Phillip asked me to stop by Broadway Video, on my way home from work on Wednesday, and pickup disc 4 of the second season of Lost. While I was there, I decided to pick up disc 5 as well.

We watched all four episodes of disc 4 Thursday night, after we got home from Thanksgiving with my family in Black Diamond. We watched two episodes of disc 5 this afternoon. We are hooked into Lost. There are so many unexpected twists going on right now that I don't know where the story is going. Personally, I think that right now, after the second episode of disc 5, we have been given a red herring.

Phillip went to work for a half-day of overtime today, which gave me some welcomed down time. I left the apartment twice today. The first time was just before nine this morning, when I walked up to Hollywood Video to take advantage of their $4.99 sale to buy a used DVD of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I didn't do much of anything today. I re-designed our profile page on geocaching.com. I played some Diablo II. I read, and I snacked. I didn't take a shower until 5:00 this evening - and I took a shower only because I was going to yoga class (the second time I left the apartment today).

We had a substitute teacher in yoga today. Lisa told us we would, last week. There were only five students this evening. If the substitute teacher told us her name, I didn't hear it. I really don't think she introduced herself by name. She was a very good teacher, with a lot of encouragement for the class. Toward the beginning of class, she mentioned that she was from "the Jewish tradition," which I thought was interesting, because when she led us in the Sanskrit chant, it sounded very Jewish to me. (Or, maybe I just imagined that.)

Yoga has become such a part of my life that I realize that I'm having a difficult time describing it - putting it into words.

(Here it is, nearly the end of November, and I still make the mistake of writing the month as "10" and saying the month as "October." I don't know why.)

When it comes to recording the geocaches we plan on finding during an outing, Phillip and I are Old School. Rather than electronically downloading the data from all geocaches for a given area, from geocaching.com into a Palm Pilot, and then downloading the cache data from the Palm Pilot into a GPS receiver, we write the coordinates, and any other important information about the cache, onto a paper notebook with a pen. Then we manually enter the coordinates into our GPS receiver. I can think of three other geocachers we've met who use the same Old School method as us. We use it because we don't own a Palm Pilot, and don't see enough benefit to buying a Palm Pilot when our method serves us just fine.

One minor drawback to our method is the increased chance of error as we write the coordinates in our notebook, and another chance of error when we enter the coordinates into our GPSr.

A bigger drawback is that, over the year and a half that we have been geocaching, we have filled up several notebooks with our 412 finds, plus the geocaches we looked for but didn't find, plus the ones we wrote down but just didn't get around to looking for. Then we decide to go back after those unfound geocaches - especially those from months ago - and we have to dig out all those notebooks, and search though the pages to find the information for the geocache we're looking for. Recently, Phillip made the suggestion of re-entering those unfound geocaches into one notebook - separating them from the found caches to make locating our notes easier.

Today, I decided to take Phillip's idea and improve on it (maybe). Instead of entering the unfound caches into one notebook, I decided to enter them into six notebooks, which would be cataloged into vague geographic areas: "Seattle," "North of the U-District," "South of Beacon Hill," "West Seattle," "Eastside," and "Out of Town." It's not a perfect system. What's the border between Eastside and Our of Town? Is Crown Hill north of the U-District? But maybe it doesn't have to be perfect.

As I started the project, I discovered that we have a lot more unfound caches listed than I'd realized. It took me a long time to re-write all the information for those caches. It just might be a better system, though - and it was fun reading though the notes of our geocaching history.

Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church, we agreed afterwards, had its pluses and its minuses.

As we sat in the Sanctuary, before the service began, the pastor came over and gave us a warm welcome, asked us our names, and made a point of remembering them. As we were leaving, after Coffee Hour, the pastor saw us, interrupted a conversation he was having, and invited us to return. He remembered our names. Then he gave us each a little loaf of bread as a gift for visiting the church. That was a big plus, and the bread was a nice touch. The pastor was, however, the only person who spoke to us - even during Coffee Hour. That was a big minus.

The church runs a food bank, and is scheduled to host a tent city on its front lawn. That is a huge plus.

The church does not use inclusive language in its service. That is a minus to me, but not so much for Phillip. I am aware, though, that finding another church which uses inclusive language will be difficult.

The service, the church buildings, and the church overall, seemed a lot more polished than Central Lutheran Church. That felt like a minus to us both, but we're not sure if it really is a minus.

The church is in the middle of its Stewardship drive. The pastor told the Congregation that Jesus wants us all to "baptize our wallets." That bothered Phillip a lot more than it bothered me.

