Maybe it's getting repetitious to post about geocaching again, but that was the main focus of our day today. It's what I've written about for tomorrow's Writers' Group.

After hiding our first cache, and submiting it to geocaching.com, Phillip and I went to the U-District for some shopping. Phillip wanted to buy a UW keychain he'd planned on attaching it to the travel bug he wanted to drop in a cache in Tacoma. He found exactly what he was looking for.

While in the U-District, we walked past the new American Apparel store. I had an idea to look in there for the tank top I'd been trying to find for yoga class. I found exactly what I was looking for: a black, 100% cotton, sweatshop-free tank top.

Then we did some geocaching before heading for Tacoma. We looked for two caches in Seattle, and found them both. (Actually, Phillip found them both.)

Our real reason for going to Tacoma was to visit Debbie and June. Since June wouldn't be home until late afternoon, we decided to do some geocaching beforehand. Along the way, we invited Debbie to join us.

Debbie, Phillip, and I looked for two caches in Tacoma, and found them both. (Actually, I found them both.) The travel bug went into the first cache, which was in a wetlands park.

We picked up June, and the four of us found two more caches. (Actually, Debbie found them both.)

The four of us went to dinner. Then it was time for Phiilip and me to drive home, log our finds, and feed Gladden.

We hid our first cache this morning. It's in a little park I found while walking home from work. We've named it "1st Hill, 1st Cache."

Now we wait for approval of our cache. I don't know how long that takes.

Friday evenings are definately more to my liking, for yoga, than Saturday mornings.

I noticed that most people wear the same clothes to yoga class each week. I do.

I kept thinking about yoga all week. I even ran the idea through my mind of taking the class two days a week. This evening, my mind was into it, but my body was tired - even before class started. I decided that once a week is fine.

I kept thinking about a big bowl of rice, and some scrambled eggs, during class. Apparently, I'm hungry, too.

My vote for the strangest microwaving instructions ever goes to Morningstar Farms™ Nine Bean Loaf®: Remove the (cardboard) lid and cover the frozen loaf with plastic wrap. Microwave on HIGH for 6 minutes. Rotate ¼ turn and let it sit for 5 minutes. Microwave for 6 more minutes. Uncover and let it sit for 5 minutes.

The Nine Bean Loaf® was delicious, even though I didn't follow the directions exactly. (If they wanted me to wrap it in plastic, they should have packaged it plastic wrap.)

Phillip and I did some more geocaching this evening. We looked for three, and found one. The one we found is 4.8 miles, southwest, from home (our farthest geocaching trip, so far).

On our drive home from the found cache, we stopped off and took some preliminary readings for our first cache hide.

Phillip and I had planned on going geocaching yesterday evening, but decided to go this evening instead. This morning, Phillip called in sick from work. He had a migraine headache. This evening, I was in the mood to do some geocaching, even if I did it solo. There was a cache out by Madison Park I wanted to look for. Phillip helped me look up the coordinates and clues.

Suddenly, Phillip noticed that there was a new cache hidden today, and no one had found it yet. In the sport of geocaching, First To Find is a very good thing. We figured out that it was out by Husky Stadium. I took off.

I parked illegally (Permit Parking Only) - but the parking lot was big and nearly empty and there were no Parking Enforcers in sight. I took off walking with my GPS receiver.

Up ahead, I saw some guy turning off the sidewalk and down a trail. There just went our First To Find, I figured. But wait! I found another trail which, according to the compass reading, was heading in the right direction. Maybe that other guy wasn't geocaching, or maybe he was and one of us was on the wrong path (literally).

My trail was narrow, bumpy, and barely there at times. About a hundred feet from my goal, my trail merged into a wider, better-used trail. At the end of the trail was the fellow I'd seen earlier, signing the log book.

I walked up to him and said, "So, are you the first to find?" He was. We introduced ourselves. His geocaching name was OldBaldEagle. (I didn't have to ask why.) We talked for a while.

Second To Find isn't so bad. I met a fellow geocacher. The view from the cache was wonderful. I didn't get a parking ticket. I decided that was a good enough experience that I went home and left the Madison Park cache for later. Life is good, even though Phillip has a migraine.

(According to OldBaldEagle's entry log, he was rather suprised to be First To Find, since he'd found the cache listing two hours earlier.)

I admit to laughing at Phillip's geocaching enthusiasm last Thursday when he suggested skipping a special dinner out in order to search for a cache.

This afternoon, I started walking home. The 60 bus pulled into the bus stop at the corner of Boren & Madison just as I got there. Ordinarily, I'd take that as a sign that I should hop on and ride the rest of the way home. This afternoon, however, I kept walking. There was a park I wanted to explore as a possible location for my first cache placement.

So now I know why my boss took the news of my seeking employment elsewhere (see March 29) so well, and why she was so eagerly looking up jobs for me.

She gave us the news this morning that she's been doing the same thing for herself.

This morning, before I left the apartment, I got lost in a news story and didn't notice the time. I left about five minutes later than normal and just missed the 60. Rather than wait for the 9, I decided to act on an impulse and walk to work - for the first time ever. I still prefer the slower paced afternoon walks home to the get-to-work pace of the early morning walk. Besides, in the afternoon, there are more people out, and more shops are open. There's more to see in the afternoon.

When I got to work, I emailed Phillip and told him I'd walked to work. His reply reminded me that yesterday was the start of The University of Washington's Walk In campaign.

On my walk home from work, I stopped in at the library and picked up the book I'd placed on hold: Geocaching For Dummies. One of the previous borrowers of this book left their library receipt in the pages. This mystery library patron checked out an intriguing combination of books:

Francis Ford Coppola: Interviews
In The Company Of Heroes
Giant Steps: Small Changes To Make A Big Difference
Geocaching For Dummies

I feel like I've been away from work for a week.

It was fun, last Saturday, revisiting my old lunchtime places - the fish hatchery, the south lawn, the walk along the cut and under the bridge, the Rotunda, and the Health Sciences courtyards. To Phillip and Emily, those were all new discoveries - that hightened my enjoyment. I miss my lunches on campus.

The alarm clock interrupted a dream this morning. A group of us were sitting down to a picnic. We were talking about a missing member of our group. We were all voicing amazement that he had landed a job with the American/Chinese space program. Apparently, he was something of a slacker. In a short time from now, someone pointed out, he was going to be busy converting yuan to dollars. By that time, someone else said, we'll all be using euros. Someone else wondered if they'd still be called euros after they're used worldwide. Then the alarm came on.

Kurt & Lori's party this afternoon capped off this busy weekend.

The party wasn't until two, so we decided to get some geocaching in beforehand. That turned out to be a mistake. Our geocaching was successful - we searched for five caches and found four. We discovered two previously unknown parks and a wildlife area. One of the caches we found was one that Phillip and Emily and I couldn't find yesterday. Interestingly, the one cache we couldn't find today was found today by a member who also logged finding the cache we'd found right before it. (Were they right behind us, or right ahead of us, I wonder.)

We didn't realize until we got to Kurt and Lori's party that all that geocaching wore us out. We just weren't in a party mood. We stayed a couple of hours, didn't mingle much, didn't participate in the May Pole dance, and went home.