Picture Overload

I haven't been caching since the 19th! Today I decided to break my no caching spell and grab a couple. The two I went after are part of a series.

Here is the first one I got:






I think the series should be called "Up Yours," because all these caches are in animals, and most of them are inserted rectally (or close enough).



Sadly the series has a more appropriate name.

I aborted the next cache I had in my GPS for a desert drive. There is something about blasting my music and going for a drive that seems to calm and relax me.

Sometimes I think the desert gets a bad rap for being a such a barren place. However, when you actually get out and walk around... the beauty emerges!











I actually got the shot below while I was waiting for cars to disappear so I could put back the first cache. I wasn't expecting much, but I think it was my favorite picture of the day! As with the rest of the pictures, you can click the image to see it larger.



I also unexpectedly came across a benchmark. My first one!

Get a Move On!

As you may know, I have recently started some trackable items. One item in particular has been in the hands of a cacher for over 30 days. I know life gets hectic, but I looked at this dudes profile and he HAS been caching since he picked it up. So I sent him a little reminder. I don't know how this e-mail comes off, and frankly, I don't care - but I want my coin to move damn it! Is there a "pre-made" letter anywhere to get this message across? I wish there was.. if there is, please tell me. I would also be interested to see how you would word "MOVE MY FREAKING COIN YOU LAZY BUTT."

Well, Here is how I did it.

Hello,

I'm checking in on the status of my geocoin "Forest Preserves" (TB1KG2T). If you have forgotten to log a drop, please be sure to log it as soon as you can. If you still have it in possession, please be sure to place it in a cache soon. If for some reason you are unable to place this coin - pass it along to another cacher or please contact me so that we can figure out someway of getting it back out there :-)

This is my first geocoin and I'm excited to see where it ends up! Thank you for picking up my trackable coin to help it see the world.

Keep on Cachin',
ErikaJean

I totally stole that last line from podcacher ;-)

I think if someone has your trackable. You should be able to nudge them like you can on twitter - or poke them like on Facebook. The feature could be called a kick... you could kick a cacher ;-)

UPDATE:

He is gathering mine and a few other coins for the WWFM. Which is cool I guess but how about a courtesy e-mail!! sheesh!

Piggy Pandemic

8/365
Originally uploaded by airrikajswan

Maybe this is a bit distasteful. You know, since some people have kicked the bucket and all.... please forgive me, I'm just sick of hearing about it 24/7!! Now knowing my luck, I will get it.

Lately

I just haven't had energy to geocache lately. It doesn't help that I have found all but a few smileys close to home. So if I do want to go out and get some I actually have to prepare myself, get things together, look at maps and so on. If I have to go through that much effort - I'd rather have the whole day to cache... but I haven't had a whole day in a while.

Anyway, I hope to get out at some point. To those of you who only come to my blog for the geocaching goodies.... please standby ;-)

Anyway. Some of my old readers may know that I was doing a 365 project... I got distracted with only 100 photos left. Looking back I wish I would have kept up with it.... but it's time to start a new 365 project attempt. (A 365 project is a photo project where you do a self portrait a day.) There is a link at the top of my blog to the project if you ever want to check it out!

I took this picture of myself the other day for that 365 project... and I LOVE it. I think it might be one of the best pictures I've ever taken. I didn't do much touch up work, just played with the color a little and added some layers.

Actually, here is the original - it started out rather dark and orange!

This weekend I picked up a desk for $34 bucks at target. It was originally $69.99, and when I saw it on sale last week at $48, I almost bought it. I'm glad I waited and saved a few more bucks! I usually get frustrated with assembly directions that come with that sort of thing, but I was surprised how simple yet detailed these instructions were. I had NO problems and got the desk put together!

Well... I think those are all my random thoughts at the moment ;-)

The Eggsperiment - Day 29

We are up to 15 Sprouts. There were 16, but one little guy didn't survive... Most of them have 4 leaves ;-)

Friday Flashback - Corn Shucking

Corn Shucking. It's a family affair!

...or child labor.

You decide.

1985-ish
My Grandma and my older sister, Sara. Working hard on Grandmas front porch in Michigan.


June 2006
My cousins and 2nd cousins. Shucking corn for everyone at the family reunion in Texas.

