Category Archives: Me stuff

Aug7

Delaware Triple Play

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We are trying to take a little trip a week until the job gods send Brian something. It sure helps us to have something to think about. In ‘the old days’ you ‘most likely’ at least would get a phone call or letter in the mail if they were/weren’t interested in you. Nowadays, if you get an email you are lucky. When I got the store job, I went in and got an application and filled it out, ‘the old-fashioned way’.

Anyway, I thought it would be a great day to go to a pretty park for a picnic. We had been to Lum’s Pond Park many years ago for a company picnic where Brian worked when we first got married. We were trying to remember which area we were in back then and think it was near the entrance.

So we stopped for gas and shorties (hoagies/subs) and headed about 25 miles to the park. We had a few people around, but mostly had the place to ourselves. We sat near the pond and saw so many white herons:

I found this ‘yucky’ cache-it has been there 10 years (Something is eating the tree and it was all over the cache). The lid is broken where the pin goes in and there wasn’t anything good in it…I left some good stuff. We had found one other one (Brian spotted it first) called ‘Wham-o’ as it was near a field where you could use a Frisbee with your pooch.

Like my pigtails-need to keep my neck cool-lol. I thought I looked like ‘Hot Lips’ from M*A*S*H, my favorite show in the 1970s. I appreciated dry humor. : )

So after I got home I noticed that another part of the park had quite a few caches…live and learn. This park will be gorgeous in the fall…we will be back!

After we left here I wanted to do a few along the C&D canal…there’s a ton of them!

I did find 12! I don’t like ‘robot’ caching-they were behind a telephone pole every 500 feet. Helped me to get to 75!

First of 12!

So a guy passed us (it was hard to do on this narrow gravel road) and he looked disgruntled about something. I think he had been in and out of his van 54 times to get these. And he complained about it on geocaching.com. Because of him I wrote it was the 8th instead of the 7th. Why do these and complain?

So next we headed to Delaware City just to check it out a bit. It’s nice there if you can ignore the smoke stacks right before you hit the town. It was a little Victorian style water port at one time. Some of the homes are sweet. Need to go back to check them out closer.

We did see this:

And Fort Delaware…like to go over there sometime as I heard there is a cache there too!

Must take a ferry there

We ate at a place called ‘Crabby Dick’s’. Can’t beat $6.99 Shrimp Poboys and fries. It was one the first floor here. That’s our trusty white Mariner parked there.

And a few parting shots of yours truly and the hubs

And a glorious sunset

Taken from the car

Aug4

New Castle and Battery Park

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Brian and I headed down to New Castle again today as I wanted to find the cache in the New Castle historic Court House in Delaware.

The guide led us up to few short flights of stairs and said ‘it’s in here someplace.’ I saw it in like 20 seconds. It stood out like a sore thumb. LOL

So after we grabbed a Cajun lunch (wow that was spicy and I couldn’t eat it all) we headed down to nearby Battery Park right on the Delaware River.

By the way, I took all these from my phone. I do that and wear down my battery. We need to remember the Canon more!

Mine was Cajun Chicken salad with honey mustard…all I could taste was that Cajun spice. To me a little goes a long way. I wish I had gotten the Catfish Poboy like Brian.

Battery Park

There was a little beach here

Neat looking driftwood

A hubby enjoying the view

And finding a Nano! It had been here 7 years…

Brian retrieved this and we sat down at this picnic table. I opened it and the log fell out! It was so windy and we thought it blew across an open field. A man was sitting near by and asked what we were looking for and we told him about geocaching. Didn’t he get up and start looking around. We almost gave up and started walking away. He waved us back and said it had just fallen in the space on top of the picnic table-wow-that was luck. I signed it and off we went. He said he would check it out. We noticed he sat for a long time on top of a picnic table when we had walked to near the other end of the park.

Saw a pretty Bed and Breakfast and their garden

And me near the water with a big barg of old cars  behind me (so our log finding helper told us).

We went to a shopping center and looked around a QVC outlet store right before they closed. I got some crocheted Halloween ornaments for mom and me for $3.25 each. The box said they sold on air for $38.00. They had a lot of them-ghost, purple spider, etc.

We also stopped at Wendy’s and tried to find a few more caches to no avail. People were mentioning wasps for the one and we looked in two areas where they could build their nests-nope. The other cache was behind a liquor store. Near the cache area, there was a pile of sand, traffic cones, etc. We thought it was near a fence, but we didn’t see anything. Oh well, it was fine finding a nano.

*****

Today would have been Brian’s mom’s 90th birthday. She’s been gone almost 16 yrs now.

Aug2

Sprucing up the place

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I noticed some of my now old blog header wasn’t showing up, so I decided a new look was in order. I haven’t moved all the widgets in place yet, but I liked the cleaned up look and wild design at the top. The one I really liked was about $60, no thank you! Update-for Zoey, this was a free design.

Not too much happening. I went to see my mom and we went out a bit on Wednesday. Today we went to a new grocery store (actually we have the same one right up the road and this is about 4 miles away). Brian was applying for a job there and Sean filled out the application there yesterday.

