Good News and the Concept of “Home”

Jon got a job! The place he’d interviewed with called and offered him the position, and he starts in about a week and a half. Insert huge sigh of relief and happiness here. Besides knowing we’ll be able to pay the bills, having a solid plan and knowing that I can start planning for things feels good. I feel like I’ve been putting life on hold, and now I can let go and just “be” for awhile.

What’s interesting about the situation is that several months ago, we wanted to get out of this area. We wanted to live in a different state or at least a different city. We were disillusioned with MHK and had started feeling detached. We even told people we had no intentions of staying. I don’t know if it ever came across as insulting (in hindsight, it probably did). I didn’t mean for it to be. But I’d never embraced this town. I didn’t like it when I first moved here, and I often forgot about the good things because I was so annoyed by the not-so-good things.

Which is why it was kind of strange when Jon and I started talking about how much we’d miss the area. We started thinking that staying here wouldn’t be bad at all. Eventually, we realized we didn’t want to leave at all. There were pros to leaving: a new place, a new adventure, possibly a cheaper venture depending on where we ended up. But something big had shifted for us. We wanted to stay here…not just in Kansas, but in Manhattan (which is misleading, since we live in Wamego, but I’m referring to the area in general).

I’ve never called Kansas “home” because it felt like a pit stop on the road to somewhere else. Maybe it still is. Maybe in a few years, we’ll end up making the big move we expected this time. At this moment, though, I get to plant my feet in Kansas. I can plan and commit to things. I can hike the Flint Hills and find all the area geocaches and continue supporting the local museums, arts, and zoo. I can finally relax and let myself love the area and let some roots settle in. They may or may not grow deep, but they can take hold for a little while and flourish.

While I’ve managed to make this post all about me, I am truly proud of Jon and nervous for him since I know starting a new job can be kind of terrifying. Staying in the area also means we don’t have to make a huge move, but we are going to make a small one. We’ll be looking for an apartment in Manhattan and moving back there probably sometime this summer. We know exactly where we want to live and it looks like we’ll meet all the requirements, so fingers crossed we’re not missing something and our application gets accepted.

The excitement came on the tail of a little bit of sadness, as one of my good friends moved on to her own new adventure today. The good part is she’ll still be a co-worker, and now I can plan to visit her and my other friends who have moved away in the last few years.

One last note before I go to bed, related to the rest of the post because it involves being able to actually plan for something again: I got tickets to see Tori Amos in August!

On that note, I need sleep.

A.

 

Going Out Westy

Yesterday was another geocaching day. We didn’t have a specific goal in mind, we just wanted to see how many we could get.

After grabbing a quick drive thru breakfast, we went back to two places we’d already been. The first one down at the boat ramp continues to elude us. We’ve been down there 3 or 4 times, and a fellow cacher even emailed me with some help, and we still can’t find it.  I don’t know if we’re ready to give up all together, but today wasn’t our day.  The second one was out at Mount Mitchell, and this time, we found it. The walk up the hill was still a little challenging, but recovery was quick and we didn’t need a sit down break like we did the first time.

We decided to head out towards Westmoreland to snag some more caches. The first few were around a historical marker and wagon display for the area where the California-Oregon Trail crossed Kansas.

We found a trail and followed it under the highway to the tombstone of one of the travelers.

A little further up, we took a walk down a long trail to grab another one, then we found one at a historical hand-dug well. The well was neat. We even stood on the small overhanging platform to look directly down.

We continued to follow our list into the Westy back roads. There was a cemetery cache that I think was taken out by the removal of some trees, and there was more pretty scenery and bridges.

At one of our last stops, we came across two  “helpers.”

They were so cute and friendly, and because we wanted to pet and play with them, it took us longer to find the cache. Before we left, we walked down to a nearby house to make sure the pups were close to their home. Luckily, they were. The roads out there aren’t heavily trafficked, but I would have felt bad if they’d been lost.

The corgi walked us back to the car and saw us off before trotting back to his home. I think there might be a corgi in our future. Maybe.

