I found a welcomed voicemail on our phone a few minutes ago. "We have tried several times to contact you regarding this special offer from [...] credit card, but you have not returned our calls. I am calling to inform you that this special opportunity, offered just to you Mr. [...], will end on Monday. If we do not hear from you by that time, we will make no further attempts to contact you." It's too bad that I don't believe them.

I went out this morning and did some solo geocaching. There were four puzzle caches I had the solutions to, but had just not looked for yet. Three of those caches were on the UW campus, and one was north of the U District. There was also one traditional geocache close to the northern puzzle cache, so I put it on my list as well. I went for the northern caches first, so that I could get to campus after noon, when parking is free. As I drove across the Montlake Bridge, I discovered that there was a Husky football game scheduled that afternoon. (I should remember to check the game schedule the next time I plan to geocache on campus.) I found the two northern geocaches - the puzzle cache and the traditional one - without much trouble. I drove back to campus and arrived about ten minutes past noon. I found plenty of free parking by the Burke Museum. The three campus caches were on the opposite side of the campus, so I had a nice long walk to the first one. There turned out to be several tailgate parties going on nearby (but out of sight), and plenty of foot and bicycle traffic, but I managed to grab the cache, carry it over to a nearby bench to log our find, and replace it in-between gaps in the traffic. I got to the next cache, but discovered that there was just too many people walking to the stadium right by the coordinates to do a thorough search. I looked around a bit, then decided it would be best to try another time. The last cache on my list was even closer to the stadium, so I didn't even try for that one. I walked back to the car and drove home. I consider that three-for-three.

I checked, and The Big Sleep is on the list of 1001 book I must read before I die.

Yesterday, I started reading The Big Sleep. I haven't checked, yet, if it is one of the 1001 books that I must read before I die. So far, however, I am in absolute awe of Raymond Chandler's descriptive phrases.

Here is one of those phrases. The scene is: Private Investigator Philip Marlowe wakes up after having drinking himself to sleep the previous night. There's a phone call from Bernie Ohls, chief investigator for the District Attorney. Here's how the book describes Ohls' voice: "He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe much money."

It's not that I'm losing interest in this blog, or that I've had nothing to write about - it's that I haven't spent much time on the home computer this week. Life just keeps happening offline, like that spur-of-the-moment work-group dinner at Old Spaghetti Factory Wednesday night.

This was my first week working in the satellite clinic. I work there in the morning, go to lunch, and then work in the main clinic in the afternoon. At times, I feel like I'm doing everything twice. I do confirmation calls in the morning, reminding patients of tomorrow's appointments. I do a whole new list of confirmation calls in the afternoon. I see a lot of patients in the satellite clinic who have been referred there from the main clinic. Then I see those same patients back in the main clinic for followup appointments.

I spend the mornings in isolation, seeing patients through a window and talking to my coworkers on the telephone. I spend the afternoons in the middle of the world, with 360 degree sights and sounds.

This has been a busy weekend. It feels like yoga class was seven days ago. We did a lot, and left a lot yet to be done.

When we hid "The Buzz," I had noticed that there was a new geocache placed nearby. I thought about suggesting that we go find it after hiding our cache. But then I saw that a couple of finders had suggested in their logs that there might be "code violations" involved in the cache placement. One geocacher had been questioned by the police as he searched for the cache. So, I decided to not suggest looking for it, and wait until whatever problems there were are resolved.

Then, on Friday, Phillip saw a log for that geocache in which a finder wrote that the hide was just like the cache that Phillip had found at 3 AM last Wednesday. So, he suggested that we go find it after my yoga class.

Yoga class was packed. There were a lot of first-time students there. We didn't learn as much about the Bhagavad Gita as I wanted to learn. Lisa asked me to demonstrate to the class my modification of the forward bend - that made me feel good. I held The Crane for longer than I had ever held it. It was a good class.

I came home from yoga class, woke Phillip up, and we looked for that geocache. Phillip found it, and I didn't think I would have thought to look where he did. I don't know how I feel about the alleged "code violations," but I do doubt the wisdom of hiding the cache where it was.

The special thing about that cache is that, although it is a micro-sized container, it contains travel bugs. That was accomplished by hiding the TBs in a separate location. Although we had long since lost the chance to be FTF for the cache, Phillip and I had a good chance to be the first to find the hiding spot for the travel bugs - "the bug house," it was called - since all the previous finders had failed to notice the directions written at the top of the log sheet. The cache owner, frustrated that no one had found the bug house, put an unactivated geocoin in as a prize for the first finder. We'd hoped that would be us.

