Saturday Geocaching

ruminator

Rocky HillThe Girl and I rose early Saturday morning, although I didn’t sleep very well Friday night. I was up several times, woken by my dreams. They weren’t nightmares, but they were evidence I’m still processing my life changes.

Regardless, I woke early and fed my Girl. Then I gathered up a few things and we headed out. I stopped at McD’s for a couple of breakfast burritos, a coffee, and three of their oatmeal cookies. Wife got me started on these. They are fresh-baked, soft, and quite good — especially with coffee. We drove to the east side of Carson City and I ran the 4Runner part way up the hill, found a wide spot in the trail, and stopped to enjoy the morning light and my breakfast.

The Girl was anxious to get out of the 4Runner and do doggie things. She ran from bush to bush, peed, pooped, and chased lizards while I fixed my burritos and ate them. The morning light was gorgeous and the overlook of Carson City was really fun. Although a half-mile away, I could hear the clank of steel plates as the inmates at the prison worked out.

I finished my burritos and put the Girl back in the car and we proceeded up the trail another quarter mile. The trail is only moderately rough, requiring me to work my way through a few rocks but nothing too challenging. Along the way I saw a couple of dogs running, then a hiker. I stopped to let them pass. One of the dogs approached the 4Runner and put a paw on the Girl’s door.

She barked and growled. “Leave it!” I commanded… she whirled about and jumped to the back seat, her hackles raised but obedient. The dogs and hiker passed.

We were able to drive to within about 500 feet of the first geocache. I parked the 4Runner and got out. The Girl hopped out and started sniffing about, looking for the marks of the other dogs. I got out my gear and we started off in the direction the GPSr pointed.

The cache was easy to find. There’s not much danger of it being muggled at this location. I signed the log and poked about to see if there was anything interesting in the loot. There wasn’t. So I restored the cache to its (nearly nonexistent) hide and sat on the rocks. I pulled my camera out and kept an eye on the Girl to be sure she didn’t range out too far.

The morning light made for a few interesting images of Carson City. I sat on the rocks enjoying the morning light and air, listening as the Girl ranged around. After a bit she joined me on the rocks, over-watching the surrounding area.

Satisfied, we made our way back to the car to share the cookies. The Girl likes oatmeal cookies too, although I save the raisins for myself.

After the cookies, we headed back down the trail. I drove out to the Carson Armory to stop in and see my friends there, but we were too early. So we stopped at a nearby historical marker, logged the geocache hidden there, and returned home.

I had time to take care of the front yard and spray the locust sprouts in the backyard before lunch. I also managed to get my bills paid and make a mail run before my friend from Reno called.

The Girl and I had a bit of a nap, then headed for Reno for a late afternoon coffee/tea with our friend. Later we found ourselves at A Controlled Burn, one of the events leading up to Burning Man, but that’s another story for another time. We’ll see if I have time to tell it.

LaTeX?

ruminator

Apparently, WordPress has a \LaTeX interface for producing mathematics and math-like symbols. If it does, then this is something I’ve wanted in my weblog for a long time.

Alright, it works. The background is white and the foreground is black (duh), so it doesn’t quite work with my current color scheme, but it will do. At least I can now produce a decent-looking equation.

Shelob’s Lair

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I got secure shell (SSH) working on my new host. One of the advantages of using a linux server/host is that the ssh protocol is supported. That means I can setup a virtual drive that connects to my website via secure ftp (sftp) and treat my host as an extension of my Mac’s (BSD unix) filesystem.

I like this… I like this a lot!

So, I was able to copy an (old) archive of my “professional” web site (Shelob’s Lair) to my host. The domain name already points to a subdirectory on my new hosting site. So now, Shelob’s Lair is once again live.

This is a good thing. Now if I can recover my edits from the last version I have locally. I’m still praying my old host comes through with my data. I’m not holding my breath.

WP Fancy Zoom

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HThis is one of the images from the Girl’s and my roams. We often wander by the Home Depot and they sometimes have interesting things, at least to me. One of the items missing from this implementation of Random Ruminations was the image popup. I prefer that a clicked thumbnail image “pop” to a new window, which can then be dismissed. Why this doesn’t happen with WordPress out of the box, I don’t understand.

However, with a bit of Google work, I found WP Fancy Zoom, a plug-in that makes the images work the way I want them to.

Now back to my chores.

26 Weeks

ruminator

Wife and GirlThis morning marks 26 weeks since Wife died. That’s half of a year. I miss you girl. I miss having you around, hearing your voice, hearing you putter around the house, even hearing your God-awful reality shows. I miss your voice and your touch. My life is much poorer now.