1988-ish.
My Uncle Bryar, Myself, and my younger sister Lisa Shucking corn in the kitchen. (Ohio). My sister might be a little embarrassed I put this picture of her up, but it is super cute! ...Half my butt cheek is hanging out anyways, so who cares!

SWAG Bag WINNER....

The winner of the SWAG bag Give away is Allegro Mouse ! (e-mail me at airr i k aj swan (AT) gma il (dot) com to claim your prize!

"I would use that swag bag to replace my current swag bag; a Ziploc freezer bag that we have had since day one of caching. It has camo-duct tape over all the holes so the swag doesn't fall out and has been rooted through by my daughter on 171 cache hunts. It also doesn't seal properly anymore but I am so sentimental about it and feel bad for creating more moop (Matter out of Place) in the world. If I did win this awesomely fabulous swag bag and contents, I would mount my current old ziploc bag with a label and hang it in a prominent place in my home for all to behold. I would even twitpic a photo of this for the world to see. I am off to re-tweet this! :)"

We will be looking forward to that twitpic! ;-)

Watch the video if you want, it is very boring...

Congrats!




THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO ENTERED, BLOGGED & TWEETED!! You all made holding a contest fun! I may have to do another one sometime ;-)

SWAG Bag Give Away! *CONTEST CLOSED*

CONTEST CLOSED

I'm having a little blog contest! I hope you will participate! It may not seem like an AWESOME blog give away, but if you are a geocacher I think you will appreciate the prize. When you geocache you find containers and swap swag items. This is a bag containing those items to swap. The bag could even be considered swag (I don't know a male that would want to keep it, hah). I however, keep a bag just like this in my pack while out geocaching so I have easy access to trade items. I hate when I have to go digging in my bag! This SWAG bag might even contain enough items to start your own cache, perhaps your first?

Whatever you decide to do with this bag is up to you! All you have to do is win! (you don't even have to be a geocacher or blogger to enter, your kids/students/pets may love all the trinkets!)

Of course, to win you have to enter. Here's how:

To enter your name in the drawing you MUST:

*Leave a comment to this post telling me what you would do with this SWAG bag. Yes it is that simple!

To earn extra entries in the drawing you can do any or all of the following:
Please be sure to leave a separate comment for each of these the entries to count.

*Twitter about this contest. You must link back to my blog and mention a contest in the tweet.
To make it easy you can use the following if you would like:
"Check it out @airrikajswan is holding a blog contest! www.erikajean.com #geocaching Hurry! It Ends April 23rd."

*Subscribe to this blog, and tell me what method of subscribing you chose. If you are already a subscriber please tell me the method of subscribing you use - and you will earn this extra entry as well.

*Blog about this contest on your blog! You must link back to my blog and mention a contest in the post.

Please be sure to leave a separate comment for each of the entries to count. (I will be printing out the comments, cutting them apart and drawing out of a hat)

CONTEST CLOSED

2nd PostCrossing Postcard.

From: Germany

Distance: 5,556 Miles
Travel time: 8 days

"Dear Erika,
Many Greeting from
the west of Germany.
This building is our
newest landmark,
the tower behind it is
243 m high. Take care,
Signed"

Happy Earth Day!

My 1st.

This postcard traveled 7202.31 miles in 7 days to get to me.

You can click the image to view the postcard larger.

It is the first postcard I've received through PostCrossing.com

Writing. No, Really.

While Caching...

I like to take in the little things while out geocaching:






I also love to enjoy the view while I search:




This is not your typical view:



but I still enjoy it.

If you would like to see any of these pictures larger, just click on them ;-)

the Eggspriment - Day 21

Little Eggman is doing well!

Previous Eggsperiment days...

Friday Flashback - Book

I remember having this book around the house as a kid. Way after 1969 of course!

Interactive Geocaching Video!

I hope you enjoy searching for the cache in my back yard... GOOD LUCK! Don't forget to sign the log (leave a comment) if you find it ;-)

Geocache HERE!

So the Weather is bad in your neck of the woods? Try some pretty much effortless geocaching below! This is an actual cache location from my 19 find day on Tuesday!

I can't wait to do this with video!!! Be prepared for upcoming posts! I just have to try it ;-)

Why?!

I want to know why they heck anyone would think this is a desirable place for a cache!?

I'm not even going to dwell on the fact that it was near train tracks, probably closer than 150 ft....

I'm pretty sure you can see in the pictures why I was turned off by this cache. The place was a trashy homeless camp under a nice big tree. There was glass ,trash, nasty carpet, a shoe... the list could go on...

