I only encountered two joggers during my hike to and from. I even got a shot of the bench that I couldn't get yesterday.

Picture time:
* Historical mills and factory signs facilitate the aggression of the youth and therefore must be vandalized.
* Fuck it, let's graffiti the (flood damaged?) buildings, too. Someone spray-painted "I love tekkin' speds," which I thought was hilarious.
* I've never been on a bike trail with double yellow lines before. I'm not allowed to pass slow bikers or walkers?
* A plaque on a bench along the trail. "Uncle Freddy died? Mother fucker!" (Jerky Boys reference)
* A three-tone house. It wasn't on the trail, but I thought it looked kinda funky.
* This house is also funky. It's a light green color with orange shutters.

My leg still hurts. It hurts in the socket where my right thigh meets my hip. My part-time job involves a lot of me running around, and the extra walking I did after work didn't really help my cause. I'm not walking with a gimp (usually), but it hurts like hell when I get up from a sitting position, and there's some discomfort when I walk normally. If there's any fine-looking women out there that would like to massage my inner thigh for me, it'd be most appreciated. Poor depth perception and/or wandering fingers is a plus. Do a good enough job (pun intended) and I'll take you out to a fancy dinner. So act fast (but work at a medium pace)! Updated pics of my place
If you haven't looked at the pics in the post below this one, I suggest you do so first. Those shots are "before." The ones here are "after."

Mom and I whooped some ass in my place tonight:

* My bedroom. Clearly from the darkness you can tell this is where I practice my various pagan arts and incantations. You can also see that the light switch is in the "off" position, which makes me wonder why the fuck I took a picture of an unlit room in the first place. Answer: because I'm stupid.
* My bathroom with a wild dolphin theme my mother wanted to go with. I'm not sure I like it much. Doesn't really look too gay, though. I can always change it later. After Mom leaves.
* My kitchen. Now with shelving! I don't have to keep my cookware inside the stove!
* My Italian restaurant, with matching curtain! I like it, though I need to get a cover for the seats that is either a solid color or matches the table. The floral design thing would raise some eyebrows when I have visitors.
* The corner area near the door and fridge. I'm not sure I need storage there, but it's there for the time being. There's just barely enough space for me to squeeze in a Shark-like powerless vaccuum.
* My living room. Barer then an eight-year-old's poontang. I'm in no rush to fill it though. It gives me plenty of space to practice running up the walls as if I was one of those Matrix guys. Pics of my place
From like, earlier in the week and stuff. Nothing fancy.

The walls of my place are actually more of a creamy yellowish color, not plaster white like the pics look.

* My kitchen from my living room. I have a bunch of places for shelving from all of the open space. I have to hide my cookware in my stove and my bathroom linens in the bottom drawer near the sink. It even came with free scuff marks under the door! I'm so excited!
* My sink area with a complete lack of countertop space. I'm getting shelving for small appliances and whatnot.
* The stove area, with the bathroom to the right and my uncentered microwave to the left. Figures I notice the crappy placement of such trivial things... crooked pictures on walls annoy me because I'm a perfectionistic bitch.
* My collection of spices from around the world. I don't use garlic powder on anything, though. I suppose I better start.
* My quaint living room with random desk furniture that will be going into the bedroom, located to the left. It ain't big, about 7 1/2 x 10 feet. Just enough room for like... nothing.
* Cable in the bedroom apparently comes through the window instead of a typical coax wall jack.

I'll probably have more pics tomorrow when most of the other stuff is moved in, shelving and all. I'm giddy with anticipation. Frosty meets Mortal Kombat
From a guy I work with:

As a child, I was always attempting to "push the limits" on my seasonal decorations. From simple things as a two headed snowman, to the Santa that had been hit by a car, I felt that holiday expression was an important issue. So, without any further delay, I present to you: "My Front Yard: 2005".

There are like 20 children that live on his street, too.

On a somewhat similar note, Police whack giant snow penis. Nice headline. Flooding photos
Pictures were summitted to WMUR and I stole them from there. Hey, at least I'm not hotlinking!