I did grab a few outdoor ‘close-ups’. I can’t show you the gardens until I pull out some weeds. I can’t do that in this weather.

Brian was watering a window box and found this little one:

There’s like a little bird’s nest ‘hut’ in there and I saw two of these-nut hatches maybe? They got a little wet.

I have to make something out of these…thinking Chili and salsa:

These petunias are gorgeous on my back patio-they smell nice too. All for $1.00.

Zoey was right, the Persian Shield came back. Sorry for the blurry shot, it was starting to get dark.

I can’t wait to see the white Moonflowers, but I am enjoying the heart-shaped leaves!

Jul26

You find some- you don’t

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As I was saying in an earlier post, Brian and I were getting the micro  cache finds down to a science. We decided to go look for some larger caches yesterday down in Yorklyn, DE. I mainly use my phone. So it was after 3 when we went out as Brian had a phone interview and we start to drive down our road. I should have gotten the site loaded up first as it wouldn’t do so going down our road. We turned around until it picked up again, but this was just the beginning of our issue with it. I decided to try a cache that hasn’t been found for a while-like March of this year. When you read info on a few caches, you forget some of the hints, etc. We parked across from a lovely place we’ve never seen before-Marshall Steam Museum & Friends of Auburn Heights Preserve Inc.. They run a miniature steam train here several times a year. That winds around this pond:

Several bullfrogs live here and croaked or jumped in when we approached. Up the hill is a gorgeous mansion with turrets.

We started looking for the cache across the road which lead into woods. That didn’t work so Bri suggested we look around the train museum property. The GPS never went under 106m. After I got home, I saw we were suppose to park around the corner from this cache where we ended up finding another one anyway. I guess I should take some notes. We went on a few wild goose chases -decided not to go through waist high grass at one place! We’ll go back in the fall.

We found this one and I gladly added more swag to the box. I am finding these caches need goodies! I found a few cute things at the Dollar Store and get a few things for Oriental Trading Co.

After about 45 minutes of looking for the first one, we gave up. If we had followed a dirt road behind the above cache, I think we would have hit on it! The GPS was really jumpy because of the trees, etc.

Today I went to my yearly eye doctor visit, though a few months late and with no insurance. I’ve been seeing a nice woman doctor a little younger than I am. So my prescription is the same after a few years and my internet purchased glasses are fine. She said my eyes are really dry and I have to use an antibiotic cream at night to see if that helps. I have to keep the pressure checked in my eyes for glaucoma, but I am good for a year. : )

I’m hoping to go to an antique mall tomorrow and look around for a few caches so I can get to #50. The mall is having a 20% off sale on some things and I usually look for old photos and paper items.  It’s something to do. : )

 

Jul25

Narrowing it down…

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So we are heading up to 50 cache finds soon! I’m thinking it would be nice to go look for a few larger ones so I can add some swag to them. Lately it’s been all micros. If you told me that a few months ago, I’d laugh. I surely could have found these with hints online, but it was indeed a learning process which, when the first one was found, it sure was a surprise and made us smile! In fact, my statistics show that we have mostly found micros. But these kind ‘get old’ and are called ‘micro spew’ as they are so common. Most are in shopping centers…there’s your hint!

I was sad to see this one open with it and with the log and things floating in water in the inside of a tree. This was an old cemetery down the road from my mom’s house.

This is considered a micro as it pill bottle size…but they can be smaller, a ‘nano’ and Brian has found two of those!

Brian and I took my mom to the eye doctor. She gets medication by injection in one or the other and yesterday it was her good eye. We dropped her off as it’s a 2+ hours appointment. That’s when we go look for caches, but I did look around the mall too.  After mom’s appointment, we took her to Texas Roadhouse as they have a nice ‘early bird’ special Mondays to Thursday. Their select menu is $7.99 and there is a 6 oz sirloin steak on that menu! That’s what we usually want anyway.

We take mom home (the restaurant is almost halfway to our home) and are almost to the same area when she phoned and said her purse with her medication was in the car-and indeed it was! So we had to turn around again…but looked for a few caches in a nearby shopping center first. The first was easy, but the second one called ‘Bah humbug’ as it was placed around Christmastime of last year was a ‘DNF’ (did not find) by many people. I looked at the hints and thought we’d give it a try. First you find a long metal fence and have to narrow down on that. We looked and looked-nothing. I did email the Cache owner for a hint and he said ‘fishing’-so I’m thinking the cache is hanging off a fishing line down the wall-the wall drops at least 100 feet behind the fence!  I saw a string with nothing on the end, so I’m thinking that was a decoy string-lol. We’ll have to check it out some other time.

Brian has a phone interview in a few hours. I haven’t heard back from the school. Sean signed up for a volunteer internship for a few weeks. Something for the resume and of course it’s a learning experience too!

Jul19

Goldfinch Lunch Break

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Brian happen to catch this hungry Goldfinch couple munching on the forming Zinnia seeds through the backdoor . I had to grab the camera and was happy with these shots. So sweet….

