Suprisingly painless. My theme got nuked, but that’s cool. It sucked anyway.
Time to play.
8:12 PM:
Themes are interesting. Far more intuitive to me. I still need to add my own flavour and banner, but Manji’s got a nice starting point.
Mental note - exercise is good in moderation. Especially when you don’t normally do any. Sunscreen is also good - especially in the areas where you don’t think the sun’s going to get to. Like your legs for example.
Oh, the agony.
I got a GPSr for my birthday. For those not “in the know”, you don’t talk about them as GPSs apparently - they’re Global Positioning System receivers. It’s important. Or, so I’m told …
The idea wasn’t so that I could find myself (*boom tish*) - it was so we could go geocaching. Basically, it’s orienteering for the new millenium (even though it’s actually been going on for a while longer than that now). You log onto the site, pick where you’re interested in going, and download a bunch of waypoints near there, each representing a cache of things that’s been hidden by someone else. You go there, you find it, you sign your name, and you appreciate the view. Sounds easier than it is - even though you can get within a 5 metre accuracy on a good day, it’s surprisingly hard to find something the size of a film case when it’s been hidden well. In the spirit of flickr and blogging, some photos:
 |
 |
 |
It’s actually really interesting how you find places you didn’t even know existed when you go geocaching. We’ve been walking the dogs for around three years here, and yet our first cache took us to a spot we’ve never been to. Walked past it daily, but never even knew it was there. From what I gather, just about everyone who starts geocaching says that. So far, we’ve found six caches. We went for a 35 kilometre bike ride on Saturday and a 15 kilometre walk with the dogs on Sunday. They need to lose weight, but they’re not impressed. I think Chief’s sore - he hasn’t moved for most of today. When he decides to bark he doesn’t even get up off the beanbag. I feel a bit guilty actually, even though it’s good for him (and us) …
Anyway, half the fun is trying to find the cache. One of the first ones we did on Sunday was the first part of a multi-cache, a series of hidden points, each one explaining where the next point is. We ended up in the middle of a ‘burb in Hopper’s Crossing, trying to look inconspicuous while we searching. Believe me, there’s only so many photos you can take before people start paying attention. Eventually, one of the locals took pity on us and shouted out, “it’s under the bench, mate!” After feeling like a bit of a tool, we thanked him and got on our hands and knees.
At which point two people appear out of nowhere and say, “Ah, I see you’ve found it!” Apart from feeling like we’re on the Truman show, everything’s cool. Turns out they’re also geocachers and have popped across so one of them can tick off the cache. We introduce ourselves, have a bit of a chat, and trade pointers. Well, to be accurate, we get the pointers, and they get a good laugh. Unfortunately, we then find out that the next point is 450 odd kilometres away, so we have to move on to the next one on our list for the day.
Walking around in the sun for about four hours is bad idea if you haven’t put on sunscreen properly. Believe me, I’m living it at the moment. We didn’t get too burned, all things considered, but we’re still burned enough to be in a fair bit of pain. To top it all off, the place went haywire today. I had to drag myself out of bed to move the car, as they’ve finally started to rebuild our road. Then, a guy who bought a monitor off us off ebay decides to show up out of the blue while I’m cooking pizza, despite our telling him he should come by later. And, we get 25 bags of wool / polyester insulation delivered, all of which I have to check and carry into the house. We also haven’t done washing for about a week and a half, so I’ve got three loads to do. For a day off, I’m pooped.
Whee. 
Now I’ve been hit too. Got past the spam-filter, impressively. Fuck ‘em - I’ll be damned if they’re getting a free pagerank from here.