A New Week Begins

I have to admit that last week was the easiest house arrest (on call) I have ever dealt with. Once case to follow on Wednesday, one call on Friday evening (that was out of scope for on call) and one call Saturday morning. I wish all weeks on call were like that.

I could not go geocaching like I normally would last weekend, but I did manage to sneak out and grab a few after lunch on Sunday. There were 3 new ones close to home that I nabbed in short measure.

Saturday I cleaned house and dealt with the one issue that came in, washed dishes and did some laundry. Sunday was church (we had a guest speaker, one of our missionaries in Mexico) and a hot dog lunch in the fellowship hall. I ate a little and my wife ate less and we both left kinda hungry. However I left much earlier than she did since she had a lot of people to talk to and I needed to go let the dogs out and finish a load of laundry. Then of course, I went out and grabbed some caches! I managed to call my mom as well but after an hour of her repeating conversation's back to me...verbatim...I had to end the call. I love my mom, but I really cannot handle that.

I also watched a few of the NCAA tournament games and enjoyed the ones I saw. I was disappointed that WVU lost but it was to be expected. I am thrilled that UNC is going to the Final Four. GO HEELS!

I had a very hard time sleeping last night. I went to bed at 10:00 PM and was up at 12:30, then 1:30, then 2:00. I finally went into the living room to read and began to get sleepy at 2:30 AM. When the alarm went off I was wide awake and ready to go.

I have been reading some e-books on my PDA lately. I usually am not a big fan of e-books (I prefer the old fashioned ones personally), but I found some of the classics I had not read (or had not read in a long time) that piqued my interest. I am about 1/5 the way through George Orwell's, "1984". I still have "Brave New World to get to then I will look for others.

This Speaks Volumes

Also, "Fitna" has been released. It is the film produced by the Danish law maker. It looks like the film erroneously uses the picture of a rapper instead of the convicted killer the producer intended to use. Also the EU does not appear to happy with it either.

NCAA Update

I watched the Tarheels play last night...or at least the first half. CBS kept going back to the WV game since it was more interesting. True, the UNC-Washington game was a a blowout, but I still would like to be able to see my Heels play!

WVU played pretty well but lost to Xavier. I *almost* thought they were going to win, but fouls and poor shooting (not to mention a flurry of 3's from Xavier near the end of regulation) kept them from advancing to the Elite Eight. While it would have been nice to see them make it, maybe it is for the best. It gives them something more to strive for.

Dripping With Attitude

My wife has had errands to run several days this week and since I am on house arrest (on call) I have stayed home and washed dishes as well as walk the dogs. The other night I finished walking Little Man and was calling The Golden so I could get her some exercise. I called many times and finally The Golden started coming towards me...then she took a left turn, raised her nose in the air, and headed down the hall into our room where she plopped down on her bed. I am good enough to play fetch with, to chase (and be chased), but when I need her, I am not worth her time!

When my wife got home, I told her the story (with over exaggerated dog movements) and she about died laughing. When she called The Golden to go take a walk, that dog ran right up to her and sat down, waiting to have her leash put on her.

Maybe I will remember that when it comes time to feed her!!

Blow Dry

The wind has really been fierce the past couple of days. My 14 year old dog, "Little Man" can't stand the wind blowing in his ears so he is not too thrilled with our morning and evening walks. Personally, I am just hoping the roof holds up. I see a lot of shingles in the neighborhood after these winds have passed.

I am on house arrest this week. Amazing how fast it comes around. The good news is I will not have to be on "house arrest" again before vacation. The bad news is I am on call the minute I get back. Oh well. At least I get a vacation.

I played hooky from work yesterday. While I still had to be on call after 5:00 PM, I was free as a bird until then. What better way to spend a could y morning than to go geocaching in Murphy, TX. I spent three hours finding 13 caches. Most were pretty easy and I walked 3.5 miles total to collect 12 of them. The last one was out of the way so I drove over, grabbed it, and went home.

Once home, I ate lunch and entered all my caching finds on the geocaching web site. I had noticed that the cache I hid on Sunday had not been published yet. I guess the admins have been busy.

After all that I broke down and washed my Dakota. I really had no plans to wash it but my wife washed her van on Saturday and it looked so good when she got done (I only helped a little) that I was moved to wash mine on Wednesday. While it is not perfect (I still have trouble with windows), it looks a lot better. And of course, it runs better now that it is clean :) .

Can It Get Any Better?

Great weekend overall.

First, the weather was great on Saturday and I went 12/12 on geocaches, including the dreaded El Diablo, a 4.5 (out of 5) difficulty. Awesome work on the cache...the best craftsmanship I have seen yet.

Then Duke almost loses to a 16 seed team, then loses to my WV Mountainers. To top it off, UNC score over 100 points in each of its 2 games this weekend

Oh, the best news was on Sunday, Resurrection Sunday (Easter to most of you folks)...He is risen!

