Friday, June 26, 2009

Nasty Goats



This was supposed to be a math game...I guess the math part is that the goats will subtract your balls...

Friday, June 19, 2009

One for Cooper


I did the head last so he wouldn't know who it was going to be. He was a little surprised. These are actually kind of fun to put together but cutting them out can be time consuming.

Hellboy


More papercraft...

Thursday, June 18, 2009

More "work"


Yet another unbusy day at work causing the exacto knife and card stock to come out...Only 1000 more storm troopers to go and I can start my own war.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

What a sore loser...

Spaceship


Cooper decided he needed to play spaceship while at Cosmo's 4 month doctors appointment. I guess this is better than what he could have been doing with them...

O Ring


Who'da thunk that this O ring (essentially nothing more than an oversized rubber band) would cost $29? The stupid chlorinator on the pool filter gets a new one every year as they stretch out too much over the course of the summer.

New Kicks


Cooper ended up getting his new sneakers Monday night. They probably won't be as durable as the New Balance ones he had before but they should put a damper on the blister he started to get on his toe. I just wish that we could have found some Sketchers with the velcro as I'm not quite ready for him to have tie shoes. I liked the fact the he could get his shoes on and off on his own. Oh well.

Turtle


Forgot to post this from last weekend. While driving to my parents house on the way home for the Pirate event in Damariscotta, we drove past this guy who'd apparently just crossed the street. Cooper hadn't seen a real turtle other than the box turtles in the pet store so we got out to look. We got pretty close then ended up walking behind him until he was out of sight and into the grass, safe from the cars. Cooper thought it was pretty cool.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Ouch

Last night we had a game at 9 that was probably the fastest game I've ever played and I use the term played loosely. We spent the whole time out in the field running down balls that were hit perfectly where we weren't. If we played the outfield deep, they dropped bloopers in, if we played shallow they were slamming line drives over our heads to the fences. After the first inning, they batted around their order one and half times and scored 15 runs. If you've ever been spanked like this in a game, let alone just in the first inning, you'd know that it pretty much takes away a bit of the drive. It got even worse when we finally got our three outs and came up to bat, only to be able to get one run back. After three innings of this, the game was called on the mercy rule and we were done. I was back in my car at 9:30 and headed home. Crap. Just once I'd like our team to be able to do this to a team and have them head to the parking lot to drink it off. Maybe Thursday...

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

11 First to Finds Run

So yesterday turned out to be much better than I had planned. I had planned on a doing a single cache at lunch that another cacher had given me a hint to on Monday so when I got to work, I pulled up all the unfound caches for Bangor. When the page came up, I was pretty surprised to see 11 new caches all placed by Ediokai (Mike Marino) and all in the Bangor City Forest. None had been logged yet as they had just been published overnight and because you had to do 10 of them to solve a final puzzle cache, it involved a lot more than just a grab and go. I had a pretty good idea that on a work day, none of the usual first to finders would be able to get these done so I decided to take the rest of the day off and go for these. I took the time to print out a sheet to use through the process and asked the boss if I could take off. She had no issues with it so out the door I went at 9ish.

After going home to change and grab my bike, I got to the BCF around 10. I headed off down the trail when at one of the first corners, there was a lady walking a dog who'd said she just seen a bear along the power lines and was taking the long way back to her car to avoid it. I asked where abouts it was and how big it was and she told me where and that it was large and that her dog seen it, it would have been bad. I continued off down the trail a little worried that I might cross it's path as the powerlines did intersect where I'd be going. All the caches were along an old railroad bed so it was pretty easy biking once I got there. I was able to find the first cache pretty quickly and as I thought, no one had been here yet. The first two caches were very easy to find. The coordinates were right on so they ammo cans were easy to locate. It was great to be finding something other than micros or nanos.

The third cache was the one that made me keep my eyes peeled. I had been listening quite intently since that lady told me about the bear but now I was stopped at the power lines and had to walk about 200 feet out on them. This part of the railroad bed was in a valley so the powerlines went uphill on both sides, making it pretty easy to see a ways.It's funny when you are listening for something so hard that your eyes can play tricks on you. The bushes along these lines were a little higher than my waste in some spots and I kept stopping to look around. Once I got to the cache, I did what I needed to and got out of there just incase.

I didn't have any trouble finding any of the rest of the next locations until the seventh. This one was a pain in the ass. Up until this one, everything was right along the railroad bed within 100 feet or so. When I got to the point that my gps was pointing due right, I started to wonder how or where the heck Mike had left the bed. The whole right side of the bed was all water about a foot deep if not more once you step on the moss and about four feet wide. The cache was showing about 350 feet up into the woods. I really didn't want to have to climb through the muck and the area looked familiar. I had been this way before doing Mainiac1957's Veazie Railroad Bed cache. I wondered how far up that was as that was where the connection was to the actual gravel trails. I rode my bike up about 500 feet and didn't see what I was looking for so I turned and went back to where I needed to be. I decided that Mike must have gone this way, so I was going to have to too. My first step onto a large patch of moss that looked dry ended up being a wet one as i sunk down about 6 inches and the water came right up over my foot. Crap. I got onto dry land again after two more soggy steps and started through a really heavy bushwacking. There was a lot of pricker bushes, mud and skunk cabbage making it quite the trip. As I got to the cache location, it opened up back to the normal forest. I found the cache after getting my bearings, I realized that what I had just done, could have been avoided had I pedaled just a little farther earlier. I was right off one of the gravel trails so I followed that back down to where the railroad bed connection was.

