A Cache Maintenance Adventure with Bev

I needed to do maintenance bad on my Hwy 507 caches.  I got up around 10, got ready and since it wasn't raining, I got all of my maintenance stuff packed up and into the Escape.  Ben was on shift and Mom was busy.  I asked Bev if she was busy, and she said no. I asked her if she wanted to go pick up some caches in the Spanaway/Elk Plain area while I fixed some of my other caches.  She said sure.  I told her I would be at her house by 11:30 because I had to run a quick errand in Tumwater.

I drove out to Tumwater and let Alicia's dogs out to go potty and to check on their food and water and then drove into Rainier to go pick up Bev.  She was ready to go when I pulled into their driveway.  She said she was so happy to get away from home for a while.  She said it's been a while since she's gone caching.  On our way to Spanaway, we talked about a plethora of things...from the cache machine in January to the hospital visit to wedding stuff.  

Our first stop was the Spanaway Park and Ride, The Hwy 507 Series: Spanaway (GC3V7QF).  I was glad when we arrived that not many people were in the parking lot.  There were two guys on motorcycles not paying attention to us.  I was able to go see that indeed, the cache was missing, create a new one and place it without any incident.  

I saw that there were several south down Hwy 7 near Elk Plain that both Bev and I didn't have yet.  We double checked our maps and finds to see if they coincided.  We pulled into the old school Fred Meyer and circled around to where the coords were pointing us towards. We found a parking spot as close as we could get to it.  We both got out and made sure there weren't any people in the nearby cars watching us look for What's On Your List Today? (GCAB6BV).  We found it with ease.

Do the Floss (GCAC4GK) was one north on Hwy 7 back towards Spanaway.  We knew we were looking for a dentist office on the right-hand side of the road. I told Bev to keep her eyes peeled.  We saw the dentist office's sign, pulled off the road and parked in the back of the building.  We both got out of the Escape and started looking.  We knew we were looking for an "other" but where was it?  We were looking in all the obvious places and came up empty.  Then I wandered away from the coordinates to see where the range was when I heard Bev say, "found it!" I told her, "way to keep her eyes peeled for the cache too!"  It was a high voltage magnet sign with a logbook on the back.  It was stuck to those green electrical boxes.

We hopped back into the Escape, got back onto Hwy 7 and continued north just a bit, got off the road at some new fast food restaurants on the right hand side of the road.  When I saw the name of the cache, Think Outside the Bun (GCABM4C), I assumed it was going to be at a Taco Bell.  It was at the Taco Bell.  We found a place to park and dodged all the hungry people going into Taco Bell and Jack in the Box for lunch.  We walked out to the front of the buildings near the sidewalk and started looking.  I noticed a clear fishing wire tied to the grate.  I grabbed it and pulled it up revealing a bison tube on the end of it. We got it opened, wrote our names on it and gently slid it back into its hiding spot. 

We walked back to the Escape and looked to see where the next one was.  It was at the Walmart.  We assumed it was probably a lamp skirt cache in the parking lot.  The View from Here (GCXRGR) was in fact a lamp skirt cache in the parking lot.  I hustled out to grab it because I didn't want to talk to the parking security guy who was weaving in and out of the parking lot aisles.   I found a reusable bag on the ground, so I picked it up and threw it in the car.  It may come in handy someday.  We thought it would be a good idea to go inside and use the restroom.

Bev decided she was hungry and wanted a Happy Meal from the McDonald's that shared a parking lot with Walmart.  We drove over there, and it was so empty.  It was also weird that you could order food on a touch screen menu.  I don't go to fast food places very often so seeing those weird me out.  We went to the cashier and ordered our food.  Bev was kind and bought me lunch since I drove.  We both got hamburger Happy Meals, and both came with unicorns!  

We sat down, ate our food and played with the unicorns.  It was magical!

We drove back to Hwy 507 and drove into Roy.  I needed to find a new place for my Roy cache.  I had found out that I could not have it in the place it's been since 2012 because the car lot didn't like people parking in their driveway.  I purposely told cachers on the cache page to park at the store and walk over.  Apparently, they didn't, so the car lot owner took the cache.  He said I could have it back if I moved it somewhere else.  There really weren't that many places to hide it in town because of the one directly in the middle of town that ruins it for other cool locations.  Bev and I drove around trying to figure out how far away 528 feet was from the one in the middle of town.  There are not many places.  I did find a tree near the defunct railroad tracks.  I got a container zip tied to the small tree and updated the cache page.  We will see if HQ will let us keep it there.  