Keene, my future home:

Brookside. One of the places I thought I'd move into!
Brookside being evacuated
Brookside from Summit Road I think.
East Surry Road
East Surry Road. Different angle.
Keene State College parking lot
Keene State College walking path
Marlboro Street. Another street I thought of living on!
Marlboro Street again
Pizza Downunder, very close to Brookside I think.
Princeton Westwood. Yet another place I wanted to move into!
Spring Street, Keene
Staples Plaza. Pan more left and there's the KFC-Taco Bell restaurtant I live in.
Water Street, Keene. How appropriate.
Winchester Street, Keene

Hillsboro, my town:

A home near Beard Brook
Beard Brook, where the tar becomes dirt
The bridge on Beard Brook
The bridge, again
Cricenti's Market, downtown
Cricenti's, again
Hillsboro Ford. Take that, you bastards!
Hillsboro Ford. Pan right some more and you're in Cricenti's.
Gleason Falls, which is way the hell up there somewhere.
The road to Gleason Falls
Gleason Falls. Owned.
Gould Pond (aka Emerald Lake area)
Gould Pond is on the east side of town. I'm west side.
Sampan, like a mile or so from my house!
One of Sampan's propane tanks being swept away. (They both swept away.)
Sleeper Road. No clue where that is.

Hinsdale, a town along the river between NH and Vermont:

Ashuelot Road, Hinsdale. Hinsdale got its ass beat hard by the rains.
Collapsed house in Hinsdale.
Collapsed road
Another collapsed road
Monument Road

Newport, about 25 miles northwest of me, near Lake Sunapee:

Main Street
Newport flooding
Newport's airport

Others:

A road in Chesterfield
Near my retirement place in Goshen
A boat in Governor's Island, Gilford
High Street, Walpole. Walpole got owned hard.
Washington-Windsor town line. Five minutes from home.
Salmon Brook. Not sure where that is (Nashua?).
Sawyer Lake, Gilmanton
Sugar River in Claremont
Sullivan Bridge. Why I can't go to work.
Washington Street, Claremont
Twin Bridge Road, Northfield Yay, another goal reached! Kinda.
Reach another goal today: I found three caches. Well, I found one cache, and the other two were locationless. I had three normal caches I wanted to find, but failed to find the first one at the NHTI campus in Concord because the GPS was telling me it was in the pond, and I didn't have my hip waders with me (nor do I own any, despite popular belief). I assume I punched the waypoint in wrong. The second cache was a micro-cache (my first! It was a film canister), which was pretty easy. The third was a multi-cache, where I had to go to a set of coordinates that had something that would tell me the coordinates of the cache itself. Unfortunately, it was along the side of the road and there was way way WAY too much traffic -- vehicles and joggers and cyclists -- for me to do any covert searching. So I couldn't really attempt this one.

I needed to find three caches to meet my goal for the summer, and only being able to find one of three really put a damper on my plans. So, I went and found a couple locationless caches in my town and called it a day. Locationless caches are very weird and I never heard of them until like last week. Essentially, you're given a place to find (like a water tower, a one-room schoolhouse, a tank statue, etc) and get a pic of your GPS at the site. The catch, though, is that you have to find such a place that no one else has logged. It makes it pretty challenging for some (people already tagged the obvious Franklin Pierce homesteads for the "where presidents grew up" cache), but some others are so friggin' easy that it's laughable. One such easy one is "find an American flag." There's a bunch in my town, and I pass at least eight going down Loudon Road on my way to work in Concord. The crazy thing about these locationless caches is that you can visit more than one flag pole and get credited with a find multiple times. As long as no one else has logged it, it's fair game.

I feel kinda cheap having to resort to flag hunting (and water tower hunting) to reach my goal, but given that today marks the four-year anniversary of the World Trade Center bombings, it feels appropriate. So enjoy the pic.

Ironically, it's the biggest and nicest flag in my town, yet it is at my least favorite place: in the Ford dealership's lot. A hiking we will go.
Had a morning meeting thing at my part-time job, and since today's forecast was 80's and sunny, today was gonna be the perfect day to get some caching in. The meeting would force me to get up early, and it would justify the trip to Pawtuckaway (normally a 1 1/2 hour drive from my house) since it was just a mere 40-minute trip from work. The three hours I'd get paid can be later used to buy some gas. Woo.

The meeting was odd, for I thought I might have entered the wrong store. I didn't recognize about 80% of the people that were there. I did get to see some people I haven't seen since I dropped down to part-time status, which was nice, but damn... there's not many people left that I know. :( It was particularly weird when they started giving out awards to associates that have performed well over the past fiscal quarter: I recognized one or two names out of 17 awards! Hella weak.

