Gladden T Hart had a rotten, no-good, horrible morning. First, I dumped him out of bed at 8:20 this morning. Then I stuffed him into the small travel box. Then I drove him across town to the veterinary clinic. He was fine, considering, when the veterinary assistant weighed him. (At 175 grams, his weight is remaining consistent.) But when the doctor wrapped Gladden up in a towel and started trimming his nails (the purpose of the visit), Gladden got very scared - squirming and crabbing, but not biting. The vet cut Gladden's nails very short, and when I got Gladden home, he tried to climb up the wall of the cage, to get to his bed, but kept losing his grip and slipping. I tried to reach in to help him, but I wasn't fast enough. Gladden got to nearly the top of the three-foot-high cage, when he fell. He managed to catch hold of the ledge and avoided falling the last foot to the cage floor. Gladden is upset with us right now, and I can't fault him for that.

It's throwing off my sense of week, not having yoga class yesterday. Today hasn't felt like a Saturday, and yesterday didn't feel quite like a Friday.

Phillip and I did some late-night geocaching last night. I called it our "Didn't Find Before" tour, because all three of the caches we looked for were ones that I'd tried on my own, but ended up logging a "Did Not Find." By coincidence, all three were Mystery Caches. The first one I didn't find before because of the high "muggle" factor. Phillip found that one last night. The second one I couldn't find before because, although our GPSr led me to the right spot, I didn't bring the clues and ended up looking in the trees instead of the guardrail. I found that one last night. I also found the third one, which I didn't find before because of muggles.

Last night, geocacher Fishiam posted a note on "Get Christie, Love" strongly suggesting that we raise the difficulty of the cache. Phillip has raised it from 1.5 stars to 2.5.

After I brought Gladden home this morning, Phillip and I went to Archie McPhee to shop for geocaching trinkets. Then we decided to hunt some nearby caches. We found the first one easily, but Phillip had an allergic reaction to something nearby. We tried a second cache, but there were too many muggles, and also Phillip's eyes were bothering him, so we quit geocaching for the day.

We had lunch at International House Of Pancakes, and Phillip saved some of his hash brown potatoes for Gladden. He's still mad at us, though.

We watched Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind (borrowed from Broadway Video) this afternoon. It confirmed what Phillip and I have known for a long time: Studio Ghibli makes Disney Studios look like a bunch of hacks.

Later this afternoon, I watched the first part of The Decalogue (borrowed from the library). It confirmed what I have known for a long time: Krzysztof Kieslowski was a master storyteller. I hope I make it through the next nine hours before it's due back.

Get Christie Love was a short-lived TV series that ran from 1974-1975. It was based on a made-for-TV movie, by the same name, which first aired in 1974. Both the movie and the TV series starred Teresa Graves, who had been a regular cast member of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. The Internet Movie Database's plot description for the TV series describes it nicely: "Adventures of sexy & sassy black undercover cop Christie Love."

In the spirit of the TV series, Phillip and I seem to be playing "good cop/bad cop" when it comes to our new cache. I checked my email this morning, before leaving for work, and learned that "Get Christie, Love" had logged two more "Did Not Find"s. Phillip and I got into a discussion about adding an extra half-star (or even a full star) to the difficulty rating, as well as adding a hint. I wanted to add them, but Phillip was against the idea. The cache is not actually that difficult to find, he insisted, and adding a hint for such a small park just might give it away. As we left for work, however, Phillip reluctantly agreed to up the difficulty and add a hint.

When I got to work, there was an email from Phillip. A second person had found "Get Christie, Love," and like the first finder, had commented that they didn't understand what all the fuss was about - the cache is easy to find if you stop to think about it. So, Phillip wanted to hold off on upping the difficulty. I agreed, and also suggested that the hint wasn't needed, either. But it was too late - Phillip had already posted a nicely vague hint.

There was a new cache listed this morning named "I Am The Walrus." It's in downtown Seattle. The description quoted part of the lyrics to the Beatles song. The lyrics weren't the words I remembered, so I did a Google search. In addition to the song lyrics, I found this interesting site about the history behind the song.

Oh - and it was my memory, not the cache description, that was faulty.

Sometimes, I see things but don't recognize them.

When I was talking with Nichol (the woman who asked me my name in yesterday's class - I'd forgotten her name when I was typing the post) yesterday, I suddenly recognized that I work in an unusally structured clinic. What's unsual is that my present clinic doesn't think of the front desk as a vital position. Nichol was very surprised by that. When I told her the circumstances that led to me being taken off the front desk and being placed in the office - because of an unreliable office worker - Nichol's reaction was something to the effect of: That's backwards. You don't place an unreliable employee at the front desk, and put a reliable front desk employee in the office.

For some reason, it didn't hit me until today. When I told my boss, last week, how my interview went, and I explained that the position was a full-time front desk position, my boss' reaction was, "But what else would you be doing?" "That's it," I replied, "It is a front desk position." "But there's got to be more to it than that," my boss insisted I didn't recognize until today that my boss just couldn't imagine a clinic assigning someone to work at the front desk full time.