We saw we needed to find one more, Bridge Over Lacamas Creek 1... (GCADY23).  It was just outside of Roy on 288th Street.  We found a place to pull the Escape over, we got out and found it right away.  We got our names on it, took a few pictures and put it back.  We could see this one, if someone didn't put it back correctly, end up in the creek down below.  

We got back onto Hwy 507 and followed it into Yelm.  I told Bev that we had one more cache that I had some time to solve a while back, a puzzle cache called Brought To You From Egypt - are you light hearted? (GCA8XK2).  It took us to the Nisqually River Powerhouse Park.  A place we've both been to several times over the years to get caches.  Bev stayed in the Escape while I walked down the steep hill.  She does not do very well on steep terrain. I followed the cache's directions and found the cache.  I got our names on the logbook, took a few pictures and put it back.  I met up with Bev back at the Escape. 

On the way home, I stopped to fix Curious George (GC8YF52), apparently, someone needed the container more than we did.  Luckily, it was easy to replace.   We got back into Rainier, and I dropped Bev off at her house.  She thanked me for a fun day.  I told her there would be many more.  I stopped by my parent's house to drop off Mom's package and to pick up a bag of mail, bananas and my leftover containers.  

I drove into Tenino to get onto Hwy 99, followed that into Tumwater and over to Costco, Walmart, Fred Meyers and to the cemetery.  I got to the cemetery too late and was rushed but was able to get my balloons and a quick chat in with Grammie and Grandpa before I had to go because they were closing the gates.

I went back over to Alicia's house to let her dogs out and then went home.  I unloaded the groceries, made dinner, finished the laundry, talked to Mom for a bit, logged the caches we found today, took a shower, fed the cats and hung out for the rest of the evening.  It was nice to get a lot of stuff accomplished.

Next Adventure:  Super Bowl LVIII Party:  Chiefs vs. 49ers

Doug's Cookie Monster Birthday Party

I try to have a theme and/or plan for people's birthday parties over the course of the year.  I came across a Dollar Tree Facebook group about a half a year ago and saw some great ideas for a Cookie Monster/Sesame Street themed party.  I started gathering things as I saw them while shopping.  I had a pretty good head start on it.  I also wanted to do a Cookie Monster/Sesame Street Jeopardy game as well, so I spent some time working on that and coming up with questions.  I learned a lot while researching the themes and questions. 

Instead of a cake, I was going to make Monster Cookies.  Mid-January, I asked Doug when it was okay to have his birthday party, since he just moved out and was living with his girlfriend, and he said the last Sunday in January.  He was busy on all the other weekends.  I asked him what kind of food he wanted to have, and he said breakfast.  I made him be more specific.  He elaborated, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, French toast with cinnamon and he insisted that everyone had at least one mimosa.  I told him that not everyone is going to have one because they are gross. I told him I would have stuff to make them for those who actually wanted one.  He said okay.  The last question I posed to him was what time?  He said 1 p.m.  I let everyone know so they could plan for it.

I spent Friday and some of Saturday cleaning the house and getting it ready for people to come over.  I finished up the Jeopardy game on several note cards and I had a spot on the wall where I was going to tape them to. I had several categories such as Jim Henson, Me Want Cookie, Om Nom Nom and Pop Culture. I was actually excited for people to answer the questions.  I picked up several decorations from The Dollar Tree like streamers, blue plastic cups and large googly eyes.   I bought Cookie Monster plates on Amazon and a stuffed plushie because I could not find one at the Goodwill. I bought the food I needed on the day before.

That morning, Ben and I got up around 10, we got the tables and chairs ready, I spent some time getting the table stuff decorated, I taped the Jeopardy notecards to the wall and at about noon, I started making the food.  I went out to the living room a few times to see how the AFC Championship was going.  Sadly, the Ravens didn't show up, so we had to watch the Chiefs again in the Super Bowl.   

I got out our food warmer because most of the food was going to be done at different times and I needed to keep it warm.  I started with the sausage, then did the bacon, the scrambled eggs and then the French toast on the griddle.  I've had lots of practice cooking breakfast, so I knew how long it approximately took for that many people.  

