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A newfound hobby of mine is Geocaching.  Put simply, it’s a world-wide game in which people hide small containers, or caches, in various places, and then provide GPS coordinates for others to use to find the caches.  There are hundreds of thousands of these things around the world already, and the number is growing!

My friend, Ben, got me turned onto the idea of geocaching and took me out on my first find.  Since then, I’ve found 22 more (and counting!).  Those 22 finds all happened in the past few days as I traveled around the Texas Panhandle.  I found 11 driving to and from Lubbock over the last 2 days, and the other 11 were found in the few days before that.

I plan on logging my geocaching exploits as they happen.  I don’t think there will be many more of these 23-cache sprees in the near future (mostly because I’ve found all the caches near my hometown!), but expect a few photos and stories about what I find along the way.

This last spree had a few interesting finds.  For example, the “The Past of Dumas” cache was found near the Dumas cemetery inside of a fence post, attached to a 5-foot piece of string.  The “Island of Rest” cache was found near Tulia, TX in a hollow tree.  The cache was taped t o a long stick and put inside the tree so that only about an inch of the stick was showing through the hole.  Very clever.

Content-wise, the coolest cache  I found this time around was the “Randall County Music Cache” in which an ammo box was filled with various CDs and other swag.  The idea was that when you’re driving across West Texas, sometimes you need some good road music and you just get tired of what you have, so you can find this cache and do a little CD swap.  I left a copy of a Mondo Generator CD in the cache and took a homemade CD called “How to See the Sun Rise.”  Amazing CD with some damn good music.  I’m glad I found that cache!

Below is a list of the caches I have found so far, and a slide show of photos from the hunt, visit my Geocaching page to see a map of the caches I’ve found so far.

1. May 21, 2009
   1. Fabulous Fox
2. June 28, 2009
   1. Phantom
   2. King Of The Road
   3. The Past of Dumas
   4. End of the Road
   5. The Race Is On!
3. June 29, 2009
   1. From A to Zinc
   2. ODS ON DUMAS HIGHWAY
   3. Blue West
   4. One Degree of Separation: Windy #7
   5. PICNIC AREA ON HIGHWAY 287
4. June 30, 2009
   1. Happy Trails
   2. Union Hill
   3. Island of Rest
   4. Kress Kross
   5. Elm Grove Road
5. July 1, 2009
   1. Llano History – TTU Dairy Barn
   2. Quiet as an…..uh…airplane!
   3. Downtown Oasis
   4. Eastern Paradise
   5. Fram & Ranch
   6. Foreverville #2
   7. Randall County Music Cache

Today is the last day of employment for the 10 1/2 month folks in the department, so we spent some time getting all the last-minute tasks accomplished.  Really, there wasn’t much left to do.  But with today ending the 10 1/2 month folks time here (until July, at least), it marks, for me, the end of the school year and the start of Summer.  With the start of a new season, comes the wrapping-up of the old season, so…

Excuse me while I go all GTD for a moment.

I’ve cleaned out my inboxes.  My email inbox is empty, and I’ve cleared out my Next-actions.  My physical in-box is nice and empty, as well.  I even went through my composition notebook to be sure there weren’t any straggling next-actions waiting for me in there.  I am, as far as I can tell, completely caught up!

That being said, I’m going to have an amazing weekend of relaxation, and maybe a little laundry.

…and geocaching.

My friend Ben turned me on to geocaching yesterday, and I went on my first find.  We tracked down a little cache down by the Fox Theater.  It was quite a rush.  I’m going to go down to Tower Grove park this weekend and see if I can find a few more.  I’d like to see if my iPhone can be used as a reliable navigation tool for tracking down caches.  As a backup, I’ll have my TomTom with me, just in case.

Oh, and as a bonus, I didn’t realize until yesterday that this is a long weekend.  Happy Memorial Day folks!  It’s time for the cookouts to begin!  HUZZAH!

(Well, I wrote this on May 4, but forgot to hit “publish”.  My bad.)

I’m writing this from my iPhone while sitting on the steps of the clock tower at SLU. Tonight is the Billikens After Dark campus-wide capture the flag game and I am in charge of refereeing the neutral zone in the middle of campus. We have a pretty good turn-out tonight. About 60 students showed up to play.