In most clinics, I understand now, the front desk is the main non-medical position. It's the first person a patient encounters. If a clinic can afford to hire someone to answer the phones, they will - otherwise, it's the front desk person who does it. That's the way my last clinic was structured. In my present clinic, they staff the phones first, and whoever is free is sent to the front desk. And if no one from the office is free, it's typically the nurse in the clinic who watches the front desk.

When I arrived in training class this morning, there was one student already there. She gave me a big smile and asked, "What's your name?" - but she didn't like it was a request for an introduction, as in "What's YOUR name?" It was more like, "What's your NAME?" - as if we were familiar faces, but had never been introduced. I didn't recognize her at all.

It turned out that she was working at the clinic that I interviewed at last week. (I write "was" because, as we talked some more, she revealed that it was her old position that I was interviewing for. She left merely because it's her habit to leave jobs before she has a chance to get tired of them.) She told me that I had made a very, very good impression there. Everybody loved me there, she told me. "They're going to hire you," she predicted with confidence. That, of course, made me feel rather excited.

I had lunch today at Seattle University. This is what I thought as I walked around campus: The one (and possibly only) thing that I miss about working at the UW Medical Center is the ability to get away from work and onto a university campus. If I only had a longer lunch, I could do the same at Harborview. Seattle University is not very far away.

As I was admiring Seattle University's Lemieux Library, I realized that I actually like the 1960's International Style buildings, with their bold and unexpected geometric shapes.

Our second cache - "Get Christie, Love" - got approved and listed this afternoon and immediately started logging "Did not finds." Veteran First Finder after Veteran First Finder couldn't find our cache. Phillip tends to be more competetive than me. He wanted to gloat, while I wanted to post hints, or at least up the difficulty rating a star or two. Globalgirl, who had 324 finds, became First To Find. I feel at little better now that it was not a typical First to Finder that took our FTF certificate, and that it was found at all.

Lisa's Friday evening yoga class will be canceled this week due to a special event. So I decided to go to this evening's class to make it up. It was taught by Denise, who is the founder of Seattle Yoga Arts. The class was packed, including a couple of other students from the Friday evening class. I ended up with a spot in the very front corner of the studio.

Denise seems to teach a lot more yoga theory than Lisa does. Class started with Denise reading to us about prana - the life energy - as the class sat and listened. I looked down at my new yoga pants and noticed that the logo on the leg reads "Prana."

We did a series of asanas very slow, and very guided. Denise asked, "Who can tell me what we're doing?" "Yoga," answered one smart-aleck, and the whole class laughed. (That's another difference I noticed with Denise's class: more vocal interaction.) "This is called 'surya namaskar,'" said Denise, after she stopped laughing. "Who can tell me what that means?" "Sun salutations," answered several students, correctly. (I didn't even recognize the sun salutations, even though we do them during every class. I had never done them so structured before.)

There was also more emphasis on learning the names of anasaras. "Who can tell me the Sanskrit name of this pose?" Denise would ask. "Vrksasana," someone would answer. "Right! And who can tell me another name for this?" "Tree pose," came the answer.

It's been a terrific day.

I was in an all-day class today. I'll be in class all day tomorrow, too. (It's no secret that the possiblity of me leaving is starting to worry my boss. She openly admits to offering me training classes as an incentive for me to stay.)

These training classes always have overly long lunch breaks. It's true at Harborview. It was true at the University, and it was true at Boeing. Today's instructor gave us an hour and fifteen minutes for lunch.

I had lunch at Blue Water Taco - a little place on Madison I've walked by many times. My vegetarian burrito was excellent. It was made by people who pronounced it "begetarian" and obviously weren't faking their accents.

After lunch, I walked over to "1st Hill, 1st Cache" to check on the condition of the cache. There was no one in the park. I reached into the spot - and couldn't feel the cache! My heart jumped into my throat. I knew going into this that there is always a chance that a cache could get muggled. In the days between hiding it and it getting approved, I worried about that a lot. Then the cache started logging a steady rate of finds and I stopped worrying. But then discovering that it has gone missing in less than a month of its hide was devestating. Weinerdog had found it just yesterday. I felt around into the spot. I felt on the ground to see where it had fallen. There was still no one around, so I got down on my knees and looked underneath, as best as I could without a flashlight. Then I felt from the other end, and found the cache. The last finder had merely put the cache back in the wrong location. (I'm sure I've done that a few times to other caches.)

By a strange coincidence, right in the middle of writing that last paragraph, I got an email reporting that someone had just logged finding the cache early this morning. It wasn't Weinerdog.

(The details of the cache hiding spot have been altered to protect its location.)

On my way home, I stopped into 8 Limbs and looked for a pair of men's yoga pants. There was another customer there looking for the same thing. "We don't have a large selection for men," the salesperson warned me. "Isn't that true everywhere, though?" I replied, and she agreed. The other fellow looking for pants told me that sometimes Travelers Bookstore has a selection. He eventually left the boutique without buying anything, but I found a pair I liked. They're not like the Bodhi Pants I couldn't get from Hugger Mugger, but they're soft, comfortable, and look nice. So, I bought them. I now have yoga clothes.