There was another cache just down the road, but after that we decided to head back to a cafe we’d passed earlier to grab a late lunch/early dinner. Sadly, the cafe had already closed for the day, so we grabbed some nuts and a drink at a gas station to take the edge off until we could get real food.

After a real dinner of shared General Tso’s at Imperial Garden, we decided we were going to call it a day for geocaching. We were tired, and my hip was killing me (which means a chiro trip this coming week).

We went to the library and hung out there to read until they closed, then went to Hastings for some more reading time and a black and white mocha before going to hang with the Fantastic Four while Terry and Erica went to the haunted house out in JC.

I read some more and worked on my current knitting project which has to be done this coming week. Once that’s done, my project list will be down again to just a few things, but I’m still on the fence about doing NaNoWriMo. I’m down to a week to decide.

Oh, and I talked the kids into watching “Chicken Run” with me. Love that movie!

We got home late last night and since I wanted to publish this post with all the pics, I waited for today. I’ll post another one later for the smallish happenings of today, and then I’m thinking of doing an “informational” post on geocaching since I’ve had several people ask questions about it.

A.

Sunday Travel Home

I woke up in pain this morning, my lower back hurting from what I’m assuming was a combination of two days of walking and several hours of sitting in convention chairs. I was slightly miserable for the first few hours, but managed to slog through hotel breakfast and packing and loading the car to head home from OKC.

One thing I forgot to mention in the previous post was that after we got done eating at McDs, we tried to find a geocache in the area. Unfortunately, it was too dark and we had no luck. This morning, we decided to try again, and this time, we had success. The only muggle in the area was a taxi driver taking a nap in his car, and he didn’t wake up until Jon and Drew had made the re-hide.

After a gas top-off, we headed back to Wichita. We didn’t make any stops, which gained us some time but caused more aches in my hips and back. We dropped Drew and his friend off at their respective homes, then we went to Braum’s to grab lunch. While there, we mapped some geocaches we wanted to to try to get on the drive home. Even though we were really tired, I didn’t want to go the whole two hours without getting out and stretching, and I knew caching would give us a good excuse to do that.

We found a cache near a benchmark, one in a cemetery, and two park caches right off the highway. One of the parks was a great discovery, not only for the cache but for an alternative public restroom during future trips along that route (the current option is a gas station bathroom that’s a little sketchy and very uncomfortable).

 

Coming into town, we decided to stop at one of the scenic rest areas that we usually pass.  There were two caches in this area, a traditional and an earth cache, which involved answering some questions and taking a picture in order to legitimately log it.  The stop was worth it. It was a nice walk around the area and the discovery of a new place to walk at some point in the future.

 

I was still debating walking the rec track, but the clouds this way looked ominous and it was chilly, so we decided to just come home and relax for the evening. I used the time to finish my posts, upload pics, and will finish off the evening with a shower and a laundry round-up since tomorrow is laundry day.

All in all, it was a great weekend (even if my last post made it sound like I didn’t have fun at the tourney).  Another adventure down!

A.

Day 2: Mission to 100 Geocaches

I normally split these multi-day excursions up and only post one a day, but since these are just two of these, I’m kicking them both out tonight.

Day 2 was a little bit harder because we were tired from the first day and from staying up later than usual.  We slept in until 9 and didn’t get out of the house until 10, then dawdled some more getting breakfast.  Based on our energy level and Jon’s headache, we decided to stick to caches that had lower ratings for difficulty and terrain.

Our first stop was City Park, where we scored five caches to start the day off. The park is big from the outside, but being on the inside, it seems even larger. It has a splash park and sports fields and water slides…it’s a pretty busy area of MHK. Being that it was early, there weren’t many people out, so we were able to make some stealthy finds.

a  Johnny Kaw

Manhattan started getting busy, so we headed out into the outlying areas to hunt. One of the finds took us down a two-trail type of road that made us feel like we should have a jeep, not an Impala.  The scenery was great though, and the cache was worth the trip.

Another cool cache we found was at an old church and cemetery, but coming upon it from the road, the top looks like a castle tower.

