where i've been -- part iii

Following our departure from Pittsburgh on Friday, Mom and I drove through Ohio to a little town called Davisburg* between Detroit and Flint in Michigan. The 4-H fairgrounds here were host to the 2006 Midwestern Geobash. And we were there.

Geobashing is what geocachers do when they're not geocaching, I suppose. And what is geocaching? It's one form of a "treasure hunt" in which a person employs a global positioning system (GPS - yeah, like the kind in luxury cars these days, although you can take this version out of your car into the woods) to go to latitude-longitude coordinates posted on the geocaching website by another person who has hidden a "cache" at that location. Then...you find it, write that you were there, maybe exchange some little prizes (playing cards...marbles...stickers...etc.), and "log" your visit on the geocaching website when you return home. It's pretty fun. I've always enjoyed a good hunt, and it's a good way to get out into nature, as many are located in natural areas - although some are in parking lots and the like, also. My mom is an avid geocacher, and so she and I went to the Geobash to camp and socialize with other cachers and search for a couple caches hidden around the fairgrounds. There were also various important-to-geocachers-items to trade, lectures about geocaching topics, and at least two super-secret traveling caches that people would find and then hide again somewhere else.

As it turned out, I spent a good portion of the event watching a horse show that was also occurring on the fairgrounds. ...I'm obviously not so gung-ho on the whole geocaching thing. I got a lot of knitting done, though! And I also did go with Mom hunting for two caches on Saturday and spent a long time Friday night with her doing a very involved night cache (I LOVE these - searching for stuff in the dark is way cooler than searching for it in the light. And also way harder. And kind of scary.). In addition, I got to meet some of the other geocachers Mom has gotten to know over the past couple years.

Finally, on Saturday afternoon we pulled up the stakes of the tent, packed up the Accord one more time, and continued on to...Kentwood!!! I'm spending the rest of the week in my hometown, relaxing (meaning knitting and reading) and visiting favorite places - and being far, far away from the lab!

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Just a random trivia thing here - PittsburgH is one of very few places in the U.S. that is a Burg with an H. I heard it was the only one in Pennsylvania, although I don't know enough cities to confirm that. Obviously, Davisburg is one of those non-H places.

where i've been -- part ii

After returning from my family camping trip, it was time to move the furniture into my new apartment. The apartment has one bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a large room that is the living room and dining area. And lots of closets.

Since rain was in the forecast for the next three days, Mom and I decided to get started with the moving nearly as soon as we dragged all the wet stuff into the apartment. Within 24 hours we had moved almost all of my furniture using the roof rack on Mom's Honda Accord (and the back seat and trunk) - and we even managed to miss out on all of the rain showers, though just barely for some of them!

The camping stuff dried out fairly quickly in the apartment after I turned on the air conditioning (I have A/C!!! YAY!!), and by Thursday we had transformed the apartment from a campsite-gone-wrong to a possibly habitable abode.

mom in the kitchen

Perhaps my favorite part of the experience was going to IKEA to get the couch I've been saving for. I had envisioned us putting the pieces of the sofa in Mom's car, since many IKEA things are flat-packed in boxes. But it didn't occur to me that sofas are not extremely flat-packable. So I was a bit discouraged when we also discovered that the sofa couldn't even be put on Mom's roof rack because it weighed more than the rack and roof were rated to hold. I was just about ready to fork out the extra charge for delivery when I wandered into the clearance place and found...my sofa. It was "damaged and dirty" (very mildly) and wasn't nearly as heavy as whatever they deliver was quoted to be...and it was over $100 cheaper than the full-price version. I took it (as well as the matching footstool). Mom and I put it on the roof and drove quite precariously back to my apartment. A few slipcovers later...

tada!

Real, live living room furniture in my own place. Woah. Nice. I feel like a real person!

And just think about all that money I saved that I can now use to buy yarn. Hee hee.

Since we had moved so quickly, there was extra time, so Mom and I went kayaking on three rivers. We went down the Monongahela, passed through the Ohio, and did a little paddling on the Allegheny. It was a long way, which we realized when we had to go back up the Mon - it took forever, and I'm not all that good at kayaking for endurance. Mom is way better because she kayaks all the time. She had to tug-boat me a little bit, but it was still fun.

you may laugh, but i didn't get sunburned!

We both slept very well that night...after we went to the Harry and the Potters concert at the library! I picked up their latest album and decided I have to read book 6 before I listen to it because I gather there's a lot of stuff from that book in the songs. I said it before, but I'll say it again: these guys are super entertaining; go see them if you can! Often it's even free.

On Friday Mom went with me to my lab meeting, and then off we went to our next adventure...!

where i've been -- part i

After a flurry of activity in the lab (meaning...a week of 12+ hour days), I hightailed it west to Raccoon Creek State Park for a Fourth of July weekend of camping with my 80% family (that is...Mom, Dad and brother. Sister is too far, being a West-coaster/Alaskan now - boo hoo.)Actually, I went back to the lab on Sunday evening and Monday morning because sadly science experiments don't have pause buttons and often take five consecutive days to complete and must be started on a certain day. Maybe that's just a workaholic excuse. Not sure.Regardless, it worked out because Jon (brother) arrived on Sunday afternoon and then slept in the tent I'd stayed in the night before...and then he left on Monday evening and I slept in that tent again, and we didn't need to have a third tent up (although Jon had already set up his third tent before he made the decision to leave on Monday...but that's just details.) Long story short, Jon made perhaps the wisest decision of the entire trip by leaving on Monday instead of staying around for Tuesday morning to head back home. On Monday night it started raining. This was sometime around 1:30a.m., which was also the time I woke up I assume in response to the loud music our camping neighbors were playing. I thought the rain would shut their music and them up, but it wasn't terribly effective. I managed to get to sleep for another few hours. At 4:30a.m. I awoke again, and it was still pouring rain -- and the neighbors were STILL AWAKE and talking in loud voices and playing music. I was treated to their discovery that raccoons were eating the hotdogs they had left on the picnic table. Their response was to yell swear words at the raccoons and eventually run outside screaming and calling them cuss names while chasing the stubborn creatures away.

Obviously I did not have a great night's sleep, and when I finally woke up for real in the morning it was STILL raining, and that meant we had to pack up the campsite all wet. Never fun. But rather funny - because then Mom, Dad, and I had to find somewhere semi-dry to sort out the items because Dad was returning home to Michigan but Mom and I were heading back to Pittsburgh and yet needed to take some camping supplies with us. Once it was all said and done, the two cars were properly packed, everyone drove home in the rain (except it wasn't raining in Michigan...it hasn't rained there in forever), and then Mom and I set up the wet tent in the dining room of my new apartment so it could dry out and not get all moldy just sitting in the car.

It was very nice to be back somewhere dry...and quiet...

The trip was by no means awful, though. In addition to kayaking, swimming, and visiting around the campfire, we went for a hike to the lovely mineral springs.

there's mom - what a big cave!!

Crisp, cool waterand a beautiful walk.

i'm on vaca

In case you're wondering...I'm more or less "on vacation." More later. Currently I'm geobashing with my mom.