Today's news that Deep Throat has come public made me sadder than I would have expected. It's an odd feeling. For some reason, I had expected Deep Throat to be one of those mysteries never to be solved in my lifetime - like Area 51 and the JFK assassination. (I was one of those who thought that Deep Throat was a cover for several sources.) I do feel good, however, that it was Deep Throat who had uncovered himself.

Phillip and I hid our second cache this afternoon. We decided on the name "Get Christie, Love." (Actually, there was no second choice.) We are now waiting approval.

While Phillip worked some overtime this afternoon, I did some solo geocaching around the University. I did a lot of walking. My legs are tired tonight. I found three caches and didn't find two.

As I was walking across the UW campus, I found a sundial I had never noticed before. It was installed by the Class of 1912. On a hunch that someone must have done a locationless cache looking for interesting sundials, I logged its coordinates and took some photographs.

After we got home, I found that yes, there is a locationless cache for sundials. Although several people had logged other sundials in Seattle (including a very prominent sundial in the UW), no one had logged the one I found today.

Earlier this morning, I learned that I won't be able to log the idea I had for the locationless cache which asks for the "Welcome To..." sign for a town whose name starts with a "Z." Someone has already logged Zillah, Washington.

Oh, yeah - I forgot to mention that this blog is two years old today. Two years ago, I was reading Winnie The Pooh.

I went out early yesterday to log a locationless cache. This one asked for the headquarters of a National Park. There is a National Park in downtown Seattle, believe it or not. In the three years that the cache has been in existence, no one had ever logged this one. This National Park is so small that the park and the headquarters are the same thing. I'd hoped to go out earlier than I did. I'd hoped to get there before the city woke up, before Seattle's parking fees went into effect, and before the park opened. I didn't wake up in time, however.

I got there just as parking fees started. I found a close parking spot. It took forever to get adequate satellite reception. I got the required coordinates and photographs just as the rangers were opening the park.

There is a regular cache a block away, but I got there just as a park employee arrived to open the gates and water the plants. So I didn't try to look for that cache, and I didn't even bother logging a "Did not find."

Later that morning, Phillip and I looked for, and found, two more regular caches in the border area of Rainier Valley, Mount Baker, and the Central District. One was in a beautiful memorial park dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This is what geocaching is all about to me: discovering new parks, new interesting locations, right in our own backyard.

While we were in The Rainier Valley, we stopped into the new Grocery Outlet. (We like that store. We don't understand that store, but we like it.) We walked out with a very heavy, very full grocery bag. The total sale was $16.20.

We went to see The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy yesterday afternoon. We've been wanting the see the movie, but we went yesterday mostly to escape the heat. We both liked the film very much - it was very faithful to the radio series, books, computer game, etc., with only a few minor additions. In other words, if you know the story as well as we do, there won't be many surprises. It was, however, very enjoyable.

Along the way to the movie, we scouted out a location for a new cache Phillip wants to hide. As we walked from the potential cache location to the movie, I was thinking to myself that a good name for the cache would be "Get Christie Love!" but I didn't think that Phillip would get the reference. We continued walking a few more feet. "I have a great name for my cache," said Phillip, "How about: 'Get Christie, Love'?"

This morning, we did Coffee Hour at church with Barbara. I wasn't looking forward to it. I mean, I like Barbara, and I'm glad we shared the duty with her, but I just wasn't in the mood for the duty. Barbara had predicted, last Sunday, that we'd have a small turnout at church, because of it being the Memorial Day weedend. She was right. We went through only a pot and a half of coffee, and we went home with a lot of leftover cookies, oranges, and bananas.

This morning, after church, we went out to place Phillip's new Travel Bug. We got to the cache location he'd picked out, but satellite reception was awful. We couldn't find the cache. Phillip then decided to put the Travel Bug in a nearby cache that we'd found earlier, that we knew would be big enough for the Travel Bug. Phillip's first Travel Bug is now in the wild.

We went hone, and I decided to check out a yoga boutique I'd discovered earlier this week when I did a search for "men's yoga pants." The boutique is called 8 Limbs, it's part of a yoga studio, and it's within walking distance of home. I got there and found the place was closed. There were no hours posted. It's between work and home, so I may check it out sometime on one of my walks home.

I vegged out for most of the afternoon today, until I decided to do some more geocaching on my own. (Phillip was busy on the computer.) I found the first cache I looked for. It was on the shore of Lake Union, and a woman passing by saw me looking around with papers in my hand and what she mistook for a cell phone, and thought I was looking for the same "boat for sale" that she was looking for. No, I told her, I was just enjoying the view.

I looked for another cache - a Mystery Cache - in Fremont. I didn't find it. (If I'd brought the hint with me, I might not have spent so much time looking in the wrong places.)

Next, I looked for a Mystery Cache on Queen Anne Hill. It was one I'd looked for earlier, but didn't find. This time, I found it without much effort. There is a sense of accomplishment that comes with finding a cache on the first attempt, but more of that feeling when I find a cache I'd given up on earlier. I should remember that.