We had a substitute teacher in yoga class this evening. Her name's Wendy. She started the class by explaining that there are seven chakras - which, she said, was convenient because there are seven weeks in a session. (See the entry for May 29.) I liked Wendy, except that she didn't know how to operate the thermostat and, as a result, the studio was about 80 degrees throughout the session. I was sweating most of the time.

Because of my back issues, Lisa has had me modify certain asanas. With both Prasarita Padottanasana and Uttanasana, I've learned to bend to a right angle rather than the full forward bend. During both asanas, Wendy saw me doing Lisa's modification, stopped me, and had me do her own modification. With my legs bent, and my hands or head on blocks, I went into as full a forward pose as possible. It was tough to undo, so suddenly, nearly two years of teaching.

I am still enjoying Friday evening yoga.

Phillip and I went to a party at Janice and Steve's house yesterday evening. On the way home, we stopped into Trader Joe's for milk. Then we stopped by "I Can See The Dawghouse From Here!" - someone had logged a rare Did Not Find recently, and I figured that since we were in the area, we might as well check on it. The cache was fine, of course. That cache has never been trouble. When we got home, we went swimming in the apartment building pool. Then I went to bed, at a little past nine, and read some more of The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill until I fell asleep.

Blogger™ has been down for a day and a half, and I feel like I won't be able to catch up.

Apparently, Emily and Eric enjoyed our Ballard geocaching adventure so much that Emily bought Eric a GPS receiver for a present. Last Monday, the four of us got together for our second geocaching adventure as a group. Last week, I had been given the task of finding us a set of caches to hunt for. Emily asked that there not be too many on the list that Phillip and I have found, so we'd enjoy it, too. Phillip asked there there not be too many micro caches on the list. I emailed everyone a list of nine geocaches, with the reminder that we don't believe in caching until we drop - when we get tired, we stop. All nine geocaches were either regular or small sized, and Phillip and I had not found any of them. They were all in the North City and Lake Forest Park area, and were within a couple of miles of each other.

Phillip and I got to Paramount Park first, and Emily and Eric found us a short time later. We hiked into the nature preserve in a single file: Eric in the lead with his GPSr, then Emily, Phillip, and me in the rear with our GPSr. I forget which one of us actually found the cache, but we found it quickly. Then Eric saw that our next cache was only .67 miles away. Three of us decided that it was best to walk that short a distance. I, however, tried to be the voice of reason and reminded everyone of our experience at the Ballard Locks. Seven-tenths of a mile is further than we realize it is, I pointed out. But, I got outvoted and we started walking.

After a few blocks, it occurred to Emily that once we get to the cache, we're going to have to walk .67 miles back to our cars. (I wish I'd thought of pointing that out.) But instead of walking back to our cars, it was voted 3 to 1 that Emily and Phillip should take Eric's GPSr and continue walking to the cache, while Eric and I should drive our two cars (with our GPSr) and meet them there. I'm not complaining, however - I thought it was all rather comical.

Eric and I drove to Hamlin Park, the location of the second cache on our list. Actually, several of the caches on our list were in Hamlin Park - it's a huge park. While we waited for Phillip and Emily, we decided to hunt for the cache. It proved to be more difficult than the first, but we eventually found it. Then we waited a long time for Emily and Phillip. I don't know about Eric, but I was getting worried. It was taking them too long to get to us. I had the only cell phone among the four of us, so unless they happened upon a pay phone, we had no way of contacting each other. Eric and I walked to the park entrance to wait for them. Eventually we spotted them way down the road. We stood and waited. At they got closer, we realized that it wasn't Emily and Phillip at all - it was some man with two small children. (They were a long way away.) So, Eric and I decided it was then best to wait by the cars. Before we got to the cars, we met up with Emily and Phillip, who had come in through a back entrance to the park, after getting lost in what they called "an alien village." Eric and I let Phillip and Emily find the cache, then we walked off together to our third cache, which was .1 miles away.

According to Emily, Eric's GPS receiver cost about half of what ours did, but his receiver seemed to work a lot better in the woods than ours does. Our GPSr kept losing its satellite lock, then regaining it. We found the third cache very easily.

The fourth cache was .1 miles away from the third. Our GPSr lost its satellite lock when it said we were about 300 feet from the cache. When it regained the lock, it told us we were 1740 miles from the cache. I had never seen it do that before. The lock never got better. With four us searching, and Eric's GPSr still giving reasonable information, we never did find that fourth cache. Eric and I kept searching after Emily and Phillip had given up. Phillip and Emily were thirsty and wanted to go back to the cars where there was some bottled water.