After walking back to where my bike was, I moved along and got the last two caches I needed to begin to solve the final puzzle. At first, I put all the numbers in to my gps and the destination was 10.6 miles away. I know the BCF is big, but not that big. At this point, with my wet feet and being sweaty, the bugs where eating me alive. I decided to ride all the way back to my car so I could sit in bugless environment to make sure I got all the numbers I had in the right place. On the way out, I stopped twice because I ran into little brown rabbits at one spot and a big red looking doe. I finally got back to the car, had some water and quick snack, and refigured all the numbers. Much better. The final was only 1.6 miles away and I knew a quick way to get to it. Luckily, this was a different part of the park so I didn't have to go back down to the bed. At this point, my ass which is used to sitting on an office chair was not feeling so comfortable from thrashing around on a bike seat.

The way the final puzzle cache is set up, I can't go into much more detail other than it was pretty cool. I found what I was looking for even though it was pretty tricky making it my 11th cache that I was the first to find. Even though I scored an unactivated Leatherman geocoin (shown) for being first to find, the fact that I was first on all 11 gave me the greatest satisfaction. I don't pay for a premium membership on Geocaching.com like most so I don't have the ability to get a text message every time a new cache is published so the first to finds are rare. To get 11 in one day will probably not ever happen again.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Softball



I thought seriously about not playing softball this year because I figured it was just going to be too tough to keep everything in balance schedule wise. As much as I enjoy playing, I was thinking that making the mad dash to get the kids, meet Meredith at home and then scream to the fields as fast as I could to be in time for the games might not be worth the hassel.

Tonight was our first game and the first race to get there by 6:20. I got out of work and got the kids, locked them down in the car and cruised home. Once we got in, I got Cooper a snack and Cosmo started screaming like crazy. Turns out he had crapped himself silently then freaked. After getting him changed I looked at the clock...5:35. Mere called and said she was just leaving. It takes about 15 minutes to get home from the mall depending on the lights. I got my stuff all ready and changed and Mere got home at 5:55. I hopped in the car after she took a minute to get settled and arrived at the fields at 6:10. Just in time.

This year, thanks to Derek Loupin's place of employment, we got sponsored and got free shirts so there were no league fees to have to come up with. The last 4 years, most of the team was Unicel employees and trying to get everything paid for was apparently almost impossible. We did get shirts that we used for two years but this year we will be under the name Select Physical Therapy. They provided the money and gave us shirts so its pretty sweet. Matt Saucier was also able to score Verizon Wireless gear bags, hats and jackets.

We lost the game but it was a great night. I don't know what the final score was, just that we lost by one in the 7th inning. It was good to see that some faces have moved on, some have returned and a couple new ones have joined but essentially we have had the same core guys for the past four years. The league is a little different this year. The biggest change is that in this league, the ball and strike count works a little different. Last year there must have been a lot of rookie pitchers causing longer games because people did a lot of walking instead of swinging at shit pitches. This year, when you come up to bat, you automatically start with a 1-1 count. Its obviously early in the season but I think I like it as it seems to make the game run a little quicker. The other noticable change is that we are not using a standard Red or Blue dot softball. I think the league must have noticed too many home runs or injuries or something as we are now using a yellow ball with less kick off the bat. All in all, it was fun and I'm glad I'm playing this year. I went 4-4 at the bat with three crummy infield singles and one infield triple on errors.


Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Clean Plate Club

Hell Yeah! Clean Plate Club....Now Mom says I can have a Freezy Pop!

Monday, June 1, 2009

Monster Jam


I think this picture says it all about the night we had. We went to the yearly Monster Truck show on Friday night at Speedway 95 with my brother and his girls and Cooper had a blast again. He kept on talking about Grave Digger and still is a little. This year was a little different in that he had already been before and is a year older. This time he knew it was going to be loud and knew what to expect, to a certain extent. When we first go there, the announcer was talking about people getting rides on the truck but Cooper was watching it and not really listening.


We got on War Wizard and got a two minute ride which was basically a half loop around the track with a couple figure eights and a drive up and over part of a dirt mound another turn or two and then back to the gate. It was much rougher than I thought it would be. I guess there's a lot going on there with the soft suspension, knobby tires, and four wheel steering. Anyway, this picture was after the ride at about 10:30pm. I think its funny to see the three totally different emotions on the kids faces. Sarah on the far left seems to be looking up and rolling her eyes as though not impressed. Danielle in the middle is just happy its over as one of the sharp turns caused her to bang her head a little on the hard seats we were in. Cooper is obviously a little excited and enjoyed the ride. He says that was his favorite part.


After the show, I kind of waited to see what the line was going to be like before we decided to take Cooper on it. It was only $5 for each of us so cost wasn't an issue. It was 9:30 when the show got over and we killed enough time deciding whether we were going to do it or not that we basically last in line. Most everyone had left and when we were walking back to the car, Randy Brown, the owner and driver of this Monster Jams Grave Digger was walking back to the track. He let us grab a pic on the way out and shook Cooper's hand. All in all a good night and we'll be back next year I'm sure.