The bug house directions took us .3 miles away from the cache location. There was no obvious hiding spot there, but given the unconventional nature of the main cache hide, we searched everywhere around us. We searched in a circle of at least 90 feet around the coordinates, and searched again, late into the night, before finally giving up. We came home, logged our find and recorded our failed effort at finding the bug house, then went to bed.

I woke up around three o'clock Saturday morning. I don't know why. I couldn't get back to sleep. I decided to get up and do some web surfing, and read some blogs, until I got sleepy again. As soon as I logged on, however, I found an email from the cache owner. He described the general location of the bug house, what it looked like, and told us the coordinates of its hiding spot. I immediately saw what had gone wrong: the coordinates on the top of the log sheet contained transposed numbers. I emailed the owner back and told him of the error. Then I started to go back to bed.

Phillip was awake, and asked me what I was doing up. I told him about the email. He asked me if I wanted to go back out and find the bug house. We got dressed, and drove out at four in the morning. We didn't even need to turn the GPS receiver on. Phillip spotted the bug house from the street. We took the unactivated geocoin, and picked up one of the travel bugs. We turned on our GPS receiver, confirmed the coordinates, then went back to the cache and corrected the log sheet. Then we drove home, posted a note on the cache page saying that we were First To Find the bug house. Then we went back to bed.

We got up late Saturday morning and went to the Friends of The Library book sale at Magnuson Park. We bought a bag full of books. Phillip had earlier suggested that we look for some geocaches in the area, and I'd picked out three in the park. We found the first one, and Phillip decided that he wasn't into it - he was too tired and it was too hot. He returned to the car, and I went on to look for the other two. I found the second one, but not the third. I am positive, given the hints and lack of other similar hiding spots, that the third cache had been muggled, however.

We left Magnuson Park, went to lunch at Wendy's where we were waited on by a guy with no love for his job, and went shopping at Value Village. We drove the long way home, to avoid the traffic from the Husky football game, and spent what was left of the afternoon vegetating.

When I logged our two finds, and our one DNF, for Saturday, I discovered that the founder of Groundspeak - who does occasional geocaching - had been in Magnuson Park that day, and had logged the same two finds, and the same DNF, as we did.

Sunday was Writers' Group, and I had nothing written. I'd been composing some things in my head for the past month, but nothing seemed to come out on paper. Barbara had earlier told me that since both Bernice and Russ would be out of town or otherwise occupied, it would just her and Don and me reading. I got up Sunday morning, still with nothing written, and considered calling Don and Barbara and making an excuse for not being able to make it. Besides, we had been invited to dinner, with Kurt and Lori, at Steph and Denny's house at six, and I could use that as an excuse. The problem was, I really wanted to go to Writers' Group, and my hesitation was simply that I had nothing written. Then I thought about the situation the other way around. With only three of us, Writers' Group would be short, and I'd have plenty of time before dinner. Then I realized that I had written a lot in the past month: it was all in this blog. I printed off the entry about our scheme to get into Groundspeak headquarters. Then I walked to church.

I sat in the pew next to Bernice, who told me that she was going to Writers' Group after all.

Writers' Group was, as always, a lot of socializing surrounding the reading. (One of topics of conversation was the story behind why Don and Barbara had been without telephone service for days.) Before we got to the reading, Barbara and Don's intercom buzzed. It was Russ. We had our full group and we all had good stuff to read. My reading got a better reception than I was expecting. We had all finished reading, and the conversations were still going strong, but it was almost four o'clock and I had to tear myself away to get home in time to get ready to got to dinner.

I got home a little past four, and Phillip jumped up. He was about ready to phone Don and Barbara's place to get me home (not that he could have, but he didn't know that). Instead of going directly to dinner at six, we were meeting Kurt and Lori at their house at five and following them to Steph and Denny's house. (In hindsight, I wonder why.) We left immediately, stopped off at QFC for a bottle of wine for the hosts, and drove to Kurt and Lori's house.

When we arrived, Kurt told us something he'd learned only minutes earlier: It was going to be a belated birthday party for him, and there were going to be more people than the six of us. We followed them to Steph and Denny's house.

In spite of not being what we were expecting, we both had a great time at the party. There were familiar people there, and a few new friends. Phillip and I left at eight, but I could have stayed longer if it wasn't Sunday night.

It's been a busy weekend.