One of the cool things about this cache was that the owners had placed a disposable camera in there for people to take their picture with. I’m pretty sure Jon snapped us before I was ready and was licking my lips or something, so I have a feeling that’s going to be a pretty silly picture.

After finding a few more off the highway, we decided to go to Ogden.  It wasn’t in our original plan, but it seemed like a good way to finish off our finds for the day. Before we resumed hunting, we grabbed lunch at Subway. It was very much needed. We were losing steam and still had a few to go to make sure we both had 100.

One of the caches in Ogden looked like it had been muggled, but the log was intact, so we signed and put it back together. Another one sounded like it was going to be a difficult one, an ode to DNFs, but instead, it ended up being a fun park and grab with a travel bug to discover.

At the end of the day, we’d made our goal to break 100 caches and grabbed a few bonus ones.  The weekend total was 31 found and 0 DNFs. The weather was great, the driving was relaxing, and we just had a good time hanging out together.

This trip also gave us the chance to compare our endurance and stamina levels from when we first started. The first geocaches we found (a few months ago when we first started) that involved walking across uneven terrain were pretty tough. This weekend, we found them challenging, but nothing that kicked our butt completely.  The first time we tried to do a full day of caching, we made it four hours before we went home, sore and needing to crash.  This time we went two days and cached for 7-8 hours each day. Granted, a good portion of that was spent driving, but there is still a decent level of physical activity taking place on these hunts. Jon even ran up a short hill today without getting winded.

I think we’re doing awesome, and it’s exciting to think that at some point in the future, we’re going to be able to find some that are rated at a more difficult terrain level.  Our next big goal is to hit 250, but we’ll probably plan a couple more weekend cache trips before that.

Once we got home, I took a shower and some ibuprofen so I wouldn’t be too sore for the work week. I did some photo editing and uploading to FB, finished the blog posts, and kept half an eye on a couple movies, Clue and Vanilla Sky (which is still in progress and will be watched with both eyes when this is done, because it’s one of my favorites).  We didn’t make it to the gym, but I’m not going to stress on it. It means we missed our gym goal this past week, but I think we made our walking goal, plus some.

I still anticipate being able to sleep well tonight.

A.

 

Day 1: Mission to 100 Geocaches

I should clarify the title of this blog post: the mission for this weekend was to reach our 100th geocache, not to find 100 in one weekend. That may be a challenge for later, though. Also, this wasn’t a worldwide mission or anything. This was just the goal Jon and I set for ourselves.

On the first day, we were out of the house by 8am. It was cold and rainy, but we were determined to press on. We grabbed a breakfast sandwich and some almond amaretto cappuccino at the gas station and headed out.

The rain was just an extra challenge, right?

The first few were easy park and grabs, but it was cold and windy, so they were a little uncomfortable. Eventually , the sun came out and the day was beautiful. We did a lot of back road traveling to start and came across some gorgeous views. One of the best scenic views was near a cache called The Shamrock Cafe. The view overlooked a patch of land that varied in different earth colors. It also overlooked trees that had started to change colors with the season.

Our exploring took us to an old schoolhouse and a couple cemeteries, one of which had an old, creaky windmill that made things a little creepy.

 

The wildlife was out as well. Early on, we found deer tracks. Later, we “chased” some turkeys down the road and stopped for some quail. One of the more unique sightings was a coyote that ran out in front of us. Luckily, I was going slow, trying to get a picture of the road and tunnel. Any faster and we might have hit him. We also came across some cicadas and a wooly bear caterpillar.

Love these tunnels.

Since we were heading towards Junction City anyway, we had lunch at Tyme Out Steakhouse. I’m not a major steak eater, but I love the ones there, so I had a steak and baked potato.

Two of our last caches of the day took us to some fields in JC. We missed the driving trail that we could have taken, so we walked a little over half a mile to get two caches. I was okay with this since caching was the day’s exercise. The bad part was that the field had several divots, and I tweaked my knee a few times.  At our last stop, we heard an unsettling noise that made us a little nervous. Luckily, the cache was a quick find. It was only after we left that we thought maybe it was a deer. Still not sure, but it’s more comforting than thinking it was some wild Kansas field monster.