Playing in Pawtuckaway had its moments. The road into Pawtuckaway isn't labeled in any way. The trails are rarely labeled, and the markers along the trails are few and far between. I'd hike on what I thought was the trail only to discover a few minutes later that I was in the middle of nowhere. Even the wooden stations you find on the side of the trail that is usually chock full of rules and history and maps were lackluster. The maps didn't have any "you are here" spots on it! I thought I was at one place when I was miles off in another direction. The map also had a bunch of numbered areas that often designated appropriate parking areas or intersections, but when you actually are in one of those areas, there is no giant number to be found. Well, I did find the "10" sign, but none of the others.

All in all, I went five for five today. I was hoping to get up to eight under my belt, but that would have involved scaling three summits. After the first summit, half of my water was gone. And since I forgot to hit the nearby Target after my meeting for some sort of energy bars first, I didn't have any food on me, either. And I was hungry, tired, sweaty, and stinky. I also neglected to bring my beat-up sneakers that I use for hiking. I had to use my work shoes. Those sucked. Well, they did their job, but I don't want to ruin them.

So I'll have to go out at least once more to reach my goal. I'm not exactly sure what my time limit is to reach my caching goal. I originally was thinking I had until the end of August, or maybe until the first day of fall. The last couple years, though, I've gone geocaching as early as March up until late November. Hmm. I think it's too late to attempt to reach my goal by the end of August, although if I had my car for the month of July, I probably would have reached that goal at that time limit. So until the first day of fall is the new time limit. That's realistic.

Took some pics. The first three are at a place called Devil's Den, which is made up of several small caves (or dens, if you will) made courtesy of several large rocks in the area. There was a cache in one of them, a cache that even when you find the cave, there was still a 50% chance you wouldn't find the cache. So I didn't fuck around and brought a big-ass flashlight with me! Ha! It was hard for me not to miss it with 2,000,000 candles at my fingertips! There was a lot of florescent moss in the cave as well. And in case you ever wanted to see the forest from the trees, well, I got a pic of that for you, too.

There were caches located near the landmarks I took in the other two pictures. Behold the power of a tiny rock holding up a significantly bigger rock! And let's not underestimate the eerieness of some random big alien green thing towering just off a trail! What's it purpose? Who knows! But it's there, and you should be afraid.



I'm so fucking beat right now. Time for a nap! Hold my calls. Pretty busy day for me today.
I couldn't sleep in, because I had an early morning haircut. It was badly needed though, so I didn't mind.

I went to Keene and worked for a few hours. Yay overtime! Saturday is really my only day off, but I don't mind coming in voluntarily since I don't feel that my new job is really a job. It's not physically demanding in any way, and I have a lot of fun with the other screwballs I work with. My department occupies one aisle of cubicles, which is 10 x 2. I think the people in the first 5 x 2 section are envious of the fun had in my 5 x 2 section. Some of them want me moved into their area so they can have fun, too. But I like where I sit, because some of the people in adjacent cubes aren't right in the head either. :) What can I say, I'm the funniest person. Ever.

But anyway, I did that for a while and I was talking with the person in the cube across from me, telling her of my fun adventures involving apartment hunting, and I guess she's looking for a place, too. Since I prefer to have a roommate and the midget house doesn't do it for me, I now have another option open to me. I tend to have much better luck finding ads for spacious 2- or 3-bedroom places but no one to split one with. Now I might. Yay! Her only request is that I don't do drugs (while one of the few questions midget house guy asked me was "do you drink beer?" Hehe.). I'll try to avoid the temptation to fuck up my life like that. :p

On a similar note, some guy got a hold of me through one of those "I need a roommate" sites, but doesn't seem to want to email me even though my email address is written in my profile. I'm not gonna pay any more money to read emails sent to me through any site, so he better fucking figure that out soon if he wants a response.