In other news, I have a job interview on Friday at a school I’m pretty interested in. Next week I have phone interview with another school. I’m pretty excited about both. I think I’d be a good fit at either one. Naturally I’m not going to divulge the names of the schools, but with any luck I’ll be announcing a positive outcome in the next few weeks.

See, I decided that it was probably time for me to be moseying along after 2 years here in St. Louis. I’ve had a great time and made some good connections and some great friends who I will be very sad to leave. But, hey, we do what we gotta do, right?

In other, tangentally related news, we are closing up shop for the year in just one week. Wednesday begins finals week, and the students will all be moved out by next Tuesday. It’s one of those bittersweet moments. Sad to see another year ending, but happy to have some quiet time in my building at night.

Goodnight folks. See you when I have good news (I hope)!

He is risen! Alleluia!

This video isn’t from the Vigil Mass I attended, nor was this song sung at the Vigil Mass I attended, but it is one of my favorite pieces of music.  They would sing it at the closing of Mass during the Easter season back when I was in Kansas attending Mass at St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center.

Last night, Pam, Renee, and I attended the Easter Vigil Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis.  The Basilica is a gorgeous place to begin with, and it was really quite stunning to walk in with it being covered in darkness.  The lights were off, and people were sitting in silent reflection.  We were all ushered outside the Cathedral to begin the liturgy.  The fire and paschal candle were blessed, and we processed inside, singing, “Christ our light!  Thanks be to God!”  As we entered, the light from the Paschal candle was passed on to each person entering by the lighting of our individual candles.  We made our way to our pews and sat in silence.

The house lights were turned on, and the beauty of the Cathedral Basilica was illuminated.  It was really quite breathtaking to see it happen.  What was once trapped in darkness was brought into light in celebration of the risen Lord.

I’ll admit, I’m not a big fan of the readings at the Cathedral.  Because the place echoes so much the lectors have to talk very…sloooowly.  It’s actually a bit distracting.  After the readings, my favorite part: The Gloria.  Bells began ringing, the choir sang, and the orchestra played.  Acolytes came out of every corner to light all the candles in the Cathedral.  When the music ended, and there was a moment of silence, you could still hear the Cathedral bells ringing out to all those who could hear in the city.  It really does make you realize the joyous occasion. I was energized, that’s for sure.

There was only one baptism, and three others also recieved confirmation.  One of the new initiates took the name Francis, and I secretly hoped it was for Francis of Assisi.  St. Francis of Assisi is my confirmation saint, as well.

The Liturgy of the Eucharist went as usual, and the recessional was the Halleluja Chorus from Handel’s Messiah.  Very fitting, and very beautiful when sang by the Cathedral choir.

Happy Easter, everyone.

It’s getting warmer in St. Louis.  According to my trusty iPhone, the temperature was a sunny 57 degrees.  I spent a couple hours outside enjoying the warmth and quality time with my good friend Leslie.

My adventure began a couple hours after Leslie’s, but that’s a natural side effect of her somehow waking up at a normal hour.  I first ventured to 6 North Coffee Company, where many a lazy Saturday afternoon is spent (mostly by Leslie, but I tag along occasionally).  A iced chai with soy milk and an outdoor table was all it took to start my day off right.  I brought a book to read, but never cracked it open.

Seeing as how I arrived so to the coffee shop (around noon), Leslie and I were pretty hungry and didn’t feel like ordering a salad from inside, so we made our way down to the Central West End neighborhood, which is just a few blocks away.  There’s a few options for lunch down there, but we settled on The Tortillaria, which I had never been to before.  It’s a shame, really, because the food was very good, and very filling.  As you would expect, the chips and salsa were complimentary, but we ordered some fresh-made guacamole, which was quity tasty.  My meal was a shredded chicken quesadilla with sides of rice and street corn.  It wasn’t the best mexican food I’ve eaten, but it was still great.  Again, we ate outdoors which made it even that much better.

Overall, it was a great day.  The day ended, as any good Catholic on Holy Saturday would end it – the Easter Vigil Mass as the Cathedral Basilica.  But that’s another story.