We made that our last cache so we could get back in time to hang with the kids. All in all, we scored 16 finds and had no DNFs. We also picked up two trackables, one of which is trying to get to Texas, so we’re going to take it to Oklahoma next weekend to get it a bit closer.

It was a fun and successful day that put us closer to our 100 cache goal.

Onward to Day 2…

A.

Day 1: Becoming an Outdoors Woman 2013

What a weekend! I’m tired and a little bit sunburnt, but the BOW experience was definitely worth it.  Like I did with Gen Con, I’m going to break these down into day posts because it seems like a lot to put into one long blog post.

I got to Rock Springs a little before 10 on Friday morning, after dropping Jon off to work and grabbing a quick breakfast sandwich. I had a little trouble finding check in, but eventually found parking.

Almost everyone else in my cabin was there, but thankfully I scored a bottom bunk. The ladies were so nice and welcoming. They helped me bring my stuff in and gave me some newbie pointers.

We had lunch (the food was great all weekend, and there was a lot of it), then the welcome meeting, then our first class. Mine was Intro to Fishing. We started out learning about the more popular fish native to Kansas. Then we learned about different poles and how to tie a hook, lead, and bobber. I caught on to making the knot fairly quickly, so now I kind of want to go fishing so I can show off.

Learning about fish!

Once we had our poles ready, we headed down to a small fishing hole and stream. The area was beautiful, but I was feeling tired and a little shaky. Standing on the edge was making me nervous. I still caught several fish, including the only large mouth bass of the day.

The anglers in my family should also take note that I put a nightcrawler on the hook by myself and didn’t get too grossed out. And I unhooked my own fish. Next year, I might even take the advanced course or the course where I learn to filet and cook a fish.

The mini Walk for the Cure was originally scheduled for that night, but they switched it up since we were getting a visit from Theresa Vail, also known as Miss Kansas 2013. Instead, we did a Chuck-A-Duck (I didn’t win), and later I went and visited with Theresa for a little bit.  She was genuinely sweet, and in case anyone was unsure if her love of the outdoors was genuine or not, it is.

After dinner, I attended a mini session called Kansas Critters that was taught by the same instructor who taught my fishing class. The session went long, but it was really interesting, and I actually learned and retained several outdoor facts. I debated going to the campfire afterwards, but I ended up just heading back to the cabin instead. I was tired, and the walk back itself was even more exhausting. It was uphill, over several rocky, uneven steps. I made that trek many times over the weekend, and it never got easier.

Not gonna lie, that night I felt a little homesick. My shower experience might have had something to do with that. I’d been given a pair of shower shoes by my friend, but I hadn’t tried them on first, and they ended up hurting my feet. The showers themselves weren’t horrible, but they had the hard rubber mats inside the stalls, and those hurt my feet even more. Because I’ve never actually showered in a camp setting (at least that I can remember), I was ill prepared all around, and so by the time I got back to bed, I was hurting and exhausted, and even though I’d had a great day, I still missed Jon and my own bed.

However, I slept fairly well, and when I woke up the next morning, I was refreshed and feeling good and optimistic.

To be continued…

A.

Hiking, Climbing, and Dungeon Crawling

It’s been a long day, but for the most part, it was good. I usually like having Sundays to just chill, but we’re getting into a time of year when that’s not always going to be the case. I should clarify that my idea of “chill” could include walking, hiking, and anything that doesn’t include sitting around the house. But…it could also mean just that.

We were up early at the in-laws this morning, wanting to grab a few more geocaches before our weekend there ended.  The first three were “did not finds.” We were feeling pretty bummed. To be fair, we didn’t stay for long at any of them, partially due to muggles, partially due to just wanting to do some more exploring. After we couldn’t find the third one, I wasn’t sure if we should try to find a nano in a high muggle area, but Jon wanted to  check it out, so we did. He found it in a few minutes.

The next two were out in the country, which involved a bit of a drive and a turtle rescue.

It’s okay, little turtle. At least you won’t be a turtle pancake in the middle of the road!