I decided to do a little hiking after work, because it's like the only real physical activity I seem to get anymore and I don't really want to suffer from some sort of muscle atrophy. :) It was an ok hike. A lot hillier than what I'm used to when geocaching, but nothing compared to the mountain climbing I miss doing back in my Boy Scout days. I had more trouble finding where the trail started than finding the cache itself. I also ran into some problems when I was within 100 feet of the cache, for I could hear the voices of a couple people. I sat there and waited inconspicuously for them to leave for about ten minutes thinking they might have been cache hunting before realizing they weren't going anywhere. They were fishing off a boulder into the large pond the trail goes around. In order to avoid being seen, I had to recall everything I have learned from Karate Joe's Ninja Assassin Dojo and Weekend Bingo Parlor. I backpedaled about 100 feet and bushwhacked my way through the woods, hiding behind rocks and whatnot in order to claim what I have sought out for. It was a lot more work than I had hoped for. When cache hunting, it's rule #1 that non-geocachers (known as "geomuggles") don't catch you in the act, for they might steal the cache and spoil everyone's fun. While that was a concern, I was hoping that they didn't mistake me in my black hoodie for some sort of baby bear or moose or some shit and fill me full of buckshot. (Hey, this is New Hampshire. You never know what people will use to fish with!) But in the end, it looks like my ninja skills paid off, and the blonde that was fly fishing was probably a cutie. Didn't feel like ninja assassining my way up to her to find out for sure, though.

Since I do a lot of geocaching and I don't think anyone else reading this knows really what the hell is involved, I took some pics of a typical cache. It really isn't much more than given a set of latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, use a GPS and find out what's hidden there. The first pic is where a typical cache would be found (after some of the sticks and branches are removed). The next pic shows some of the crappy loot you can find, including a Billy Idol cassette (it's under the stickers) and a random travel bug. The last pic would be the obligatory logbook with writing implements. When you find a cache, you take an item from the cache, you place an item into the cache, and you sign the logbook. It's ok to just sign the logbook without exchanging items. Sometimes, you can score something awesome in a cache, but I've noticed that in most cases, the loot is crap. But I do it more for the thrill of the hunt and the scenery. And the exercise.

Anyone need some lumber?
It's been a long time since my town was hit with any severe weather. I welcomed the change last night. There was a lot of lightning outside, as if someone was having a big strobe light party outside my windows. It didn't rain or thunder for the longest time. Just lots and lots of lightning. I turned on The Weather Channel to find out what the hell was going on, and a big red blob on the doppler radar was over my town. Awesome!

The rain didn't last long, maybe five minutes if that. Just long enough for the lightning to sweep through and take out a couple trees within a stone's throw distance from my house. One tree was across the street in my sister's front yard. That came crashing down and took the power lines with it. It was at this time that I got to see the practicality of owning a UPS, for I was busy burning a backup DVD and doing all sorts of stuff. Buy a UPS! It could save your shit!

But anyway, once power was off, my mother and I gathered some flashlights, lit some candles, and checked out the damage outside. The tree that took out the power lines was uprooted about five feet. It would have sucked if it fell in the opposite direction, towards the house. My sister and her family just built the house, and the house hasn't been standing for a year yet.

A branch from a tree landed on the roof over my front porch, hitting the wires there, but not breaking any of the windows it touched. A couple split and/or downed branches could be found a little too close for comfort around the backside of the house, but did not cause any damage.

My sister's husband called the police. While we waited for PSNH to show up, a few civilian vehicles went down the road and slowed down when they saw the tree blocking their way. While most people did the smart thing and turned around, a couple people contaminating the gene pool proceeded to cross underneath the tree with their car. We were waving our flashlights and hands to warn them of the downed wires, but to no avail. I really wanted to see them go up in flames, because such fools deserve it. No dice, though.

Eventually the police came to set some flares, and PSNH came and took care of the trees and the wires. We weren't without power for that long, but it was still creepy to see frequent and constant lightning flashes even four hours after the power went out.

I took some pictures, but the ones I took at night didn't come out. I took some this morning, but they aren't nearly as impressive with most of the obstructions having been taken care of. The firs pic is that of my sister's place and remnants of a tree that was on her property. The next pic is a souvenir left on my front yard by the PSNH chainsaw crew of last night's events. The third pic is of the branch that rested on my front porch's roof. The last pic is pretty much the same shot, just a little higher up.



All in all, no structural damage. No explosions. Some inconvenience, but that's about it.

I look forward to the next occurrence of severe weather. I like to play outside in hurricane weather, so my gleeful celebration of natural chaos shouldn't surprise you too much. ;) Rain ain't stopping me.
Bugs? Eh... they might next time.

Decided to do another three-peat today geocaching, and once again, I went 3 for 3. And it was raining off and on. And it was buggy. That makes me awesome.