At Least The Rain Has Stopped

Wow. Yesterday's and last nights deluge was intense. Several places were flooded, including a park where I have geocached in the past. Sadly, most of the caches were not tethered down, so I fear they are lost.

Work was okay yesterday and so far today it has been quiet. There are not a whole lot of people in the building and the highlight has been the Swede asking me to help him fix his PC. It has hardware failure but I am not sure if it is only the HD or maybe the controller.

Last night I attended my first Church Board meeting as the trustee representative. It went well, but the down side is that you have to listen to things that you wish you didn't. Like most churches there are members who lead vey immoral life styles and when they want to get involved in ministry, that issue tends to rear its ugly head.

I got home at just about 9:00 PM and watched Jericho with my lovely wife. I was blessed and did not have to drive last night as the senior elder stopped by to pick me up.

I woke up rather tired this morning and to be honest I have been sleepy all day long. If I could take a nap, I would.

We have care group tonight but I do not know who is teaching the lesson. All I know is that we are meeting at someone else's house tonight since the normal host is sick. She has been sick for a week. I hope she gets well soon.

I Expected As Much

My TL is on vacation this week so I expected it to be a bit busier than normal. If Monday is any indication of how the rest of the week will go, Heaven help us.

I got into work and got settled. I read all the new e-mails and skimmed the threat board and then looked at my personal e-mail. I had no sooner finished reading that when two issues came in back to back. In a way it was nice because it kept me busy all morning, but I really do not enjoy trying to handle multiple things at once. I guess I just do not multi-task well.

The rest of teh day went pretty well but I did get one call that needed attention about 1.5 hours before I went home. It was not resolved before I left work, so it was handed over to the on-call guy. I would not have to worry about it until 7:00 AM the next morning.

I came home and ate a quick dinner of pulled pork sandwiches and chips before I walked the dogs and watched some TV. I went to bed early. I was pretty tired from sitting on my butt all day. Amazing how that wears me out more than physical labor.

The next morning I was able to walk the dogs before it started raining, so I figured things were going my way. However in the process of packing my lunch, I spilled a cup of cranberry juice all over the counter and the floor. So much for a smooth morning.

After I got to work it started to rain...hard. It has been raining for several hours and the roadways are almost flooded. At least work has been mostly quiet. The Swede has called me twice but even with the interruptions I was able to do one report and close out one of the open high severity cases. I guess we will see how the rest of the day goes.

Great Day!

Sunday was a very good day. First, I slept in until 7:00 AM and when I got up I had an inviting cup of strong coffee. The weather was not bad so I walked Little Man and then came back to get ready for Sunday School/Church.

Sunday school went well and the techer (who has a very bad back) had both his son and his adopted daughter with him. he was in good spirits and it showed in his teaching.

Sunday was also the first day for our new pastor (which reminds me, I need to update our mychurch.org web page) and his message was delivered very well. He made a few changes to the routine, but they were welcomed. And even though the service ran over, no one really seemed to mind too much.

After church my wife and I stopped by a little Italian place and much to our amazement, it was not busy and we were able to get in and out at our pace. The server was even prompt and courteous! His tip showed our gratitude.

My wife and I got home and let the dogs out. We gave them some fresh water and I got dressed to go out "stomping in the woods"...geocaching. My wife was going with me and that made the day even better.

We loaded up our geat after we both changed into older clothes and headed out. My wife found the first one very quickly and then we moved on the the next area, a green belt a few miles away. That location actually had a lot of memorable moments: The first cache was missing, the second cache was lying on the ground and when my wife put it back where she thought it went, I realized that no one other than a small child (or my wife) could get their arm in the hole to get it out! I had to ask my wife be brave and put her arm back into a dark hole to pull out the cache while I fixed it so it would not fall down so far.

The next cache was out in the open again and my wife figured out a way to make it findable but not overly obvious. The last one in that park was there but it was heavily damaged. It was one of the famed "JakeinTexas" hides and well worth the 3/3 rating.

We moved on to a few more and struck out on one of those as well. I think it is still there, but camo'd ver ywell. The rest presented no problems other than a muggle or two. By the time we headed back home we were tired and hungry and the dogs need to be fed as well. It was almost 6:00 PM before we got back (we left at 2:15 PM) and we were very quite content with the outcome of our day.

I finished up the day by logging all our finds and notes to the geocaching web site and then calling my my while I walked both dogs. I was tired, but it was such a great day. God really blessed us both.

Sore

I spent a good part of yesterday working on getting the parsonage ready for our new pastor who moves in with his family in about 2 weeks. It was a church workday with the goals of removing the carpet/padding and the wallpaper and border. The first part and the most of the second part went pretty quickly with our team. The last room however, had wallpaper that must have been attached with a super glue...it took a team of six (sometimes more sometimes less) five hours to remove it all. FIVE HOURS. I have glue under my fingernails that still will not come out.