There was a large metal bucket in front of the Pulpit. At the beginning of the service, water was poured into the bucket. Then, later in the service, the pastor invited "the congregation" to come forward to "make their pledges." People began leaving the pews to drop money into a plate that was placed in the middle of the bucket, above the water. Phillip and I were both confused. Was this part of the Stewardship drive, or was this how that church collected the offerings, instead of passing around collection plates? We stayed in the pew, unsure of what to do. After it was over, and Communion began, we realized that we had missed the offering. (The question remains: What that a special ceremony, or was that the regular Offering?) When Communion began, I realized that the collection plate was still in the bucket, so I discretely dropped our offering and our visitor card in as I walked back to the pew. That ceremony seemed strange to us, and I'd planned on mentioning it to someone at Coffee Hour - but, of course, no one talked to us. This was neither a plus nor a minus.

There was something that Phillip later called "The Disney Moment." We both thought it was odd, if not a little tacky. For a short time, during the service, a gold star above the alter began spinning while a tinkling sound filled the speakers in the Sanctuary. That was a minus - but a minor one.

I forgot to ask Phillip for his opinion about this, but Communion used wafers rather than bread. I prefer bread. This is, however, a matter of my personal taste, and fits in with the idea of the church being more polished than what we're used to.

Neither one of us saw another same-gender couple in the Congregation. This could be a major minus. There is, however, two services on Sunday, so we were seeing only part of the congregation. The church did seem open to people of varied ages, races, apparent economic status, and physical abilities.

Does all this add up to a plus or a minus for this church? Neither Phillip not I are sure. As I type this entry, however, I am remembering that Phillip and I both took an immediate liking to Central, from our first visit - there was no looking at pluses and minuses.

After church, Phillip and I did a multi-cache on Queen Anne Hill. As I've written before, neither Phillip nor I are especially fond of multi-caches. This one, however, we knew we had to do someday. Everyone we've spoken to has told us that this is one of the best geocaches in Seattle. We'd made two attempts at it in the past. The first time, I'd gone out alone and couldn't find the first waypoint. (It turned out that the waypoint had gone missing, and so the cache owner gave me the coordinates for the second waypoint.) The second time, Phillip and I both tried to find the second waypoint, but couldn't. Since then, we've been given hints by other geocachers to where that second waypoint is hidden. So, this afternoon, we tried again, starting with the second waypoint. It took us a very long time to find it, and I was ready to give up when Phillip found it. Phillip also found the third waypoint - which was the most impressive, we both agreed, of the whole series. Then Phillip found the fourth waypoint, and from there, I found the final cache. As I noted in our log, the multi-cache lived up to hype, and then some. Every stage of it used clever, non-standard cache containers, and the location of the final was interesting, if not particularity scenic. And with the finding of that cache, we have found every cache hidden by markta - and I have enjoyed every one of his caches. There were some other caches I suggested finding on Queen Anne Hill, but Phillip was ready to go home, and I didn't mind doing so. That is why multi-caches are not our favorites: We had driven all over Queen Anne Hill, finding four caches, but in the end, we had found only one geocache.

I have been feeling a lot of interest in geocaching lately, but we've somehow not gotten out to find any caches. The list of caches we should get out to find, some of them very close to home, grows, but still we sit in front of the computer reading about them instead of looking for them. I blame the weather - or maybe our combined mood caused by the weather.

Friday night, as I was solving a puzzle cache - that I'd hoped to find someday - Phillip got up and asked if there were any new caches in the area (so maybe we could log a First, Second, or Third To Find). No, there weren't, but I suggested some groups of caches in various parts of town - or there was one relatively new micro cache less than a mile from home. We ended up going after the single micro less than a mile from home. That pretty much sums up our geocaching state of mind lately - the interest is there, if not the drive.

Earlier this week, SnowWolf emailed us to ask if we were going to the geocaching event at Marymore Park, in Redmond, on Saturday (yesterday) - and if we were, could he get a ride with us? Maybe I'd seen the event and it hadn't pique my interest, or maybe I hadn't noticed it, but until SnowWolf's email, I hadn't planned on going to the event. But then I thought: Why not? I asked Phillip, and he seemed to have the same reaction I had. We picked up SnowWolf in front of the Downtown Seattle library yesterday morning, and Phillip and I are both glad we all went. We had a great time at the event. After the event, the three of us decided to go find three Marymore Park geocaches. We went after the first one, had difficulty getting to it because of recent flooding, and found it. Then we returned to the car to find the next two, and got lost driving around the park, then decided to return to Seattle instead. Driving across the 520 floating bridge, talking about geocaching, SnowWolf mentioned that he hadn't been able to find a cache that we'd found. So, we stopped off at the cache and helped SnowWolf log a find. Then Phillip wasn't feeling well, so we dropped him off at home. Then SnowWolf and I went after a cache that I'd found a long time ago, but he'd at which recently logged a DNF. I helped him find that one. Then I dropped him off downtown.

I'm in the mood to go geocaching right now, but Phillip and I are going to church - that church in Greenwood. Whether we go geocaching afterwards remains to be seen.