Earthcaches

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of Earthcaches... a different sort of Geocache where the object is to take you to a spot with, usually, geological significance and hopefully get you to learn something. The requirements for them are a bit different from your average cache, since there's no physical container and, well, the aforementioned desire to have you learn from the experience. Usually you have to email the cache owner with the answers to some questions (things you can observe at the site, often related to information given in the cache description) and sometimes also a photo of yourself at the site in question.

I decided to celebrate the anniversary by actually finding an Earthcache and went searching for one close to home that I hadn't already done... and came up with one up in Snohomish. The locals call it Spirit Rock and kids from the nearby high school will paint it with messages (mostly related to the school, near as I can tell).

( It's a big rock... I can't wait to tell all my friends. )

Crossposted from my Livejournal

Stormy Day

So, the day started out with the realization that not only had we lost television service sometime during the night, but our phone and internet as well (not surprising since they're bundled together). Thankfully we have our smartphones... although we're out on the edge of range for them, so they're not exactly the most ideal method for staying connected (normally we run a microcell through our internet connection to get better coverage). After listening to the radio for a bit, we also quickly came to realize that we were actually pretty lucky. Quite a lot of people in the Puget Sound area were without power... ours flickered, I think, twice and only one of those was enough to reset any clocks. This was our first major windstorm of the season and the first one we've had since we moved to the house. Apparently, our old neighborhood was without power for a chunk of the day, so I really shouldn't complain. I just *really* hate being disconnected from the rest of the world.


Anyway, as some of you may have seen on TV if you watched the Seahawks/Saints game today, this really was a humdinger of a storm. Winds, rain and even lightning... with the combination producing sideways rain at times. ( It was pretty wild out there! )

Anyway, after going down around 4:30 this morning, we finally got internet and the rest back around 8:30 this evening. (There may have been some loud cheering that startled the cats.)

*Hugs the internet*

Crossposted from my Livejournal.