I haven’t done any geocaching since…eek! February. I went to Myrtle Beach in February, did exactly four caches there, and then nada.

My 365 kind of fell apart in there somewhere too – not happy about that. I did find a few pictures I had lost a while back, but I still need to get those posted. Hopefully I can do that soon.

And all of this because life has been in the way. I had a steady job while I was going to school for the last two years. I ended up quitting that in February to focus on classes (I was supposed to graduate in May). I had a HELL of a time securing money to cover my tuition and such for the fall so I COULD finish. That finally got squared away.

In the meantime, the job situation hasn’t been pretty and my bills are months behind. I started a new job in April, worked until the end of June and they’ve since had me on a six-week (and indefinite?) furlough. In that time I’ve been selling things on Ebay and just plain working on reducing the amount of clutter I’ve acquired in the last six years.
I suppose dorm living will do that. But the amount of money I’ve been getting from that isn’t even paying for the gas in my car. I’ve also started a new job, but I’m not sure how long to expect that I’ll be working with them. Something about that job doesn’t feel quite right and I can’t quite put my finger on it.

In other news, I had a friend get married in May and the wedding was beautiful. Then the first weekend of this month, a tornado hit the campgrounds where we keep our camper on a seasonal lot. My dad was there at the time. Luckily he didn’t get hurt and everything on our lot stayed put, but there was a camper that snapped in half with people inside because it got uprooted by a tree and there were a lot of trees that came down.

So anyway…I don’t really want this blog turning into a sob story about things not going well for me right now, but I did want to update anyone who’s been wondering where I’ve gone. Sorry! I just haven’t had much happy anything to blog about lately.

Note: Click the picture to see more of the tornado damage. Our neighbor at the campgrounds provided the pictures.

We’re doin’ it again in 2010! This page includes additional information about the campground that cannot go on the cache page. Coordinates and additional waypoints are on the cache page.

The campground also has activities going on that weekend that cachers can participate in around the event Feel free to check out their entertainment calendar to find out more.

Address:
Evergreen Lake Park
703 Center Dr.
Conneaut, OH 44030
Phone: (440) 599-8802

About the campgrounds:
You can visit for the day or stay all weekend. Geocachers will get 10% off their overnight or weekend stay. Just tell the campground you’re camping with the geocachers.

Click here to see the 2010 Season Rates.

If you’re just staying for the main event and heading home, there is a visitor’s fee. All visitors have to register at the office.

Those visiting for the day:
$2.50 per adult
$2 per child

I’ll have a bookmarked list of caches put together soon and link those to the cache page

I started this fan page a little while ago, but I thought I’d blog it here just in case you missed it. There’s a link at the bottom of the sidebar too. I’ve been thinking of doing a drawing out of my Fans for a fun prize one of these days, but I need to come up with something I thought that would be a good way of saying thanks for being a fan! Plus, it’s another way to follow the blog if the subscription options and Twitter aren’t enough for you.

I try to post some extras on the fan page that don’t get posted here, but that hasn’t happened too much yet because it has been kind of new. Maybe you can help with that. What kinds of things would you like to see posted there besides the blog post updates?

Also, click here for my personal Facebook page. I’ll accept you as a friend, but let me know you’re a fan of my blog in the message section when you send the request

Note: I am participating in the HooHaa TB Race 2, hosted by P.J. This is a periodic update of my racer.

Snitch is on his way. He’s hopped from New York to Vermont so far in one giant leap totaling 169 miles he’s traveled. There haven’t been pictures yet, but I’m hoping someone will post some soon so I can post them here Protocoldroid, the last cacher who moved Snitch, did give him a *thumbs up* though so that’s pretty cool, haha.

Also, as of Feb 19, P.J., who’s hosting the race, tweeted that all of the racers are on the move! Glad to see no one will be left behind

You can follow Snitch’s travels here:

And of course I’ll update here periodically

The thing I really loved about receiving this postcard is it reminded me of my time in the United Kingdom. I spent about a week and a half in London, but took some time for geocaching outside the city with some locals. John was one of Alison‘s friends who helped drive me out to an event at Malvern Hills (near the Welsh border). He was generous enough to take the long route so I could see the countryside. It was beautiful! It looked a lot like this, but the yellow rape seed (as shown in the picture) was just starting to bloom so at the time I could still see a lot of green patches.

I only missed one 365 shot this week! It’s nice to have an improvement over several weeks of having only 5 shots for the week. There are some days I just plain forget to take a picture, and I feel particularly stupid when I do that and have at least two methods available to take pictures. I really want to finish this Project 365 strong even though I’ve missed some days.

Update: JUST KIDDING!! I got ALL of my shots this week Found one hiding that I hadn’t uploaded yet

Here are this week’s pictures:

Also: If you haven’t checked out my Project 365 Rejects lately, there are a couple new ones uploaded.

Sadface!

I missed yet another two pictures this week. It’s disappointing when that happens, but now that things are caught up a little and not so crazy for me it should be OK. I need to get back on track with this thing!

For those of you who don’t know, I’m also doing a little friendly competition between me and two other cachers in Ohio: Jen from the NW Ohio area and Brian from central Ohio. Each day, we each take our pictures and then upload them to a special Facebook group we made just for us Then, each of us votes on each other’s photos to choose which one we like best for the day. We cannot choose our own. We have a predetermined tie-breaker vote in case each of us gets a single vote for the day. The one at the end with the most votes wins!

If I keep missing these photos, this competition won’t end well for me But that’s OK, even if I lose, I’ll still kinda win because the “losers” will together choose the winning prize for the winner! And that’s just plain fun.

Here are links to their Project 365 shots:

Jen’s 365 pictures

Brian’s 365 pictures

My week 12 photos:

The first thing that caught my eye on this one is that it’s from Portugal. If you get a postcard from Finland, it’s no surprise. But Portugal, that’s a different story. I really liked seeing the shrubs in this one. Way cool! It’s even cooler that they’re outside of a dinosaur museum.

It’s time for me to play catch up! I have not been keeping up with this Project 365 thing the way I would have liked. I’ve missed a total of four photos so far, which isn’t something I’m too proud of. But at least it’s only four photos. Really that’s not too bad, and I’m not giving up I started this thing, and I intend to finish it…even if that means I’m short by a few.

Here are all of my catch up pics:

It’s a sad day when you have to archive a geocache. It’s even more sad when it’s because the cache has been tampered with.

The covered bridge where my now archived cache was placed.

Today I had to archive my Don’t be a party pooper! cache I placed in Pierpont, Ohio. The last cacher who found it discovered an empty soda can and a syringe in the container. Yikes! I can’t have families coming to this place and finding that kind of stuff in there.

I knew a homeless person was living under the bridge because I had found their belongings hidden at one point, but it took almost a year for THIS kind of stuff to happen. I placed the cache in April 2009. Others had seen the homeless person and/or their belongings, but it never seemed to be a problem so I left it alone.

Now, it’s a problem. And this can’t continue if we’re going to have fun with geocaching.

Now for a little humor. When I picked up the cache today I decided to read through the logbook because that can certainly be fun. I found a great entry from June 4, 2009 when a muggle found the cache, signed the log and left it for others. Here’s the entry:

I don’t even play these games and I found it. What the fuck is this shit. -Jason Smith S981-

Haha. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when I read that