Plan for the day

It's cold, really cold, about 24F today. Winter seems to have finally found us.

BB and I slept a bit late then got up to get the day underway. The chicken stock is ready so I filtered it and put it away with a view to a soup in the next several days.

I'd like to get out geocaching and for a bit of a walk today but with BB and the cold I'm not sure it that is possible. It may be that when she goes to the doctor I can take a quick trip to Marlborough where there are three caches on a golf course and try to find them, do a bit of walking, and on the way back stop at Staples to get several things I need there.

Day's wrapup

BB was out this evening at an office X-Mas party so I was on my own. The roast chicken from last night was so good I decided to have it for dinner. Of course, the outstanding gravy had much to recommend it as well.

Spent the evening reading and watching TV. I'd recorded The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy but the editing on this version was so bad I turned it off and decided to read instead.

BB got home about 9 or so and promptly fell asleep on the couch. After the third time I finally convinced her to call it a night.

The pedometer reported that I walked 2.25 miles yesterday. On one hand it seems like a lot on the other it had no effect whatever on my weight which I'd like to get under 200 lbs.

BB will be home tomorrow but has a doctor's appointment in the afternoon. I'm not sure what the day will be like but it promisses to be colder.

Geocaching numbers 9, 10, 11, and 12!

Went out geocaching to get number 9 and 10 and possibly more.

The Mattress Graveyard and The Rock were quickly found.  Since this was my 10th geocache I decided to make a video to post with this blog entry.  Both caches were quickly found but I had a bit of misadventure when my camera battery failed and then the camera ran out of memory.  By the time it was all dealt with my hands were rather cold. Still both caches were found and I now have 10!  Yea!!



Since these were quick finds I decided to look for some others and drove a few blocks down Edgel to Nobscot Cagers.  This is just a few blocks south so off I went.  The cache was in an interesting little park that I'd never visited.  Easy parking and a fairly quick find.  Here are some photos and videos.  Following the day's theme of failed batteries the GPS batteries gave up just as I found the cache.  No harm though as I'd just found it.



Well since I was on a role and hadn't really walked very far, I decided to checkout Nobscot Woods.  I'd been intending to do this after I discovered where the parking was.  My original intention was to just checkout the parking to see if it was accessible in my car.  But, once I got in the parking lot and realized that the cache was only about 1/4 mile away I decided to finish my exercise for the day and see if I could find it.  Off I went.  I was a bit unsure of the trails but followed those that were readily visible until the GPS started pointing well off trail.  At that point I decided to just cut cross country.  It turned out to be mostly up hill although the walking was easily enough.  After about 30 minutes I found myself standing right on top of the cache.  My 4th for the day and #12 overall!



Well that's today's geocache adventure!  Oh, and the pedometer read 1.95 miles in the cold and about half up hill walking through snow!

Note to self:
1) Try to change batteries when I'm in a warm place.
2) Get bigger camera memory.
3) When it's cold, dress plenty warm.

Fooling with speech recognition

Since I hope to be doing a good deal of bloging I decided to install them and experimental with Vista's speech recognition facility.  It's OK, but like my previous experience with speech recognition it's not necessarily any faster than typing.  Still, it's worth a bit of experimentation.

After installing things and reviewing the tutorial I tried creating a blog entry but it seems that the speech recognition does not work within the browser page.  That means that I would need to dictate in wordpad and then copy into the blog.  It's not clear that it would save any time or be any quicker.

Still trying to get to 10 geocaches

Woke up very rested this mourning after yesterday's exercise.  Perhaps a bit leg weary but clear and feeling full of spit and vinegar.

Had some sausage gravy and biscuits for breakfast.  It was not my best effort but a nice start on a cold day, particularly as it's now below freezing and promises to be cold most of the day.

The plan for today is to get my 10th geocache.  There are two just off of Edgel road in the scout camp just down the street from where BB and I lived in her house - the Mattress Graveyard and The Rock.  They are near one another and related in that the Mattress Graveyard contains a tape measure to measure the Rock.  As it's a bit cold I'll have to dress warmer than yesterday.

I've put a new battery into my pedometer with a view to seeing just how far I walk on my various geocaching outings.

