A quiet weekend

No major doings this weekend.

No movies.

No visiting friends.

Nada.

But I did go geocaching both Saturday and Sunday.  I didn't travel too far, just over towards Brechin on Saturday, and Barrie on Sunday.  It was great just getting out on a couple of sunny summer days.

I really hope the city of Orillia purchases the land that the former Huronia Regional Center sits on.  There is a beautiful beach there, and great looking lawns.  The city could use some more waterfront park land like this.

I also took a drive over to Lock 41 on the Trent Severn, where there used to be a cache.  Apparently was archived, but I still had a nice time watching boats go through the lock.  I didn't realized that some of the locks on the canal were still manually controlled.  You'd lose a few pounds if you spent your summer opening and closing locks all day.

Sunday I cached in the Barrie area and I used my iPhone to solve a wherigo for the first time. Glad to see the app works well, and I had fun doing it.

One of my favourite things about caching is discovering treasures in my own backyard.  I think the spots I went to this weekend confirmed that.

It's good to have friends with different interests.

As someone who has a lot of different interests, it's great to have several circles of friends with whom I can share my passions. This weekend has been a great example of that. The last couple of summer weekends I haven't had much going on, but this weekend there has been one of those rare convergences where so many things were going on, I couldn't get to all of them.

It started Saturday morning. I took a drive to the south shore of Lake Simcoe to see the Queenston Players do some Shakespeare on the grounds of the sadly departed Red Barn Theatre. Aside from the overpowering sunshine, you couldn't have asked for a better day for a little Romeo and Juliet, Shrew, Hamlet, MacBeth and Dream. My friends Patsi and John along with the rest of the troupe, very admirably handled the text, and the cuts that were made made the stories easy to follow.

From there I headed north to the fields of Oro-Medonte, where Ed had invited the Blue Beetle Comics gang to his place for a barbecue. And what a feast it was! Ed takes his barbecue very seriously so the ribs and pulled pork had been smoked for hours. The sauce he made beat anything that comes in a bottle. His wife Ang made some of the most delicious cole slaws I've ever had. It was great catching up with everyone in that geek circle since my new job prevents me from meeting up with them on the traditional Wednesday nights after new comic day. Great food, great friends and great general geekiness!

The weekend closed with a drive down to Mississauga. My friend Tric had asked for a geocaching lesson so I headed south to hit the city. I met up with Phil and Amanda, who were going to join us, for a brief look around the Disney Store at Square One first. (Did you know they sell Vinylmation at the Disney Store now?) About 2:00 we got to Tric's and went out into the wilds of Mississauga. We ended up finding 5 caches on the day and had a great time trying to stay cool.

So my lesson in all this is to indulge your passions. Meet people who share those passions. And live life to the fullest!

Make it weekly, Less Pressure

So the title of the blog is Daily Doings, but if I try to keep to a weekly schedule, things are more likely to stay up to date. Not a ton of updates this week.

My birthday was Wednesday. Thanks Ann, for taking me out to lunch. On the whole it was a pretty low key affair. I did work that day so no big parties. There was one night when I could not get to sleep no matter how hard I tried so I was up all night watching episodes of Top Chef Canada I wanted to catch up on.

I hardly watch tv any more. I listen to a lot of podcasts about a lot of different topics. I find surfing the net, chatting with friends on facebook and reading blogs about topics I'm interested in much more fulfilling. One day I'll clean out my PVR and get caught up with shows, but right now, I just don't care.

I finished Week 3 of the Couch to 5K running program this week. That means I'm up to 9 minutes of running in a 30 minute exercise routine. I enjoy running through Scout Valley, but I really have to watch my footing there because the terrain is so rough. I'm a week past where I stopped when I tried this program last summer. This year I've got a little more motivation to keep it up. One of the local theater groups is doing the Full Monty next spring...

I finally got out and did some geocaching today. Started with the unfound cache closest to home and continued my way down the Oro-Medonte Rail Trail. Did about 5K of walking which helps with the exercise regime. It was hot, so I treated myself to a strawberry shake at the end of it. Gotta love the Burger Pit!

Not much coming up this week. Back to the phones tomorrow. We've been given the okay to work extra hours this month, not sure how much I'm going to do. One thing I can say is that I am saving a lot of money by working evenings. Not going out a couple of nights a week is keeping the cash in my pockets.

The minutia:
Podcasts: Laughing Place, PodCacher, The Onion
Comics: some Flashpoint tie ins
TV: Top Chef Canada

Not much goin' on

But I did get out of the house yesterday. I decided that since the temp was a balmy -4 C it would be a good day to get out and do some geocaching. Now seeing as it is winter, I don't fancy a several mile trek through the wilderness, so I filtered my caching database to only find caches of difficulty and terrain ratings of 2 or less. I also add waymarking into my winter caching, which is kind of like virtual caching but broken down into hundreds of categories. Many of the categories are, in my opinion, stupid like McDonalds or KFCs. Each category you make a find in gives you an icon on your personal chart. What I like to do is, in the categories I don't like, make one find and then ignore the entire category. That way I get the icon, and then eventually my searches will only come up with waymarks that I want to find like historical markers, roadside attractions or museums.

First Waymark Location: St. Thomas Church, Shanty Bay

Categories: This Old Church, Ontario Historic Plaques & Stained Glass

The one geocache I did find was a short hike to Little Lake from a North Barrie suburb. Thanks to a recent snowmobiler, the trail was hard packed almost to the cache location. The find was quick and I was back to the car quickly.

Spent the evening in front of the boob tube. I hadn't watched the Simpsons in years, but seeing as this was the 20th Anniversary 450th episode, I thought I'd watch. The episode was average, eliciting a few chuckles, but I really enjoyed the documentary special that was on right after. It was interesting seeing how the show is received around the world.

Highlight of the night was the return of Chuck. I love that show and the start of the third season didn't disappoint. The direction has changed a little, but the humour, the action and the characters will keep me coming back.

Geocache: Bush Golf GC1Z17F

TV: The Simpsons, The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special in 3D on Ice, Chuck