Yet I press on. I weep less now than I did a couple months ago. That’s not because I forgot you, but because I am healing. Your memory is never far from mind. You were the biggest part of my life and the last couple years of your life, while hard, were still good right up to the end. I am thankful for that time, even the hard part.

My life changes. After nearly two years spent taking care of Wife, I’m relearning how to live. It takes time and energy. It’s a process of discovering what I still like to do… and what I no longer like to do.

My work is improving. A couple of projects came up the last couple of weeks that were actually interesting. The little flood studies I’ve been tasked with of late might be important to the client (and they get my full attention), but they are more task than interesting. I know it sounds arrogant, but those projects do not need an engineer with my experience and skills; they need someone a lot less expensive. But they bring in income to cover part of my pay — that is they pay some of the bills. So, I do them. The client deserves my best, so I do my best to give it.

I need a big hydraulics or hydrologic problem to challenge me. I need a problem that I can sink my mental teeth into, one that requires me to obtain and analyze data, to figure out the relation between variables, and then permits me to propose a solution. A research project would be nice… a thick, juicy, mental steak. I think I’m ready for something like that. I pray one comes along, soon.

I permitted myself a few weeks not working on the house. I had a marketing trip to Texas and drove my Girl and I out there. That was a good trip. It refreshed my soul a bit. It gave me a lot of outside time. It gave me time with friends. The following weekends I spent outdoors chasing geocaches. The Girl and I got a lot of sun, air, and exercise. We saw a lot of places around here and I had an opportunity to make a few images. This is good.

Now it’s time to get back to clearing the garage of things I no longer need or care about. I want to be able to park my 4Runner in the garage when winter comes. It’s time to sell the bike and the Bimmer. I only need one car and vehicles are expensive. I’ll bank the cash and hold it for something else that will be useful.

Today I’ll work in the garage a bit. Perhaps I’ll haul a load of things over to FISH to support that local ministry. They sell donated items and feed people. This is a good thing. Wife approved them. In the afternoon I think I’ll drive to Reno for coffee/tea with a friend. Maybe the Girl and I will capture a couple of geocaches along the way. We could at least snag a couple of park-and-grabs.

Sunday morning the Girl and I will drive out to Virginia City for doggie class. I think we’ll leave extra early and hunt a few geocaches out there. We should have time to find four or five before class. We’ll enjoy class, hopefully eat BBQ for lunch, then drive home so I can finish my weekend chores. Laundry needs to be done and the house needs to be reprovisioned. I’ll also need to rest after the weekend and before the work week begins.

That is my life now. During the downtime between activities I’ll spend some time writing in my journal. That is where I process things and where I’ll continue to do the grief work and the life work that I hope and pray leads me to some answers about what is next. There might come a time when I just have to decide. However, that time is not now. Maybe it’s in six months or a year. Like my dad used to say, “we’ll see…”

In the meantime, I mark the weeks since Wife’s death. I remember her. I celebrate her life and the things we shared together that made it good. I miss her and that’s a good thing. It’s a reflection on the quality of what we had.

Actuarial Tables

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I really want to figure out how to get an image in my entries. I also have a small book to read on using WordPress and am planning to make this site mine, using my own design. I found a set of basic templates in HTML5 and CSS3 from Zeldman that will get me started. I just need a block of time to fiddle with things.

During morning prayers, I started thinking about my expected lifetime. That lead me to the Social Security Administration’s actuarial tables. According to these data, I have an expected lifetime of about 22 years. That’s long enough to accomplish some things, should I decide to press on.

The expectation is that a man my age will live to be about 82-years old. That’s a lot older than my father and both of my grandfathers. Yet I don’t share many of their life decisions that probably shortened their lives. What it means (at least to me) is that I have time to become skilled at something, should I choose to do something different than I am now. It also has financial implications because I need to plan ahead to provide for myself.

Of course, my assumption is that I’ll remain healthy for that time. That’s something I can work on so that I minimize the risks of major disease. I can’t eliminate them, but I can minimize the risk.

That leads to the second part of my prayers — what should I be working toward? Where should that be? What do I want?

I wish God would lean down and whisper in my ear the answers to my questions. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work this way. I suppose if it did, I’d be as crazy as the Irishman who was close to William Wallace (in Braveheart) who claimed that God spoke to him. That’s probably not a good place to be.

Still, I wish God would just tell me the plan instead of me having to work it out. I’m lazy that way.

New Digs

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After waiting (and waiting) for TextDrive to get my shared host back online, I elected to buy hosting on another site so I have a place to park some words and images.

I will eventually move my old entries to the archives of this site, but I have no idea when I’m going to be able to do that. Just know it’s on my list of things to do. I have old entries through February 2013. I hope TextDrive will recover the remainder of my data. Regardless, I will not be using that service anymore.

So, here we go…