Trying to get to 10 geocaches

8:00 I'm a bit sleepy this AM.  Not sure why as I got a full 8 hrs sleep but there it is.

After I got up I made pork sausage gravy bisquets.  Yum!  I'm the only one in the house who enjoys them.  They're very southern.  Just fry up a pound of pork sausage in a few tablespoons of bacon grease.  Dust with flour to adsorb the grease.  After the flour is browned add milk to make a white gravy.  Season with fresh ground pepper and pepper sauce.  Serve on top of fresh bisquets.  Very yum!!

Plan for today is to see if I can end the day with 10 geocaches found.  We'll see.

10:00 Went out geocaching to try several that I've not found.  Had 2 successes and 3 DNFs.

I started at The Leprechaun Coin Cache and DNF again.  I'm not at all sure where it is.  The coordinates are on the bridge.  I looked very carefully but without success.  The water is even higher than it was last time I was by and there is no access to the bridge abutments.  It may be that it is only accessible by boat.

Then I went to Wayland's Alpine Field.  This is a micro cache in a very public area.  Try as I might I couldn't find it.  I'll stop back by later since one of the photos gave a fair clue.

After 2 successive failures I decided to try Wayland 5.1 - Vespula's Cenotaph.  Success!   It was a nice walk although I found myself a bit winded walking up hill a bit.  Clearly I need the exercise geocaching provides.  Here are a couple of photos.

Wayland 5.1

It took me some time to find the hide but after 30 minutes or so I was finally successful.

My enthusiam returned with success at Wayland 5.1 so I moved on to The Great Wall of Kay?. This is another small cache.  I spent 20 minutes or so but did not find it.  I think it may be inside a rock.  I'll put it on my TBD list.

I then took some time to reconoiter the solution coordinates for Sudbury Garrison.  There is parking at the park off of 117.  It's about 0.25 miles from parking.  So I'll go back and try again at some point.

From there I went to Davis Farm "321".  This was an interesting walk and would be a good place to ski.  I was able to find the hide without to much trouble.  Here's the album.

Davis Farm 321

It was getting a bit late and I'd not had lunch so I called it a day.

6:00 I made roast chicken and vegtables for dinner.  Put it in about 4:30 for dinner at 7:00 as the bird was fairly large.  I seasoned the bird with salt, pepper, and cajun spices.  The vegtables were some of the red potatoes left from the weekend, carrots, onions, and brussel sprouts roasted in some olive oil and garlic.  When the bird was ready I made a gravey and we had a very nice dinner.  With that big of bird we had a lot of left overs so we'll have chicken again tonight and then I'll freeze the rest for other dinners.

As usual I took the bones to make a stock.  I've always wondered why people don't do so commonly, but they don't.  More's the pitty as home made chicken stock is so much better than the bought stock.  After the stock is ready I'll make a toca soup.  It's a favorite for colder weather.

BB and I spent the evening reading and watching TV.

Geocaching and thoughts on retirement.

I slept in a bit this mourning.  One of the advantages of being retired is that I can finally get a full 8 hours sleep a night.  It is a great delight to wake up truely rested and ready for whatever adventures I'd like to have today.

I love to cook and eat.  So the day started with making some cream cheeze with salmon and capers.  Yum!  I'd smoked some salmon a week or so ago and saved the left overs to blend with cream cheese and capers.  It's marvelous on bagels with a nice cup of coffee (thanks to Karma Coffee of Sudbury).  It's interesting that while I'd been buying lox cheese from Sudbury Farms it was really rather trivial to make my own.  In any case we now have enough to last a few weeks or so and I'm looking forward to a steady diet of great bagels and cream cheese.

Last night BB and I watched a Netflixs video Julie and Julia.  It was a nice movie and reminded me that I've never actually read the Julia Child book.  I think I'll buy a copy with a view to actually reading it as the movie implied that the book deals in part with technique and not just recipes.  So I've gone online and ordered a copy from Amazon (beats driving over to Framingham to pick it up).

Most of the mourning was spent either fooling with the TV or geocaching setup.