Everyone arrived close to 1:00 and I told everyone that the food was done and ready to be eaten.  Doug and Sonya were the only ones who partook in mimosas.  I am just not really a fan of them.  Champagne to me is gross.  We all sat at the table and ate our food while talking about random things.  Doug was pretty surprised about the Cookie Monster themed birthday party and Mom brought the red roses. 

Once we were done eating, I grabbed the Monster cookies, I made on Saturday, and handed them out to those who wanted them.  They turned out larger than I thought they would, and they were very blue!  This was my first time using gel food coloring in my cookies.  Everyone had a piece or part of a cookie.  I announced that we were going to play the Jeopardy game I had made.  Everyone was intrigued on what answers I was going to give them.

We went through Jeopardy and then double Jeopardy.  I didn't do the daily double in each round just to make it simple.  I also tried making the answers easy but some of them people either couldn't remember or just didn't know. I did have a final Jeopardy question, and no one got it right, but I didn't think they would.  It was more of a fun fact to know.  Everyone seemed to have fun.

We had Doug open his birthday presents.  I really had no idea what to get him, so he got junk food from The Dollar Tree, Coke, candy, sunflower seeds and Crunchy Cheetos.  I put them in blue bags with googly eyes on them.  They sorta looked like Cookie Monster, lol.  He opened the rest of his gifts and by that time I think everyone was "funned" out.  You could tell Erika and Zac wanted to go.

I thanked everyone for coming and Ben and I spent some time cleaning up the decorations, doing dishes, vacuuming and putting the table and chairs away.  We watched part of the AFC Championship game and sadly the 49ers won.  Now we had to watch a really awful Super Bowl with Taylor Swift being the center of attention.  We hoped neither of them won but we knew that wasn't realistic. 

We did some laundry, put some stuff away, ran the dishwasher and I worked on some wedding stuff for the rest of the evening.  We started getting some of the RSVP's back and I spent some time filling out my spreadsheet to make sure we got all the information we needed to work on the next set of wedding purchases. 

Next Adventure:   A Cache Maintenance Adventure with Bev

Fantasy Football Champion in Both Fantasy Leagues!

I am finally a Fantasy Football Champion in both my leagues for the 2023-2024 football seasons.  I have been playing for over 15 years and I have won only one other time. But this was a huge milestone, both leagues!  That is very hard to accomplish!

I was very lucky to get the players I got in the draft and traded around throughout the season. This year Ben and I were able to be the league's commissioner for our main league with Willmarth.  Our main goal was to take down Kevin, who somehow cheated the last two years and won, to prevent him from threepeating.  We made darn sure he wasn't going to do it.  I honestly couldn't care less who won as long as it wasn't Kevin. 

I started off slow earlier in the season but after some trading, watching Sportscenter, fantasy stuff on the internet and doing some research, I was able to make good choices.  It was frustrating when I did lose because it was by less than 3-5 points each time.  

The other league, Heather's family's league, was crazy each week.  Ben and I were definitely the dominant teams.  For some reason every time I played against Josh, his running back from the Bears would do very well, rack up points and I would lose to him.  

In Family Fantasy Football, as I Want to Play a Game, I went 10-4-0. In Blood Sweat and Beers, as Bitey McFinFace, I went 7-5-2, yes, I had two ties during the regular season.  Those made me very upset.

When it came down to the playoffs, I was put up against Willmarth in our league and Ben in Heather's family league.  I was able to outplay both of them.  My fantasy players showed up in the last two weeks of the season.  I beat Willmarth 152-111 and beat Ben 256.14 to 243.22.  Of course, I rubbed it in.

Earlier during the season, Ben thought we needed a trophy to pass around to the winner.  The trophy literally came two weeks before the playoffs ended.  We unboxed it to see what it looked like, and it was awesome.  I had gone to the Goodwill earlier that season as well to find a trophy for Heather's League.  We let her know that her league now had a trophy to pass around.  

With the conclusion of the last regular season NFL game, I was crowned Fantasy Football Champion and yes, I did a photo shoot with my trophies. It was amazing!

I am hoping to do just as well next season.  Bring it on!

Next Adventure:  Doug's Cookie Monster Birthday Party