When we started geocaching, I was constantly googling to see what another acronym meant. When I read the Activity log in the geocaching app, I would have to stop and check what something meant. GZ, FTF, TFTC, CO, P&G, SL. WHAT?!? So what do all those geocaching acronyms mean? IDK: I don’t know! This is a beginner’s guide to geocaching acronyms.
Every hobby has its own lingo. Every sport has its own vocabulary. Geocaching is no different.
Do you have the desire to create something? Is there a novel, short story, poem, play, or script on your mind and in your heart but not on paper? Would you like to make a quilt, a painting, a clay pot, or a pair of mittens? If something is holding you back, you have come to the right place. This is a review of Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.
Maybe I should correct that. This is less of a review of Big Magic and more of a recommendation to read Big Magic. I LOVED this book. It was entertaining, enlightening, and encouraging. Gilbert introduced me to ideas so far out of my realm of experience that I could feel my brain stretching. For example:
The purpose of dating is to get to know someone, right? You can learn a lot about a person geocaching, so take a date geocaching!
My hubby and I are geocachers. Our youngest son, 18, had never gone with us. When you are 18, you are pretty much into living your own life. I get it. But then he brought a girl home. It was his “bring a girl home for dinner” date with her. The one where she meets mom and dad and everyone starts to picture how she would fit into the family.
After eating homemade pizza (she likes pepperoni) and playing some really bad badminton in the backyard, I asked if they would like to go geocaching with us. We got a more enthusiastic response from her than from our son, but, since they were willing, we grabbed our bag and headed out.
We are relatively new to the geocaching game (or hobby, or sport). The basic concept is that, when you find a hidden cache, you use the geocaching app to log it as a find. But what do you do when you look for a cache but don’t find it? The other option on the app is to log it as a DNF (Did Not Find). So that brings up the question, should we log a DNF when geocaching?
As beginners, we frequently did not find the cache we were searching for. Our searching skills were still pretty raw. Face it, until we gained some experience, we didn’t know what we were looking for!
Every time we found a new style of cache, we learned more about what to look for the next time. The truth is, when you are new to geocaching, your search skills are still unrefined.
We already felt bad enough that we couldn’t find what should have been an easy cache. We didn’t want to add to our humiliation by making it public knowledge! If we logged each cache we didn’t find as a DNF, we were publicizing our failures, right? Well, that is how we felt when we started geocaching so we didn’t log DNF’s at first.
For the past few months, I have been reading books about the empty nest. I have to STOP! These books are getting me down!
It is my current stage of life and I want to be prepared for it. Also, I have been reviewing these books for my blog so I can give recommendations to you about the best ones to read. That means I have really dug into them to be able to share the pros and cons with you.
You know what I have found? I have found that reading books about the empty nest is very depressing!
Since my own nest emptied recently, I have been reading books about the empty nest. This is a review of The Empty Nest by Karen Stabiner.
The full title of the book is The Empty Nest, 31 Parents Tell the Truth About Relationships, Love, And Freedom After the Kids Fly the Coop. This book is a collection of 31 essays by a very diverse group.
I enjoyed the diversity of the authors. All are professional writers so the quality of writing is very good. Included are essays by traditional couples, single moms, single dads, gay parents, and one man who is not a parent but a very involved godparent.
Not all gained empty nest status by their child going to college. One son joined the army. One girl left for boarding school at 14. Death claimed one couple’s son.
Last Saturday, Jerry and I had a plan to go geocaching. By the end of the morning, we had learned a valuable geocaching lesson: look before you touch!
We headed to an area about half an hour away from home to Miles, IA, to attempt a series of geocaches that we found on the are geocaching app.
We thoroughly enjoyed the series! It was called Couples Cache, and had a dating theme. The name of each cache included a question that we answered when we logged the find. For example, one was How You Met. Then First Date. Another was called Perfect Getaway with the question, if you could go any where on a getaway trip, no expense to you, where would you go, and what would you do? First Gift asked what your first gifts to each other were. Favorite Movie asked, obviously, about your favorite movie.
This is a review of From Mom To Me Again, How I survived My First Empty Nest Year And Reinvented The Rest Of My Life by Melissa T. Schultz.
I was prepared to not enjoy this book. After LOVING Going Gypsy and enjoying My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space, I didn’t plan to enjoy From Mom To Me Again.
Even the title didn’t really grab me. From Mom To Me Again implies that ME got lost in being MOM, which sounds so depressing to me.
Then I started reading the book. And sentences I read started resonating with me. For example,
For obvious reasons (my own nest just emptied) I have been reading books about the empty nest. This is a review of My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: The Amazing Adventures Of An Ordinary Woman by Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Scottoline Serritella.
It is very obvious that Lisa is a professional writer and that this is not her first book. She is very good with words. Her sentences are crisp and she often employs a play on words which made reading this book enjoyable. I love her writing. What I don’t love as much is that the book is a collection of essays. I guess I prefer a more cohesive story. Yes, it’s all about Lisa, or her daughter, or her mother. But it just didn’t flow very easily for me, which made it too easy to put down and forget.
A few weeks ago I got a new cleaning job. It was for an older lady who needed help to be able to stay in her own home. She was 85 years old. I know this since she told me several times. When I went to her house for the interview, she was sitting on the couch reading. I also noticed a pile of books on the table beside her bed. This lady loved to read!
Since she was quite elderly, she would be there while I was cleaning. That’s not my favorite situation, but in this case it was necessary.
Well, when I arrived at her house to clean the first time, she was sitting on the couch reading a book. She was actually reading The Lipstick Jungle! Of course I cleaned every other room first so as not to disturb her, but eventually I ended up in the living room. She was still on the couch reading. I dusted the whole room. I shook out the rugs. Then all that remained was vacuuming the carpet.