The first “country” cache was a hike through some tall grass on the side of the road, and the other was a cemetery cache.  It was starting to get hot by that time, and Dad F was bringing us breakfast, so we headed back to house, ate, and watched some TV before heading back to MHK. I couldn’t resist, though, and found one more in Andover, a large that ended up being a hike across a field and an obstacle course through some trees.

We were on a time table to get back to MHK for a game, but we decided to take one last geocache detour (I know, it’s always “one last” with us). This one was about ten minutes off the beaten path, so we were definitely bumping up against our time. Once we finally found it, we weren’t sure if we were up for the challenge.  It was on what could be considered a hill but struck me more as a plateau, with the sides going almost straight up. The climb honestly looked like more of a challenge than I was up for. Jon managed to get to the top while I looked for a lower part to climb with no luck. I was going to let him find it on his own, but when I got back to where we parked, I figured all I needed was a little bit of courage.

Using the grass to help pull myself up and paying attention to my footing, I managed to get up the hill.  Out of breath and sweaty and gross, all I could think at that moment was “Holy cow, I just rocked my own world.” This was seriously another moment of pride for me.  The view was gorgeous and worth the climb, and shortly after I got up there, Jon made the find. Getting down the hill was a little less graceful. I literally had to sit on the ground and slide down because my knees and balance were not going to let me walk down that slope. Still, it was worth the dirt and the grass cuts I ended up with.

On the drive back to the highway, we came up on some uprooted trees that I thought were kind of haunting.

 

We made it back to town, and even being dirty and gross, we got to our game on time.

I’m easing back into RPG games after kind of losing my mojo for it. Jon and I were invited to play in a Pathfinder game, so I decided to give it a shot. I’m playing a human fighter and our first encounters were level one dungeon crawly type things where we killed a bunch of rats and skeletons. It was fun! I’m not used to Pathfinder, so I’ll probably have more questions as this progresses. I’m excited to see where the story goes and getting to know the other players who all seem like cool people.

After the game, we headed to the campus library to distribute con flyers at a movies on the grass event. Unfortunately, shortly after we got there, Jon started shaking and feeling sick. I think it was probably a mix of not eating and dehydration, but it freaked me out. We ended up leaving before it started, but they let me hand out some flyers and put some on a table for people to grab.  I had a touch of guilt, but  I wasn’t taking any chances.  Everything is okay now. Jon’s feeling better, though a little run down.

We decided to stay in MHK one last night since my friend offered the extra night to stay at her house. Once I got here, I took a shower and sat down to handle some emails and other projects. Jon has a test tomorrow night, so I’m going to be doing some con updates and correspondence at Hastings.

It was a good weekend overall. We didn’t get as much activity as we’d wanted, but what we did get was fun.  The goal this week is to get back into our routine. We made our gym goal this past week, but not our walking goal. Which is okay. Now we just try again for the coming week.

A.

Goals, Cemeteries, and Zombies

Today was a good day.

We slept in a little bit but were out of the house by 10, which was later than we wanted to be out, but it was still early enough to accomplish something. Our first stop was the Wamego rec field to walk our second day of C25K.  When we’d originally planned to do this, we thought we’d be up before it got too hot. It didn’t work out that way, so this walk was tougher than it might have been had we gone back to the mall.  As hard as it was, we still finished, though the urge to just go home after that was pretty strong.  Right now, we’re just picking up the walking pace. It’s going to be killer if we ever graduate to running.

Along the way, we found one of the geocaches we hadn’t been able to find previously, so that was pretty awesome. While I’m working up to doing the whole 30 minute set without breaking, I’m not quite there yet, so stopping to search was a nice break.

We decided to go ahead and hit some more geocaches in the area before heading into Manhattan. Today was a day for cemeteries, including one called the Vieux Family Cemetery.  The area was interesting and a little creepy, not because of the graveyard, but because of the hidden shelter through the trees.

Go ahead…go in. I dare you.

The graveyard was beautiful but sad.  The history there was amazing, but the graves were mostly for children who didn’t live much past the age of one, if that. There were also several that were marked “unknown.” Not sure if it was that fact or if the place just held a sad energy, but it made me cry, so we didn’t linger too long.

