A ‘lil Hoohaa

OK, I’ve neglected this blog long enough. Let’s see if I can get these features and things rolling again.

A look at the week ahead with holidays, birthdays and wacky other days!

March 8: There apparently is nothing big about today, according to my calendar.
March 9: Barbie’s Birthday
March 10: First paper money issued
March 11: First basketball game
March 12: Girl Scout Day
March 13: Good Samaritan day
March 14: Daylight Savings Time begins
March 14: Albert Einstein’s Birthday

Have a good week!

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A look at the week ahead with holidays, birthdays and wacky other days!

Feb. 15: National Gumdrop Day
Feb. 16: Mardi Gras
Feb. 17: Random Acts of Kindness Day
Feb. 18: Pluto discovered
Feb. 19: Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood debuted (1968)
Feb. 20: Toothpick Day
Feb. 21: Love Your Pet Day

Have a good week!

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The real world can be some hectic, eh?

It kind of got in the way the past week and change, so I’ve been a little behind here. Fear not! I will be back next week with all the goodies and features I have for the site.

I wanted to give some updates about some recent things, however.

Camera

I received my camera back from the local guy and he couldn’t figure out what is going on with it. The pop-up flash now works, but it won’t work with an external. So, I’ll be sending it into Canon soon to get an estimate. Hopefully it won’t drain the bank. If the repair bill is too much, I might opt to have them send it back and go with their loyalty program. That basically is a situation where Canon would take my 30D and send me a re-furbished 50D as a replacement for a pretty decent price.

We’ll see, though, as I am saving for Ireland and I don’t want to have to dip into that account.

Until I send the camera into Canon, however, I’ve been using it, sans flash. I’ve enjoyed having my 30D back, but it will be leaving me soon again.

Photo projects

If you haven’t seen or followed my Flickr account, I would encourage you to do so. Why wouldn’t you anyway?

I’ve been taking on some photo projects and have been having a good time.

One is my Project 365. This is where I have to take one photo a day for an entire year. I started Jan. 1 and am still going at it. It’s been fun, challenging and really cool to see what I have come up with. There are still more than 300 days, however, so I look forward to keeping it up.

I also started my 100 Strangers project yesterday. The idea of this is to take a photo of a complete stranger 100 times. But, you can’t just take candids or do it without them knowing. The idea is to get permission, tell them you are posting them online and find a little about them. It’s really quite an interesting challenge. I don’t think this will end in a year as it will take me time to fill it up, but it should be fun.

To help with this project, I’m going to order some of those mini-Moo cards and have a small explanation (if it fits) and the address to my Flickr account. This way, I can hand these to the people and they can know where I’ll be posting the images.

I’m also trying to do a 12 of 12 each month this year, but I think tomorrow might be tough. I’m going to try though!

One more photo thing I’ve done recently — a press room shoot. Since I started working at the paper I’m at now, I’ve always wanted to shoot the press room. I had the chance the other night and came up with some good shots. I have a set at Flickr that you can check out if you want.

But, allow me to share my top three favorite shots from that night:

Geocaching

This is something I’ve been neglecting, somewhat. Not that I don’t want to go caching… but I’m not as gung-ho about going out in the snow and the sub-freezing temps to do it! I can wait for the warmer days, where I can plan a full afternoon of caching and not have to worry about if it will be too cold to take a 1/2-mile hike down a nice trail.

I have had some sporatic hits here and there (and hope to get at least one cache this weekend when I head to Binghamton) and I’ve been planning some days to cache… once the weather breaks, of course.

The good thing is that I’ve been a little slow recently, so I might be able to plot it well enough where I can get my 2,000th find on my trip to Ireland in late June/early July. Of course if this weather broke soon, who knows if I’d be able to hold off long enough for Ireland!

HooHaa TB Race 2

An update is needed, for sure.

If you all didn’t see, the cache containing all the travel bugs was recently placed. The race wasn’t starting until the cache was visited and someone grabbed a TB or two.

That has happened.

Four bugs appear to be headed toward Bermuda in an early jump to the race. But, who knows where they will go from there. The rest are ready to roll. Hopefully some traveling people will come by and snag some of the TBs and move them along. It’s a quick on-and-off of a major highway, so I’m hoping everything goes soon!

The race officially started with the grabbing of those TBs — so Feb. 8. The end date for the race will be Feb. 8, 2011.

If you haven’t already, please put that passage I sent you in the TB description and also please put “HHTB Race 2″ BEFORE the name of your TB, thus showing that it’s in the race. So, it should look like this: “HHTB Race 2: Travel Bug Name.”

I attached a card to each bug before it was released, too, explaining that it’s in a race.

And I saw it in one or two descriptions — please don’t encourage dipping. It’s against the rules. If it happens once or twice, I’ll let things slide as things can happen. BUT, if it continues, I’ll have to wipe out some of those miles.

Other things

Classes started for this semester (see, there’s that real world thing again), so I’ve been doing a lot of that work during my free time.  Two jobs, the photos and some other things just made the blogging part tough for a bit. But, now that things have started to push forward, I can take a few breaths and move forward with everything and juggle things a little more.

The students I have this semester seem really with it, so that’s good. I’ve been lucky this year with the four classes I’ve had. I don’t know if I’m being spoiled or if it’s just how things have worked out — but it’s been a blast to deal with.