The first cache took me no time to find, but I did have to wait a while before I could go and find it. I had to park in the beach parking lot. While there weren't many people coming or going (rainy day), there was this one kid that was walking around about 100 feet away. And he wouldn't go away. Must have been waiting on a ride. I spent about ten minutes waiting for him to go somewhere else for a while, and once he left, I ninja stealthed my way to where the cache was, found it in a couple minutes, and then got the hell out of there. The number of mosquitoes I put up with was insane... if I was smart, I would have gotten some bug repellent or some deet first.

The third cache took the most work to find once I was in the general vicinity. The last 30 feet are always the toughest. It also proved to be the most rewarding, because there were all sorts of good loot I could have swapped out for. I almost went with this handheld electronic battleship game (batteries included!), but settled on trading for one of those pocket hand warmer packet things instead. Mosquitoes galore, too.

The second cache involved me hiking over a mile one-way. It was muddy, obstructed by a log, involved me making wrong turns, and required me getting my sneakers soaked. Not too pleasant. And I didn't even mention the mosquitoes! Oh, the mosquitoes! No exaggeration at all, there must have been one hundred of them after me at the cache's location easily. It sucked ass. It sounded like I was invading a bee's nest instead of being attacked by blood-sucking punks. It was awful. I wasn't sure I was gonna make it back alive.

The pics below all come from my second cache hunt today. The first three pics should be greener than they actually appear, courtesy of all of the algae growth and pollen that has fallen into the waters. The fourth happens to be Ferrin Pond in Weare, NH, which is where I went. I guess if you have never seen a body of water before, it might look awesome, but otherwise... I'm not sure why I took the picture. :) I felt the need to take some pictures of mushrooms after that.

The cache is located on the far end of the pond, and the boat in the next picture was on the near end. Not sure what it was doing there, since there isn't any residential areas nearby. Although there might be... I heard people yelling off in the distance at one point in my hike, and since most of the trail seemed suitable for four-wheeling use, maybe it belonged to one of them. There was also a pile of trash in a small metal bowl near the boat. I didn't understand this. This wasn't a state park or anything, and it's not like some ranger is gonna come and swap it out with a new trash can or something. Bastards.

The last pic is that of a Mercedes Benz 320 S. Not sure what year it is, nor how many miles it has. It was near where I parked my car, at the beginning (end?) of the trail. I took more than one pic of it, but I guess my batteries died and this was the only one that came out. :( Looked pretty sweet. Is it my prize for making it to and fro and surviving all the obstacles and bugs? Not sure, but I hope so.

I took other pics as well, but they either came out sucky or they didn't save, much like the other car pics. Oh well. I guess it's the price I pay for having a digital camera that runs on just 2 AA batteries. I wonder if other cameras last longer because they use 4 AA's or some Lithium-Ion things. I like my Nikon 2100, though. Very small, lightweight, runs on nothing. Cost me a mere $125, a friggin' deal-and-a-half at the time. I just wish I could fill my compact flash card up without recharging the batteries ten times in the process.


Pics Ahoy
If things go my way today, I'm gonna go get lost in the woods for a while. I figured this would be a grand opportunity to purge my collection of geocaching pics from the year before:

The first four pics come from atop Temple Mountain in Miller State Park, a place you will be lead to should you do the Stone Chair cache. The first pic is the stone chair itself, while the second pic is a shot of what I believe to be Mount Monadnock. There were an assload of random rock piles and cairns nearby, and that's what pics #3 and 4 show. It was like a ghetto Stonehenge up there.

A week later I went to do the Flagpin cache, which is at the summit of another mountain in Miller State Park. Well, I don't know if you want to call it a mountain, since instead of hiking the steep grueling trail, you could walk or drive your lazy ass up the paved road to the summit. Too bad I didn't realize that was possible until after I nearly killed myself from exhaustion. Damnit. The first two pics show Mount Monadnock I think. The third pic is of a rock I found while getting lost trying to find my way to the third cache in Miller State Park. It was completely secluded off trail. I settled for this instead of having to bushwhack my way to my next find.

Poor Farm Treasure is a cache located in the backwoods of Weare, NH. The last two shots are from the drive to the cache. Nothing special about them. Just some trees. And my retirement home.