 

A little further up the road, we found another one. It was another one of the tiny ones, which crack me up at how cute they are.

We drove all over the place and got lost in some sketchy back roads, but we found five caches today. In the last cemetery, we even saw some wildlife: a snake and a ginormous rabbit, as well as some lizards running around on the road. The creepiest wildlife we saw, however, was the giant fuzzy caterpillars all over the road.

Later on, we took another video of a cache are we found a few weeks ago. Warning: spoilers.

We finally decided to head into Manhattan to grab a late lunch at Cox Bros BBQ. I was craving a BBQ Brisket sandwich.  While there, we signed up for their customer card and got a free jar of hot sauce and some free mac and cheese. We also got a picture of two raccoons paddling a canoe, which is pretty adorable and only slightly disturbing.

 

After that, we went to Game Hounds to put up another Tengaicon flyer. While there, Jon bought me Dead Island: Riptide. I’ve been talking about renting it, but since we gave up our GameFly account, I would have had to rent it and commit some time to finishing it. This way, we can actually play it at our leisure, and since we bought it used, it was way less than paying full price for a brand new copy.

Our last stop was the gym. This was a double workout day because we set dual fitness goals: the first was to train for a 5K by finishing the Couch to 5K program, and the second was to make it to the gym at least three times a week in order to evaluate if we were going to keep our memberships or not. We ended up taking a couple rest days this week (fyi, our week is from Tuesday to Monday to compensate for the “rest” we took the Monday back from Gen Con), so in order to fit all our goals in, we doubled up today. It wasn’t so bad. We managed to fit in another 20 minutes of cardio, and I started watching The Missing on Netflix.

Once we got home, I played some DI:R, then uploaded pictures and organized things out of my Dropbox. I have yet to shower, so I think that’s next on the list. Then it’ll be either more video games or maybe some reading and an early night to bed. Plans for tomorrow include going to buy new shoes (walking and possibly another pair for hiking), laundry, and the gym to get our third day in for the week.  Since we’ll be in Topeka, we’ll probably hit up some geocaches there.

Maybe bed is needed, because I think I’ve planned another full day for tomorrow.

A.

 

Climbing to the Top

I was so glad when I woke up this morning to the feels of no back pain and a high level of energy.  We got out of the house early to beat the heat and traffic for geocaching.  Our original plan involved going to Manhattan to run a few errands, do some caching, and maybe play a round of mini golf. But we never made it that far, deciding to hit some caches going the opposite way instead.

Most of the caches were fairly easy, yet highly adventurous today. We drove a lot of dirt boards. We found most of them, so that was nice, and we were able to leave some treasures in the non-micro caches we found. We even sent our found geocoin back into the wild.

The first highlight was a cache near an old abandoned bus out on the plains.

The land is private, so the bus itself isn’t explorable, but the scenery is pretty and somewhat haunting. I feel I could write horror stories about that bus.  Jon braved the bees to find this one, which probably gave him the advantage since he ended up finding more than I did.

The second cache of note was actually one we didn’t find, but it took us hiking up Mount Mitchell, a local area just outside Wamego. The term “Mount” scared me a little after our last climbing expedition, but I wanted to tackle it anyway. The log said the cache was halfway up but that if you climbed to the top, the view was gorgeous.

At the point where the actual cache was supposed to be, we rested and debated whether to go up the rest of the hill. This little hike had been difficult in the fact that I had to avoid small muddy areas and watch where I was going, but it wasn’t that taxing, so we went the rest of the way up to take in the view.

Kansas has a reputation for having ugly flat lands, and I’ve heard that parts of Western Kansas live up to that. But I believe the area where we live, near the Flint Hills and tallgrass prairie, is beautiful. Climbing the summit of this “mountain” was well worth it, not only to see this awesome angle, but as an affirmation of just being able to physically do this.

We noticed that red stone from one side of the hill (last picture, bottom right), so we went back down and took the trail the other way to see it from a closer view.