On the TV front, I'd scanned channels on the Samsung cable and for reasons I'm not clear on many of the digital HD channels vanished!  I tried a number of things none of which were the least effective and finally rescanned as I'd done last night and all is restored.  Heaven knows why.

Geocaching activities were centered around Sudbury Garrison cache.  It's a virtual cache that references a historical marker to solve a puzzel to get the actual cache location.  Now on the whole I'm not especially keen on this cache type but I'd planned to go out caching today as the weather is fairly nice and decided to have a go at this one.  I did a bit of research and found what appear to be a good clue to the historical marker referenced in the puzzle at the Wayland Story of Haynes Garrison.  It seems that the marker is near Buddy Dog on Rt 20.  After the cleaners come by this afternoon, I'll see if it's there and perhaps find the cache.

It's probably appropriate to note that my interest in geocaching is driven in part by being concerned about a certain tendency to sit about reading and generally just passing the days and not getting out and about nearly enough.  That's one of the big changes that retirement brings - one no longer has work to structure life.  If you want something to happen you need to actually take the initiative to make it so.  Now I suppose at some level that's always the case even when not retired but retirement brings so much more time that it changes things.


About 1:30 after the cleaners left I dropped a book off at the library and went to find the Sudbury Garrison clue.  Took this photo.  The cache says:

From the memorial stone you will find two important numbers:
YY - is the last two digits in the year the monument was erected. For example: 1945 would mean YY=45
And:
L – is the number of letters in the word following “settlers” on the monument. For example: “the settlers ran to the garrison” would mean L=3.
Now use the following equations to generate 5 digit numbers (round and drop fractions):
NORTH = 26130.37 – 216.7895 * YY
WEST = 25901.5 – 360.25 * L
This should yield two 5 digit numbers (throw away any decimals).
The coordinates of the final cache are at:
N42 NORTH
W071 WEST filling in the 5 digit numbers you calculated above for the decimal minutes.

Well the monument was erected in 1803 so YY is 03 and there are 6 letters in sought.  Unfortunately, doing the math gives N42 25.480 W071 23.740.  This is in Concord not Sudbury and the cache description and log entries are a bit ambivalent.  I'll take a drive by at some point.

Meanwhile, while I was out I did find two caches:  Chiswick and Curtice Cache.  Chiswick was fairly quick and easy.  I'd not known this small park, such as it is, was in Sudbury but I found the stone circle and cache fairly quickly.  Here are some photos of Chiswick:

There was a fair bit of large trash in the area but since I was in a small car I wasn't able to take anything out.

I'd been by Curtice Cache once before and DNF.  I went back deciding to check other locations based on the fact that someone noted that the coordinates were wrong.  I found it OK but NOT at the specified coordinates.  Mine were N42 23.0489 W071 26.0434.  The listing is likely wrong.  I tried to send an email to the person that placed it but they are not registered so no luck there.  Here are some pictures:



These two finds bring my total to 6.  Not a lot but a fair start.

I also took a bit of time today to experiment with GPS accuracy comparing the Nuvi 255 with the Delorme PN-40.  Interestingly there isn't all that much difference.  The Nuvi is a little less accurate at about 0.01 to 0.001 decimal minutes different from the PN-40!  That said, the PN 40 has a number of other rather nice features and I'm generally happy with it.

After I got back from playing geocache, I worked a bit on my common sense blog.  I'm inclined to the view that with age comes a certain wisdom rooted in experience.  My common sense blog is my attempt to share this perspective.

Dinner was sauted shrimp and salad.  I used some Tiber Sauce and it was very good.

Recovery day

BB and I slept in late after dinner with Bob and Burnedette last night.  BB was a bit "under the weather" from overmuch red wine.  One of the great sadnesses of getting older is about the time you learn to really appreciate fine liquor you no longer are able to drink without ill effect.  So sad.

We met our new nextdoor neighbors.  I'd made some oatmeal raisan cookies for their children, young boy and girl, and we brought them over to introduce ourselves.  Interestingly they are from Iceland and have been in the US for 12 years.

I've been thinking about this business of being retired and have decided to be a bit more active in this blog as a way to create a personal experience document of the experience.