I’m glad they like these as I like to help wildlife.

I saw that the local school district needed a ‘full-time’ instructional assistant for the elementary where Sean went to school. I’m a bit nervous about working full time, I’d like to get my feet wet with part-time. I haven’t worked around kids for several years, but of course I raised a fine fellow.  They only want you to have a high school diploma. The pay is decent too. I dropped off my resume today.

Jul18

Polyvore

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Oh my oh my…another place to play online. This is more like a scrapbook type of website. Below I just dragged items over that came up under ‘tops’, ‘jewelry’ etc. You can chose backgrounds and templates also. Also like Pinterest, you can have a bullet in your toolbar to click to your page. Looks like a fun thing to do on a hot day like today! Thanks to Scrappy Jessi (side bar) for the link! BTW, I did this in about 15 minutes just to try it out.

Stuff I like
Jul9

Hid my first geocache!

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I asked Brian if we could go look for some caches on Sunday as I wanted to prove to myself that I could do this again after the way I felt on the 3rd. Looking back, a lot of that was the heat and the steepness of the hills and stairs (still out of shape in dealing with that stuff). I had gone on other hikes without all that uphill terrain and I fared much better. I also had put together a little plastic box, added a log, filled it with ‘swag’ (goodies) and had camouflaged it with tape that was ready to hide.  I wanted to go to the park where I walk all the time but then something happened. We headed over to our town. It’s further away than Kennett Square with a town in the middle.  We go to the first area and park near this sweet garden there. We had to walk a bit to the one we were looking for and then it’s  a ‘let’s go….no just look once more…let’s go’ kind of thing.

Leave it to Brian to run his hand along the top of this abandoned announcement board and find this most unusual cache log!

We were feeling pretty good. The cache owner said people could email him for additional hints. I am so sure we can now find that elusive one down the road-hee hee!

Going back to the car I told Brian I wanted to check out this little memorial garden for a man  named Fred.  I thought Bri was taking more photos than he did as the landscaping and everything was just perfect. There was a stone in the middle of the ‘patio’ area and it said ‘I love you to the moon, I love you to the stars, I love you beyond, beyond’. There was also a moon and star whirligig. I found the perfect cache location! We are told on the website to put a cache where you want people to visit and this certainly was deserving of more people seeing it.

I said it could be a night search with all those solar lights there.

So when I got home, I saw that this man was a borough council member for our town. He passed away last year at only age 59. He has two little grandsons. They would love my cache!

I got approved right away and then people found it already today!

A group of us actually work within walking distance to this cache. Got the notification last night and considered making an early morning work trip to GZ but decided against it. Gave this cache a look with two other cachers at our morning break to no avail. At lunch I returned with ‘Y’ and we made the find very quickly. Not sure how we missed it in the morning. I actually eyed this spot before to place a cache, nicely done. SL, TFTC

Very cool.

The trains down from here have graffiti all over them

See how the grass is dying? It’s dry beyond dry.

 People will see this too-right near the garden where my cache is.

We went on to find a few more and not find one. The one we couldn’t find was another one of those cammoed film canisters that we walked through a field to find. We each found a tick on us. There was a road right near the cache. Bri doesn’t have much driving stealth yet. Of course last night, I found yet another tick on me! I had changed and showered twice. I think the critter was in the pile of  dirty clothes in the bathroom that I picked up and put in a basket.

Being a bit lazy today. Tomorrow night is the Bacon Brothers (Kevin Bacon) at Longwood Gardens!

One for the road…our little harvest…hand watering helped a bit!

Jul6

Nature’s hidden gems

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Some views from new areas (and a couple of already visited) we have just discovered:

Valley Garden Park, Wilmington, DE (above and below) Never been.

Newlin Grist Mill Park, Glen Mills, PA …We were here for a company picnic, Sean and I stopped here for a picnic lunch a few times and Ken and Colleen had their wedding photos taken here.

Harbor area, Atlantic City, NJ (never been-aquarium here and some caches. We also found a great harbor side restaurant). Never been.

Arboretum at Swarthmore College (Penna.) Never been.

Nottingham Park. Been here once and not in this area for fireworks years ago.

Now go and discover some of your own!

Jul5

Sean share

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Sean let me take a photo of him with his iPhone on the beach down in Virginia Beach. He has that instagram app and applied it. I really like this shot. It ‘was’ almost perfect. There was the seagull, the little girl near the water and the blob with a sleeping bag over his head…which was edited out.

 I think I shared this one before-a friend asked him to be the subject in a photo shoot at in PSU. One of my favorites of him.

We had a low key 4th of July-it was hot. We had pasta salad, burgers, chicken and roasted corn on the cob. And the bundt cake! Someone in the family decided to have the pick on me for something that doesn’t concern them. The thing is, I did nothing to them personally for them to get so mad at me. And this person hardly goes on their FB page and decided to do so just to give me a scolding. I would never write anything like what they wrote on their wall or family members wall. I guess when someone doesn’t like you, nothing you say matters. This makes me really sad. I’ve known this person for 34 yrs. : (