The walls were riddled with nails where pictures once hung and I tore up a couple of my fingers on them. I bled rather profusely so I doubt I will have tetanus, although I prolly should get a tetanus shot next time I go to the doc, just to be safe.

After that I inhaled three hot dogs, some chips, and a diet soda. I tried to clean up best I could but I still was caked in glue. I am surprised I did not stick to the sheets last night.

After work was over at the parsonage I headed home, picking up some gasoline along the way. In the back of my mind I remember a new 9key cache...a terrain difficulty "3" nearby. My ego and pride got the best of me so I went after it before I went home to do some house work. I manged to find and sign it, but it was not without some difficulty. While I would put it at a "3.5" (I had to shimmy up 12 foot of tree, hug it with my legs, remove a rock that was covering the bole at the top, extract the cache, open it, sign it and return it all as I found it. Of course in the process I dropped part of the cache and had to go down after it then do the whole thing all over again. I am 42 years old and only in "fair" shape and that one almost kicked my butt! I was so proud of myself I had to call 9key and tell him I managed to get it.

Once the heroics/acrobatics were done, I went home and dried a load of clothes, folded them, recorded my antics on the geocaching web page, entered some receipts into AceMoney, and vacuumed the house...stripping the bed and changing the sheets as well. My wife came home shortly thereafter and we exchanged stories. She smiled and asked if she could join me on a caching run today and I eagerly accepted her offer. I like caching with her. A lot.

Later that evening I noticed my left middle finger had swollen about 50% larger. I saw a small prick near the joint where the pain was the greatest and figured I received a spider bite. This morning the pain and swelling are the same, give or take, but there is no discoloration...which I think is a good thing. Unless I am dead I am going caching...swelling or not!

Playing Catch Up

Well, I am again way behind in timely updates to this blog. I was pretty dedicated for a while but I seem to have slacked off quite a bit over the pat few months. Let's see if I can bring everyone up to speed.

I went geocaching (as usual) on Saturday and I was quite surprised to have my wife join me. While she did not last long (about 1.5 horus into a three hour trip) she did manage to find 2 or 3 of them on her own. While she is still a greenhorn, she is progressing pretty well. I ended that day at 298 finds. I was hoping to get 300 by Saturday, but I guess God had other plans.

Sunday was Sunday school and church. Since we had eaten out Friday and Saturday night, we ate sandwiches at home for lunch. My wife was going out to walk the dog the go to the grocery story and she expected me to go out caching, but I did not really feel like it (please don't tell my caching buddies!) so I just stayed home. We ahd "Voice of Faith", our once a month Sunday evening service that night and I guess I just did not want to tire myself out completely.

Monday I had the church trustee meeting. I have agreed to take the role as the Trustee representative to the admin board since our head trustee (the current rep) has to step down. The trustees have a lot of changes to prepare for and I hope we can step to meet the challenge.

Tuesday I worked on my presentation about Islam to our care group. It did not take long to finish it. It was not polished, but it was informative.

I took Wednesday as a vacation day and went geocaching in the morning before I came home to fertilize the yard and spray weed killer on the nasty growth that has taken over my neighbor's yard. That was a 2.5 hour chore. While I was out caching I met ThePadre. He is a bit of a local legend in North Texas. New cachers like myself stand to gain a lot by talking to him.

After I finished geocaching and doing the yard work, I got cleaned up and got ready for care group so I could present my material on Islam. The presentation went pretty well...I obviously am no scholar nor am I a great speaker, but the message was well received.

After care group, my wife and I cam home and walked the dogs before watching the two "Law and Order" episodes we recorded. One had to do with illegal dog fighting and my wife could not watch it. Her love of dogs has softened her heart to the point that those issues really bother her.

Work has been pretty quiet so far this week. My TL is taking Friday off and is on vacation all of next week. Fortunately, I am not on call so I get to hand over the daily trash to the on call guy at night. While I am sure I will be tested next week, I can take comfort in knowing I am not alone. I have help.

One funny thing to mention. While I was out geocaching yesterday, my truck keys somehow became detached from the rest of my key ring in a wooded area many miles from home. I was not sure where they fell off so I had to retrace my steps until I found them. If you think that is not too difficult, you have to remember that geocaches are not placed on trails so I was "bushwhacking" quitea bit. Finding them was almost like looking for needle in a haystack. To make this story even more interesting, ThePadre, whom I had met just hours before, told me that it was good idea to carry a spare key since he had lost one once himself.

Whoa!