Bob and Burnedette here for dinner

I tried out the Delorme PN-40 searching for Curtise Cache.  It seems to work well but I was unable to find the cache in the snow.  I'm also a bit suspicious that the cache location is bogus.  I'll try again next week.

Bob and Burnedette came for dinner tonight.  I cooked a 6lb rib roast, asperagas, and new potatoes.  Cheese cake for desert.  Yum!  We had a very nice dinner with some outstanding wine that Bob brought including Tres Picos which I particularly enjoyed.  Rather surprisingly BB brought up the topic of New Years dinner!  After our earlier disagreements I was somewhat taken aback.  In any case I'll talk to Bob and see what we can work out.

Delorme PN-40 arrived

My new GPS has shipped and is in Chelmsford.  It might be here today.  We'll see. 

It turned out it showed up!  Yeh!!  I'd read the manual online a when I ordered it.  Setting it up was relatively simple.  That said the critism that it is complicated is both true and false.  The PN-40 is a very sophisticated device with a large variety of features and functions.  With sophistication comes a certain unavoiadable complexity.  It took me the better part of the afternoon to get things going properly.  Part of the issue was with Delorme Topo USA and Delorme Cache Register.  I also got tripped up with Geocache.com (only 5 poket queries per day).  At any event I eventually got things sorted.

Dinner was left over beef strip on salad.

Quiet Thursday

BB and I enjoyed our usual Thursday.  We settled on a roast for dinner with Bob and Burnedette Saturday.  We bought a nice 6lb rib roast.  Yum.

We're still trying to find the smell downstairs.  It comes and goes and I've no idea where it is coming from.  It smells like a dead mouse.  I've checked around the area where the smell seems strongest  but haven't found anything.  I thought it might be in the heating duct but when I turn on the fan there isn't any smell coming out of the duct.  I'll continue to look but at this point I'm really stumped.

Weather has gone cold.  Winter seems to be finally here.

Dinner was pork roast, string beans, rice, and cranberry relish.  That's the last of the pork.

Real snow

Woke up to the year's first real snow.  I've got about 6" of wet heavy snow and it was still coming down.  Since it's going to rain I'll have to get it off before then.  Fortunately Mike came home about the time I started and we were able to get the driveway and decks cleared before the rain came.

The snow blower is acting up a bit.  I'm hopeful it is bad fuel.  It ran but not especially well.

Got a nice surprise and the Delorme PN40 was on sale for $199 on Amazon.  Ordered it.  It has a number of nice features for geocaching and boating that should prove useful.

Voting and geocaching

Today was the primary for MA senator.  I went out and voted in the Democratic primary (this is, after all, Massachusetts).

On the way home I went out to find the Feeley geocache.  That's my fourth.  I'd been saving this cache to test out my Nuvi 255 for paperless caching.  It worked surprisingly well.  While the Nuvi doesn''t report particularly high accuracies as a practical matter it took me to within 4' of the cache location following the directions at http://geocaching.totaltechworld.com/index.html.  Very cool.

From Geocachin

The first photo shows the general cache location and the second the cache container.  I worked out how to load jpg files on the nuvi.  That should be useful for trail maps and such.  While it doesn't have the accuracy of specialized handhelds it is plenty good enough to start with.  That said I'm going to wait until after Christmas before buying anything else.

No response to the couple of emails I sent looking for geocaching buddies but we'll see.

Spent the rest of the day reading and dealing with the first of this years snow.  We're suppose to have rain and snow tomorrow so it looks like winter is finally here. I also took some time to look at the Matress Graveyard geocache and The Rock.  They are near each other off of Edgel road.  Weather permiting I'll try to get by there tomorrow.

Dinner was spegetti.  Mike said he was going to eat dinner with us and it was the only thing I had enough of.  I ended up making more.  Then he decided not to.  Oh well.

Messing with geocaching and nuvi

Spend the day generally messing about with my Nuvi 255, GSAK, and the garmin-nuvi-export macro.  I upgraded my nuvi firmware, downloaded Garmin's POI loader, and managed to follow the instructions at http://geocaching.totaltechworld.com/index.html.  It took a bit of mucking about but at the end I got all the pieces working and presto the Nuvi can be used for paperless geocaching.