The picture doesn’t show the writing well, but this stone was in memory of a soldier, “Dodge.”  He died in action on April 30, 1945 (my birthdate, though a couple decades before I came around) in the Philippine Islands, incidentally in the same area that Jon was born (a few decades earlier as well).  Interesting coincidence.

The other caches were fun too, but the last place we stopped for the day just did me in. I couldn’t tell where the thing was, and I walked through the brush and ended up covered in little fuzzy plant seeds. It irritated me, and I figure when irritation sets in, it’s time to call it a day. We may go back to that one, though there were chickens in the area, and I feel the chickens kind of made it a little awkward.  Silly chickens.

We came home, showered, and plan on spending the rest of the evening chilling, possibly getting a few things done around the house, but taking it easy for the most part.

Since I promised some pics from last night’s cache in the pretty hidden garden we found, here you have them.

I’m happy to see that my camera took decent pictures so I can use it more at Gen Con to save my phone’s battery life. We talked about doing more caching tomorrow, but we’ll have to play it by ear. The goal for tomorrow is to have everything packed and ready for Tuesday’s drive. Also, we’re planning to dog-sit for my friend during the day tomorrow, which means laundry and probably some much needed rest. I’m thinking I might hit the gym for a lighter workout, just to keep moving.

But for now, it’s off to find something on Netflix.

A.

Today Was Brought To You By the Letter “Rain”

It rained all day today. I think there may have been a combined total of twenty minutes that we didn’t have precipitation, but I can’t verify that. I did make it to the car from work without getting rained on, but just barely.  Jon and I got soaked walking from the gym to the car and then got completely whiny about the whole thing and decided to avoid any more wetness by foregoing a trip to Dillons for a trip through the drive-thru.

I realize we weren’t going to melt, but the rain makes me tired. Also, I don’t mind being  in the rain, and a wet shirt doesn’t bother me at all. But wet feet are a different thing entirely. I don’t  own rain boots (or galoshes, as the kids call them these days) or a raincoat. I have tennis shoes. And they are not waterproof and my feet were pretty damp for most of the day. Another thing I hate? Wet pant legs, and it’s worse now because all of my pants are too long.  This has actually been an ongoing problem. The places where I buy pants firmly stick to the big and tall rule of clothing making, so I can’t find a plus sized pant that accommodates my short height.  My current pants selection was doing okay for a long time. Sure, they were a little long, but I made them work.

Apparently, increased physical activity and more fruits and veggies make your pants larger. Be warned of this weird trick of nature.

I need to either find someone who knows how to hem pants or I need to take a crash course in doing it myself. Because even pulling them up as I walk over the wet ground doesn’t always do the trick, and it’s a tricky feat when I’m already carrying other things. The pants I wear are not “roll up” friendly either, and I’m not going to resort to the early ’90s fashion statement of pegging my pants. That hasn’t come back in style and I have no intentions of bringing it back.

The gym did happen though, and that’s always a good way to kick off a Monday. I’ve been using my gym time to watch Netflix on my phone, and I’m almost done with “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.”  This makes time go by faster, which is good, because even though I like how I feel when i exercise, I’m not entirely sold on the exertion part. Also, having my ear buds in gives me an excuse to zone out in my own little world. I could be considered a rude gym goer. Unless I know someone, I have no interest in talking to complete strangers, especially the old guy who got up in my business about how to diet several months ago (I really do hold a grudge). Today, he actively tried to engage me while I had my ear buds in and was very obviously watching a movie.  So I ignored him and just kept doing my thing.

Which I’m sure makes me a horrible person, but age has seriously worn down that part of me that feels the need to indulge everyone.  My gym time is my time, and I’d like to keep it that way.

The last thing of the day is that my newest Coursera course started today. I’m taking Social Psychology and I’m kind of excited for a refresher on part of my college major.  Admittedly, I went a little gung ho when I first started signing up for classes a few months ago, and then they all rolled around and I quit them all because I got overwhelmed. This wasn’t the first time I’d done that to myself. But right now, I’m in the mood to maintain a stress free, low pressure class. Even with Gencon coming up, I think I can hang with this one.

I was going to do a little discussion about the remake of “Oldboy,” but I think I’ll save that for another night.

A.