At the cars, Eric started figuring out which cache on our list was the closest. Emily, however, made a suggestion that we all call it a day and go back to their new condominium on Eastlake for tea. I voted that we continue on with at least a couple more geocaches. Phillip was tired and wanted to go have tea. It appeared that Eric and I got outvoted. I had, after all, said we'd quit when we got tired. Still, I admit to feeling some disappointment. Out of nine caches, we'd looked for only four, and out of those four, we had found only three. I had wanted to break our awful DNF ratio for the previous week.

We followed Eric and Emily back to their condo. We drank tea and talked and I had a great time. Emily reminded us all that we were about a block from our geocache, "White Noise." She and Eric wanted to go find it. We went with them, only to find that "White Noise" has disappeared again. We walked a couple more blocks and they found another geocache - one that Phillip and I had previously found.

Then Emily told us about the wonderful Happy Hour menu at The Eastlake Bar & Grill, across the street from their condominium building. The four of us walked there and had a great meal out on the deck. I was having a great day. I had long since stopped feeling disappointed about our geocaching count. Then Phillip and I said our goodbyes, went home, logged our Finds and our DNF, and got ready to go to the movies.

Phillip and I had free passes to The Bay Theater in Ballard. We went to the 7:10 showing of X-Men III: The Final Stand, only to find that it had sold out. We faced a dilemma: Our passed expired at the end of June, and were good only Mondays through Thursdays. When will be able to use them? We drove back home, resigned to the fact that we may have to let them expire unused.

We got home before 8:00, but I was exhausted. I laid down on the bed, but couldn't sleep. Then Phillip had a crazy idea: Why don't we set the alarm for 9:00, try to fall asleep, and go see the 9:55 show? I agreed to try it.

I fell asleep at some point, Phillip woke me up a little before nine, and we drove back to Ballard. We got in to the 9:55 show, which was surprisingly full. We got home a little past midnight, I went to bed, and fell asleep right away. I felt sleep deprived all day at work the next day - Tuesday.

I enjoyed X-Men III a lot. I enjoyed Saw II, which we'd rented this past weekend. I want to write more, but it's time for bed.

Last Sunday, I was in the mood for some geocaching, but Phillip wasn't. At Phillip's suggestion, I went out alone. I picked out six caches to look for. The first was one that Phillip and I had logged a Did Not Find on once before. I didn't find it last Sunday, either. I couldn't find the next one I tried, or the one after that, or the one after that. After four DNFs in a row, I decided to call it a day and not go after the remaining two. I was convinced that the fourth one I tried was missing (and I still am), but it was still a discouraging geocaching adventure.

On Thursday evening, as I wrote earlier, I went out alone, looked for three geocaches, and found all three easily.

Yesterday, Phillip and I went to a party at Bruce and Patty's house in West Seattle. Phillip and I decided to go over to West Seattle early and do some geocaching before the party. I picked out eight geocaches, keeping in mind the time, early in our geocaching days, that we overdid our hunting before a party at Kurt and Lori's house and tired ourselves out. I hoped we'd know when to quit this time. We easily found the first cache we looked for, despite the fact that our GPS receiver kept bringing us about 50 feet away from the cache. We found the second cache even easier. The third geocache brought us to a deeply wooded area (I am continually surprised at how many such areas there are within the Seattle city limits) where we could not get a good satellite lock. We spent a very long time searching for that cache before declaring it a DNF. We got terrible satellite reception at the fourth cache we tried, too, and we both got frustrated and agreed that it was time to quit and go to the party. We wanted to try one more geocache, however - because it was literally across the street from Bruce and Patty's house. When we got about 200 feet from the cache location, we lost satellite reception again. We managed to find the trail into the hide area, but we saw that it was a steep, uphill, muddy climb, so we decided not to look for that geocache. So, out of the eight caches on our list yesterday, we found two and logged two DNFs.

We enjoyed the party very much. I was glad that no one talked about work very much. (Bruce was once a coworker of mine, and still works at Harborview. Patty works at Harborview, too.) Phillip was surprised to find one his coworkers there, and even more surprised when he learned that his coworker was there because he's married to one of Bruce's daughters. It's a small world, as Bruce said.

This afternoon, after a trip to the library, Phillip and I decided, on the spur of the moment, to go find three quick geocaches at the north base of Queen Anne Hill. We found the first two easily. The third one was an easy micro, but we couldn't find it.

In the past week, Phillip and I, either as a team or alone, have logged a Find on seven geocaches and logged a Did Not Find on seven others. I hope that our geocaching afternoon with Emily and Eric tomorrow improves our odds.