Had some of the pork roast, sweet potato (they are gone now), and French green beans with shitaki mushrooms for dinner.  VERY nice!

I've decided not to go down for mom's birthday but will go down in the spring and then again at Thanksgiving next year.  BB and I talked about it a bit.

Called Bob L and arranged to have them over for dinner this weekend.

First snow

As is our custom BB and I slept in Sunday and then had a lazy mourning reading the paper.

I spoke to Art and Avery in the evening concerning plans for Mom's 89th birthday.  I may go down but have yet to really decide.

Dinner was left over steak, sweet potato, and french green beans.

Rainy day

BB and I slept in and had a quiet mourning.  We ran a few errands in the afternoon and then hung around the house.

Talked a bit about having people over for New Years.  BB is not interested.  Likewise, I may go down to NC for Mom's birthday next week.

Made sauted shrimp with pepers for dinner.  Very good.

Doctor, geocache, and reading

I had a doctor's appointment this mourning to check blood presure.  It was very good so the new dosage seems to be working well.

On the way back home I stopped to see if I could find The Leprechaun Coin Cache. The cache is located on a bridge over the Sudbury river.  The sight is lovely but I was not able to find the cache.  Google places it mid bridge and I walked across looking carefully for it.  No luck.  I also check under the bridge on the west end.  No luck.  The east end was underwater so no luck there.  I DNF it and will go back in a few days to check again.

After I got home I was curious about using my car Nuvi and downloading to it from the web site.  I nipped out to Staples and bought a micro SD and cable.  Turned out the cable was wrong but I had one upstairs. The micro SD card went in OK but seems inclined to pop out so I'm not sure I'll use it.  At any case I plugged the cable in and tried downloading several caches.  Things worked ok.  It seems that I get an icon for the parking area and the cache proper.  BB and I may try to use it tomorrow.

Dinner was steak with fresh herbs, sweet potato, French green beans with almonds, mushrooms and onions, and cranberry relish.  Yum!



 

Day with BB: geocacheing and errands

It was very windy and rainy last night as a front came through.  The leaves are now more or less off the trees so next time they are dry, hopefully this weekend, I'll blow them AGAIN.

BB and I spent the day together.  After a rather late start and some time together we went geocaching to Winterbrook at Walenbach (Sudbury Valley Trustees).  It was a lovely walk through some mature forest.  The cache was easily found although I misread the GPS and we ended up doing some walking off trail.

We spend the afternoon running errands.  Rt 9 was a zoo particularly Christmas Tree Shop.  I should have know better.

My knee is a bit tender.  I don't know if it's the increased walking or what.  Since I've got a doctor's apointment tomorrow (blood pressure which is now OK) I'll ask after it.

 Dinner was chicken fajitas with fresh hom emade quacamola.  Yum.

Geocaching and library

The weather early today was rather plesant so I took the opportunity to drop some books off at the library and revisit the Tavern of the Damned geocache.  It seems to have returned as a letterbox that was not present when I first visited Nov 22 with BB, Marie, and John.  At any case it was easily found notwithstanding the somewhat bogus clue that confused the building and chimney foundation.  At any event I logged it so now I'm up to 2.  I suppose everyone starts somewhere but 2 does seem like a very small number.

From Geocaching

While out I checked out the nearby Winterbrook geocache located on Wolbach Farm.  I'd not been aware of it even after 10 years in Sudbury.  Perhaps BB and I will try to find it tomorrow (weather permitting as it's forcast to be rainy).

BB and I watched a Netflix movie in the evening and read.  Dinner was left over Cornish Hen, smoked chicken, green peas, sweet potato, and cranberry relish.  Yum!

Quiet day at home

Spent the day reading and working on the net.

I've been considering buying a GPS for geocaching.  The Garmin 60 CSx was available at Wallmart on-line and Amazon for $248 and the eTrex Venture HC for $124.  In a period of a couple of days while I was thinking about it the prices jumped $40.  Welcome to the world of dynamic pricing.

BB went to a wake for the father of one of her coworkers this evening so I feed and walked the dogs.  Made some breakfast hash for dinner.