On a weekly basis I peruse The Smoking Gun website. I get a chuckle once in a while reading about the crazy stuff people do and get in trouble with the law. One of the more popular features of the site is the "Mugshots" section of the site. This morning while I was viewing some of the photos, I saw this one and did a double take. While I cannot be sure, this picture really looks like one of my old bosses at Ericsson. The photo looks just like what I remember the guy looking like, only a tad older.

Twice In One Week

Wow...the DFW area has received snow not once but TWICE this week. The first time was about four inches and melted the same day and yesterday it began raining (hard) and then turned into sleet then eventually snow. We had been under a storm warning but it fizzled out...we received less than one inch.

Depending on who you believe it will be a high of 35 degree or 45 degrees. Both the Weather Channel and Weather Underground have different reports.

Key Word Search

I get rather annoyed when I get sent job notices from headhunters who do not take the time to verify that the jobs they are sending me are jobs I would be interested in. Today I was sent a listing for a contract job in MN. I live in TX. The odds of me taking a contract job in MN are pretty slim, wouldn't you think?

How did I get this listing? It would appear that they searched on some key words that are "hot" right now...many of which happen to be in my resume. They didn't however, check to see where I live in relation to where the job is. Oh, by the way, this is not a telecommuting job. Sigh.

On a more positive note, our church has formally accepted (via vote of the members) our new pastoral candidate as our new pastor. We just need to iron out an official starting date and we should be ready to roll.

I also received the rest of my tailored clothing last night from one of the guys I help with PC issues. He has given me four pair of trousers and a blue long sleeve shirt...all custom fitted. To be honest there are clothes that clients of former clients did not accept (for whatever reason) and have been taking up space in his inventory. Not that I could ever afford his prices, but the retail value of the clothing is about $1,000. Wow. It makes me think twice about charging him for the next house call! now to be fair, the clothing did not cost him that much and I do only charge 50% to members of our church but still, these are NICE clothes. The only thing I found wrong was a button hole issue on the sleeve. One sleeve has two button holes and the other has only one. I guess that makes it imperfect but I am not going to complain...it was free.

Way To Go, Gloria!

From Michelle Malkins blog.

Genocide?

“There are six million female lives lost in the world every year simply because they are female,” Steinem asserted, making a passing reference to pregnant women killed by male partners. Presumably, she’s not including the millions of unborn girls aborted around the world every year because of their gender. (Not exactly the kind of empowerment the fist-raising, bra-burning pro-choicers had in mind.) And nothing in Steinem’s record indicates that she’s thinking of the untold numbers of girls and women murdered for “honor” in the name of Allah by Muslim relatives."

It would be nice if the Femi-Nazi's would speak up when REAL atrocities are committed.

Well worth the read.

What Kind Of D&D Character Are You?

In honor of Gary Gygax (RIP)

I Am A: Lawful Good Human Cleric (5th Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-12

Dexterity-12

Constitution-11

Intelligence-14

Wisdom-12

Charisma-11


Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment because it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.


Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.


Class:
Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron's vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity's domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric's Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

DFW Snow

It usually happens once a year for one day. In 2007, we did not get the honor of seeing this:


Being a WV boy by birth and living in WV/NC most of my life, I miss seeing this white stuff on the ground...we just do not get it here in the DFW area.

I will enjoy it while it lasts (it is supposed to get to 54 today).

Washout

I guess it was time for Texas to get a good hard rain again. I woke up this morning to the sound of thunder as well as rain pelting the roof and the windows. it was bad enough that my wife did not want me to even walk the dogs. She knew that they would not want to be outside while it was pouring so she waited until it subsided and she took them out for quick walk. I was getting ready for work while she took care of the dog walking ths morning. I guess I owe her some flowers for that.

I am off call and will not have to go back for another month...just in time for quarterly close, one of the busiest times of the year.

Call was not too bad this time. Yes I was woken up a couple of times at 2 AM for issues beyond my realm of authority and I did get a few calls this weekend asking me about maintenance going on, but overall it was doable.

I did sneak out for a little while to try to find a couple of puzzle caches that were local to us. I struck out on both but for different reasons on each. the first one required a bit of waypoint projection, something my older GPSr cannot do, so I solved the puzzle and e-mailed the owner my info to prove to him that I can do the hard part and he agreed to mail me the coords so I can look for it.. I mena, I know the general area and worked out all the math/puzzle stuff correctly, but without a proper GPSr, finding it would be rather time consuming...especially since it is supposed to be well hidden.

The second one I looked for has been muggled. That was really sad since it has been active for about five years now. I have put it off for a long time because of the perceived driving needed to solve the clues, but I was incorrect as in the clues were all within a few miles of each other. I solved the clues and went to the final one and figured out the cache was missing. I called Tizom to verify that I had the right locale and he confirmed it. Not only was I unable to find it, several other season cachers who have put this one off were unable to find it as well. I hate to see this icon go but maybe it is time to archive it.