Worth Mentioning

I just finished my stint on house arrest Monday morning at 7:00 AM when I handed over to our colleague in Mexico who was covering for us on Memorial Day. Something strange and wonderful happened my week on call...I WAS NOT CALLED...NOT ONCE! That has never happened before and by Sunday afternoon I was getting a little nervous...Most of world had calls they were working on but North America (and for the most part Latin America) didn't. Everything that we normally would handle occurred during our normal working hours. Nothing after hours was required of me. Praise God! Now of course that will mean that my next stint of on call will be murder...and my colleague is out of town on vacation so I will be flying solo for that week. Pray for me!

On Saturday I was able to attend the Geocacher meet and greet in Richardson at the Golden Corral. It was nice to be able to meet some of local cachers and put a name to a face. The two I wanted to meet the most (Tizom and 9key) were unable to attend. Funny, they both live in the same small town I do and we only live about a mile apart from each other. Small world.

After the meet and greet I had to sop by and get a haircut. Having thinning hair as well as mle pattern baldness is interesting because what little hair I have on top grows the fastest and the thicker part (on the sides, grows slower. Makes for an interesting look if I wait too long between clips.

Oh, I placed a cache on the way home that I had been wanting to put out for quite some time. It themed it around my online nick, "mcwtlg". It was a unique way to place a cache and the people who have found it have left favorable comments.

After the meet and greet my wife and I attended the memorial service for a member of our church. The service was not what you would expect and oddly enough there was a lot more laughing than there was crying. "Shirley", the lady who passed away, would have wanted it that way. She was a real joker.

My wife helped set things up and serve and the guys helped clean up some...but the women did most of the work. We ended up staying until 4 PM to make sure all was done and by the time my wife and I got home we were not in the mood to do much of anything.

Sunday was Sunday school and church with a lunch of bagels and Einstein Brother's. While they are not the best I have ever had (I really mis Bruger's in NC), they will suffice. The spreads are usually pretty good and I like the smoked salmon flavored one, even if it is a tad salty.

After lunch I was getting bored so I did some geocache maintenence on a few caches I have not kept up with lately. I swapped out containers on two and replaced a missing one on a third. It is a lot of work to maintain caches if you decided to place them for others to find.

Monday was cloudy and it looked like it was going to rain, but the forecast stated that it would clear up by the afternoon. I did not do much in the morning except take a walk with my wife in the park across the street and vacuum. While I had an agenda (9key had placed a new cache there and I wanted to check it out) my wife did not mind. She actually likes when we can kill two birds with one stone. The walk was a good one and par for the course, my wife hindered my getting the cache, although she was helpful in keeping watch while I fetched it and signed the log. How did she hinder me finding it? She struck up a conversation with a dog owner and they started talking right where the cache was. This has happened before but I am not sore about it. Actually it is rather funny.

After our walk I decided to go place a few caches in some spots I had been eyeing for a while. I was able to get to all of them via bicycle and was done in good time. They have not posted yet but they will soon enough and the local cachers will have three more to jump on,

Once those caches had been placed and reported to the web site, I went out to start cutting grass. I finished just about 5:30 PM...it had taken me about three and a half hours to cut two yards in the 90+ degree heat. No worries, I was fully hydrated. I dranke about a gallon of water during that time.

I hosed myself off outside before coming in to the house (I had just vacuumed that morning) and ate a sketchy dinner before I walked Little Man. I feel sorry for him. He just cannot handle much of a walk anymore. it is a chore to get him to go half a block. I guess for 14 he is doing pretty well.

After I got back and got a shower, I went to Kroger's to grab some ice cream (The Travel Channel had been running ice cream and I was now in the mood) and a few things my wife said we needed. I got back and inhaled my pint of Dove Toffee Caramel Indulgence (or whatever it was called) and finished watching another episode of Anthony Bourdain's, "No Reservations". He may be brash, but he is entertaining.

When I got to work today, I found that my new laptop was in. It is an HP6510b which is a newer laptop and I need to set it up and configure it...not an easy task considering what I have to deal with at work each day, but I figure with my lunch hour and a little time after workI should be able to get it done. The bad thing is that I am at home the next two days and configuring this from a VPN connection is supposed to be possible, but tricky.

I am in no hurry. I plan on using the old laptop as a Windows Laptop and re-rolling my home machine since it has been acting up lately. Of course it will be dual boot Windows and Linux. What else would I do with it?