Speaking of which, I need to put together a couple of quizzes. So, off to do that.

More later!

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Welcome to Snapshot Saturday!

Here’s this week’s photo:

This is my father, cousin Lauren and uncle Jim from many years ago. How about those collars?

Hope you enjoyed!

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If any of you are fans of music, music history or anything like that, you’ll love this cache.

It’s located at the original site of Woodstock, which is now a performing arts center etc. However, there’s a plaque there and a neat little spot to see some of the history.

I was in the area this past weekend with a friend who is a music fanatic as we had hit up a winter road rally. After, I wanted to grab a few caches and this was one of them.

This is an ammo can located at this spot, which is pretty cool. The history of the spot is the really neat part.

Here is the historical plaque with the original field where Woodstock was held in the background:

The cache isn’t too far from this spot, though the snow made it a little harder to find! I did, finally, stumble upon it and I really like the creativity the person put into this ammo can. Here are some images of the cache … away from its hiding spot, of course.

The details:

Geocache: Peace, Love and Geocache (GC1FPZ3)

Location: Bethel, New York.

The ratings: 1.5 for difficulty; 1.5 for terrain.

Time to do the cache (to and from): Less than 10 minutes.

Total hike: 50 feet from parking?

Scenic?: To a point, but historical references and such make it more “scenic.”

Tips: Pretty straight-forward cache, with the idea more of bringing you to a wonderful spot. Don’t think too much about it. Coordinates were decent.

Overall HooHaa Rating (1-10): 8.

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A look at the week ahead with holidays, birthdays and wacky other days!

Note: Two things to celebrate the 29th, so an open day on the 30th!

Jan. 25: Opposite Day
Jan. 26: Chinese New Year
Jan. 27: Chocolate Cake Day
Jan. 28: Ernie’s Birthday
Jan. 29: National Kazoo Day
Jan. 29: National Puzzle Day
Jan. 31: Backwards Day

Have a good week!

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Welcome to Snapshot Saturday!

Here’s this week’s photo:

Guess who this little rascal is?

Hope you enjoyed!

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Let’s see where we travel this week…

CARD STATISTICS

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It seems wherever you go, there are different traditions for people when a geocacher reaches 1,000 finds. I’ve heard many different things on what people do, but one thing seems for sure — 1,000 finds is the ultimate milestone.

Some people will eventually go so far past 1,000 finds, it won’t matter. But in the geocaching circles I’ve looked at and such, 1,000 finds is the main goal. Everything else is gravy.

For me, reaching 1,000 was almost a weight off the shoulders. I don’t know why. When I got to 100 finds, I was super pumped. At 500, I was stoked. Then, reaching 1,000 became an obsession.

Once I got to 1,000, I realized that geocaching had gotten too much into the numbers (though I do like the numbers!) and now I don’t go as nutso as I once did.

So, this tip is about what you can do when someone you know reaches that magical milestone.

Here are some ideas I’ve heard to celebrate someone’s 1,000th:

• An event in his or her honor
• Golden Ammo Can (several ways of doing this)
• A full-stocked cache gift to the person for them to hide
• A FTF for their 1,000th

I’m sure there are a few more, but these are the ones I’ve heard most about.

With that in mind, let me tell you what we do in our area — the Golden Ammo Can.

When someone reaches the milestone or is closing in, we usually start planning the Golden Ammo. That usually means a few of us discuss ideas, share costs (sometimes) and decide places to put the cache. We try and make it so the people will enjoy the hide — so try and make it some sort of hide that they like the most (long hike, multi, mystery etc.)

The idea is to not publish the geocache until the person has found it (in other parts, I’ve seen they have it published, but request that nobody finds it until the honoree logs the FTF). We usually try and do them around an event or a planned weekend. Then we all go out, the honored person finds the cache and then all the others sign in and log it.

It’s a fun time, usually.

I’ve done two Golden Ammo cans — one for monet37 and one for the Devil Duckies.  Monet’s was an in-depth puzzle cache based on art as she’s an art teacher. The Devil Duckies is basically a park-and-grab, though it would be a walk from their house to a park where they bring their pooches. So it’s one that’s close to home for them and that they can walk and check on when they want. Alas, they ended up parking close the day they found it as it was cold!

Here’s the Devil Duckies at their Golden:

Here’s monet37’s Golden:

As you can see, we spray paint the ammo cans gold. I try and do it inside and out. Usually these have pretty decent swag in them. For the Devil Duckies, it had a lot of Devil Duckies on the inside. Monet’s had a lot of art supplies.

So, as this week’s tip — when someone you know reaches this wonderful milestone, do something nice for them and recognize them. It’s hard to get to 1,000 finds, so it’s worth celebrating!

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A look at the week ahead with holidays, birthdays and wacky other days!

Note: The calendar I have lists two Jan. 18 days and nothing for the 19th. Consider that an open day!

Jan. 18: Dr. Martin Luther King Day/Winnie the Pooh Day
Jan. 18: Winnie The Pooh Day
Jan. 20: Penguin Awareness Day
Jan. 21: National Hugging Day
Jan. 22: National Blonde Brownie Day
Jan. 23: Measure Your Feet Day
Jan. 24: Compliment Day

Have a good week!

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