Oh, the wreckage! The horror! Aie!
I purged all of the photos that were on the card of my digital camera. Most of the pics are useless, but there's a few I wouldn't mind sharing with the masses. However, I'm trying to figure out the best and easiest way to do this. Should I just give text descriptions and links? Or should I use thumbnails displayed in some sort of tablular format? I kinda want to make a mixture of both, but I'm lazy and either solution requires more work than I really want to dedicate. Bah.

I'll start with some shots of my car when I got involved in a fender bender a month or so ago. As you'll notice, there ain't that much damage. It was mostly aesthetic. Not sure how the dealership figured it would cost nearly $3,000 to fix. But that's my insurance company's problem, not mine. :)



Other pics forthcoming, once I come to a conclusion about layout. Geocaching pics
[Note: this entry never existed, but was later added here because it was placed on another page on one of my old sites]

There's even more pics at Jake's site:

Jake's car - Where we had to get out and walk in order to reach our first geocache. Also pictured is my canteen, Jake's backpack, and a pair of hubcaps that don't belong to either of us. *shrug*
Cache #1 - We reached the cache we were looking for about an hour later. It was very well hidden; easy to miss, especially since the forest was getting too dense for the GPS to work.
Jake - standing in front of the cache.
Our path - Yeah, we walked all around that cache and never saw it. We win.
Jerome - writing in the log saying that we have arrived.
The congrats message - found in the cache.
The item we took - Dropped off a deck of cards, picked up an "Any" jey. Woo!
Gee, is this forest manmade? - On our way to the second geocache in the same area.
Jerome tweaking out - like the scientists in Half-Life after we passed a piece-of-crap shack that gave us Blair Witch Project flashbacks. It was freaky.
Jerome's house - Or the side of it anyways. Built in 1812. Home of Franklin Pierce, the 14th U.S. president. Yeah, you're so jealous.
Jerome's dog - A dumb brown poodle that likes to bark a lot. Woof.
Onwards to the third geocache - Located somewhere in Hooksett, NH.
Mmm... marshy... - still a cool pic, though.
Jarrod - Being a tubesteak after we failed to find the third cache. "next post"
Jon here. Well, here it is, ladies and gentlemen, my second post of three. This one has pictures! From my vacation! To Orlando! Two weeks ago! With my dad and sister! Too many exclamation points! As you can see, I have the same kind of stupid humor as Jerome!

1. Here's me and my sister at NASA, with a shuttle launch pad in the background. This was an awesome day, and I took more pictures here than any other day of my vacation.

2. This is actually a pic of the inside of a space shuttle thruster. This particular one was used in several missions including the first shuttle flight and the Hubble Telescope placement. It is about 8 feet in diameter.

3. You are the weakest link! Goodbye. Doesn't my sister look like the host of that show? She's single by the way, fellas.

4. Here's me on the beach in Sarasota. This was the most beautiful beach I have ever seen in my life. The best part is, I didn't even get any sand in my crotch! (Or my wallet... funny story, when I went on Spring Break with Jerome (and Jarrod, Mike and Derek) I got sand in my wallet somehow (I think playing beach volleyball. Long story short, despite me trying to blow it out, and wash it out (in the washing maching and dishwasher), my wallet still has sand in it.))

5. Here's my sister (second from left) playing Abdullah Sheik Mohammad Ahzhul Izrahim in Disney-MGM Studios' The Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular. She was chosen as an extra before the show because she jumped up and down and yelled really loud to call attention to herself. (As I mentioned before, she is available.)

Thanks for putting up with me. I'm pretty sure I will have only one more post before my 24 hours is up, so look for it later on today, and every third Wednesday of the given month, right here at Against the Grain. Frisbee Pics
[Note: this entry never existed, but was later added here because it was placed on another page on one of my old sites]

Jake #1 - This came from the day before; it was the only decent shot Jon took of me and/or Jake.
Jeanell #1 - Jeanell about to make a catch.
Jake #2 - Jake running next to the frisbee in a feeble attempt to stop it from running away. Heh.
Jerome #1 - Me just, eh, hanging out, waiting to pounce on Jeanell's next throw towards me.
Jake #3 - Frisbees are known to bite if they get too close to your face.
Jeanell #2 - Do a little dance?
Jerome #2 - Grondin with the air snag. :) You can also tell that I didn't bother shaving that day. :)
Jon #1 - Jon took all of the above pics. Wanting to be in front of the camera, Jeanell took this shot of Jonny. ...
Sorry, Jon. That's freakin' gross.

I'm kinda happy I don't live over on your side. :p