YES the tree was cool, BUT...If I wanted so badly to place a cache by/in it I would have cleaned the area up for future cachers to come. Perhaps it didn't look like this when the cache was placed, but after reading the logs... if this were my cache, I'd temporarily disable it and go clean... or archive it all together.

I know, I know, I know. CITO. And I do, but this place was overwhelming. I'm not going to put that trash in my car after cleaning it up. No freaking way. Besides. I don't think It would all fit in my car. There was more that what was in the picture. Trust me.

The Logs:

"The cache site hardly illustrates the positive aspects of our state. I hope the CO reconsiders its placement. "

"Second try, still no luck, will keep it on my list. Did collect a huge bag of CITO, could hardly get it into my truck, but you could hardly tell the difference. What a shame, this old tree deserves better."

"Looks as if this may be a layover point for illegal immigrants."

"UGH, lots of trash around here. Could use a CITO. Didn't have enough room in the vehicle to haul this trash out. Don't let your kid out around here. Found a needle at bottom of the tree. Be careful. We looked a long time and even went where cache was but didn't go far enough."

Do You See What I See?

Do you see the cache?



Click it if you think you do...

$1.68 for Sending My TBs

Some of you may know, my sister and I had a bet going. To win, we had to find 100 caches first. The loser had to buy themselves and the person who won a Travel Bug (TB). I won that bet in March.

Last week I received not one, but two travel bugs from my lovely sister! I've been thinking about what to put on them and what mission to give them for some time. Today I finally figured out what I wanted to to.

Here are the two Travel Bugs. You can click on the pictures to see the TB page, which shows the mission and gives a description.

This time I didn't want to toss them in any old cache around Tucson, so I tried something different. I'm a twoot that tweets on twitter (haha, I had i'm a "twit" but that didn't seem right!) and I mainly use it to connect with other geocachers. So I decided to put out a tweet asking if anyone wanted to start my travel bug for me. I got 4 quick responses, so I chose the first two. I e-mailed with them, got their addresses and dropped the TBs off at the post office this evening.

My coins will be starting in different states! I think the whole thing is rather neat. I don't technically know if it is against "rules" but since it is the first move I don't really care. After all you can "grab" coins from people.... but if any one does know if there is anything written about mailing active TBs please let me know.

Actually it would be kind of neat to have a TB base on mailing or handing it to other geocahers. A TB that never sees a geocache, but only geocachers. Hmmmm. Idea. I wonder if anyone would play along.... I may have to test that idea out. I'm sure someone has already thought of it.

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Hoppy Easter!

I hope everyone has a very Hoppy Easter!

By now, I hope everyone has received their mail. If you are out of the US you might get it later :-/ What I sent was a very simple craft that I had been wanting to make for quite a while. Instead of sending just paper (which is what I made)- I decided to go with an Easter theme. So I whipped out the scissors, puffy paint, acrylics and my creativity. I think they turned out pretty good, though some might argue that a third grader could have made them... and that is probably true. But nonetheless, I had fun making paper!

My pictures aren't that great and I didn't get as many of the process as I should have... but please enjoy:

I even had a couple eggs left, so I signed up on Postcrossing.com.

In short: the objective of Postcrossing is to allow people to exchange postcards via mail (real mail, not email) with random postcrossers from around the world. Oh, and it is absolutely free, meaning, if you send a postcard, you will receive one back from another random user (and sometimes, another one from the person you wrote to).

Through that website I sent postcards to Norway, Germany, Taiwan, Canada and Finland! I'm hoping to get some postcards in return! You know I'll be posting them here ;-)

---

In retrospect, I should have incorporated the Easter themed postcards with The Eggsperiment. If I do this again I will embed some wildflower seeds (probably to US people only) into the paper. That way when the cards are received they can be torn up and planted!

For anyone interested in paper making here are some links on how to do it. There are different ways of doing it. Different ways may work better for you. I myself, googled and read a few different methods for papermaking and then did it my own way ;-)
One method.
Another method.
A video of how to do it.

Catching Rain

It has been a while since we've seen rain here in Tucson, Arizona

Something makes you want to reach out and touch it,



just to make sure it's real.



It is.



Seeing Feeling is believing.



Did I mention, It is only 54.3 °F ?

Brrrrrr.

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