Hotspur.us

My attempts at FTFs have been foiled by many things. Non-cachers, animals, mud, rain, sleet, snow, shortness, work, sickness….but never the Army. Until now.

A still as yet unfound cache was sitting in White Park by the time I was done with work and judging from the satellite image I was pretty certain I could make quite work of it.

The weather was wretched, a solid rain had been beating the city to death since early morning. I decided to stop home and grab my wellies and my parka just in case I couldn’t make quite work of the find.

With my dress pants jammed down in my pink wellies with palomino ponies and my black parka I headed out to the park. As I navigated the speed humps (no fun in a Jeep) I noticed an unusual sign (not quite verbatim, but close enough).

 WVU ARMY ROTC

Maneuvers Today

No Live Rounds

Thank You

 

Did that mean the park was off limits? It sure didn’t say so. I was confused. (I was also relieved they weren’t using live ammo in White Park.) So I decided to approach the cache from a different angle. I tried a parallel street and was happy to see no signs indicating A) the Army was around or B) the park was off limits.

I popped out of the Jeep and headed onto a nearby trail. I was following the arrow and the trail and was closing in on 75 feet to the cache when I noticed the Army. One squad (unit, troop, platoon?) was holding a small embankment which was really very close to Ground Zero. Another was approaching. Crud.

I wasn’t exactly invisible, what with my pink wellies, and I had clearly attracted the attention of at least one person. It occurred to me that the guys lying in the mud would most likely NOT appreciate me giving their position away while searching for the cache.

 

Not really willing to give up, but also not wanting to interfere with the Army I developed a secondary plan. I would go home, work out and then come back and hope the Army would be redeployed by then.

By the time I got home I had developed a third plan. I would change clothes and walk to the park, hopefully killing two birds with one stone. It was uncomfortably warm out so I shed the parka’s liner, suited up and headed out into the driving rain storm.

When I arrived at the park I was not happy to see the WVU ARMY ROTC signs still standing. Crud. Like last time I circled the park and approached the cache from the back. I was feeling pretty confident that the Army was close to being done (they were wearing blaze yellow vests at this point) so I headed to Ground Zero.

I was elated to find the cache and see an empty log. Sweet FTF victory!  I unzipped my parka, reached into my inside pocket and found…nothing. Right. My pencil was in the liner pocket. Which was in the foyer hanging on the coat rack.

There I stood, in the driving rain, parka unzipped, hunched over trying to keep the log dry  and no writing implement in hand.

I just did what I always do in these situations. I signed my name with mud. There was plenty to go around.

I like to knit. Which is not to say I knit particularly well. And I love scarves. So far I’ve had quite good luck with them. So when I ran across (thanks to a friend) a very easy and cool scarf pattern I was not able to resist.

I was a little confused when I read the instructions. Ok, I was really confused when I tried to read the instructions as they were in Italian, Spanish, German and something else I was not able to identify. Eventually I came across the English directions.  That only managed to confuse me further. So I got online and watched a video. Still slightly incredulous that it only involved 8 knit stiches. So I stretched out the yarn a bit and plunged on it. After all, it’s not like I’ve never frogged a project before.

I was quite pleased with the speed of the project. A good thing for me since I tend to lose focus or joy when working on a project that takes too long.

The colors really are quite lovely and my favorite. I can’t imagine why I was shocked to find that I had a scarf in similar colors.

The photos really do not do the yarn or the final project justice, which is a true shame.

Having yellow walls and being too lazy to get out the proper lighting equipment does have disadvantages.

 

Three weeks in to the Photo A Day project and I’m still interested. That may be a record in and of itself. I have a very short attention span. I tried to work in a little bit of a theme this week. I decided to use the Retro Camera app – the Xolaroid 2000 setting -  as much as I could. It seemed like a good idea, until I started also using my Canon S90. Oh well, the best laid plans of mice and men and all that nonsense.

January 16, 2012

We keep our porch lights up quite some time past Christmas. Coming home and seeing the house looking so festive well into the Winter gloom makes me feel a little better about the crappiest time of the year. But only a little.

January 17, 2012

This is a close up of one of my Renaissance hats. It’s a lovely green velvet number with plenty of trim and ostrich plume. And since it was sitting in the foyer – well to be more accurate it was on Gramps’ bust which is in the foyer – I was struck anew by how cool the detail work was on it. At any rate, I was giddily happy with how this came out. It looks so artsy fartsy.

January 18, 2012

It amazes me that amidst so much gloom and greyness that is Morgantown, a sky as such can suddenly appear. I took this shot from our attic window. I should print it out really big so it covers our windows. I’ll look out the covered window and think….”Ah, look at the lovely sky” when of course it is wicked outside.

January 19, 2012

Remember that blue sky from yesterday? Yeah, it snowed today. I really hate Winter. But I liked the ways the lights streaked.

January 20, 2012

We’ve been worrying over Orlando since finding she has insulinoma. After a new round of meds she has been back to her normal ferrety self. Which is to say, she likes to eat the cats’ food. Not a great photo, but that’s no shock. At least she was mostly still.

January 21, 2012

I had a cranky pants meltdown when I tried to go to the gym and found my car frozen shut due to an ice storm. De-icer didn’t work. Warm water didn’t work. So instead I decided to go for a walk. It was icy out but I did manage to make it to the cemetery without any mishap. Even on a bad day it is a lovely place to stroll. The monuments are amazing.

January 22, 2012

So one day it was brilliantly sunny. Then we had snow. And ice. And then today, the weather turned yet again and the sun came out and Winter dissipated and I (shockingly) went geocaching. Cabin fever hit the caching community pretty hard since I had a goodly number of company.

 

 

I have noticed, and then apparently forgotten judging by today’s episode, that when I eat raw broccoli I get a wicked case of the hiccups. (Also referred to as bups, if you happen to be a ferret or a cat. But I digress and the thought or my ferret or cats chopping up a head of broccoli into crudite size bites is alarming. They are not allowed to use knives.)

At any rate, I thought some broccoli would be a great thing to enjoy at lunch today. Especially since we have a lot  A LOT of it in our refrigerator. What I did not factor into my decision was that I was manning the phones today.

I’ve now been hiccupping for 15 minutes. And quite loudly at that. I’ve received one phone call in which I both answered and said goodby with a hiccup.

Thanks Broccoli, I thought we were pals.