I didn't end up going to the Sunday edition of the play. Our neighbor friends, Shelley & Steve, M's mom and dad and our trick-or-treating partners, offered to take her over. Doug and I had wanted to get out to do some caching, and we figured with Jessica otherwisely occupied and not with us complaining, we'd have more fun.
I checked with Jessie to see if she'd be upset if I skipped the play, and she was all cool with it. She wanted to go to the cast party afterwards, so S&S dropped the girls off there, and I picked up when it was all over. So indeed I only had to sit through the Worst Play Ever Which Was Not The Fault Of The Cast only once.
The cast party was in full and out of control swingage when I got there. Mind you -- this is 6pm and they are fifth and sixth graders, so it was NOT like our cast party in 12th grade for Playfest or "South Pacific." Oy, I still have a hangover from those cast parties! Anyway -- seeing as the Beatles were so heavily configured into the "soundtrack" of the play, they were all singing and dancing to Beatles tunes. Specifically ones that they could sing loud and dance crazy to. "Obla di, Obla da" was a big hit, and all the kids knew all the words. "All together now" was fun because I got in on the act and sang the solo voice that gets echoed, and I yelled it out rather obnoxiously, so the kids fell down laughing and then screamed the response. It was funny.
I'm especially relieved that she's made some good connections with sixth graders. Especially because her best friend for many years, Megan, is in sixth grade, and this year Megan decided it was uncool to hang with Jessie because she's in fifth grade, so we never see Megan anymore. That's rather sad. I miss her a lot, they were really good friends. Perhaps once Jessie makes it to middle school (7th grade) Megs will realize that it is okay to be friends with someone one year your junior. She's a great girl, and was such a good friend. See, I mentioned earlier that fifth grade is when all the crap and cliques and hell break loose. I was right.
 | As I mentioned, we got to head out for some Geocaching while she was tied up with the play. Geoff and the dogs are always willing participants in such activities. We went to Danvers to an old haunt, one we hadn't been to in quite some time, and hiked out a little over a half mile to the cache site. Thing with geocaching is that sometimes it IS the most obvious location that you're looking for. We got to what our GPS said was 10 feet from the cache and we looked around. There was a large hollowed out tree, and without saying it out loud, both of us said to ourselves "Naaah, toooooooooo obvious!" and then we spent 10 minutes rummaging through other bushes and possible locations. I almost put Geoff up into the hollowed out tree, just to keep him busy. That would have been funny if he looked in and said "Hey!" Doug eventually returned to the painfully obvious location and as sure as eggs is eggs, there it was. We hiked back a different direction and had a good view of Rte 62 in Danvers, the Staples/Stop & Shop mall (if you ever drive up Rte 1, it's on your right just after the exit for 62) and the Danvers State Mental Hospital grounds. The dogs got good and worn out, as did Geoff. I am still happy that I retained a lot of my hiking strength through the winter. Last year at this time this short hike would have kicked my ass completely. God bless Geocaching! Every cache we find we log as "watch this cache" on the main site so we can see who comes to visit it after us. I like seeing the username Xeraphas has found a cache on your watch list. That's happened twice so far. Way to go Mike!
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One of the caches we did this past summer with our friend Ian has either been stolen or washed out to sea in the winter storms. That's too bad... we put some nice stuff in there and took two pictures on the camera that was in the cache. Such is life. I think we need to get Mr. Ian and take him on some more serious cache adventures this spring. There are still some by his house (Gloucester/Rockport) that we haven't hit.
Aaron told me that he found a place on Mt. Desert Island where he and Michelle went hiking this weekend that would make the Best Geocache Ever. I think this summer we'll need to go up there, scout it out, and plant one for them to be trustees of.
And, there are two places around here that I want to make into caches, before someone else does.
Aaah, spring. The snow is gone. The paths are slowly returning to solid. And a young girl's dreams of caching fancy are back in full swing. Huzzah!
Enough on Geocaching. You're sick of it already!
The swan is still out on the pond by our house, but he won't swim up close to the street anymore. I wondered why, and then I noticed a Canada Goose sitting up on the shore. A few hours later I noticed it again. The next day, there it was -- I believe it's the mommy, and she's sitting on a nest. I also noticed another Canada Goose sitting in the water up on a log, sleeping, with one foot tucked up. That's the daddy. For three days they've been in exactly the same position. When I got home from dropping Geoff off at school, I noticed Daddy Goose wasn't in his spot. The swan was way out on the pond, swimming back and forth and looking very sad.
I decided to sneak in for a closer look at Mama Goose. Daddy goose came from out of nowhere, across the pond, at about warp speed 10 when he saw me walking towards her. She had her head down close to her body, and was growling at me. He had his neck in full ghetto "Don't go there, bitch! *snap snap snap" mode.
Lucky for me, I had a bag of bread.
I threw him several pieces and he stopped his attempts to give me the bum's rush. He gobbled them down -- three days of not moving or doing anything must have him in complete hunger mode. He ate his fill as I slowly made my way towards Mama. I put several chunks of bread out for her and kept walking. I figure she'll come eat them when I'm not around. She got out of her nest and preened it for a while and I got to watch her. She put more leaves on it, and pine cones... as if that would protect them from me if I really did want to stomp them. Duh? Silly goose.
I also fed the swan. He was very hungry, and very pretty.
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After church yesterday and before geocaching, I piled some of the wood our neighbor has been cutting and saving for us. He's going to be putting up a fence behind our tree line so we don't have to look at his work trucks. And the wood is in the way.
Between trees he's cut down and dead trees he's chopped up, we've got quite a woodpile behind the house now. I checked with my other neighbor, who is a fireman, and he told me there indeed are no rules for "recreational" burning, so we can have a campfire in the backyard. If anyone complains, he said to tell them we're cooking on it. No one can get after you for that. And, he said that no one in this neighborhood gets their panties in a bunch about burning, at least in the 16 years he's lived here no one has. So he told us to have a good time.
We intend to.
A lot of the wood is really wet still from this winter, so we may not be able to have a good fire as of yet. A few solid weeks of drier weather and a lot of the smaller stuff will be ready. I feel that with us not being able to spend a lot of money on a summer vacation that we may as well camp at home and have some serious fun here. Why the hell not? Geocache all day, come home, roast weenies by the fire. Set a tent up. Camp here.
Anyway -- that's about all for me today. I've got some work to do for cateringman's website and I really REALLY should get out and rake the yard up. Spring is here, boys and girls... spring is here
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